“Steady now,” she said, pulling his arm around her narrow shoulders. “I had to find my gun. Stay with me.”
Kell clung to consciousness as long as he could. But the world was dangerously quiet, the distance between his thoughts and his body growing further apart. He couldn’t feel the pain in his arm where the nail had struck—couldn’t feel much of anything, which scared him more than the pressing dark. Kell had fought before, but never like this, never for his life. He’d gotten into his fair share of scrapes (most of them Rhy’s fault) and had had his fair share of bruises, but he’d always walked away intact. He’d never been seriously hurt, never struggled to keep his own heart beating. Now he feared that if he stopped fighting, if he stopped forcing his feet forward and his eyes open, that he might actually die. He didn’t want to die. Rhy would never forgive him if he died.
“Stay with me,” echoed Lila.
Kell tried to focus on the ground beneath his boots. On the rain that had started to fall. On Lila’s voice. The words themselves began to blur together, but he held on to the sound as he fought to keep the darkness at bay. He held on as she helped him over the bridge that seemed to go on and on forever, and through the streets that wound and tipped around them. He held on as hands—Lila’s and then another’s—dragged him through a doorway and up a flight of old stairs and into a room, stripping off his blood-soaked clothes.
He held on until he felt a cot beneath him and Lila’s voice stopped and the thread was gone.
And then he finally, gratefully, plummeted down into black.
III
Lila was soaked to the bone.
Halfway across the bridge, the sky had finally opened up—not a drizzle, as London often seemed to favor, but a downpour. Within moments, they had been soaked through. It certainly didn’t make dragging the half-conscious Kell any easier. Lila’s arms ached from holding him up—she nearly fumbled him twice—and by the time she reached the back door of the Stone’s Throw, Kell was barely conscious and Lila was shivering and all she could think was that she should have kept running.
She hadn’t lived this long and stayed this free by stopping to help every fool who got himself into trouble. It was all she could do to keep herself out of trouble, and whatever else Holland was, he was clearly trouble.
But Kell had come back.
He didn’t have to—didn’t have any reason to—but he had, all the same, and the weight of it clung to her when she fled, slowing her down before finally dragging her boots to a stop. Even as she turned around, raced back, a small part of her had hoped that she’d be too late. Hoped they’d already be gone. But the rest of her wanted get there in time, if only to know why.
Why had he come back?
Lila asked him that very question as she was dragging him to his feet. But Kell didn’t answer. His head lolled against her collar. What the hell had happened? What had Holland done to him?
Lila couldn’t even tell if Kell was still bleeding—she didn’t see an obvious wound—but he was covered in blood and it made her wish she’d struck Holland a second time for good measure. Kell made a soft sound, between a gasp and a groan, and Lila started talking, worried that he might die on her and it would somehow be her fault, even though she’d come back.
“Stay with me,” she’d said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. With his body so close to hers, all she could think of was the smell. Not of blood—that didn’t bother her—but of the other scents, the ones that clung to Kell, and to Holland. Flowers and earth and metal and ash.
I can smell his magic on you.
Is that what it was? The scent of magic? She had noticed Kell’s in a passing way, when she first dragged his body across her bedroom floor. Now, with his arm draped around her, the scent was overpowering. The trace of Holland’s burning steel lingered in the air. And even though the stone was safely in her pocket, she could smell it, too, its scent washing over the alley. Like sea and wood smoke. Salt and darkness. She felt a moment of pride for the strength of her senses until she remembered that she hadn’t smelled Kell’s flowers or the stone’s smoke on herself as she made her way to the Barren Tide, or as she sat at the counter, and Holland had tracked her there by both.
But the rain fell heavy and steady, and soon she could smell nothing but water on stones. Maybe her nose wasn’t strong enough. Maybe the scent of magic was still there, beneath the rain—she didn’t know if it could be expunged, or at least dampened—but she hoped the storm would help cover their trail.
She was halfway up the stairs, Kell’s boots leaving red-tinged water in their wake, when a voice stopped her.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”