Marie Brennan - A Star Shall Fall

“Then what?” Her contempt lashed out like a whip. “That when you’re gone, she’ll understand? These years you’ve been in the Hall, worshipping at her feet, laughed at by all the courtiers who have seen it a thousand times before, a poor little mortal pining for his faerie lover. But once you’re dead , oh, yes, then we’ll understand. We’ll see what your devotion was worth.

“You won’t be here to see it, though. Because you’ll be gone. Do you imagine yourself looking down from Heaven, seeing us all mourn you as you deserve?” Irrith’s eyes blazed green, burning with inhuman light. “What makes you think you’re going to Heaven at all?”

Galen’s heart pounded once, hard enough to shake his entire body, and then it stopped.

The sprite’s slender frame was rigid with emotion. The only thing moving was her breast, heaving with her shallow gasps. Then it slowed, and Irrith said, more quietly but with no less force, “I don’t know your divine Master. But I know this much: he does not love suicides. And what would you call it, when a man embraces death for love of a faerie queen?”

He had no answers. His heart was beating again, but he could not draw breath. Her questions rang in his head, the echoes multiplying instead of fading out, and all he could see was Irrith’s green eyes, shifting as no human eyes could.

And Lune’s face, the perfect portrait that had resided in his memory since he first saw her above Southwark, shining in the night sky. His goddess.

Irrith opened her mouth, as if to say something more. But no sound came out, and then she spun away and was gone, slamming the door shut behind her, leaving him alone with the silent fire.

It was not the Queen’s mourning night, but the great garden of the Onyx Hall was empty. At Lune’s request, even Ktistes had departed, leaving her alone with the trees and grass, fountains and stream, and the faerie lights blazing the image of a comet across the ceiling above.

She walked without purpose, without seeing, up one path and down another, lost in the maze of her own thoughts. In nearly one hundred and seventy years of rule, Lune had faced many challenges to the Onyx Hall and her rule over it. More than once she had thought herself at the end of that road, doomed to lose her realm, her sovereignty, or even her life. And always she had found a way to continue.

Always—until now.

The weight of the Dragon already lay upon her. She remembered that searing touch, the annihilating force of its attention. Soon she would feel it anew. The last clouds were shredding; they would not endure until the end of the month. The reports from Paris were that Messier was having difficulty sighting the comet, obscured as it was in the morning twilight, and soon he might lose it entirely; but after that it would reappear in the evening sky. They would face the Dragon whether they were ready or not.

She was not alone after all. Someone was waiting on the path ahead.

Galen.

The meticulous elegance of his apparel set off a warning bell in her mind. She’d seen such a thing before—had done it herself. He dressed with care because it was a form of armor, a way of preparing for battle.

They had not spoken to one another directly since he fled Rose House. She knew what battle he expected, and was prepared for it.

But Galen surprised her by bowing, with the same flawless care that marked his appearance. “Your Grace, I bring you good tidings. I know how to kill the Dragon.”

Kill. Not trap, or banish, or appease. End. And ensure their safety forever.

So why did the Prince not look happier?

Formality rose, unbidden, to her lips; she dismissed it. That was the game he wanted to play, and she didn’t trust it. Instead she asked directly, “How?”

“It requires a little preparation,” he said. “With your permission, Abd ar-Rashid and I will enter the Calendar Room for that purpose—though I know we can ill afford to lose eleven days. But the principle, madam, is sound.

“Much of it will be the prior plan. We will use the Monument to summon the Dragon down into the chamber in its base. This will be armored in gold, to prevent it from fleeing while an alchemical conjunction is performed. But not with sophic mercury: instead we will bind it into mortal form. If this does not immediately result in the death of that host, and therefore the death of the Dragon, then it will at least be vulnerable, as it was not before.” He bowed again. “Your Grace, I will undertake this duty myself.”

Duty. Binding. Elegant words, to blunt the raw edge of his meaning.

He still intended to die.

Galen didn’t flinch away from her gaze. He’d gotten better at lying, but not perfected the art. There was fear beneath the surface, whose existence he was doing his best not to show.

Fear held in check by certainty. The principle was sound. Every detail of their predicament was too firmly graven into Lune’s mind for her to delude herself on that front; offering herself up to the Dragon as appeasement was a weak possibility at best. Even Aspell had known that. Binding the Dragon to mortality stood a far better chance of success.

He hadn’t come here expecting argument, she realised. The armour was not for her. It was for himself, to hold the fear at bay.

She wondered if he had chosen his moment deliberately, tracking her movement through the garden until she came to this point, or whether it was pure chance that put them near the twin obelisks. Michael Deven’s grave, and the memorial to her past Princes.

All of them died eventually. Some from illness, others from misfortune; one had given his life to prepare them for the Dragon’s return. None of them could live forever.

But she hadn’t expected to lose Galen so soon.

She had not answered him. He was stiff as a pike, still where he had been when she stopped, awaiting the answer they both knew she had to give.

Before she could give it, though—“What of your family?”

It was cruel, but necessary. His calm cracked a little. “My sisters,” he said, with a hint of unsteadiness, “have been taken care of. Delphia’s jointure is provided for by our marriage settlement.”

A lawyer’s reply, which told her the answer to her real question. “You have not told her yet.”

His jaw trembled, then firmed. “No. But I will.”

Lune could not guess how the woman would take it. Delphia was too unfamiliar to her still. But the considerations of one mortal woman would not change their circumstances—nor, she suspected, Galen’s determination. He would do this come Hell itself.

And she had no reason strong enough to refuse him.

“Then make your preparations, Lord Galen,” she said formally, acknowledging him with a curtsy, Queen to Prince. “The resources of this court are at your disposal.”

“I think the one thing worse than locking myself in that room for months on end,” Cuddy said, “would be locking myself in that room for months on end to do mathematics .”

The puck’s voice echoed down the corridor as Lune approached. She hid a smile before she came through the pillars into the dwarves’ workshop. Some fae, like the von das Tickens, might have a great deal of love for craftsmanship, but none of them enjoyed mathematics. Even those mad brothers did their work by instinct, not calculation. For that, they needed a mortal.

Eleven days ago, Cuddy and the dwarves had carried stacks of books into the great clock’s chamber: instructions in algebra, elementary works on the calculus, and Newton’s great Principia Mathematica ; Flamsteed’s observations from 1682; Halley’s Astronomiae cometicae synopsis , which had started their troubles to begin with. There were rumors that a French mathematician would be attempting to calculate the comet’s orbit and perihelion, but Lune and her court could not afford to wait. The Calendar Room was the only solution, and so Lord Hamilton had offered himself for this herculean task. He knew little of that branch of learning, but that was nothing sufficient study outside of time could not mend.