Midnight Never Come (40 page)

She had the pale skin, the inky hair, the black eyes and red lips. But what had been unnerving in its perfection was now mere faerie beauty: a step sideways from mortality, enough to take the breath away, but bearable. And
right.

A last, a crystalline tear hovered at the edge of her lashes, then fell.

“Thank you,” Suspiria whispered.

Then, like Francis Merriman, she faded from view, and when the throne was empty Deven knew they were both gone forever.

For a moment they stood silently in the presence chamber, with the corpse of Achilles, the huddled forms of Eurydice and the two elf knights, while Lune absorbed what she had just seen and done.

Then a pillar cracked and split in two, and Lune realized the thunder had not stopped. It had drawn nearer.

And Suspiria was gone.

Deven saw the sudden panic in her face. “What is it?”

“The Hunt,” she said, unnecessarily. “I was to ask Suspiria — the Stone — they think the kings might relent, if she relinquished her sovereignty — but what will happen, now that she is gone?”

He took off before she even finished speaking, flying the length of the presence chamber at a dead run, heading directly for the throne. No, not directly; he went to one side of it, and laid hold of the edge of the great silver arch. “Help me!”

“With
what
?” She came forward regardless. “The throne does not matter; we have to find the London Stone —”

“ ’Tis here!” Tendons ridged the backs of his hands as he dragged ineffectually at the throne. “A hidden chamber — I saw it before —”

Lune stood frozen for only a moment; then she threw herself forward and began to pull at the other side of the seat.

It moved reluctantly, protecting its treasure. “Help us!” Lune snapped, and whether out of reflexive obedience or a simple desire not to die at the hands of the Hunt, first Sir Cerenel and then Eurydice picked themselves up and came to lend their aid. Together the four of them forced it away from the wall, until there was a gap just wide enough for Lune and Deven to slip through.

The chamber beyond was no more than an alcove, scarcely large enough for the two of them and the stone that projected from the ceiling. A sword was buried halfway to the hilt in the pitted surface of the limestone, its grip just where an extremely tall woman’s hand might reach.

Lune did not know what effect the sword had, now that one half of its pact had passed out of the world, but if they could take it to the Hunt, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall . . . a slim hope, but she could not think of anything else to try.

Her own fingers came well short of the hilt. She looked at Deven, and he shook his head; Invidiana had been even taller than he, and he looked reluctant to touch a faerie sword regardless.

“Lift me,” Lune said. Deven wrapped his bloodstained hands about her waist, gathered his strength, and sent her into the air, as high as he could.

Her hand closed around the hilt, but the sword did not pull free.

Instead, it pulled her upward, with Deven at her side.

C
ANDLEWICK
S
TREET
, L
ONDON
:
May 9, 1590

She understood the truth, as they passed with a stomach-twisting surge from the alcove to the street above. The London Stone, half-buried, did not extend downward into the Onyx Hall. The Stone below was simply a reflection of the Stone above, the central axis of the entire edifice Suspiria and Francis had constructed. In that brief, wrenching instant, she felt herself not only to be at the London Stone, but at St. Paul’s and the Tower, at the city wall and the bank of the Thames.

Then she stood on Candlewick Street, with Deven at her side, the sword still in her hand.

All around them was war. Some still fought in the sky; others had dragged the battle down into the streets, so that the clash of weapons came from Bush Lane and St. Mary Botolph and St. Swithins, converging on where they stood. Hounds yelped, a sound that made her skin crawl, and someone was winding a horn, its call echoing over the city rooftops. But she had eyes only for a set of figures mounted on horseback that stood scant paces from the two of them.

She thrust the sword skyward and screamed,
“Enough!”

And her voice, which should not have begun to cut through the roar of battle, rang out louder than the horn, and brought near-instant silence.

They stared at her, from all around where the fighting had raged. She did not see Sir Kentigern, but Prigurd stood astraddle the unmoving body of their sister, a bloody two-handed blade in his grip. Vidar was missing, too. Which side did he fight on? Or had he fled?

