The Mirror King (The Orphan Queen, #2)(31)

I missed him. Those moments. That innocence. The security of my father’s arms around me.

Now Tobiah’s father was gone, too.

I dropped my attention back to the dais where Tobiah was speaking to his mother, urging her to sit and rest until the memorial began. But even as she started to acquiesce, a hidden piano struck a chord, and other instruments joined a moment later. Strings, winds, and bass.

As one, the audience stood.

As the priests came down the aisles, the thousands of attendees sang a remembrance hymn. Our voices swelled through the chamber, crashing and crushing like waves. I shivered with chills; on the dais, Tobiah looked just as haunted.

By the end of the song, a handful of priests stood on the dais with the queen and crown prince. They dipped their hands into the pool of water and began a prayer. Everyone sat as the memorial began with an account of Terrell’s life and his honors.

A few times I had to shush Carl and Connor, while our neighbors flashed glares, but the chamber was noisy with the movement and breath of thousands of others. My mind wandered to the city rooftops, the open sky, and pure, uncomplicated vigilantism.

The cathedral was silent as one speaker stepped down and another stepped up. But before he could begin, water erupted up from the pool and the entire building trembled. Gas lamps shuddered and flickered, and droplets of water sprayed over us.

Screams sounded from all around the cathedral, echoing in the huge chamber. Guards surged to their feet, swords drawn as they moved toward their charges.

“Under the bench!” I pushed Theresa to the floor. Just as I was reaching for Connor, shouting the same instructions, a booming voice came from above.

“Wilhelmina!”

I knew that voice.

“You cannot hide from me!”

Dread seeped into every piece of me as I stepped backward, away from Theresa and the others, into an aisle—and into enormous white hands.

A sharp crack ripped through the chamber, and everyone looked up as the golden heavens split in two.





ELEVEN


I WRENCHED MYSELF away from the wraith boy just as the first pieces of stone fell. “Everyone get out!”

My cry was lost in the cacophony of screams and collapsing stone. The whole cathedral was cracking open like an egg. Chunks of gold and marble plummeted to the dais, landing in the empty pool with a deafening crash and shudder. Frigid night wind blew in, and the whole space stank of wraith.

Priests fled, their robes fluttering. James dove for Tobiah, who was reaching for his mother. The three of them, along with another handful of guards, made their way into the aisle. More stones from the roof crashed down, spraying white dust like snow. Their clothes were coated with it.

On the stairs above, people packed so tightly there was no way to get out.

“Wil!” Connor screamed for me as Sergeant Ferris heaved him into Kevin’s arms. Half covered in white rubble, my bodyguard picked his way toward me, drawing his sword as though he could do anything against the wraith boy. It was too late.

There was no way we could escape before the building came down on us.

I spun and grabbed the wraith boy’s forearms, giant and straining against the clothes I’d given him. “Stop it.”

“I can’t.” He grinned down at me, too wide, too wild. A fist-sized stone dropped overhead, but he batted it away before I had the chance to move. “There’s no way to stop it.”

Streams of people poured up the aisles. The gap overhead widened as the building shuddered again, shaking loose a chandelier. The fixture smashed into the bench where Tobiah and his family had been; I couldn’t see them anymore, not through the debris and a fire that raged upward. Heat blasted through the cathedral.

“Stop the building from collapsing.” I gripped the wraith boy’s wrists. “Put out the fire.”

“That’s not within my power.”

Thousands of people were going to die because of him—because of me.

Unless I did something.

People trampled one another in their efforts to reach the stairs. Real starlight shone through the gap in the roof, faraway points that lined up exactly with the gold constellations.

My Ospreys were leaping across the benches, heading toward the exit. I couldn’t find the royal family, but several more chunks of the roof had fallen in. Another crashed downward, crushing nearby benches. The floor shook, but I stayed on my feet because of my grip on the wraith boy, who wasn’t bothered by the chaos he’d caused. He calmly stepped sideways as a head-sized chunk of roof broke off and flew at me; he blocked it with his own body.

I had to stop this.

I dropped to the floor and pressed my hands against the stone. “Wake up,” I said, and immediately, my breath grew short. My vision turned to fog. “Stay together. Do not break. Do not fall. Do not shake.”

One last stone thudded to the floor, creating a new plume of dust, but the building stopped moving. The constant low rumble ceased. Wind sucked the smoke and dust from the upper reaches of the sanctuary, revealing the impossible.

Great hunks of marble clung to the jagged crack in the ceiling. Chandeliers clutched the golden constellations like iron spiders. The splayed-finger tops of the columns crept out and linked with one another, as though in prayer.

My heartbeat was hummingbird quick in my ears, but the cathedral had animated. It had done as I’d commanded.