The Hôtel Valemont stood on the eastern tip of the Île Saint-Louis, in the middle of the Seine, and on the night of the twenty-first of December, every window in it was lit.
Magnus saw it from the Pont de la Tournelle, through the sleet, at eleven o’clock: a great pale stone house, four stories high, with a steep slate roof and a hundred tall windows blazing gold, standing over the black river like a ship.
Cars were drawing up outside.
Long black cars, one after another, with tinted windows, from which figures in cloaks and masks stepped out onto the wet pavement and swept up the steps and through the great doors.
From somewhere inside, faint across the water, came music.
A waltz.
“Last chance,” said Adrian, beside him.
“We can turn round.
Go back to the car.
Drive to Vienna.
Tell her you had a cold.” “Vampires don’t get colds.” “She doesn’t know that you know that.” Magnus looked at the house for a long time.
He was wearing a black coat that had been made for him in two days by a tailor in the Hidden City, an ancient ghoul who had once made coats for Habsburg archdukes and who had cried, a little, while measuring him.
Under it, a black suit, a white shirt, a black silk tie.
Around his neck, against the cold, a green-and-white scarf: not Kit’s, which had gone down the river, but another, a Shamrock Rovers scarf that Mara had ordered from Dublin and given to him, wrapped in brown paper, without a word.
And in his pocket, a mask.
Black velvet.
Plain.
It covered his eyes and the bridge of his nose and nothing else.
“Traditional dress,” Adrian had said, looking at the scarf.
“Seraphine will be scandalized.” “Good,” said Magnus.
Adrian was in midnight blue, with a mask of silver feathers.
He looked, Magnus thought, exactly like what he was: a young lord of an old house, born to rooms like the ones across the river.
He also looked as if he were about to be sick.
Lyra was not with them.
Lyra was in a van parked on the Quai d’Anjou with four laptops, a drone, and a direct line into the Hôtel Valemont’s security system, which she had owned since Thursday.
“I can see every camera,” she said in Magnus’s ear, through a flesh-colored receiver no bigger than a grain of rice.
“I can open every door.
I can turn off every light.
If anything happens, anything at all, you say the word and I’ll black out the whole island.” A pause.
“Try not to need me to.
The Paris grid’s harder than Prague’s.” “Understood.” “And Magnus.” “Yes?” Another pause, longer.
“Don’t let her buy you,” said Lyra.
“Please.” The ballroom was on the second floor, and it was the most beautiful room Magnus had ever seen.
It was long and high and white and gold, with a ceiling painted with gods in clouds and walls lined with mirrors between tall windows, so that the whole room seemed to go on forever in every direction, reflected and re-reflected into infinity.
Twelve chandeliers hung from the ceiling, each one a waterfall of crystal, lit by candles: real candles, thousands of them.
At one end, on a gallery, an orchestra in black played Strauss.
At the other, a pair of tall gilded doors stood open onto a terrace above the river.
And the room was full of the dead.
Three hundred of them, at least.
Masked, all of them, in velvet and silk and lace and feathers.
Gowns of every color, though mostly red, deep Crimson Court red.
Coats in the cut of every century.
Jewels, everywhere, on throats and wrists and fingers and in hair, catching the candlelight.
They moved through the room in slow, gliding circles to the music, and the mirrors multiplied them, and the effect was of being inside a jewel box full of moving, glittering, beautiful, terrible things.
Magnus felt them all at once, the way he had in Prague.
The blood-sense opened, and three hundred cold presences pressed against it, old and older and oldest.
Commons and nobles and High Vampires.
A handful of Lords’ heirs.
And somewhere in the room, two or three presences so old and so heavy that he felt them like boulders in a stream.
He pulled his aura in.
Hard.
As hard as he could.
In for four.
Hold for four.
It didn’t matter.
He was ten steps into the room when the music faltered.
Just slightly.
The first violin missed a note.
