Standing there, at the mouth of the ballroom, Alucard’s ears caught slices of information, too thin, and all confused, tangling with one another until he couldn’t pick the news apart, sort the real from the fabulous, the truth from the fear.

The city was under attack.

A monster had come to London.

A fog was poisoning the people.

Invading their minds.

Driving them mad.

It was like the Black Night all over again, they said, but worse. That plague had taken twenty, thirty, and passed by touch. This, it seemed, moved on the air itself. It had taken hundreds, maybe even thousands.

And it was spreading.

The tournament magicians stood in clusters, some speaking in low, urgent tones while others simply stared out through the gallery’s vaulting windows as tendrils of dark fog wrapped around the palace, blotting out the city in streaks of black.

The Faroans gathered around Lord Sol-in-Ar in tight formation as their general spoke in his serpentine tongue, while the Veskans stood in sullen silence, their prince staring into the night, their princess surveying the room.

The queen caught sight of Alucard and frowned, pulling away from the knot of vestra around her.

“Is my son awake?” she said under her breath.

“Not yet, Your Majesty,” he answered. “But Kell is with him now.”

A long silence, and then the queen nodded, once, attention already shifting away.

“Is it true?” he asked. “That Rhy …” He didn’t want to shape the words, didn’t want to give them life and weight. He’d picked up fragments in the chaos of Rhy’s collapse, seen the matching spellwork on Kell’s chest.

Someone has wounded you, he’d said nights before, offering to kiss the seal above the prince’s heart. But someone had done worse than that.

“He will recover now,” she said. “That is what matters.”

He wanted to say something else, to tell her he was worried, too (he wondered if she knew—how much she knew—about his summer with her son, how much he cared), but she was already moving away, and he was left with the words going sour on his tongue.

“All right then, who’s next?” said a familiar voice nearby, and Alucard turned again to see his thief surrounded by palace guards. His pulse quickened until he realized Bard wasn’t in any danger.

The guards were kneeling around her, and Lila Bard of all people was touching each of their foreheads, as if bestowing a blessing. Head bowed, she almost looked like a saint.

If a saint dressed all in black and carried knives.

If a saint blessed using blood.

He went to her as the guards peeled away, each anointed with a line of red.

Up close, Bard looked pale, shadows like bruises beneath her eyes, jaw clenched as she wrapped a cut in linen.

“Keep some of that in your veins, if you can,” he said, reaching out to help her tie the knot.

She looked up, and he stiffened at the unnatural glint in her gaze. The glass surface of her right eye, once a brown that almost matched her left, was shattered.

“Your eye,” he said dumbly.

“I know.”

“It looks …”

“Dangerous?”

“Painful.” His fingertips drifted to the dried blood caught like a tear in the outer corner of the ruined eye, a nick where a knife had grazed the skin. “Long night?”

She let out a single stifled laugh. “And getting longer.”

Alucard’s gaze tracked from the guards’ marked skin to her stained fingers. “A spell?”

Bard shrugged. “A blessing.” He raised a brow. “Haven’t you heard?” she added absently. “I’m aven.”

“You’re certainly something,” he said as a crack snaked up the nearest window and a pair of older priests rushed toward the novice working to ward the glass. He lowered his voice. “Have you been outside?”

“Yes,” she said, features hardening. “It’s … it’s not … good …” She trailed off. Bard had never been chatty, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen her at a loss for words. She took a moment, squinting at the odd gathering that they faced here, and began again, her voice low. “The guards are keeping the people in their homes, but the fog—whatever’s in the fog—is poisonous. Most fall within moments of contact. They aren’t rotting the way they did in the Black Night,” she added, “so it’s not possession. But they’re not themselves, either. And those who fight the hold, they fall to something worse. The priests are trying to learn more, but so far …” She blew out a breath, shifting her hair over her damaged eye. “I caught sight of Lenos in the crowd,” she added, “and he looked all right, but Tav …” She shook her head.

Alucard swallowed. “Has it reached the northern bank?” he asked, thinking of the Emery estate. Of his sister. When Bard didn’t answer, he twisted toward the door. “I have to go—”

“You can’t,” she said, and he expected a reprimand, a reminder there was nothing he could do, but this was Bard—his Bard—and can’t meant something simple. “The guards are on the doors,” she explained. “They’ve strict orders not to let anyone in or out.”

“You never let that stop you.”

The ghost of a smile. “True.” And then, “I could stop you.”

“You could try.”

And she must have seen the steel in his eyes, because the smile flickered and went out. “Come here.”