She was halfway through the strings on the first boot when she heard a sound of strain, like an oof, and looked up to find a man standing in her bedroom.
He hadn’t come through the door—it was locked—and yet there he was, one bloody hand braced against the wall. Lila’s kerchief was balled up between his palm and the wooden boards, and she thought she could make out a mark of some sort ghosted into the paneling beneath.
His hair hung down into his eyes, but she recognized him at once.
It was the fellow from the alley. The drunk one.
“Give it back,” he said, breathing heavily. He had a faint accent, one she couldn’t place.
“How the bloody hell did you get in?” she asked, rising to her feet.
“You have to give it back.” Here, in the light of the close little room, she could see the shirt matted to his chest, the sheen of sweat across his brow. “You shouldn’t … have taken … it.…”
Lila’s eyes flicked to the stone where it sat on the table, and his gaze followed and stuck. They lunged for it at the same time. Or rather, Lila lunged for it. The stranger pushed off the wall in that general direction, swayed sharply, and then collapsed at her feet. His head bounced a little when it hit the floor.
Great, thought Lila, staring down at his body. She toed his shoulder with her boot, and when he didn’t move, she knelt and rolled him over. He looked like he’d had a hell of a night. His black tunic was stuck to his skin; at first she thought it was sweat, but when she touched it, her fingers came away red. She considered searching his pockets and dumping his body out the window, but then she noticed the faint rise and fall of his chest through his stained shirt and realized he was not, in fact, dead.
Yet.
Up close, the stranger wasn’t nearly as old as she’d first thought. Beneath a bit of soot and blood, his skin was smooth, and his face still held some boyish angles. He looked to be a year or two older than Lila herself, but not much more. She brushed the coppery hair from his forehead, and his eyelids fluttered and began to drift open.
Lila pulled back sharply. One of his eyes was a lovely blue. The other was pitch black. Not black-irised like some of the men she’d seen from the Far East, but a pure, unnatural black, running edge to edge, uninterrupted by color or white.
His gaze began to focus, and Lila reached for the nearest thing—a book—and struck him with it. His head lolled and his body went slack, and when he showed no signs of waking, she set the book aside, and took hold of his wrists.
He smells like flowers, she thought absently as she dragged his body across the floor.
III
When Kell came to, he was tied to a bed.
Coarse rope wound over his wrists, pinning them to the headboard behind him. His head was pounding, and dull pain spread through his ribs when he tried to move, but at least the bleeding had stopped, and when he reached for his power, he was relieved to feel it rise to meet him. The royal blade’s spell had worn off.
After a few moments of self-assessment, Kell realized he wasn’t alone in the room. Dragging his head up off the pillow, he found the thief perched in a chair at the foot of the bed, winding up a silver timepiece and watching him over her knees. She’d done away with her disguise, and Kell was surprised by the face beneath. Her dark hair was cut short along her jaw, which ended at a pointed chin. She looked young, but sharp, bony in a starved-bird kind of way. The only roundness came from her eyes, both brown, but not quite the same shade. He opened his mouth, intending to start their conversation with a question, like, Will you untie me? or Where is the stone? but instead found himself saying, “One of your eyes is lighter than the other.”
“And one of your eyes is black,” she shot back. She sounded cautious, but not frightened. Or, if she was, she was very good at hiding it. “What are you?” she asked.
“A monster,” said Kell hoarsely. “You’d better let me go.”
The girl gave a small, mocking laugh. “Monsters don’t faint in the presence of ladies.”
“Ladies don’t dress like men and pick pockets,” retorted Kell.
Her smile only sharpened. “What are you really?”
“Tied to your bed,” said Kell matter-of-factly.
“And?”
His brow furrowed. “And in trouble.”
That, at least, garnered a sliver of surprise. “Aside from the obvious being tied to my bed?”
“Yes,” said Kell, struggling to sit up a little despite the binds so he could look her in the eye. “I need you to let me go and give me back the thing you stole.” He scanned the room, hoping to catch sight of the stone, but it no longer sat on the table. “I won’t turn you in,” he added. “We’ll pretend this never happened, but I need it.”
He hoped she would glance, inch, even lean in the direction of the talisman, but she stayed perfectly still, her gaze unwavering. “How did you get in here?” she asked.
Kell chewed his cheek. “You wouldn’t believe me,” he said dismissively.