Hastra was shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“I’m going to do you the favor,” she said, setting aside the empty glass, “of assuming this wasn’t your idea.” She turned on him. “And you’re going to do yourself the favor of staying out of my way. And next time you mess with my drink”—she drew a knife, twirled it on her fingers, and brought it up beneath his chin—“I’ll pin you to a tree.”
The sound of steps hurrying toward her returned Lila to the present.
She spun, knowing it would be him. “Was it your idea?”
“What?” stammered Kell. “No. Tieren’s. And what have you done with Hastra?”
“Nothing he won’t recover from.”
A deep furrow formed between Kell’s eyes. Christ, he was an easy mark.
“Come to stop me, or to see me off?”
“Neither.” His features smoothed. “I came to give you this.” He held out her missing knife, knuckled hilt first. “I believe it’s yours.”
She took the blade, examining the edge for blood. “Too bad,” she murmured, as she slid it back into the sheath.
“While I understand the urge,” said Kell, “killing Holland was not a helpful notion. We need him.”
“Like a dose of poison,” muttered Lila.
“He’s the only one who knows Osaron.”
“And why does he know him so well?” she snapped. “Because he made a deal with him.”
“I know.”
“He let that creature into his head—”
“I know.”
“—into his world, and now into yours—”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“Because it could have been me,” said Kell darkly. The words hung between them. “It almost was.”
The image came back to her, of Kell lying on the floor before the broken frame, blood pooling rich and red around his wrists. What had Osaron said to him? What had he offered? What had he done?
Lila found herself reaching for Kell, and stopped. She didn’t know what to say, how to smooth the line between his eyes.
The satchel slipped on her shoulder. The sun was up. “I should go.”
Kell nodded, but when she turned away, he caught her hand. The touch was slight, but it pinned her like a knife. “That night on the balcony,” he said. “Why did you kiss me?”
Lila’s chest tightened. “It seemed like a good idea.”
Kell frowned. “That’s all?” He started to let go, but she didn’t. Their hands hung between them, intertwined.
Lila let out a short, breathless laugh. “What do you want, Kell? A declaration of my affection? I kissed you because I wanted to and—”
His hand tightened around hers, pulling her into him, her free hand splayed against his chest for balance.
“And now?” he whispered. His mouth was inches from her own, and she could feel his heart hammering against his ribs.
“What?” she said with a sly grin. “Do I always have to take the lead?” She started to lean in, but he was already there, already kissing her. Their bodies crashed together, the last of the distance disappearing as hips met hips and ribs met ribs and hands searched for skin. Her body sang like a tuning fork against his, like finding like.
Kell’s grip tightened, as if he thought she would disappear, but Lila wasn’t going anywhere. She could have walked away from almost anything, but she wouldn’t have walked away from this. And that itself was terrifying—but she didn’t stop, and neither did he. Sparks lit across her lips, and heat burned through her lungs, and the air around them churned as if someone had thrown all the doors and windows open.
The wind rustled their hair, and Kell laughed against her.
A soft, dazzling sound, too brief, but wonderful.
And then, too soon, the moment ended.
The wind died away, and Kell pulled back, his breath ragged.
“Better?” she asked, the word barely a hush.
He bowed his head, then let his forehead fall against hers. “Better,” he said, and almost in the same moment, “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” she asked as he pulled her up the stairs and into a bedroom. His bedroom. Gossamer billowed from the high ceiling in the Arnesian style, a cloudlike painting of night. A sofa spilled cushions, a mirror gleamed in its gold trim, and on a dais stood a bed, dripping with silks.
Lila felt her face go hot.
“This really isn’t the time,” she started, but then he was pulling her past the fineries to a door and, beyond, into the alcove lined with books, and candles, and a few spare trinkets. Most were too battered to be anything but sentimental. In here, the air smelled less like roses than polished wood and old paper, and Kell spun her around to face the door. There she saw the markings on the wood—a dozen symbols drawn in the ruddy brown of dried blood, each simple but distinct. She’d almost forgotten about his shortcuts.
“This one,” he said, tapping a circle quartered by a cross. Lila drew a knife, and nicked her thumb, tracing over the mark in blood.
When she was done, Kell put his hand over hers. He didn’t tell her to be safe. He didn’t tell her to be careful. He simply pressed his lips to her hair and said, “As Tascen,” and then he was gone—the room was gone, the world was gone—and Lila was tipping forward once more into darkness.
V
Alucard rode hard for the docks, Anisa shivering against him.
His sister slid in and out of consciousness, her skin slick and hot to the touch. He couldn’t take her to the palace, that much he knew. They’d never let her in now that she was infected. Even though she was fighting it. Even though she hadn’t fallen—wouldn’t fall, Alucard was sure of it.
He had to take her home.
“Stay with me,” he told her as they reached the line of ships.
The Isle’s current was up, leaving oily streaks against the dock walls and splashing over onto the banks. Here at the river’s edge, the magic rolled off the water’s surface like steam.
Alucard dismounted, carrying Anisa up the ramp and onto the Spire’s deck.