And then, slowly, like a wave moving across a pond, the dancers nearest the door began to slow, and stop, and turn.
Their masked faces turned toward him.
One by one.
Then ten by ten.
Until half the ballroom had stopped dancing and was standing still, in its silks and its jewels, looking at a young man in a plain black mask and a football scarf.
Nobody knelt.
They were old enough, most of them, and proud enough, to fight it.
But Magnus felt them want to.
He felt it like a tide pulling at his ankles.
Then the orchestra found its place again, and the music swelled, and a voice behind him said, softly, warmly, with great amusement: “Well.
I think that answers that.” He turned round.
Seraphine Valemont was not beautiful, exactly.
That was the first thing he would have said about her, if anyone had asked.
Beauty was too simple a word.
She was tall and slender and pale, in a gown of deep red silk that left her shoulders bare, with dark auburn hair piled high on her head and held with pins of gold and garnet.
Her mask was a narrow band of red lace across her eyes.
Her face below it was oval, calm, with a long, elegant nose and a wide, curved, generous mouth.
She looked perhaps thirty-five.
She was the oldest thing in the room.
She was older than the Warden.
Magnus felt it the moment he turned.
Not as old as the deep cold voice in his blood, but older than anything he had stood this close to.
Seven hundred years.
Eight.
And she wore it not like the Warden, like a weight, but lightly, easily, like the silk of her gown.
Like something she had chosen.
Her eyes, behind the red lace, were green.
Very green.
And they were looking at him with an expression of frank, warm, delighted curiosity, as though he were the most interesting thing she had seen in a century.
“Monsieur Magnus,” said Seraphine Valemont, and held out her hand.
He didn’t take it.
He didn’t know if he was supposed to.
He saw her notice, and saw her smile widen, very slightly.
“And Adrian,” she said, turning.
“Darling.
How long has it been?
Twenty-nine years?
You look exactly the same.
Your mother will be so pleased.
She’s on the terrace.
Do go and say hello.” She tilted her head.
“Before she comes to find you.” Adrian bowed.
It was a perfect bow, low, elegant, from the waist.
Magnus could feel, through the sense between them, how much it cost him.
“Madame,” he said.
“You honor us.” “I do, don’t I.” Seraphine laughed.
It was a lovely laugh, low and warm, with something underneath it like a blade in a velvet sheath.
She turned back to Magnus.
“Will you dance with me, Monsieur?
I have been waiting all evening.
I have been waiting, if I am honest, for rather longer than that.” Do not dance with anyone who has not danced with Adrian first.
Before Magnus could answer, Adrian stepped forward.
“Madame,” he said, smoothly, with his most charming smile.
“Forgive me.
But it has been twenty-nine years.
And I have such fond memories of our last waltz.” He held out his hand.
“Might I have the first?” Seraphine looked at him for a long moment.
Something moved behind the red lace.
Something quick and cold and calculating.
Then it was gone, and she was smiling again, warm and delighted.
“Of course, darling,” she said, and took his hand.
Magnus watched them dance.
They were very good.
Of course they were.
They had both been born to it.
They went round the floor in long, sweeping, graceful turns, her red gown flaring, his blue coat-tails swinging, through the candlelight and the mirrors, and the other dancers made room for them.
Seraphine talked the whole time, her lips close to Adrian’s ear, smiling.
Adrian smiled back.
Through the sense between them, Magnus felt his brother’s nerves, stretched as tight as wires.
And then, halfway through the waltz, on a turn near the windows, he felt something else.
A sharp, tiny prick.
In the palm of Adrian’s hand.
Where Seraphine’s gloved fingers were pressed against his.
And a thread.
Thin, fine, gossamer.
Spinning out from her palm to his.
Not a hook.
Not a binding.
Something lighter and stranger.
A promise, drawn in blood.
Adrian’s face didn’t change.
His smile didn’t change.
His step didn’t falter.
But through the sense between them, Magnus felt him go very cold, and very still, and then, very deliberately, accept it.
