“Do you think Emma will not?”
“Emma will not take her place.”
“Emma will kill her. She has no other choice.”
Emma cleared her throat.
Longland and Helmi turned toward her.
“Well?” Helmi demanded. “Are you going to kill her?” She settled one fist on her hip, looking like a miniature Amy. She almost pulled her other hand free—but to do it, she would have had to let go of Emma. Her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t even thought about it.”
Had she?
No. Not really. She glanced at Chase, saw a flicker of contempt, and saw Allison turn toward him before he could open his mouth. Had she really thought that they could somehow neutralize the Queen of the Dead in a way that didn’t kill her?
Or had she just assumed that somehow Chase would do it? Or Eric? Or Ernest? Someone who had killed Necromancers in the past? Had she assumed she could somehow leave it in Longland’s hands?
“There is no way,” Longland said, in a far less heated voice, “that you will escape this if the Queen of the Dead is still alive.”
“Did you want to kill her just to—”
“I never wanted to kill her,” he replied, before she could even finish her sentence. “She was the only one who saw potential in me. The only person, ever. She taught me everything I know. She gave me power I had never had; she gave me a home and food and an education.”
“Why did the other Necromancers want to kill her, then? Didn’t she give them the same thing?”
“Had you arrived in our city, Emma, she would have offered you what she once offered me, yes. But, like the Necromancers of very recent vintage, you have had no experience of privation, starvation, disease. You have lost no one to war or famine. Your entire experience is far, far freer than the life a Necromancer knows.
“It is always about context. In her early years, she gathered those with similar potential. Some of them already had status or wealth, if not respect.” He hesitated, and added, “Historically. She had stopped gathering those when I was found; they were costly and ambitious. They understood her roots, and they despised them; they did not feel her fit to rule, or at least, not as fit as they would be. They are gone,” he added.
“They are not,” Helmi replied. “She is never safe from the machinations of the Court.”
“She is always safe! There are things she has not, and will never, teach us.”
Helmi’s shoulders slumped. “She teaches you all the things she taught herself. She withholds only the things she was taught before she became Queen.” She turned to look up at Emma. “He’s right. You won’t ever be free while my sister lives.”
• • •
Emma had to retrieve her hand to put on her boots and her coat; she had to ask Allison for help to deal with buttons, zippers, laces, her hand was so numb. Helmi hovered by her side, her luminescent eyes a contrast to the rest of her pallor; she seemed shadowed and defeated. And she did so as an eight-year-old girl. Emma knew she wasn’t eight in any real sense of the word, but it was hard to hold on to that knowledge.
Margaret walked through the closed door. “Ernest is in the car.”
Amy immediately opened the door and walked into the winter night, clearly staking out her territory as the other driver.
“Has Ernest seen—”
“No. But I have. Helmi is correct. The gateway is not yet operational, but it will be soon. I could not approach closely enough to determine which of the Necromancers are present; there appear to be two.” She glanced at Helmi, and added, “The only one of the dead who could approach them and be guaranteed either freedom or safety is the one who stands by your side. No Necromancer would be foolish enough to touch or bind her where the Queen has not.”
“Emma,” Helmi whispered. Emma automatically bent her head to bring her right ear closer to the girl. “Bind me.”
Longland’s eyes should have fallen out of their sockets. Margaret’s surprise was less obvious.
“I can’t,” Emma said quietly. “I don’t know how.”
It was Helmi’s turn to looked shocked. “What do you mean, you don’t know how?”
“She means,” a familiar voice said, “exactly what she says.”
The dead young girl turned to face the magar.
• • •
Helmi left Emma’s side in a heartbreaking rush of arms and fast limbs, as if she had forgotten that the dead didn’t actually need to run. As if—and this was worse—she had forgotten that the dead couldn’t touch anything, not even each other.
Only when she was inches away from the magar did she come to a sudden stop, lowering her open arms, closing herself off.
“I am not her magar,” the older woman said.
“You must have taught her something.”
“No. Her life has done that, and better than I could. She cannot bind you. It’s possible that Margaret or Longland could teach her, indirectly, what she would need to know—but not in time, Helmi. Even if she could do as you have asked, what use would it be to her?”
“Not her. Me. Me. She has Margaret. Margaret is bound to her.”
The magar looked at Emma. “And how do you hold Margaret?” Which was the question Emma was expecting.
“I don’t know. Maybe Margaret can answer.”
If Margaret could, she didn’t.
“What will you do now, Emma?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? Emma looked to Michael and Allison. “We can’t stay here. If we hit the road quickly enough, we’ll be able to escape, at least for a short while—but we can’t spend forever on the run. We can’t go home if—if she hasn’t been—been stopped.”
Margaret nodded. “She cannot be stopped from Canada.”
“Can she be stopped from anywhere in the world that isn’t her citadel?”
“I don’t think so, dear,” Margaret replied.
“No,” Longland said.
“No,” Helmi whispered. The words overlapped, adding texture and certainty to the discussion.
“Is she coming, now?”