He didn’t know if he hoped to find anyone aboard, or feared it, since only the mad and the sick and the fallen seemed to be in the city now.
“Stross?” he called. “Lenos?” But no one answered, and so Alucard took her below.
“Come back,” whispered Anisa as the night sky disappeared, replaced by the low wood ceiling of the hold.
“I’m right here,” said Alucard.
“Come back,” she pleaded again as he lowered her onto his bed, pressed a cold compress to her cheeks. Her eyes drifted open, focused, found his. “Luc,” she said, her voice suddenly crisp, clear.
“I’m here,” he said, and she smiled, fingers brushing his brow. Her eyes began to flutter shut again, and fear rippled through him, sudden, sharp.
“Hey, Nis,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Do you remember the story I used to tell you?” She shivered feverishly. “The one about the place where shadows go at night?”
Anisa curled in toward him, then, the way she used to when he told her tales. A flower to the sun, that’s what their mother used to say. Their mother, who’d died so long ago, and taken most of the light with her. Only Anisa held a candle to it. Only Anisa had her eyes, her warmth. Only Anisa reminded Alucard of kinder days.
He lowered himself to his knees beside the bed, holding her hand between his. “A girl was once in love with her shadow,” he began, voice slipping into the low, melodic tone befitting stories, even as the Spire swayed and the world beyond the window darkened. “All day they couldn’t be parted, but when night fell, she was left alone, and she always wondered where her shadow went. She would check all the drawers, and all the jars, and all the places where she liked to hide, but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find it. Until finally the girl lit a candle, to help her search, and there her shadow was.”
Anisa murmured incoherently. Tears slipped down her hollowed cheeks.
“
You see”—Alucard’s fingers tightened around hers—“it hadn’t really left. Because our shadows never do. So you see, you’re never alone”—his voice cracked—“no matter where you are, or when, no matter if the sun is up, or the moon is full, or there’s nothing but stars in the sky, no matter if you have a light in hand, or none at all, you know … Anisa? Anisa, stay with me … please…”
Over the next hour, the sickness burned through her, until she called him father, called him mother, called him Berras. Until she stopped speaking altogether, even in her fevered sleep, and sank deeper, to somewhere dreamless. The shadows hadn’t won, but the spring green light of Anisa’s own magic was fading, fading, like a fire burning itself out, and all Alucard could do was watch.
He got to his feet. The cabin swayed beneath him as he went to the mantel to pour himself a drink.
Alucard caught his reflection in the ruddy surface of the wine and frowned, tipping the glass. The smudge over his brow, where Lila had streaked a bloody finger across his skin, was gone. Rubbed away by Anisa’s fevered hand, or maybe Berras’s attack.
How strange, he thought. He hadn’t even noticed.
The cabin swayed again before Alucard realized it wasn’t the floor tipping.
It was him.
No, thought Alucard, just before the voice slid inside his head.
Let me in, it said as his hands began to tremble. The glass slipped and shattered on the cabin floor.
Let me in.
He braced himself against the mantel, eyes squeezed shut against the creeping vines of the curse as they wound through him, blood and bone.
Let me in.
“No!” he snarled aloud, slamming the doors of his mind and forcing the darkness back. Until then, the voice had been a whisper, soft, insistent, the pulse of magic a gentle but persistent guest knocking at the door. Now, it forced its way in with all its might, prying open the edges of Alucard’s mind until the cabin fell away and he was back in the Emery Estate, their father before him, the man’s hands brimming with fire. Heat burned along Alucard’s cheek from the first lingering blow.
“A disgrace,” snarled Reson Emery, the heat of his anger and magic both forcing Alucard back against the wall.
“Father—”
“You’ve made a fool of yourself. Of your name. Of your house.” His hand wrapped around the silver feather that hung from Alucard’s neck, flame licking his skin. “And it ends now,” he rumbled, tearing the sigil of House Emery from Alucard’s throat. It melted in his grip, drops of silver hitting the floor like blood, but when Alucard looked up again, the man standing before him was and was not his father. The image of Reson Emery flickered, replaced by a man made of darkness from head to toe, if darkness were solid and black and caught the light like stone. A crown glittered on the outline of his head.
“I can be merciful,” said the dark king, “if you beg.”
Alucard straightened. “No.”
The room rocked violently, and he stumbled forward onto his knees in a cold stone cell, held down as his manacled wrists were forced onto the carved iron block. Embers crackled as the matching poker prodded the fire, and smoke burned Alucard’s lungs when he tried to breathe. A man pulled the poker from the coals, its end a violent red, and again Alucard saw the carved features of the king.
“Beg,” said Osaron, bringing the iron to rest against the chains.
Alucard clenched his teeth, and would not.
“Beg,” said Osaron, as the chains grew hot.
As the heat peeled away flesh, Alucard’s refusal became a single, drawn-out scream.
He tore backward, suddenly free, and found himself standing in the hall again, no king, no father, only Anisa, barefoot in a nightgown, holding a burned wrist, their father’s fingers like a cuff circling her skin.
“Why would you leave me in this place?” she asked.
