The tears were coming again. She’d done this much for him, then: that beast would not add to his torments. Scant comfort.
The ghostly substance of Galen’s body rippled, then firmed once more. Looking around as if seeing his surroundings for the first time, he said, “I thought I would be in Hell.”
Lune smiled. A strange radiance had suffused her: serenity, unshakeable as the foundations of the earth. “No, Galen. Your soul is not bound for Hell.”
“But he killed himself,” Irrith said. “Even I know where suicides go.”
Delphia pushed herself to her feet, careful as a cripple walking for the first time. She said, “I won’t quote the words of scripture directly, not in this place—but it tells us the greatest love of all is to give up one’s life for the sake of others.”
“For the sake of faeries.” The words tasted bitter in Irrith’s mouth, all the more so because she wanted to hope, and didn’t dare. “We don’t matter, in Heaven’s eyes.”
“Yes, we do.” The joy in Lune’s smile was like nothing Irrith had ever seen before. “We are not creatures of Heaven, but when love joins our two worlds, even the angels do not condemn it. I have seen it myself, long ago.”
She sounded like a madwoman. The shining certainty in her eyes, though, dissolved the ache that had lodged within Irrith’s breast since Galen first offered himself for the sacrifice. He isn’t damned. He’s given up his life—but not his soul.
Through her own dignified tears, Delphia said, “Go on, Galen. Heaven awaits you.”
He hesitated. Irrith thought some lingering fear held him back, until he shook his head.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
To leave Lune—but he said it to all three of them, his wife, his lover, and his Queen. Irrith’s throat closed, with sudden hope. “He’s a ghost,” she said, as if no one had noticed. “Haunting the palace. He doesn’t have to go anywhere, does he?”
She looked hopefully to Lune as she said it, but saw the elfin woman’s radiance dim. “Have to—no. But Galen . . . do not trap yourself in that fashion.”
“It isn’t a trap if I choose it,” he said, and all the passion of his soul was in those words.
Sorrow touched Lune’s lips. The fading that had come upon her, the exhaustion of the Onyx Hall’s decline, had only made her beauty more poignant. “But think of what you are choosing. For today, it would be a blessing; you would remain among those you love. What of tomorrow, though, and the next day, and all the days to come? Forever adrift in these halls, as mortals pass and faerie memory dissolves into forgetfulness, until even your friends scarcely remember who you are and why they once cared for you.”
Irrith wanted to insist it would not be so. But then she thought of past Princes—or tried to. Lord Antony, Jack Ellin, Lord Joseph. The names were there when she reached for them, and even the faces; that was not how fae forgot. When she tried to recall Jack’s sense of humour, though, or the respect she felt for Lord Joseph when he heard the news of the comet’s return . . . nothing. They might have been people from a history book, not men she’d known.
That would happen to Galen, too. The only way to hold on to such memories was to love. And then his lingering would be an endless source of pain to them both.
“This place would become a prison to you,” Lune said, softly, regretfully. “Do not condemn yourself to that Hell.”
His face was taut as if he would weep, but death had robbed him of all tears. “I cannot abandon this place, though. If I knew all danger had passed—the Dragon is gone, but the enchantments are still fraying. How can I leave you to face that alone?”
He couldn’t go, and he couldn’t stay. Irrith remembered the moans of the ghosts on All Hallows’ Eve—then thought of other ghosts. The ones they didn’t sweep away each year.
“Then come back,” she said.
No one understood her. Irrith fumbled for an explanation. “There’s a manor house in Berkshire that’s haunted by the ghost of some lady. Not all the time; just on the night of her wedding. I have no idea where she goes the rest of the time, but couldn’t Galen do that? Come back once a year—at least until this place is safe?” Until the desire binding him to this world faded enough for him to let go.
Lune didn’t answer immediately. She turned instead to Delphia. Any normal woman might have argued, out of confusion or piety or simple instinct, but Galen had married one who understood; she nodded. Then Lune said, “I cannot promise it will be so; that, I fear, lies beyond me. But I can leave the door open. If you wish to return, nothing here will prevent you.”
It wasn’t certainty. It was enough for Galen, though. A smile broke across his face, like dawn breaking clear after the endless months of clouds. The image spread across Irrith’s memory like a balm, blotting out the horror of Cannon Street and the black holes of his eyes, and the relief brought her almost to tears. “Good-bye—for now,” she whispered, and heard Delphia and Lune echo her with their own farewells.
And the light grew. It came from everywhere and nowhere, shining through the fading substance of Galen’s ghostly body. It should have burnt, like church bells and prayers; Irrith felt in it that same holy force, the touch of the divine. It could have burnt, if it chose. But the light passed through her without harm, shining in the depths of London’s faerie realm, and then it was gone, as if it had never been.
