But London was more than just the City within the walls. They would not abandon their defense so long as one outlying village remained under threat.
Sir Peregrin cleared his throat. “Madam—you wish us to let it through into the Onyx Hall?”
“No,” Lune said. “You will battle it outside the cathedral.”
In the mortal City. Not hiding under glamours, pretending that what they did was something mundane; a fight such as this could not be concealed. But who was there to see? The cathedral mount was an island in a sea of fire. The humans were fled. Their church bells had fallen silent, brazen tongues now melted slag in a desolation of cinders. If London was not quite safe for her people, it was the closest it had come since mankind settled on the banks of the Thames.
The Captain of the Onyx Guard touched his hand to his heart. Lune knew his doubts, as clearly as if he had spoken them: his knights were brave, but few, and the Dragon a foe more terrible than any had faced.
She would be sending some of them—perhaps all—to their deaths.
But any who lacked the courage for this battle had already fled.
“Let me fight it.”
The voice came from the amphitheater’s entrance, rumbling in the hollow pit of Lune’s stomach. Broken and hoarse, but still familiar, and her throat closed up tight.
Prigurd Nellt was coarsely dressed, his hair grown long and shaggy beneath the helm he now removed. Deep lines seamed the hard skin of his face, marking the lonely years of his exile. But his shoulders were straight, and the hilt of his great two-handed sword rose above one of them, wrapped in well-worn leather.
Peregrin’s own sword hissed out of its sheath, and the tip flashed fire as he leveled it at the giant. “You have been banished. Why are you here?”
“To defend London.” Prigurd said it without flourish. He advanced carefully, Peregrin’s blade tracking his every step, and stopped well shy of Lune, kneeling on the sand. “Your Majesty. Lord—” He caught Antony’s name before it came out, blinking at Jack in confusion. “Er—Prince. Let me fight for you.”
Jack was staring in manifest curiosity, but Lune did not have time to explain. She frowned down at the exile. “You are no longer of our guard.”
The giant’s doubt spoke frankly as he eyed the knights. “I know. I—I haven’t forgotten. But I’ve had time to think, and to—regret. I don’t expect you will let me back, your Grace. That isn’t why I’m here. I just want to do something. So that when I think about this place, I can remember something other than how I betrayed you.”
The constriction in her throat grew tighter. Against shame, against the threat of punishment, he returned to them in this desperate hour. Not for reward: she believed him when he said that. But for honor, and duty, and loyalty. Because this was his home, even if she had driven him from it.
Peregrin’s body was practically humming with distrust. Lifting her fingers, Lune gestured for him to back away. “Madam—” he began.
“We need him,” Lune said. “His size, his strength. Would you face an enemy whose head you cannot reach? We will not turn away a sword arm, Peregrin—not when our realm is at stake.”
An intake of breath from Prigurd, that from a smaller creature might have passed unnoticed. His thick fingers dug into the sand.
From Lune’s side, unexpected support. “I wasn’t here when this—fellow’s crimes were committed,” Jack said. “In fact, I have no idea who he is. Which makes me, I think, as close to a neutral party as we’ll find in this room. I make no judgment regarding his past actions, but if he will fight for us, then he has my favor.”
Prigurd’s head came up in startlement. Purest joy flickered there, just for a moment, and it struck Lune like a blow.
He deserves this much of me.
“For this battle,” she said, “he shall have mine as well.” Fumbling, she unpinned the diamond brooch holding her cloak shut, and extended it toward the giant. The star buried in its depths winked in the light. “And when this is done, he shall have three days and nights’ safety here in the Onyx Hall, with no hand raised against him.” Could she grant more than that? It depended on his former brothers-in-arms—who, if they did not precisely forgive him, looked more than a little relieved to have the giant’s strength on their side. After the battle, they might view him with renewed charity.
Disbelieving, Prigurd rose, ate the ground between them with two strides, and took the brooch from her hand. His calloused skin rasped against hers—and then Jack and Lune gasped as one.
Sir Peregrin leapt forward, ready to defend them, but he had barely moved before a tiny sprite shrieked into the air above their heads, screaming what the Queen and Prince already knew. “The cathedral burns!”
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: eight o’clock in the evening
The Dragon found its foothold on the very scaffolding erected for the cathedral’s repair. Eight days before, the architect Dr. Christopher Wren had met with others to discuss its restoration: the mending of its broken roofs, the straightening of the leaning walls, the support of a pillar that had settled askew under the weight of the central tower.
Now a spark alit on the edge of a board laid to patch a hole in the leads, and burrowed its way inward.
The exhausted defenders in the hellish oven of the churchyard fell back, defeated. The Dragon dug its claws into the board, flames licking across the parched timber. Stone could not burn, but its fittings could, and with ravening hunger the Fire tore inward, seeking the power below.
In the cracked, chipped floor of the nave, the entrance opened up. Marching in grim, battle-ready file, the knights of the Onyx Guard and their erstwhile commander emerged, weapons in hand.
They arrayed themselves across the south transept, Sir Peregrin Thorne anchoring one end of their line, Dame Segraine the other. The tombs of London’s worthy forefathers and foremothers stood between them like shield brothers. The vaulting stone heights of the ceiling concealed the flames for now, but the blocks ground ominously against one another, shifted by the thundering heat. The wooden roof above was too high for anyone to douse the flames, even if water could be brought. All they could do was wait.
Wait, and prepare. Gripping the hilt of his sword in both hands, Prigurd Nellt drew in a slow breath, letting his great chest expand—and grew.
The days when a giant could walk the land in his true form had passed. To live in the Onyx Hall, or the home of any other faerie monarch, he drew himself inward, diminishing his bulk until he could live—if not comfortably. But here, hidden by walls of stone and flame, with the ceiling so high above, Prigurd could be as he once was.
The giant’s shoulders swelled upward and out. Head bowed, Prigurd grew, flexing arms as thick as an ox’s body, shifting legs the size of mighty trees. In his hands, the sword kept pace, until three men together could not have wielded it. Hewn from the stone of his rocky northern home, the blade held a touch of that cold chill, and the giant smiled to think of what it could do.
No Dragon would eat his home. Not this day, nor any other.
The wooden roof was well in flames, but the Fire had not the patience to wait. With a roar, its power struck downward, and the stone of the ceiling shattered as if blasted by gunpowder.
A blazing column punched through to the floor, smashing into ruin the recumbent monument of some long-dead knight. Upward curved the flames, a thick band coiling about itself, until the gathered fae could barely look at it, or breathe the searing air. The stone beneath calcined white, crumbling into powder that spun into a stinging whirlwind, the herald of the Dragon.