The waltz ended.
Seraphine curtsied.
Adrian bowed.
And as he straightened, he looked across the ballroom at Magnus, and his face was perfectly calm, and through the sense between them came a single quiet word: Safe.
“What did she do?” Magnus said, low, when Adrian came back to him.
“Nothing very much.” Adrian took a glass of something red from a passing tray and didn’t drink it.
“There’s a needle in her glove.
Silver.
Very fine.
Every partner she dances with gets a little prick, and a little drop of her blood goes in, and they owe her a favor.
Unspecified.
To be called in at her pleasure.” He shrugged.
“It’s an old Crimson Court trick.
She’s done it to half the room.
She’d have done it to you.” “And now you owe her a favor.” “I suppose I do.” Adrian looked at the glass in his hand.
“Better me than you.” “Adrian—” “She’ll want to dance with you now.
The glove’s spent; the needle only holds one drop.
You’re quite safe.” Adrian’s smile was a little too bright.
“Go on.
Don’t keep her waiting.
And for God’s sake, Magnus, don’t step on her feet.” He did not step on her feet.
He had practiced for six weeks, in the wine cellar, with the mismatched sofas pushed against the walls and Silas laughing and Irina dancing and Noah pretending to read the newspaper.
He had practiced until Adrian stopped wincing.
And now, in the ballroom of the Hôtel Valemont, under the twelve chandeliers, with three hundred masked vampires watching, he held Seraphine Valemont’s hand and her waist and went round the floor in the long sweeping turns of the waltz, and did not step on her feet once.
“You’ve been taught,” she said, sounding pleased.
“Adrian?” “Yes.” “He was always the best dancer in the family.
Julian’s competent.
Cordelia’s correct.
But Adrian dances as if he means it.” She smiled up at him.
“So do you, I think.
Under all that care.” They turned.
The mirrors turned with them.
He could feel her hand in his, cool and light and very strong.
He could feel her blood, through the blood-sense, old and deep and calm.
And under it, faintly, through the sense Adrian’s blood had given him, he could feel her.
Not her thoughts.
Her shape.
Curiosity, and delight, and ambition, bright and hungry as a flame.
And under those, deep down, so deep he almost missed it, something else.
Something old and dark and heavy and very, very carefully hidden.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” said Seraphine.
“Because I think you’ll know if I’m not.
You have that look.
He had it too.” She tilted her head.
“I want you.” Magnus said nothing.
They turned.
“Not like that.
Or, well.
Not only like that.” She laughed softly.
“I want what you are.
I want what’s in your chest.
I want every old fool in Europe who still dreams about the iron crown to look at you on my arm and see the Crimson Court standing behind the King’s blood.
I want them to come to me.
And I want to use them.” “For what?” “To end this.” Her voice changed.
Hardened.
“Do you know how many of us there were in 1897?
Four hundred thousand.
In Europe alone.
Do you know how many there are now?
Ninety thousand.
Perhaps.
We’re dying, Magnus.
Slowly, the way old houses die, one room at a time.
Hellsing kills us.
The Lords hoard us.
Nobody makes new ones properly anymore; they make strays and throw them away.
And every year the humans get stronger, and their cameras get better, and their science gets closer, and one day they’ll find all of us, every last one, and that will be the end.” They turned.
“Unless someone puts it back together.
The Kingdom.
The Laws.
The Crown.” “You want to be Queen.” “I want there to be a Queen,” said Seraphine.
“Or a King.
I don’t much care which.
I want there to be someone at the top of the table again.
I’ve wanted it since 1897.” Her green eyes held his.
“I can’t be it.
I’ve tried.
They’d never accept me.
I’m only one Lord among six, and they’d tear me apart.
But you,” she said softly, “they would accept.
Some of them.
Enough of them.
If you had the Crimson Court behind you.
My armies.
My money.
My name.
My seven hundred years of knowing exactly where every one of the other Lords keeps their secrets.” “And in exchange?” “In exchange, you swear the Crimson Court’s oath.
