“I can be merciful,” said the dark king, “if you beg.”

Alucard straightened. “No.”

The room rocked violently, and he stumbled forward onto his knees in a cold stone cell, held down as his manacled wrists were forced onto the carved iron block. Embers crackled as the matching poker prodded the fire, and smoke burned Alucard’s lungs when he tried to breathe. A man pulled the poker from the coals, its end a violent red, and again Alucard saw the carved features of the king.

“Beg,” said Osaron, bringing the iron to rest against the chains.

Alucard clenched his teeth, and would not.

“Beg,” said Osaron, as the chains grew hot.

As the heat peeled away flesh, Alucard’s refusal became a single, drawn-out scream.

He tore backward, suddenly free, and found himself standing in the hall again, no king, no father, only Anisa, barefoot in a nightgown, holding a burned wrist, their father’s fingers like a cuff circling her skin.

“Why would you leave me in this place?” she asked.

And before he could answer, Alucard was dragged back into the cell, his brother Berras now holding the iron and smiling while his brother’s skin burned. “You should never have come back.”

Around and around it went, memories searing through flesh and muscle, mind and soul.

“Stop,” he pleaded.

“Let me in,” said Osaron.

“I can be true,” said his sister.

“I can be merciful,” said his father.

“I can be just,” said his brother.

“If you only let us in.”

VI

“Your Majesty?”

The city was falling.

“Your Majesty?”

The darkness was spreading.

“Maxim.”

The king looked up and saw Isra, clearly waiting for an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. Maxim turned his attention to the map of London one last time, with its spreading shadows, its black river. How was he supposed to fight a god, or a ghost, or whatever this thing was?

Maxim growled, and pushed forcefully away from the table. “I cannot stand here, safe within my palace, while my kingdom dies.” Isra barred his way.

“You cannot go out there, either.”

“Move aside.”

“What good will it do your kingdom, if you die with it? Since when is solidarity a victory of any kind?” Few people would speak to Maxim Maresh with such candor, but Isra had been with him since before he was king, had fought beside him on the Blood Coast so many years ago, when Maxim was a general and Isra his second, his friend, his shadow. “You are thinking like a soldier instead of a king.”

Maxim turned away, raking a hand through his coarse black hair.

No, he was thinking too much like a king. One who’d been softened by so many years of peace. One whose battles were now fought in ballrooms and in stadium seats with words and wine instead of steel.

How would they have fought Osaron back on the Blood Coast?

How would they have fought him if he were a foe of flesh and blood?

With cunning, thought Maxim.

But that was the difference between magic and men—the latter made mistakes.

Maxim shook his head.

This monster was magic with a mind attached, and minds could be tricked, bent, even broken. Even the best fighters had flaws in their stance, chinks in their armor …

“Move aside, Isra.”

“Your Majesty—”

“I’ve no intention of walking out into the fog,” he said. “You know me better than that,” he added. “If I fall, I will fall fighting.”

Isra frowned but let him pass.

Maxim left the map room, turning not toward the gallery, but away, through the palace and up the stairs to the royal chambers. He crossed the room without pausing to look at the welcoming bed, the grand wood desk with its inlaid gold, the basin of clear water and the decanters of wine.

He’d hoped, selfishly, to find Emira here, but the room was empty.

Maxim knew that if he called for her, she would come, would help in any way she could to ease the burden of what he had to do next—whether that meant working the magic with him, or simply pressing her cool hands to his brow, sliding her fingers through his hair the way she had when they were young, humming songs that worked like spells.

Emira was the ice to Maxim’s fire, the cool bath in which to temper his steel. She made him stronger.

But he did not call her.

Instead, he crossed alone to the far wall of the royal chamber where, half hidden by swaths of gossamer and silk, there stood a door.

Maxim brought all ten fingertips to the hollow wood and reached for the metal laid within. He rotated both hands against the door and felt the shift of cogs, the clunk of pins sliding free, others sliding home. It was no simple lock, no combination to be turned, but Maxim Maresh had built this door, and he was the only one who ever opened it.

He’d caught Rhy trying once, when the prince was just a boy.

The prince had a fondness for discovering secrets, whether they belonged to a person or a palace, and the moment he discovered that the door was locked he must have gone and found Kell, dragged the black-eyed boy—still new to his benign breed of mischief—back up into the royal chamber. Maxim had walked in on the two, Rhy urging Kell on as the latter lifted wary fingers to the wood.

Maxim had crossed the room at the sound of sliding metal and caught the boy’s hand before the door could open. It wasn’t a matter of ability. Kell was getting stronger by the day, his magic blooming like a spring tree, but even the young Antari—perhaps the young Antari most of all—needed to know that power had its limits.