Marie Brennan - A Star Shall Fall

But nothing happened.

She smelled smoke, the dreadfully appealing scent of meat on the spit—but no flames leapt out at her. The blazing eyes widened. Then the Dragon, realizing its powers were limited by human flesh, did the only thing it could.

It ran for the Stone.

Irrith hurled herself after. She was the faster of the two, and knocked her quarry sprawling a second time. They narrowly missed a maid, sleepily yawning her way down the dark street. An inhuman snarl rose from Galen’s throat, and a foot slammed into her face, hard enough that Irrith saw stars. She rolled free, then forced herself to her feet once more, because a single thought survived the impact of his foot: I have to keep it from the Stone.

They were already at Abchurch Lane. Irrith snatched out one of her pistols and fired, but running spoiled her aim; her shot chipped the front of a shop. Swearing, she dragged out the other and halted for an instant, concentrating on Galen’s back.

Her second shot flew more true—but not true enough. It struck his hip, spinning him into the brick wall at his side, scarcely three paces from his goal.

Irrith was already running again. She dropped both spent pistols to the ground and drew her last weapon, the knife of jotun ice. He knocked her aside as she came near, but the blow served her purposes well enough; it threw her that last bit of distance, putting her between Galen and the London Stone.

No. It isn’t Galen. Galen died inside the Monument.

But to her horror, she saw something of him in the twisted snarl on his face. “Irrith,” he said, spitting her name like a curse. “Traitor one day, faithful the next. Can’t you change your mind one more time? For me?”

She tightened her grip on the knife. Its cold seared her hand; the Dragon kept well clear of it as he pushed himself away from the wall. His shirt was beginning to smoke, tiny flames curling up where his skin pressed against the fabric. “Odd,” she said breathlessly, trying to delay long enough for her still-spinning head to settle. The Stone was a hard presence just behind her back. If he got so much as a finger on it… “You know the things Galen knows—knew—and yet you don’t know me at all.”

He laughed, and the sound itself burnt her. “Don’t I? I know you’re a coward. You could have loved me, but you were too afraid. Not of the grief—of the possibility that your love would never be returned. That even that ultimate gift couldn’t draw me away from my hopeless devotion to Lune, and you would be left as I was, grovelling after someone forever out of your reach.”

“Don’t say that word,” Irrith snarled, past the choking knot in her throat. “ I. You aren’t Galen.”

“Half of me is.”

“The body means nothing.”

“All of the body; half of the spirit. That’s what the alchemy meant, Irrith. A wedding of two separate spirits into one, cleaving unto each other like man and wife. Though in this case, the man is the wife.” The Dragon twisted Galen’s mouth into a travesty of a smile. “He welcomed the fire in like a demon lover.”

Fire that was burning his body up from the inside. They weren’t wrong; the conjunction had weakened the Dragon. Might even kill it, in time. But how long would that take?

She saw again the terror in Galen’s face, as he went to his death. Walking into Hell with his eyes wide open. Could the torments of damnation be any worse than this, his spirit shackled to a creature that would destroy those he loved?

As if it could read her thoughts, the Dragon grinned and spread Galen’s arms wide. “Do you think death will free him? We are one spirit now. Kill him, send him to Hell, and I will go with him, for I am Galen St. Clair.”

They both lunged.

The Dragon was ready for Irrith, because it knew her, as Galen had known her. One searing arm came across to block her thrust. But Galen knew weapons as a gentleman did, with rules and courtesy and honor, and he couldn’t block what he didn’t expect.

Irrith’s right hand was knocked out of line—but the knife wasn’t there anymore. Their joined momentum brought them crashing together hard, her slight weight against Galen’s searing body, and her left hand brought the blade up and into his chest.

They staggered, scant inches from the Stone. Then Irrith set her feet and drove him back, slamming his rigid frame against the brick wall behind. Elemental ice and elemental fire warred, sending waves of heat and cold radiating outward, until she wanted to scream and flee to safety. But she hung on, sinking the knife hilt-deep into his ribs, glaring into those eyes of flame, until the light in them flickered and died, leaving behind pits of black ash. When Irrith let go, the body fell limply to the ground. The knife-hilt clattered free, its blade melted away.

She stood gasping, shaking, staring at the corpse of Galen St. Clair.

His blind face seemed to stare at her in accusation. Pain twisted inside her, sharper than the vanished knife. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t love you—I couldn’t.

If she had loved him, she could never have killed him.

Slowly Irrith became aware of eyes on her. No one stood near, but mortals were watching from a safe distance, peering through shutters and half-cracked doors, whispering to each other in the shadows. From farther off she heard shouts and running footsteps: a constable, no doubt. Her concealment had fallen at some point, and now she stood over a dead man’s body, with her faerie face bared to the world.

She could not leave him there, lying in the filth of the street. Clenching her jaw, Irrith bent and took hold of Galen’s lifeless, unresisting hand. With an effort, she heaved him over her shoulder, then built another concealment for them both. It was hard, with so many people watching, but the darkness helped; she slipped away down Cannon Street, carrying the dead Prince, taking him home to rest.

Fae knew little of funerals. Those mortals who died among them were generally deposited back in the world they’d come from, in their beds or in a gutter, according to the kindness of the one who put them there. The fae did not bury their own dead. There was no need, when their bodies fell so soon to nothingness, the spirits that shaped them gone to oblivion.

The Princes of the Stone were always returned to their families, to be buried with Christian rites. Only Michael Deven lay interred in the ground of the Onyx Hall, beneath a stand of ever-blooming apple trees in the night garden, forever close to the faerie Queen who loved him.

Michael Deven—and now Galen St. Clair.

For him, the fae gathered in solemn observance, lining the path through the night garden. Or at least as close to solemnity as they could manage: some were puzzled by this semimortal ceremony, and some showed too-sharp curiosity in his death, fascinated by the experience that came among them so rarely. But knights of the Onyx Guard stood sentinel along the path, and Bonecruncher’s loyal goblins lurked behind; anyone who thought to profane the Prince’s funeral vanished instantly from view, with a minimum of fuss.

The pall-shrouded bier came through the arch, borne on a tatterfoal-drawn open carriage. Preceding it was an honour guard of five elf-knights and one half-mortal valet; Edward Thorne and his father Sir Peregrin led the way, side by side. The plaintive sound of a flute threaded through the quiet air, marking time for their slow procession. Fae knelt as they went by. The bier crossed the Walbrook, passed under the drooping branches of willow trees, and came among new mourners: the mortals of the Onyx Hall, all those who had been under Galen’s authority as Prince. They rarely gathered in one place, those mortals, and made an odd assortment standing together. Men of all classes, from the wealthy through to lawyers and artisans, labourers and the humble poor. Women, some beautiful, some scarred by disease. Old and young, and a large knot of children, lured away into a realm of wonder, their eyes wide as they watched grief go by.