A Gathering of Shadows

  He wanted to ask about the tournament roster, about Alucard Emery—but even unspoken, the name left a sour taste in his mouth. He took a long sip of ale, but it did nothing to clear the bile.

  “We should go on a trip,” said Rhy, dragging himself upright. “Once the tournament is over.”

  Kell laughed.

  “I’m serious,” insisted the prince, his words slurring slightly.

  He knew Rhy was, but he also knew it would never happen. The crown didn’t let Kell travel beyond London, even when he ventured to different worlds. They claimed it was for his own safety—and maybe it was—but he and Rhy both knew that wasn’t the only reason.

  “I’ll talk to Father….” said Rhy, trailing off as if the subject were already fading from his mind. And then he was up again, sliding out of the booth.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kell.

  “To fetch us another round.”

  Kell looked down at Rhy’s discarded glass, and then his own, still half-full.

  “I think we’ve had enough,” said Kell. The prince spun on him, clutching the booth.

  “So now you speak for both of us?” he snapped, eyes glassy. “First body, now will?”

  The barb struck, and Kell felt suddenly, horribly tired. “Fine,” he growled. “Poison us both.”

  He rubbed his eyes and watched his brother go. Rhy had always had a penchant for consumption, but never with the sole intent of being too drunk to be useful. Too drunk to think. Saints knew, Kell had demons of his own, but he knew he couldn’t drown them. Not like this. Why he kept letting Rhy try, he didn’t know.

  Kell felt in the pockets of his coat and found a brass clip with three slim cigars.

  He’d never been much of a smoker—then again, he’d never been much of a drinker, either—and yet, wanting to take back at least a measure of control over what he put in his body, he snapped his fingers and lit the cigar with the small flame that danced above his thumb.

  Kell inhaled deeply—it wasn’t tobacco, like in Grey London, or the horrible char they smoked in White, but a pleasant spiced leaf that cleared his head and calmed his nerves. Kell blew the breath out, his eyes sliding out of focus in the plume of smoke.

  He heard steps and looked up, expecting Rhy, only to find a young woman. She bore the marks of Kisimyr’s entourage, from the coiled dark hair to the gold tassels to the cat’s-eye pendant at her throat.

  “Avan,” she said, with a voice like silk.

  “Avan,” said Kell.

  The woman stepped forward, the knees of her dress brushing the edge of the booth. “Mistress Vasrin sends her regards, and wishes me to pass on a message.”

  “And what message is that?” he asked, taking another drag.

  She smiled, and then before he could do anything—before he could even exhale—she reached out, took Kell’s face in her hand, and kissed him. The breath caught in Kell’s chest, heat flushed his body, and when the girl pulled back—not far, just enough to meet his gaze—she blew out a breath of smoke. He almost laughed. Her lips curled into a feline smile, and her eyes searched his, not with fear or even surprise, but with something like excitement. Awe. And Kell knew this was the part where he should feel like an impostor … but he didn’t.

  He looked past her to the prince, still standing at the bar.

  “Was that all she said?” asked Kell.

  Her mouth twitched. “Her instructions were vague, mas aven vares.”

  My blessed prince.

  “No,” he said, frowning. “Not a prince.”

  “What, then?”

  He swallowed. “Just Kell.”

  She blushed. It was too intimate—societal norms dictated that even if he shed the royal title, he should be addressed as Master Kell. But he didn’t want to be that, either. He just wanted to be himself.

  “Kell,” she said, testing the word on her lips.

  “And your name?” he asked.

  “Asana,” she whispered, the word escaping like a sound of pleasure. She guided him back against the bench, the gesture somehow forward and shy at the same time. And then her mouth was upon his. Her clothes were cinched at the waist in the current fashion, and he tangled his fingers in the bodice lacings at the small of her back.

  “Kell,” someone whispered in his ear.