It was a question to answer later. In the sudden hush, she lowered the tip of the sword until it pointed at the riders — the ancient kings of Faerie England.

“You have brought war to my city,” Lune said in a forbidding voice, a muted echo of the command that had halted the fighting. “You
will
take it away again.”

Their faces and forms were dimly familiar, half-remembered shades from scarcely forty years before. Had one of them once been her own king? Perhaps the one who moved forward now, a stag-horned man with eyes as cruel as the wild. “Who are you, to thus command us?”

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune said.

The words came by unthinking reflex. At her side, Deven stiffened. The sword would have trembled in her grasp, but she dared not show her own surprise.

The elfin king scowled. “That title is a usurped one. We will reclaim what is ours, and let no pretender stand in our way.”

Hands tensed on spears; the fighting might resume at any moment.

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune repeated. Then she went on, following the same instinct that had made her declare it. “But not the Queen of faerie England.”

The stag-horned rider’s scowl deepened. “Explain yourself.”

“Invidiana is gone. The pact by which she deprived you of your sovereignty is broken. I have drawn her sword from the London Stone; therefore the sovereignty of this city is mine. To you are restored those crowns she stole years ago.”

A redheaded king spoke up, less hostile than his companion. “But London remains yours.”

Lune relaxed her blade, letting the point dip to the ground, and met his gaze as an equal. “A place disregarded until the Hall was created, for fae live in glens and hollow hills, far from mortal eyes — except here, in the Onyx Hall. ’Twas never any kingdom of yours. Invidiana had no claim to England, but here, in this place, she created a realm for herself, and now ’tis mine by right.”

She had not planned it. Her only thought had been to bear the sword to these kings, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall, and hope she could sue for peace. But she felt the city beneath her feet, as she never had before. London was
hers.
And kings though they might be, they had no right to challenge her here.

She softened her voice, though not its authority. “Each side has dead to mourn tonight. But we shall meet in peace anon, all the kings and queens of faerie England, and when our treaty is struck, you will be welcome within my realm.”

The red-haired king was the first to go. He wheeled his horse, its front hooves striking the air, and gave a loud cry; here and there, bands of warriors followed his lead, vaulting skyward once more and vanishing from sight. One by one, the other kings followed, each taking with them some portion of the Wild Hunt, until the only fae who remained in the streets were Lune’s subjects.

One by one, they knelt to her.

Looking out at them, she saw too many motionless bodies. Some might yet be saved, but not all. They had paid a bloody price for her crown, and they did not even know why.

This would not be simple. Sir Kentigern and Dame Halgresta, if they lived — Lady Nianna — Vidar, if she could find him. And countless others who were used to clawing and biting their way to the top, and fearing the Queen who stood above them.

Changing that would be slow. But it could begin tonight.

To her newfound subjects, Lune said, “Return to the Onyx Hall. We will speak in the night garden, and I will explain all that has passed here.”

They disappeared into the shadows, leaving Lune and Deven alone in Candlewick Street, with the sky rapidly clearing above them.

Deven let out his breath slowly, finally realizing they might — at last — be safe. He ached all over, and he was light-headed from lack of food, but the euphoria that followed a battle was beginning to settle in. He found himself grinning wryly at Lune, wondering where to start with the things they needed to say. She was a
queen
now. He hardly knew what to think of that.

She began to return his smile — and then froze.

He heard it, too. A distant sound — somewhere in Cripplegate, he thought. A solitary bell, tolling.

Midnight had come. Soon all the bells in the city would be ringing, from the smallest parish tower to St. Paul’s Cathedral itself. And Lune stood out in the open, unprotected; the angel’s power had gone from her. The sound would hurt her.

But it would destroy something else.

He had felt it as they passed through the London Stone. St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the two original entrances to the Onyx Hall. The pit still gaped in the nave, a direct conduit from the mortal world to the fae, open and unprotected.

In twelve strokes of the great bell, every enchantment that bound the Onyx Hall into being would come undone, shredded by the holy sound.