In blood.
To me.
You rule, and I advise you.
You wear the crown, and I tell you when to take it off.” She smiled.
“It’s not so terrible.
It’s what every king has ever had.
A wise counselor.
A power behind the throne.” “And the ghouls?” She blinked.
It was the first time he had surprised her.
“What about them?” “Baron Kessler beat a ghoul in the market square of the Hidden City.
In front of everyone.
With a cane.
Because she dropped a parcel.” Magnus kept his voice very level.
“He’s your vassal.
Under your oath, would that be allowed?” Seraphine looked at him for a long moment.
They turned, and turned again.
“Matthias is a fool,” she said at last.
“He’s been punished.
But the household bond is in the Codex, Magnus.
Article twenty-two.
It was the King’s own law.
A Lord’s ghouls are his own affair.” She smiled, very gently.
“You can’t change everything at once.
No one can.
Not even him.” He had a crown, and three hundred years, and nobody to tell him no.
The waltz was ending.
He could hear it in the music, the long, sweeping final phrases.
He held Seraphine’s hand and her waist and turned her one last time, under the chandelier in the center of the room, and as the music rose to its last chord he looked down into her green eyes behind the red lace, and he asked, very quietly: “Did you have a key to his castle?” She stopped dancing.
The music ended.
All around them, the dancers stopped, and bowed, and curtsied, and began to applaud the orchestra.
Seraphine Valemont stood perfectly still in the center of the ballroom with her hand in his, and her face did not change at all.
But through the sense Adrian’s blood had given him, Magnus felt it.
The deep, dark, heavy thing at the bottom of her, the thing so carefully hidden.
He felt it move.
Like something enormous turning over at the bottom of a lake.
It was grief.
And under the grief, so old and so deep it had almost turned to stone, guilt.
“Yes,” said Seraphine.
Her voice was very soft.
“Yes, I did.
He gave it to me himself.
In 1650.
He said I was the only one he trusted.” She took her hand out of his, slowly.
“I never used it.
Not once.
Not even on that night.” A pause.
“I didn’t go to the council either.
None of us did.
You will hear a great many stories about why.
Mine is that I was afraid.
That I had heard there would be hunters at the castle, and that I was a coward, and that I stayed in Paris and let him die.” She looked at him for a long time.
“I have never said that aloud,” she said.
“Not once, in a hundred and twenty-nine years.
I’m not sure why I have now.” A faint, bleak smile.
“Perhaps it’s the blood.
He always did make me tell the truth.” She turned away.
Then turned back.
“Think about my offer,” she said, quite steadily, the warmth back in her voice as if it had never left.
“Take as long as you like.
Well.
Take until midnight.
At midnight, the masks come off, and I’m going to introduce you to everyone in this room.
And after that, I’m afraid, you won’t have very long at all.” She walked away across the ballroom in her red gown, and the dancers parted for her.
“Well,” said a voice at Magnus’s elbow.
“You must be the stray.” He turned.
The man was a little taller than Adrian, a little broader, a little darker.
Thirty, perhaps, in appearance.
He had Adrian’s long, aristocratic face, but none of its warmth; where Adrian’s mouth was always on the edge of a laugh, this one was thin and pressed and faintly contemptuous.
His eyes, behind a mask of black and gold, were the same brandy color as Adrian’s.
They were looking Magnus up and down, slowly, from the plain black mask to the football scarf, with an expression of polite, bored disgust.
“Julian Vale,” he said.
He did not offer his hand.
“Adrian’s brother.
His real brother.” He smiled thinly.
“I hear you’ve been sharing blood with him.
How sweet.
He always did like strays.
Dogs, ghouls, fire-axe murderesses from California.” He glanced across the room, to where Adrian was standing on the terrace, very stiff, talking to a tall, cold, silver-haired woman in black.
“Mother’s beside herself.