  Only it wasn’t Asana, but Delilah Bard. She did that, crept into his thoughts and robbed him of focus, like a thief. Which was exactly what she was. What she’d been, before he let her out of her world, and into his. Saints knew what—or where—she was these days, but in his mind she would always be the thief, stealing through at the most inopportune moments. Get out, he thought, his grip tightening on the girl’s dress. Asana kissed him again, but he was being dragged somewhere else, outside, on the path in the cool October night, and another set of lips was pressing against his, there and then gone, a ghost of a kiss.

  “What was that for?”

  A knife’s edge smile. “For luck.”

  He groaned in frustration, and pulled Asana against him, kissing her deeply, desperately, trying to smother Lila’s intrusion as Asana’s lips brushed his throat.

  “Mas vares,” she breathed against his skin.

  “I’m not …” he began, but then her mouth was on his again, stealing the argument along with his air. His hand had vanished somewhere in her mane of hair. There it was now, at the nape of her neck. Her own hand splayed against his chest, and then her fingers were running down over his stomach and—

  Pain.

  It glanced across jaw, sudden and bright.

  “What is it?” asked Asana. “What’s wrong?”

  Kell ground his teeth. “Nothing.” I am going to kill my brother.

  He turned his thoughts from Rhy to Asana, but just as his mouth found hers again, the pain returned, raking over his hip.

  For a single, hazy moment, Kell wondered if Rhy had simply found himself another enthusiastic conquest. But then the pain came a third time, this time against his ribs, sharp enough to knock his breath away, and the possibility withered.

  “Sanct,” he swore, dragging himself from Asana’s embrace and out of the booth with murmured apologies. The room swayed as he stood too fast, and he braced himself against the booth and searched the room, wondering what kind of trouble Rhy had gotten himself into now.

  And then he saw the table near the bar, where the three men had sat talking. They were gone. Two doors to the Blessed Waters: the front and the back. He chose the second set, and guessed right, bursting out into the night with a speed that quite frankly surprised him, given how much he—and Rhy—had had to drink. But pain and cold were sobering things, and as he skidded to a stop in an alley dusted with snow, he could feel the magic already rushing hotly through his veins, ready for the fight.

  The first thing Kell saw was the blood.

  Then the prince’s knife on the cobblestones.

  The three men had Rhy cornered at the end of the alley. One of them had a gash on his forearm. Another along his cheek. Rhy must have gotten in a few slashes before he’d lost the weapon, but now he was doubled over, one arm wrapped around his ribs and blood running from his nose. The men obviously didn’t know who he was. It was one thing to speak ill of a royal, but to lay hands on him….

  “Teach you to cut up my face,” growled one.

  “An improvement,” grumbled Rhy through gritted teeth. Kell couldn’t believe it: Rhy was goading them on.

  “… looking for trouble.”

  “Sure to find it.”

  “Wouldn’t … be so sure …” The prince coughed.

  His head drifted up past the men to Kell. He smiled thinly and said through bloody teeth, “Well, hello there,” as if they’d just chanced upon one another. As if he weren’t getting the shit kicked out of him behind the Blessed Waters. And as if, at this moment, Kell didn’t have the urge to let the men have at Rhy for being stupid and self-destructive enough to pick this fight in the first place (because Kell had no doubt that the princ
e had started it). The urge was compounded by the fact that, though the thugs didn’t know it, they couldn’t actually kill him. That was the thing about the spell scorched into their skin. Nothing could kill Rhy. Because it wasn’t Rhy’s life that held him together anymore. It was Kell’s. And as long as Kell lived, so would the prince.

  But they could hurt him, and Kell wasn’t angry enough to let that happen.

  “Hello, Brother,” he said, crossing his arms.

  Two of the men turned toward Kell.

  “Kers la?” taunted one. “A pet dog, come to nip at our heels?”

  “Don’t look like he’s got much bite,” said the other.

  The third didn’t even bother turning around. Rhy had said something to insult him—Kell didn’t catch the words—and now he angled a kick at the prince’s stomach. It never connected. Kell clenched his teeth and the man’s boot froze in midair, the bones in his leg willed still.