“Give me your hand.” Deven seized it before she could even move, taking her left hand in his left, dragging her two steps sideways to the London Stone.

“We will not be safe within,” Lune cried. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind, as more bells began to ring.

Deven slapped his right hand onto the rough limestone surface. “We are not going within.”

It was the axis of London and its dark reflection, the linchpin that held the two together. Suspiria had not made the palace alone, because she
could
not; such a thing could only be crafted by hands both mortal and fae. Deven would have staked his life that Francis Merriman was a true Londoner, born within hearing of the city bells.

As Deven himself was.

With his hand upon the city’s heart, Deven reached out blindly, calling on forces laid there by another pair before them. He had drunk of faerie wine. Lune had borne an angel’s power. They had each been changed; they were each a little of both worlds, and the Onyx Hall answered to them.

The Thames. The wall. The Tower. The cathedral.

As the first stroke of the great bell rang out across the city, he felt the sound wash over and through him. Like a seawall protecting a harbor in a storm, he took the brunt of that force, and bid the entrance close.

A fourth stroke; an eighth; a twelfth. The last echoes of the bell of St. Paul’s faded, and trailing out after it, the other bells of London. Deven waited until the city was utterly silent before he lifted his hand from the Stone.

He looked up slowly, carefully, half-terrified that he was wrong, that he had saved the Hall but left Lune vulnerable, and now she would shatter into nothingness.

Lune’s silver eyes smiled into his, and she used their clasped hands to draw him toward her, so she might lay a kiss on his lips. “I will make you the first of my knights — if you will have me as your lady.”

M
EMORY
:
January 9, 1547

T
he man walked down a long, colonnaded gallery, listening to his boot heels click on the stone, trailing his fingers in wonder across the pillars as he passed them by. It was impossible that this should all be here, that it should have come into being in the course of mere minutes, and yet he had seen it with his own eyes. Indeed, it was partly his doing.

The thought still dizzied him.

The place was enormous, far larger than he had expected, and so far almost entirely deserted. The sisters had chosen to stay in their own home, though they visited from time to time. Others would come, they assured him, once word spread farther, once folk believed.

Until then, it was just him, and the woman he sought.

He found her in the garden. They called it so, even though it was barely begun: a few brave clusters of flowers — a gift from the sisters — grouped around a bench that sat on the bank of the Walbrook. She was not seated on the bench, but on the ground, trailing her fingers in the water, a distant expression on her face. The air in the garden was pleasantly cool, a gentle contrast to the winter-locked world outside.

She did not move as he seated himself on the ground next to her. “I have brought seeds,” he said. “I have no gift for planting, but I am sure we can convince Gertrude — since they are not roses.” She did not respond, and his expression softened. He reached for her nearer hand and took it in his own. “Suspiria, look at me.”

Her eyes glimmered with the tears she was too proud to shed. “It has accomplished nothing,” she said, her low, melodic voice trembling.

“Did you hear that sound, half an hour ago?”

“What sound?”

He smiled at her. “Precisely. All the church bells of the city rang, and you did not hear a thing. This is a haven the likes of which has
never
existed, not even in legend. In time many fae will come, all of them dwelling in perfect safety beneath a mortal city, and you say it has accomplished nothing?”

She pulled her hand from his and looked away again. “It has not lifted the curse.”

Of course. Francis had known Suspiria far longer than his appearance would suggest; he had not dwelt among mortals for many a year now. This hall had been an undertaking in its own right, a challenge that fascinated them both, and they had many grand dreams of what could be done with it, now that it was built. But it was born for another purpose, one never far from Suspiria’s mind.

In that respect, it had failed.

He shifted closer and put gentle pressure on her shoulder, until she yielded and lay down, her head in his lap. With careful fingers he brushed her hair back, wondering if he should tell her what he knew: that the face he saw was an illusion, crafted to hide the age and degeneration beneath. The truth did not repel him — but he feared it would repel her, to know that he knew.