She thinks you’ve been a terrible influence.” “Adrian makes his own decisions,” said Magnus.
“Adrian has never made a decision in his life.
He drifts.
He always has.
Toward whoever’s warmest.” Julian’s smile widened.
“Right now that’s you.
Next decade, it’ll be someone else.
You’ll see.” He leaned in, very slightly.
“I’d enjoy it while it lasts, if I were you.
Whatever you are.
Seraphine’s going to put a ribbon round your neck and walk you round Paris like a show poodle, and when she’s finished with you, I’m going to buy you from her, and see what’s really in that chest of yours.” The second heart beat once, cold and hard.
Magnus felt his aura slip.
Just a little.
Just for a second.
The way it did when he was angry.
Julian Vale’s knees buckled.
He caught himself on a gilded chair.
It was very quick.
Almost nobody saw.
But he was suddenly white under his mask, and his brandy eyes had gone wide, and his thin mouth had fallen open, and he was staring at Magnus with an expression that had nothing bored or contemptuous left in it at all.
Magnus pulled the aura back in.
“Your brother,” he said quietly, “is the bravest person I’ve ever met.
He took a needle for me tonight, from a woman he’s afraid of, without being asked.
He’s spent thirty years stealing ghouls out of auctions and driving strays to safety, in a city where nobody owns anybody.
He doesn’t drift.
He chose.” He paused.
“You have forty ghouls, he told me.
Do you know their names?” Julian stared at him.
He didn’t answer.
“No,” said Magnus.
“I didn’t think so.” He turned and walked away.
He found Adrian on the terrace, alone.
The tall silver-haired woman in black was gone.
Adrian was standing at the stone balustrade, looking down at the black river, very still.
“Your mother?” said Magnus.
“Lady Cordelia Vale.” Adrian didn’t turn round.
“She’d like me to come home.
She says all is forgiven.
She says Julian needs help with the estates.” He laughed softly.
“She says if I come home, and bring you with me, House Vale will be the first house in Europe to kneel to the King’s blood.
And our name will be written in every history for a thousand years.” A long pause.
“She said she was proud of me.
For the first time in two hundred years.
Because of who I’d found.” Magnus stood beside him at the balustrade.
“What did you tell her?” he said.
Adrian was quiet for a long time.
Below them, the river ran black and fast, carrying chunks of ice from somewhere upstream.
“I told her I already had a family,” he said at last.
“And that she wasn’t in it.” Through the sense between them, Magnus felt how much it had cost him.
He felt it like a bruise.
He didn’t say anything.
He put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder, and they stood there together in the cold, in the sleet, above the river.
Inside, behind them, the orchestra stopped playing.
A hush fell over the ballroom.
Somewhere a clock began to strike.
Midnight.
“Masks,” said Lyra, in Magnus’s ear.
Her voice was very tense.
“She’s going to the gallery.
She’s got a glass in her hand.
She’s going to make a speech.” A pause.
“Magnus.
There’s someone else.
Someone just came in through the river door.
Old.
Very old.
Older than Seraphine.
Every camera in the building just went to static when she walked past.” Another pause.
“She’s coming toward you.” Magnus turned from the balustrade.
She was standing in the open terrace doors, between the candlelight and the dark.
A small, slight figure, no taller than his shoulder, in a gown so old-fashioned it was almost a shroud: gray silk, high-necked, long-sleeved, to the floor.
Her hair was white, and very long, and loose, and it moved slightly although there was no wind.
Her face was the face of a woman of seventy, lined and delicate and very calm.
She wore no mask.
And her eyes were completely black.
No iris.
No white.
Black, all the way across, like two drops of ink.
She looked at Magnus for a long time with those black eyes.
Then, slowly, she lowered herself, in her gray silk gown, on the wet stone of the terrace in the sleet, all the way down onto both knees.
“Your Majesty,” said Lady Eveline Nacht.
“I have kept your papers.
All of them.
I have been waiting such a very long time.”