  “What the—”

  Kell wrenched with his mind, and the man went flying sideways into the nearest wall. He collapsed to the ground, groaning, and the other two looked on with surprise and horror.

  “You can’t—” one grumbled, though the fact that Kell could was less shocking than the fact that he had. Bone magic was a rare and dangerous skill, forbidden because it broke the cardinal law: that none shall use magic, mental or physical, to control another person. Those who showed an affinity were strongly encouraged to unlearn it. Anyone caught doing it was rewarded with a full set of limiters.

  An ordinary magician would never risk the punishment.

  Kell wasn’t an ordinary magician.

  He tipped his chin up so the men could see his eyes, and took a measure of grim satisfaction as the color bled from their faces. And then footsteps sounded, and Kell turned to find more men pouring into the alley. Drunk and angry and armed. Something stirred in him.

  His heart raced, and magic surged through his veins. He felt something on his face, and it took him a moment to realize that he was smiling.

  He drew his dagger from the hidden sheath against his arm and with a single fluid motion cut his palm. Blood fell to the street in heavy red drops.

  “As Isera,” he said, the words taking shape in his blood and on the air at the same time. They vibrated through the alley.

  And then, the ground began to freeze.

  It started at the drops of blood and spread out fast like frost over the stones and underfoot until a moment later everyone in the alley was standing atop a single solid pane of ice. One man took a step, and his feet went out from under him, arms flailing for balance even as he fell. Another must have had better boots on, because he took a sure step forward. But Kell was already moving. He crouched, pressed his bloody palm to the street stones, and said, “As steno.”

  Break.

  A cracking sound split the night, the quiet shattering with the pane of glassy ice. Cracks shot out from Kell’s hand, fissuring the ground to every side, and as he stood, the shards came with him. Every piece not pinned by boot or body rose into the air and hung there, knifelike edges facing out from Kell like wicked rays of light.

  Suddenly everyone in the alley grew still, not because he was willing the bones in their bodies, but because they were afraid. As they should be. He didn’t feel drunk now. Didn’t feel cold.

  “Hey now,” said one, his hands drifting up. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It’s not fair,” growled another softly, a blade of ice against his throat.

  “Fair?” asked Kell, surprised by the steadiness in his voice. “Is three against one fair?”

  “He started it!”

  “Is eight against two fair?” continued Kell. “Looks to me like the odds are in your favor.”

  The ice began to inch forward through the air. Kell heard hisses of panic.

  “We were just defending ourselves.”

  “We didn’t know.”

  Against the back wall, Rhy had straightened. “Come on, Kell….”

  “Be still, Rhy,” warned Kell. “You’ve caused enough trouble.”

  The jagged shards of ice hovered to every side, and then drifted on the air with slow precision until two or three had found each man, had charted a course for throat and heart and gut. The shards and the men that faced them waited with wide eyes and held breath to see what they would do.

  What Kell would do.

  A flick of his wrist, that’s all it would take, to end every man in the alley.

  Stop, a voice said, the word almost too soft to hear.

  Stop.

  And then suddenly, much louder, the voice was Rhy’s, the words tearing from his throat. “KELL, STOP.”

  And the night snapped back into focus and he realized he was standing there holding eight lives in his hand, and he’d almost ended them. Not to punish them for attacking Rhy (the prince had probably provoked them) and not because they were bad men (though several of them might have been). But just because he could, because it felt good to be in control, to be the strongest, to know that when it came down to it, he would be the one left standing.

  Kell exhaled and lowered his hand, letting the shards of ice crash to the cobblestones, where they shattered. The men gasped, and swore, and stumbled back as one, the spell of the moment broken.

  One sank to the ground, shaking.

  Another looked like he might vomit.

  “Get out of here,” said Kell quietly.

  And the men listened. He watched them run.

  They already thought he was a monster, and now he’d gone and given the fears weight, which would just make everything worse. But it didn’t matter; nothing he did seemed to make it better.

