the icy presence filling the room. The black diamond rings they both wore began to spark and glow. Kiril’s vision darkened. Mathiros screamed his wife’s name.
Kiril reached, scraping himself raw, and threw every bit of strength against the shadow. For an instant it balked, mantling over the room. He couldn’t breathe, could feel nothing but that black chill.
The ice inside his chest broke and stabbed him through the heart.
His legs folded. The shadow crested over him, crashed down. Mathiros screamed. Isyllt screamed. The floor rushed up to meet him. Old debts come due at last.
The shadow retreated; it would take Kiril with it, and at last he might rest. Isyllt’s face lingered behind his eyes—no surprise that death would wear her countenance. But she called his name, invoked it, held him inside his pain-riddled flesh. Over the roar in his ears he heard his king’s wailing grief. He might only have imagined Erishal’s mocking laughter.
Darkness stole over him, dark and blessed silence.
The bells tolled an hour before dusk, slow and solemn and irrevocable.
In her chambers in the Gallery of Pearls, Savedra Severos sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed her face into her hands. Her eyes ached, though she had no tears—it wasn’t her grief, but the weight of it still crushed her. It would crush the whole palace; the queen was well loved.
Had been.
“I should go to him.” Her voice snagged and broke halfway. Maybe it was her grief after all. Lychandra had always been kind to her son’s impolitic mistress, more than Savedra could have hoped for. “If he’ll see me.”
She had been the prince’s lover for six months, formally installed in the Gallery for three, but it still felt unreal that she might walk the palace corridors and visit Nikos whenever she wished. Even now. Especially now.
It was almost a relief, if only to leave her room. The windows were shuttered and draped and warded, the air close and cloying with smoke and incense. With no sunlight for days, too many candles had smudged the ceiling and curtains and left the taste of wax and char on her tongue with every breath. The ashes of prayers streaked her shrine, but no saint had answered, not Sarai or Alia or even owl-winged Erishal. Or rather, Erishal had answered, but not as Savedra had begged.
“He’ll see you,” her mother said, sipping her tea. No amount of death or chaos could shake Nadesda Severos’ flawless deportment. It made her seem colder than she was, but it was reassuring. A familiar comfort. “He needs you now more than ever.”
Savedra frowned, letting her hands fall. Her hair hung in kinks and tangles around her face and she didn’t need a mirror to know how bruised her eyes must be, how dull her complexion. Nothing she could do for it now—it was madness to uncover the mirror with so many demons about, and she’d sent her maids away days ago.
That her parents had stayed in the city, let alone come to visit her in the palace, was testament to either pride or love. Or both, she conceded. There was room for both. And ambition, of course—that the Severoi stayed when other great houses fled the Octagon Court would be marked. Especially now, as the city’s horror became the kingdom’s grief.
“This is an important time for you and the prince,” her father said, leaning over Nadesda’s chair. “With Lychandra gone, it will be you he turns to more and more.”
Ambition again. Her fists clenched in her already-wrinkled muslin gown. She’d been grateful, at first, that her parents hadn’t repudiated her when she became Nikos’s mistress. It might have been easier if they had.
She touched the pearls at her throat—the mark of her station. Her fingers tensed against the cool slickness and for an instant she thought of ripping them away, scattering them across the room. “I’ll never be queen, Father, not for all your scheming.” Her voice was calm when she would rather scream; her mother’s child, after all. “Can’t you at least feign a little sorrow? Or tact?”
Sevastian’s lean brown face creased in a frown. A familiar expression—she’d have the same lines on her brow in ten years. Or sooner. Her mother’s smooth olive skin and silken hair were not to be hers.
“I don’t have to feign sorrow, Vedra,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Lychandra was a good woman, a good queen. She’ll be missed. Saints know she made Mathiros bearable. But sorrow doesn’t negate practicality. You may