Page 75 of Shadow Lord

“Stand back,” Dis says. He’s already moving, already between the pooling dark and the rest of the room. Hex is on his feet a half-second later. Felix has actually grabbed one of the fire pokers Big Brian brought back from the commune, for reasons nobody’s questioned until exactly this moment. Morgana’s crystal is abandoned on the camp bed, both her hands coming up instead, already shaping something. Even Adam has grabbed the nearest heavy object, which happens to be a saucepan, and is holding it like it might actually help.

The shadows finish gathering, and he’s simply there. Standing in the middle of Felix’s old living room like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Dressed in dark fabric, long hair loose, amber eyes finding mine before they find anyone else’s.

Nobody moves. Nobody breathes, from the look of it. Dis’s shadows are coiled tight and dangerous round his own feet, ready. Felix’s knuckles have gone white around the poker. Even Hex, who spent last night defending Dark with his whole chest, has gone very still. Watching, waiting to see which version of Dark just walked through a wall uninvited.

He’s alone. No shadow men behind him, no army pouring in through whatever door he just opened. Just him, standing in an unfurnished living room full of people who have every reason not to trust him. He has apparently decided that the way to prove himself, is to bring absolutely nothing with him at all.

“I am not here to fight anyone,” he says, into the silence. Both his hands are open and empty at his sides. Deliberately, visibly empty. “I came because I could not stay in my own realm one more hour not knowing whether Bunny was safe. That is the whole of it. That is all I came here for.”

Nobody lowers anything yet.

I don’t think. I don’t decide. I simply walk straight past Dis’s shoulder and into Dark’s arms. I feel the entire room’s held breath change register behind me. Not release exactly, not yet. But something loosening at the edges.

“You’re really here,” I say into his chest, muffled and completely undignified.

“I could not stay away,” he says quietly, one hand coming up to rest against the back of my head like he’s checking I’m actually solid. “Not knowing. Not while the sky itself is deciding what we’ve done and I had no way of learning whether it had cost you anything.”

I turn my head just enough to see the room. Felix still has the poker, but it’s lowered now, pointing at the floor rather than at anything specific. Dis’s shadows have settled, though he hasn’t fully unfolded his arms. Adam’s still holding the saucepan, though with considerably less conviction than a moment ago. Hex is the one who finally moves. He crosses the room in a few quick strides and stops directly in front of Dark, studying his face like he’s checking for something specific.

“You came alone,” Hex says.

“I came alone,” Dark says.

“That was either extremely brave or extremely stupid,” Hex says.

“Possibly both.” Something that’s almost a smile crosses Dark’s face. “I judged that arriving with anything resembling force would rather undercut the entire point I was hoping to make.”

Hex studies him a moment longer. Then he hauls Dark in for a rough, one-armed hug. I’m still wrapped around Dark’s middle, so I get squashed into it too, the kind of embrace old friends give each other when there aren’t words for the actual thing they mean. “You colossal idiot,” Hex says, over the top of my head. “You beautiful colossal idiot.”

Felix finally sets the poker down against the wall, though he doesn’t move it far. “I still don’t trust this,” he says, to the room in general, “but him showing up here looking that terrified is more convincing than hiding somewhere sensible would have been, so. Fine. Watch your step.”

“Duly noted,” Dark says.

Dis says nothing at all, but his shadows have gone quiet, settling back into something closer to ordinary dark. That, from Dis, is practically a hug.

It’s Magdalene who breaks the last of the tension, sweeping in from the kitchen with a tea towel still over one shoulder. She stops dead in the doorway. One hand goes to the woven bag at her hip, to the little pouch of salt she’s carried for as long as I can remember, and rests there. For a long moment she just looks at him. Not frightened, exactly. It’s the look of a woman meeting her own prophecy in the middle of Felix’s old living room, and finding it standing there with empty hands.

Then she takes her hand off the bag.

“So,” she says. “You’re the one.”

“I am given to understand that I am, yes,” Dark says. “We have met. You very nearly salted me.”

“I did,” Magdalene says. “I was right about what you were. I was wrong about what you would do about it.”

Dark inclines his head, slowly. “That is more generous than I expected.”

“Don’t get used to it.” She sniffs, and her eyes stay on him a moment longer. “Forty years I’ve been warning people about you. I had pictured someone considerably less polite.”

“Noted,” Dark says.

High Priestess Magdalene turns and marches back towards the kitchen, a little too briskly, the tea towel slipping from her shoulder. “There’s tea, if anyone still wants it. I imagine we’ve all got some waiting to do.”

We do. Nobody quite says it out loud, but the sun’s still frozen exactly where it was an hour ago, and there’s only one place any of us actually wants to be for whatever happens next.

We walk together, all of us, through streets that still don’t quite know what time of day they’re supposed to be having. Up towards Brandon Hill, the same little park where we all once watched a solar flare tear across the sky. Cabot Tower stands dark against the frozen twilight ahead of us. We climb the path towards it in a loose, straggling group.

We’re not the only ones up here. The park’s dotted with knots of people, huddled in coats despite the mild, not-quite-morning air. Several of them are filming the sky on their phones. One small group is kneeling in a rough circle that might be prayer or might just be shared panic. A man near the tower is shouting something about the end times to absolutely nobody in particular.