  His steps crackled on the broken ice as he trudged over to where Rhy was sitting on his haunches against the wall. He looked dazed, but Kell thought it had less to do with the beating and more to do with the drink. The blood had stopped falling from his nose and lip, and his face was otherwise unhurt; when Kell quested through his own body in search of echoing pain, he felt only a couple of tender ribs.

  Kell held out his hand and helped Rhy to his feet. The prince took a step forward, and swayed, but Kell caught him and kept him upright.

  “There you go again,” murmured Rhy, leaning his head on Kell’s shoulder. “You never let me fall.”

  “And let you take me down with you?” chided Kell, wrapping the prince’s arm around his shoulders. “Come on, Brother. I think we’ve had enough fun for one night.”

  “Sorry,” whispered Rhy.

  “I know.”

  But the truth was, Kell couldn’t forget the way he’d felt during the fight, the small defiant part of him that had undeniably enjoyed it. He couldn’t forget the smile that had belonged to him and yet to someone else entirely.

  Kell shivered, and helped his brother home.

  IV

  The guards were waiting for them in the hall.

  Kell had gotten the prince all the way back to the palace and up the Basin steps before running into the men: two of them Rhy’s, the other two his, and all four looking put out.

  “Vis, Tolners,” said Kell, feigning lightness. “Want to give me a hand?”

  As if he were carrying a sack of wheat, and not the royal prince of Arnes.

  Rhy’s guards looked pale with anger and worry, but neither stepped forward.

  “Staff, Hastra?” he said, appealing to his own men. He was met with stony silence. “Fine, get out of the way, I’ll carry him myself.”

  He pushed past the guards.

  “Is that the prince’s blood?” asked Vis, pointing at Kell’s sleeve, which he’d used to wipe Rhy’s face clean.

  “No,” he lied. “Only mine.”

  Rhy’s men relaxed considerably at that, which Kell found disconcerting. Vis was a nervous sort, hackles always raised, and Tolners was utterly humorless, with the set jaw of an officer. They had both served King Maxim himself before being assigned to guard the young royal, and they took the prince’s defiance wi
th far less nonchalance than Rhy’s previous men. As for Kell’s own guards, Hastra was young and eager, but Staff hardly ever said a word, either to Kell’s face or in his company. For the first month, Kell hadn’t been sure if the guard hated him, or feared him, or both. Then Rhy told him the truth—that Staff’s sister had died in the Black Night—so Kell knew that it was likely both.

  “He’s a good guard,” said Rhy when Kell asked why they would assign him such a man. And then added grimly, “It was Father’s choice.”

  Now, as the party reached the royal hall the brothers shared, Tolners produced a note and held it up for Kell to read. “This isn’t funny.” Apparently Rhy had had the grace to pin the note to his door, in case anyone in the palace should worry.

  Not kidnapped.

  Out for a drink with Kell.

  Sit tight.

  Rhy’s room was at the end of the hall, marked by two ornate doors. Kell kicked them open.

  “Too loud,” muttered Rhy.

  “Master Kell,” warned Vis, following him in. “I must insist you cease these—”

  “I didn’t force him out.”

  “But you allowed—”

  “I’m his brother, not his guard,” snapped Kell. He knew he’d been raised as Rhy’s protection as much as his companion, but it was proving no small task, and besides, hadn’t he done enough?

  Tolners scowled. “The king and queen—”

  “Go away,” said Rhy, rousing himself. “Giving me a headache.”

  “Your Highness,” started Vis, reaching for Rhy’s arm.

  “Out,” snapped the prince with sudden heat. The guards shied away, then looked uncertainly at Kell.

  “You heard the prince,” he grumbled. “Get out.” His gaze went to his own men. “All of you.”

  As the doors closed behind him, Kell half guided, half dragged Rhy into his bed. “I think I’m growing on them,” he muttered.

  Rhy rolled groggily onto his back, an arm cast over his eyes.

  “I’m sorry … sorry …” he said softly, and Kell shuddered, remembering that horrific night, the prince bleeding to death as he and Lila tried to drag him to safety, the soft I’m sorrys fading horribly into silence and stillness and—