Helmi shook her head. “If there were more Necromancers, if she hadn’t lost so many knights, she might take the risk. The Queen of the Dead is safe in her citadel. She won’t leave it—”
“She’s left it before,” Chase cut in. Something in his voice caused Allison to raise a hand; it hovered a foot from his arm, as if she wanted to touch him to offer comfort and realized just how little that comfort would mean. Emma was surprised when he caught her hand in one of his.
“She won’t leave if she doesn’t feel her safety is guaranteed. In the past, she might have come here. But with cars and phones and internet, she’s no longer certain to have uninterrupted time. So much has changed, so quickly.” She turned, again, to Emma.
Eric, silent until then, said, “She’s safe in her citadel. No one can touch her there.”
Helmi’s expression hardened further, and given the death glares she’d leveled at Longland, that should have been impossible. She said nothing, waiting as all eyes fell on Eric.
“She has, three times in the history of the court, come close to death,” Longland said, when Eric didn’t speak. “Once, before the citadel was constructed. To construct the citadel was not the act of a month or even a year. It required power on a scale that she had never before used. It required a gathering of the dead that she had never attempted. I imagine,” he continued, when Eric failed to interrupt him, “that what Emma gathered in order to open the exit was the only gathering that might come close. How long did that take?” It was a rhetorical question; he knew the answer.
Helmi said, “You have the lantern.” She turned, then, to the magar and said, in a quieter voice, “You gave her the lantern.”
“And will you accuse me of betrayal, who are dead—and trapped—as I am?”
“My sister wants the lantern.”
“She always did. And think of what she might have built if she had claimed it.” She turned to Eric. “You are too silent.”
He exhaled. “I have an idea.”
Helmi said, with scorn, “And we know where your ideas lead!”
“Helmi,” her mother said.
Eric ignored the interruption. He looked to Emma. “No one could touch her in her citadel back then. But you weren’t there. If you want—if you intend—to stop her, you’ll have to go to her.”
“How? I have no idea how to reach the citadel.”
“The living need to eat. Very little grows in the citadel. There is some fertile land, but even that is only enough to feed a small family. She has to import food.”
“Where does she get the money?” Michael asked. It was the first time he’d chosen to contribute throughout this lengthening emergency council.
“There is a long and complicated answer to that question. We can discuss it on the way.”
“On the way to where?” Michael replied, an edge to the words. “Where are we going?”
“If you’re willing to take the risk? The citadel.”
ERIC HAS EXISTED FOR SO LONG he thinks he should be immune to pain, to fear. And perhaps he is; he is not afraid of Helmi. He is not afraid of Emma. He is not comfortable in the winter glare of the magar, but she never liked him, never accepted him.
And yet, for years, she has guided him. Years.
Longland is afraid of everything except Emma. Longland knows the fate of the dead who displease the Queen. So does Eric. But that fate might be peaceful, in the end. If he has no choice, he has no responsibilities—and he has shouldered responsibility, however imperfectly, since the moment he died. He is tired.
The magar offers no guidance. Her eyes—her dead eyes—burn with accusation and guilt. Eric wonders if his do the same. He is so tired.
“You want to return to the citadel,” the magar says.
“No.”
“There is a throne waiting for you. And a very lonely girl.”
Chase curses, the sound familiar and almost comforting.
“You could have returned at any time,” the magar continues.
Eric turns away from her. He turns toward Emma. He sees her as the dead see her. She is the brightest thing in the room, the warmest.
He came to kill her. He could not make himself do it. He had seen too much of Emma and her friends: Allison, Michael, the intimidating Amy Snitman. He couldn’t imagine that Emma could become one of the Queen’s knights. She might have the power, yes, but the potential didn’t define her. If his target had been Amy? Maybe. Maybe Amy Snitman would be dead, and Eric would be in hiding, planning the deaths of Necromancers and longing for the moment when he might kill the Queen of the Dead and redeem himself at last—just as he’s done for centuries.
On the night he made the decision not to kill Emma, Emma did not look like this. The seed of potential has grown, has flowered. The small light has become a miniature sun, a source of warmth. To the dead, there is very little difference between Emma Hall and the Queen.
As if she can hear the thought, Helmi lifts her hand. Emma’s rises with it. “Can you kill my sister?” Helmi demands. “She loves you. Even after all this time, she loves you. She says love never dies.”
“Love dies,” Eric replies. He is not willing to have the rest of this discussion with Helmi. It’s not a discussion to have with anyone who has spent centuries hating him, blaming him. Which is ironic, because Eric has spent those same centuries hating and blaming himself. Wishing, fervently, that he had never met Reyna. Wishing that he had never fallen in love and, failing that, that Reyna had never returned his love.
Love led them here. Endless pain. Endless regret. Endless guilt—a vortex that has destroyed not only Eric’s existence but also the existence of every single person who has died since. It has been so long since he has seen Reyna. It has been so long since the girl he loved has existed in the eyes of the woman he has vowed to kill.
