She grasped it—the very light crackling in the clouds above.It sizzled in her grip, and she threw it down into the earth.
The blinding flash of light threw her backward, blinded her.Screams rose all around her, voices like raindrops pattering against cobblestones.
Then silence.Absolute quiet.No rain, no wind, no thunder.Only a still, dark night.
And Diana’s frantic, beating heart.
“Temple!”she cried, jumping to her feet.“Temple!”
Coughing.“Here.”
She threw herself at a dark shadow on the ground.She couldn’t see him, couldn’t see if he was hurt.But there was power still inside her, and thinking of the fairy lights, she produced one in her hand.A glamour, but with the loveliest soft glow.A Nickleby House glow that, somehow, changed her tears to laughter, her fear to strength.
So did the sight of Temple.He was stretched across the ground, propped on an elbow.“Are you well?”
She knelt by him.“Yes.You?”
“Yes.Fordham?”
She lifted her fairy light high, casting its light across the garden.
And on the shocked faces of the transcendent ton.The entire ballroom seemed to have followed them outside.The entire ballroom had watched her pull a fairy light out of thin air.
And so had the king.He stood at the very front of the crowd, mouth open, his wife the queen on his arm.She covered her mouth with one hand and clutched her skirts with the other.
The end.Of… everything.
She couldn’t think about that right now.Coughing behind her.She whipped around.Apollo lay on the ground, stretched out on his back like he was stargazing.He rolled to his side, pushed slowly to sitting, mumbled a curse.
“What was that?”Temple asked.He stood, pulling her into his arms.“Did you create that lightning or… reroute it?”
“A glamour.”It had to be, but it had felt so very?—
“It seemed real.”The light in her palm flickered into darkness.Better that than all the eyes on her.
“Someone provide a damn light.”Nico’s voice.
A dozen fairy lights appeared on palms, and the crowd rippled, parted.Nico appeared, and he picked up Apollo’s knife, then jerked Apollo to his feet.
“You are coming with me,” Nico said.
Apollo didn’t fight it.But before Nico pulled him into the crowd, he looked to Diana.What she saw there… it could not be… worry.For her?How could he, after…
“Take Fordham to my guards, Sir Nicholas,” the king said.
Apollo would lose his title.
She could lose her life.
She clung to Temple.
And the king stepped forward.“Seize them.Bring them inside.”
“No.”Diana clung to Temple, but a thousand arms, it seemed, separated them.
“Touch her,” Temple growled, “and I will delight in separating the iron from your blood.”
“Can he do that?”a man somewhere to Diana’s left asked.