Irrith drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said to the Queen, “Yes. I’ll stay.”
EPILOGUE
Royal Observatory, Greenwich: October 6, 1835
Frederick Parsons stepped away from the eyepiece and grinned. “And there it is. Just like it was seventy-six years ago.”
His companion raised both eyebrows dryly. “Not just like, I should think. May I see?”
Frederick waved him forward. His companion had to bend farther to reach the eyepiece, but despite the discomfort, stayed in that position for a long time, studying the heavens above.
Far in the distance—unimaginably far, though not incalculably so—a “star” blazed across the sky. They weren’t the only curiosity-seekers at Greenwich, come to observe the return of Halley’s famed comet, but they were the only ones to bring their own telescope. The Royal Observatory yet remained far enough outside of London’s gaslights and filthy smoke to be a good point from which to see such wonders.
Other comets came and went, of course, but they didn’t interest Frederick as this one did. He’d been born only twenty-four years before: far too recently to have seen its last apparition, and far too long ago to have any hope of seeing the next one. This was his only chance to observe the comet that had nearly destroyed London.
His companion had watched it from France, though. Yvoir had spied on the great Charles Messier himself, and sneaked an opportunity to use the astronomer’s own equipment one night when Messier lay coughing in bed. He claimed to have sensed the malevolent presence of the Dragon, but Frederick thought the faerie was making it up.
“We should figure out some way to drag Master Ktistes up here,” Frederick said, bored with watching Yvoir watch the sky. “You could put a glamour on him, to hide the horse body.”
“Hiding it doesn’t make it go away,” Yvoir said, still hunched over. “I don’t fancy putting him on a steamboat for a jaunt down the river. Besides, it hardly matters now. This is a historical curiosity, nothing more. The academy has other concerns.”
Frederick sniffed, doing his best impression of a stuffy old man. “There’s no respect for history nowadays—not even for our poor martyred founder.” He dug a stone out of the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “They say he haunts the Hall, you know. But I don’t believe it.”
“Lady Delphia believed,” the French faerie told him. “And since she was the patroness of the Galenic Academy, I would say you’re the one with no respect for history, my friend.” He straightened at last, with faerie suppleness that even Frederick’s young joints could envy.
At least until impatience banished it. Frederick
said, “Very well; we’ve seen the comet. Now can we go back? Wrain claims he finally has a working model of his aetheric engine, and I don’t want to miss the chance to laugh at him when it fails again.”
Together the faerie and the mortal packed up their telescope and then raced down the steep slope of the observatory’s hill, running by the light of the full moon and the stars, and the wandering star of the comet, trailing its bright banner across the sky.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like the other Onyx Court books, A Star Shall Fall owes a great deal to the people who assisted me in my research. In London, that included Mick Pedroli of Dennis Severs House, for advice on living in an eighteenth-century style; Eleanor John of the Geffrye Museum, for answers about house furnishings; Rupert Baker and Felicity Henderson of the Royal Society Library, for fetching out comet books and many dusty volumes of Royal Society minutes; Dr. Rebekah Higgitt and Dr. Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, for assistance with the history of the observatory and horology respectively; Susan Kirby, Alan Lilly, and Mimi Kalema of Tower Bridge Authority, for letting me into the basement of the Monument very early on a Saturday morning; and Dr. Kari Sperring and her husband, Phil Nanson, for touring me around Cambridge and even taking me punting.
I also needed a great deal of help via e-mail, on a variety of arcane topics. John Pritchard sent me a fabulous diagram of the Monument; Ian Walden advised me about local flora; Farah Mendlesohn was my go-to woman for Jewish history; Ricardo Barros of the Mercurius Company helped me figure out eighteenth-century dancing; Rev. Devin McLachlan did the same for eighteenth-century Anglican theology; and Dr. Erin Smith made the astronomy go. For information on Ottoman Arabic society, the Arabic language, and the nature of genies, I owe thanks to Yonatan Zunger, Saladin Ahmed, and Rabeya Merenkov. Sherwood Smith did the German translations for me, and Aliette de Bodard not only knew what iatrochemistry was, but could tell me how to say it in French.
The late-night conversations this time were with Adrienne Lipoma and my husband, Kyle Niedzwiecki, with an assist from Jennie Kaye. They very kindly let me talk at them endlessly about the book, and provided more than one useful suggestion.
And then there are all the authors who wrote books I made use of. They are too many to list here, but as always, the bibliography is available on my Web site, www.swantower.com.
Marie Brennan, A Star Shall Fall
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