handful of dust. Pearls glinting in the eye sockets. I felt Hephaestion’s grip loosen about me, and he ran forward, falling to his knees beside what was left of his master. I nearly collapsed myself from the mix of fear, exhaustion, and confusion.
Nimue turned, a shimmer of starlight and majesty. Her left eye socket was still a ruin of scar tissue, but her right gleamed green in the dark.
I was beginning to suspect that something very, very bad had happened.
Michelle stepped forwards at once and fell to one knee.
“’Chel,” I said. “I don’t think that’s Nimue.”
Nim, or the Green Lady, or whoever the hell it was who gazed at me. I couldn’t quite tell if she was saying I am saddened that you do not recognise me, your old friend or I am pissed off that you are giving the game away. “I am your queen,” she said. “And you will bow before me.”
Yeah, I was doubling down on not Nim. “A world of not happening.”
The wind was still surging around me, and I felt her pulling me in like a whirlpool. “I do not recall offering you a choice.”
I was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that I still had Michelle’s knife in my hand. I was also painfully aware that Elaine was still cowering in the corner. The psychic sea-swell of Nimue’s command dragged me to my knees in front of her, and I bowed my head. This was so many flavours of not good. I had one chance at this and if I fucked it up I’d probably wind up a little pile of bleached bones like the Prince of Wands.
Doing my best not to think about it, because I’d be frankly fucking amazed if she couldn’t read my mind, I thrust the knife upwards, aiming for her heart. I had a nauseating flashback to the way I’d skewered Nana King, but I didn’t see what else I could do.
Nim met my blade halfway with her open hand, letting the whole knife run through her palm and spattering me with blood that mingled with the rain that was still peppering the room. It was a pretty baller move, but it seemed to cost her. The weird mystical eddies that had been holding me in place let up long enough that I could jump to my feet, shove Michelle aside as respectfully as I could, and get myself and Elaine the fuck out.
I sprinted across the floor, grabbed Elaine by the waist, and ran for the window. Nim had taken a room with a view of the river, and if I could clear the quite-wide-now-I-looked-at-it paved area between us and the water, we’d at least live for longer than it took us to drop four stories.
Bracing myself on the windowsill, I summoned as much of my mother’s power as I could without wanting to eat the person I was carrying, and launched myself out into the storm. Wind whipped my face as if trying its hardest to push me back to land. Spread out below me, I saw the lights of boats on the river, sailing past serene and unconcerned. The rain lashed down in violent streams that stabbed into my back like swords as I fell towards the black-and-gold water of the Thames.
We plunged down, the city vanishing above us like some unreal thing, a dream of another world.
The current caught us and pulled us down.
I clung to Elaine, although there was little I could do for her. My arm was still broken, and I’ve always been an okay swimmer at best. Now and then I managed to kick my way towards the surface and gulp in a few breaths of air, hoping that Elaine could do the same. But always the water sucked us down again, as if it was directed by some malicious will. Which, I mean, it definitely was.
I’d seen glimpses of Nimue’s power over the years, but I was beginning to realise that they’d been just that—glimpses. What I’d seen her turn on the Prince of Wands was something else. And now I was caught in the grip of her disdain, in a city whose very air and water responded to her most casual thought.
In other words: I was fucked.
Then suddenly I felt something pulling me upwards. No, not me. Us. In fact not even us, Elaine. The unselfish thing to do would be to let go and allow whatever was rescuing her—and who was I kidding it was definitely Patrick—to rescue her while I