But the first kept coming, kept slashing, and Kell scrambled backward out of the sword’s arc. He almost made it; the blade caught his arm, slicing through fabric but narrowly missing his skin. He lunged away as the weapon cut again, but this time it found flesh, slashing across his ribs. Pain tore through Kell’s chest as blood welled and spilled down his stomach. The man pressed forward and Kell retreated a step and tried to will the street stones to rise between them. They shuddered and laid still.
“Surrender,” ordered the cutthroat in his too-even tone.
Kell pressed his hand to his shirtfront, trying to stem the blood as he dodged another slice. “No.” He spun the dagger in his hand, took it by the tip, and threw as hard as he could. The blade found its mark, and buried itself in the cutthroat’s shoulder. But to Kell’s horror, the man didn’t drop his weapon. He kept coming. Pain didn’t even register on his face as he pulled the knife free and cast it aside.
“Surrender the stone,” he said, dead-eyed.
Kell’s hand closed protectively around the talisman in his pocket. It hummed against his palm, and Kell realized as he held it that even if he could give it away—which he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, not without knowing what it was for and who was after it—he didn’t want to let it go. Couldn’t bear the thought of parting with it. Which was absurd. And yet, something in him ached to keep it.
The cutthroat came at him again.
Kell tried to take another step back, but his shoulders met the makeshift barricade.
There was nowhere to run.
Darkness glittered in the cutthroat’s eyes and his blade sang through the air, and Kell threw out his empty hand and ordered, “Stop,” as if that would do a damned thing.
And yet, somehow, it did.
The word echoed through the alley, and between one reverberation and the next, the night changed around him. Time seemed to slow, and so did the cutthroat, and so did Kell, but the stone clutched in his hand surged to life. Kell’s own magic had bled out through the wound across his ribs, but the stone sang with power, and thick black smoke poured between his fingers. It shot up Kell’s arm and across his chest and down his outstretched hand, and rushed forward through the air toward the cutthroat. When the smoke reached him, it did not strike him, did not force him off his feet. Instead, it twisted and coiled around the cutthroat’s body, spreading over his legs, up his arms, around his chest. And everywhere it touched, as soon as it touched, it froze, catching the cutthroat between one stride and the next, one breath and the next.
Time snapped back into motion, and Kell gasped, his pulse pounding in his ears and the stone singing in his grip.
The stolen royal blade hung mid-slash, inches from his face. The cutthroat himself stood motionless, his coat caught mid-billow behind him. Through the sheet of shadowy ice or stone or whatever it was, Kell could see the cutthroat’s stiff form, eyes open and empty. Not the blank gaze of the compelled, but the vacancy of the dead.
Kell stared down at the stone still thrumming in his hand, at the glowing symbol on its face.
Vitari.
It is the word for magic. It refers to its existence, and its creation.
Could it also mean the act of creating?
There was no blood command for create. The golden rule of magic said that it couldn’t be created. The world was made of give and take, and magic could be strengthened and weakened, but it could not be manifested out of nothing. And yet … he reached out to touch the frozen man.
Had the power somehow been summoned by his blood? But he hadn’t given a blood command, hadn’t done anything but say “Stop.”
The stone had done the rest.
Which was impossible. Even with the strongest elemental magic, one had to focus on the form they wanted it to take. But Kell hadn’t envisioned the frozen shell, which meant the stone didn’t simply follow an order. It interpreted. It created. Was this the way magic had worked in Black London? Without walls, without rules, without anything but want and will?
Kell forced himself to return the talisman to his pocket. His fingers didn’t want to relinquish it. It took all his focus to let go, and the moment the stone slipped from his hand back into his coat, a dizzy chill ran through him, and the world rocked. He felt weak as well as wounded. Drained. It isn’t something for nothing after all, thought Kell. But it was still something. Something powerful. Something dangerous.
He tried to straighten, but pain tore across his stomach, and he groaned, slumping back against the alley wall. Without his power, he couldn’t will the wound closed, couldn’t even keep his own blood in his veins. He needed to catch his breath, needed to clear his mind, needed to think, but just then the stones at his back began to shake, and he pushed off the wall an instant before it crumbled to reveal the second hooded figure.
“Surrender,” said the man in the same even tone as his counterpart.