When she dragged her eyes up, she could almost see a glint of silver in the air—a thread of light—but with every passing second, the body on the bed bore less resemblance to her son.
Her fingers moved to brush the hair from Rhy’s eyes, and she fought back a shudder at the brittle locks, the papery skin. He was falling apart before her eyes, the silence punctuated only by the dry crack of settling bones, the sound like embers in a dying fire.
“Emira.”
“Please.”
“Your Majesty.”
“Please.”
“My queen.”
“Please.”
She began to hum—not a song, or a prayer, but a spell, one she learned when she was just a girl. A spell she’d sung to Rhy a hundred times when he was young. A spell for sleep. For gentle dreams.
For release.
She was nearly to the end when the prince gasped.
IX
One moment Alucard was being dragged from the prince’s room, and the next he was forgotten. He didn’t notice the sudden absence of weight on his arms. Didn’t notice anything but the glitter of luminescent threads and the sound of Rhy’s breath.
The prince’s gasp was soft, almost inaudible, but it rippled through the room, picked up by every body, every voice as the queen and the king and the guards inhaled in shock, in wonder, in relief.
Alucard braced himself in the doorway, his legs threatening to give.
He’d seen Rhy die.
Seen the last threads vanish into the prince’s chest, seen the prince go still, seen the impossible, immediate decay.
But now, as he watched, it was undone.
Before his eyes, the spell returned, a flame coaxed suddenly back from embers. No, from ash. The threads surged up like water over a broken levy before wrapping fierce, protective arms around Rhy’s body, and he breathed a second time, and a third, and between every inhale and exhale, the prince’s corpse returned to life.
Flesh grew taut over bone. Color flooded into hollow cheeks. As quickly as the prince had decayed, he now revived, all signs of pain and strain smoothed into a mask of calm. His black hair settled on his brow in perfect curls. His chest rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of deep sleep.
And as Rhy calmly slept, the room around him was plunged into a new kind of chaos. Alucard staggered forward. Voices spoke over one another, layered into meaningless sound. Some shouted and others whispered words of prayer, blessings for what they’d just seen, or protection from it.
Alucard was halfway to Rhy’s side when King Maxim’s voice cut through the noise.
“No one is to speak of this,” he said, his voice unsteady as he drew himself to full height. “The winner’s ball has started, and it must finish.”
“But, sir,” started a guard as Alucard reached Rhy’s bed.
“The prince has been ill,” the king cut in. “Nothing more.” His gaze landed hard on each of them. “There are too many allies in the palace tonight, too many potential enemies.”
Alucard did not care about the ball or the tournament or the people beyond this room. He only wanted to touch the prince’s hand. To feel the warmth of his skin and assure his own shaking fingers, his own aching heart, that it was not some horrible trick.
The room emptied around him, the king first, and then the guards and priests, until only the queen and Alucard stood, silently, staring at the prince’s sleeping form.
Alucard reached out, then, his hand closing over Rhy’s, and as he felt the pulse flutter in the prince’s wrist, he didn’t dwell on the impossibility of what he’d seen, didn’t wonder at what forbidden magic could be strong enough to bind life to the dead.
All that mattered—all that would ever matter—was this.
Rhy was alive.
X
Kell staggered out of the street and into his palace chamber, caught by the sudden light, the warmth, the impossible normalcy. As if a life hadn’t shattered, a world hadn’t broken. Gossamer billowed from the ceiling and a massive, curtained bed stood on a dais on one wall, the furniture dark wood, trimmed in gold, and overhead, he could hear the sounds of the winner’s ball on the roof.
How could it still be happening?
How could they not know?
Of course the king would have the winner’s ball go on as planned, Kell thought bitterly. Hide his own son’s situation from the prying eyes of Vesk and Faro.
“What do you mean Holland’s here?” demanded Lila. “Here as in London, or here as in here?” She trailed in his wake, but Kell was already to his chamber doors and through. Rhy’s room stood at the end of the hall, rosewood-and-gold doors shut fast.
The space between their rooms was littered with men and women, guards and vestra and priests. They turned sharply at the sight of Kell, bare-chested beneath his coat, hair plastered and skin streaked with blood. In their eyes he read the shock and horror, surprise and fear.
They moved, some toward him and others away, but all in his path, and Kell summoned a gust of wind, forcing them aside as he surged through the mass to the prince’s doors.
He didn’t want to go in.
He had to go in.
The screaming in his head was worsening with every step as Kell threw open the doors and skidded into the room, breathless.
The first thing he saw was the queen’s face, blanched with grief.
The second was his brother’s body, stretched out on the bed.
The third, and last, was the slow rise and fall of Rhy’s chest.
At that small, blessed movement, Kell’s own chest lurched.