touch, as though she had lain in the snow for hours, as though she was already dead.
Mallory tried to say something, but the words died in his throat.
Sophie smiled weakly, already a ghost of the smile he remembered. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a real mess of things.’
‘It wasn’t true … about Caitlin and me. I’d never do anything like that.’
She looked into his face and saw it was true.
‘I love you.’ He gripped her hands tightly. ‘You saved me. I was worthless before, and … and-’
‘Ssh. Don’t say it.’ The light gave her skin a translucent quality. ‘I love you, too.’
Her eyes flickered and closed.
Mallory closed his own eyes and thought hard. The pub in Salisbury where he had first seen her came to mind as clearly as if he was there. Sophie, with her traveller friends, wearing a faded hippie dress beneath a pink mohair sweater, a clutter of beads and necklaces around her neck, her sharp, questioning intelligence, the knowing quality around her eyes that he instantly found deeply sexy. Though he hadn’t realised it until much later, that first moment was when she had trapped him in her gravity.
He recalled the first time they kissed, every detail of the surroundings, the temperature of the air, the smell of her hair. He recalled the first time they made love. Watching her in the dealers’ room of Steelguard Securities, when he knew she was special even though the context had been stolen from him.
So many memories, every sensation, every word spoken, mundane and unique. He wanted them all, but there were too many. Desperately, he tried to hold on to her.
Then, from somewhere far away, a cold wind blew and she was gone. His hands clutched thin air. Broken, he sagged until his forehead touched the floor.
Niamh had moved to a window that had been hidden behind one of the tapestries, now flung wide open to the night. From outside came the sound of wings.
Mallory turned to her, filled with a residual hatred that was fading fast. In a second she went from the woman he would have travelled to the ends of Existence to destroy to just another enemy. There would be no revenge.
He saw in her face some kind of secret knowledge that pleased her, and then there was movement behind her. Standing on the back of a flying, bat-winged beast was the Libertarian. He held out his hand for Niamh to join him.
Grasping Llyrwyn, Mallory ran to the window, but he was too late. The beast was already moving away. The Libertarian had his arms around Niamh’s shoulders, like old lovers reunited.
‘Your new life is yours to enjoy,’ Niamh said sardonically, ‘in what little time remains.’
The leathery wings beat faster and the creature turned towards the Burning Man, soaring on thermals, out of the court and away.
Mallory raced back to where Caitlin hung on the torture frame. Her wounds were all superficial and already healing. As he cut through the barbed wire, her eyes flickered open.
‘Oh,’ she said weakly. ‘Why are you crying?’
Mallory touched his damp cheek. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
3
In the bright, fresh hour after dawn, the Court of the Soaring Spirit took on a new mood. In the streets — no longer dark, no longer claustrophobic — people turned their faces to the sky for the first time in many days. Music rang from the open doors and windows of the Hunter’s Moon.
In the airy, sun-drenched corridors and rooms of the Palace of Glorious Light, the old was swept out. As Mallory watched over Caitlin, asleep now and recovering from her wounds, a dark mood came over the room. He had thrown open all the curtains to allow some light into the place, yet an area of darkness was growing in the centre of the room and spreading out to drive the light back. Fearing another attack from Niamh, Mallory drew his sword, but even its flames were dimmed.
In the heart of the darkness, Mallory glimpsed piercing eyes. A potent sense of threat pervaded everything, yet it was also sexually charged. Mallory had felt it before in the Watchtower. ‘The Morrigan,’ he said.
The darkness swept towards Caitlin and disappeared inside her like smoke being sucked into a fan. Caitlin’s eyes snapped open, and in them Mallory could see no sign of the woman he knew, nor did she even appear conscious. She floated an inch or two above the surface of the bed.
‘She’s back with us now.’ The fearful voice came from Caitlin’s lips, but Mallory recognised the tone of Briony’s persona.
‘Leave her,’ Mallory said.
‘The Dark Sister has a bond with this one. They know each other, and benefit from each other’s strengths.’
‘What does the Morrigan want with Caitlin?’
‘Revenge. For the indignities heaped upon her in the Watchtower by the queen of this court. She will ride this Sister until the debt has been paid, in blood. And it will be paid in full soon.’
Caitlin floated back to the bed, sleeping peacefully once more. No response came to Mallory’s further questions, and there was no sign that the Morrigan waited inside his friend.
Troubled, he returned to the charred royal reception hall. Open windows along one wall now flooded the room with sunlight. He felt a strange connection to the place as he looked out over the shimmering rooftops, yet also inexplicably sad.
Decebalus boomed a greeting. He was covered in cuts and a jagged, badly stitched wound now ran diagonally across his face, but he was in high spirits.
‘You have a visitor,’ he said.
The barbarian gestured towards the door behind him and Hunter entered, looking around curiously. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place.’
‘I thought you’d walked out on us.’
‘I’m nothing if not capricious.’
‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are resting after the battle,’ Decebalus said, ‘but to a man and a woman they are ready to take the war to the Enemy.’
‘We’d just be sending them to their deaths. I was tasked with finding the Extinction Shears — that’s the only thing that’ll stop the Void,’ Mallory said. ‘And we’re no closer to achieving that.’
Flopping into a chair, Hunter draped his legs over one arm. ‘Don’t worry. You’ve got me now.’
‘Is that supposed to encourage me?’
‘You haven’t heard my plan yet.’
‘All right. First we need to get you a sword.’
Hunter grinned. ‘Oh, I’ve already got a weapon.’
‘Then it’s the three of us — you, me and Caitlin.’ Mallory was suddenly overcome with a devastating pang of loneliness. He turned back to the bright, new day, searching for an answer he would never find.
4
The high winds gusting along the chasms of New York City threatened to tear Church from the few square feet on top of the Empire State Building. Clutching onto the mooring mast to save himself, the world spun far below.