Every guardian has doubted that desire. Ernest doubted it—loudly—when they first met. But Ernest is not that young man; he is older, more fatherly, his fury burned to determined embers with the onset of age. He is so much younger than Eric.
Love dies. It’s the answer he gave to Ernest, those many years ago. It’s the answer he gave to Philip, the man who preceded him. It’s the answer he’s given to anyone who has known enough to ask. It’s been a theoretical answer.
Eric is dead.
There is no action he can take against the Queen of the Dead on his own unless she desires it. She can immobilize him with a single word. All discussions about the nature of love, about his ability to kill the Queen, have been safely theoretical or philosophical. Until now. And now? Emma is here. The question is no longer theoretical.
Eric can return to the citadel at any time he chooses. But Emma and Chase can’t. Emma doesn’t even have the travel documents necessary to leave her own country, and Eric’s not certain she’d survive the attempt if she did.
But if Helmi is right, if the Necromancers are truly coming in any force at all, there is a chance. There’s a way. It’s risky, and it means that Eric must return to face Reyna one last time.
“The magar is right. There is a place waiting for me in the citadel.” He exhales and turns to Longland. Merrick Longland, the man he—and Chase—killed. “I have a plan.”
NATHAN SPENDS HIS DAY READING, and when reading fails to keep his attention, he rises and heads to the door that separates his rooms from the rest of the citadel. He chafes at the clothing he’s forced to wear because he’s aware of every itchy thread; he feels the rough cloth and the edges of lace and wonders why a top-heavy wig hasn’t been added to the almost comic assembly.
Being dead, it appears, is about discomfort and silence and boredom. And pain. Sleep still eludes him because he listens for the sounds of his body. Weeping is his heartbeat and his breath. He bleeds, and grows weak with lack of food or water. He will not, he is told, incubate many diseases.
Diseases are carried by the living. The only living person he regularly sees is the one who brings his food and leaves it in stiff silence.
Today, standing inside his door, he takes stock of the life he’s been given. He considers the alternative. Being disembodied isn’t pleasant, but there’s freedom in it that being embodied doesn’t have.
The door is heavy and opens outward; the hinges are on the exterior. The hinges are on the exterior of almost all doors in the citadel; only the doors to rooms the Queen occupies are normal.
No one moves in the hall facing the door, but the hall is not empty. Two of the dead stand at attention, framing the doorway. Nathan has been to London; he’s aware that the dress guards at Buckingham palace will stand at attention as if they’re carved statues. He doesn’t expect the dead to notice him as he leaves—unless he has been ordered to remain in his room.
They make no sound; they make no movements. He nods at them anyway before he turns, arbitrarily, to the right and begins to walk. Other guards—dead guards—are standing immobile in the hall. They are furniture. They take no breaks.
Nathan wonders if they think. He wonders if they pass their hours and days trapped and encased with no escape; he wonders if they are still sane. And then, as he walks, he wonders whether the floors have ears or eyes or some way of seeing who passes above them and whether the walls are, like the guards, just more furnishings, but given no human shape.
He wonders, in short, if this is hell.
Helmi appears to his left in answer to the unasked question.
“Nathan,” she says. “I need your help.”
He continues to walk as she drifts by his side. He doesn’t actually like her much, but she’s company.
“What,” he asks, voice tight with contained sarcasm, “could I possibly
do to help you?”
“Emma is coming to save you, but she won’t survive if you don’t help.”
Emma. Emma is coming here. The thought simultaneously fills Nathan with dread and desire. He holds up one hand. “Don’t tell me this. Do not tell me another word.” What he wants to ask, as well, is when and where is she. Those are the wrong questions. The answers are dangerous to know.
“You’re worried about what you’ll tell the Queen.” It’s not a question.
“Yes. If she asks—if she commands—I’ll tell her everything.” When Helmi fails to reply, he stops walking and turns to face her. “I want to know. I want to see Emma again. But—she can’t come here. She’ll die.”
“Which is why I need your help. The citadel isn’t the whole of the city. If the Queen and her court are distracted, Emma might be able to sneak in.”
“How the hell do you sneak into a flying city?”
Helmi looks at Nathan as if he’s too stupid to live. “You want me to answer that question, but nothing else?”
Put that way, she’s right—and Nathan’s not up to explaining that his question wasn’t actually a question at all.
“The Queen hasn’t summoned you today, and after I talk to her, I don’t think she will. She’ll be busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Preparing,” Helmi replies, with a hard, tight smile that is way too old for her face, “for Eric’s return.”
“Eric’s coming?”
“Yes. Eric is finally coming home. If no one does anything too stupid, that’s what will take up every single thought she has. We need you to run interference to make sure that the less obsessed-with-Eric among the court don’t call her attention to anything else. There might be people new to the court who would help with that, but I doubt it. They’re not new enough not to be terrified of the Queen of the Dead.”
“Neither am I.”
“Does fear make you stupid?”
“Not exclusively.”
Helmi says, “Well, save the rest of the stupidity for later. Follow me. Pay attention. You’re only going to get one chance to get this right.”