And before he could answer, Alucard was dragged back into the cell, his brother Berras now holding the iron and smiling while his brother’s skin burned. “You should never have come back.”
Around and around it went, memories searing through flesh and muscle, mind and soul.
“Stop,” he pleaded.
“Let me in,” said Osaron.
“I can be true,” said his sister.
“I can be merciful,” said his father.
“I can be just,” said his brother.
“If you only let us in.”
VI
“Your Majesty?”
The city was falling.
“Your Majesty?”
The darkness was spreading.
“Maxim.”
The king looked up and saw Isra, clearly waiting for an answer to a question he hadn’t heard. Maxim turned his attention to the map of London one last time, with its spreading shadows, its black river. How was he supposed to fight a god, or a ghost, or whatever this thing was?
Maxim growled, and pushed forcefully away from the table. “I cannot stand here, safe within my palace, while my kingdom dies.” Isra barred his way.
“You cannot go out there, either.”
“Move aside.”
“What good will it do your kingdom, if you die with it? Since when is solidarity a victory of any kind?” Few people would speak to Maxim Maresh with such candor, but Isra had been with him since before he was king, had fought beside him on the Blood Coast so many years ago, when Maxim was a general and Isra his second, his friend, his shadow. “You are thinking like a soldier instead of a king.”
Maxim turned away, raking a hand through his coarse black hair.
No, he was thinking too much like a king. One who’d been softened by so many years of peace. One whose battles were now fought in ballrooms and in stadium seats with words and wine instead of steel.
How would they have fought Osaron back on the Blood Coast?
How would they have fought him if he were a foe of flesh and blood?
With cunning, thought Maxim.
But that was the difference between magic and men—the latter made mistakes.
Maxim shook his head.
This monster was magic with a mind attached, and minds could be tricked, bent, even broken. Even the best fighters had flaws in their stance, chinks in their armor …
“Move aside, Isra.”
“Your Majesty—”
“I’ve no intention of walking out into the fog,” he said. “You know me better than that,” he added. “If I fall, I will fall fighting.”
Isra frowned but let him pass.
Maxim left the map room, turning not toward the gallery, but away, through the palace and up the stairs to the royal chambers. He crossed the room without pausing to look at the welcoming bed, the grand wood desk with its inlaid gold, the basin of clear water and the decanters of wine.
He’d hoped, selfishly, to find Emira here, but the room was empty.
Maxim knew that if he called for her, she would come, would help in any way she could to ease the burden of what he had to do next—whether that meant working the magic with him, or simply pressing her cool hands to his brow, sliding her fingers through his hair the way she had when they were young, humming songs that worked like spells.
Emira was the ice to Maxim’s fire, the cool bath in which to temper his steel. She made him stronger.
But he did not call her.
Instead, he crossed alone to the far wall of the royal chamber where, half hidden by swaths of gossamer and silk, there stood a door.
Maxim brought all ten fingertips to the hollow wood and reached for the metal laid within. He rotated both hands against the door and felt the shift of cogs, the clunk of pins sliding free, others sliding home. It was no simple lock, no combination to be turned, but Maxim Maresh had built this door, and he was the only one who ever opened it.
He’d caught Rhy trying once, when the prince was just a boy.
The prince had a fondness for discovering secrets, whether they belonged to a person or a palace, and the moment he discovered t
hat the door was locked he must have gone and found Kell, dragged the black-eyed boy—still new to his benign breed of mischief—back up into the royal chamber. Maxim had walked in on the two, Rhy urging Kell on as the latter lifted wary fingers to the wood.
Maxim had crossed the room at the sound of sliding metal and caught the boy’s hand before the door could open. It wasn’t a matter of ability. Kell was getting stronger by the day, his magic blooming like a spring tree, but even the young Antari—perhaps the young Antari most of all—needed to know that power had its limits.
That rules were meant to be obeyed.
Rhy had sulked and stormed, but Kell had said nothing as Maxim ushered them out. They had always been like that, so different in temper, Rhy’s hot and quick to burn, Kell’s cold and slow to thaw. Strange, thought Maxim, unlocking the door, in some ways Kell and the queen were so alike.
There was nothing forbidden about the chamber beyond. It was simply private. And when you were king, privacy was precious, more so than any gem.
Now Maxim descended the short stone flight into his study. The room was cool and dry and traced with metal, the shelves lined with only a few books, but a hundred memories, tokens. Not of his life in the palace—Emira’s gold wedding rose, Rhy’s first crown, a portrait of Rhy and Kell in the seasons courtyard—those were all kept in the royal chamber. There were relics of another time, another life.
A half-burned banner and a pair of swords, long and thin as stalks of wheat.
A gleaming helm, not gold, but burnished metal, traced with bands of ruby.
A stone arrowhead Isra had freed from his side in their last battle on the Blood Coast.
Suits of armor stood sentry against the walls, faceless masks tipped down, and in this sanctuary, Maxim threw off the elegant gold-and-crimson cloak, unfastened the chalice pins that held his tunic cuffs, set aside his crown. Piece by piece he shed his kingship, and called up the man he’d been before.
An Tol Vares, they’d called him.