Kell looked up. “We don’t.”
Lila was leaning back against the wall, just beside the place he’d cuffed her to the wood—the board was ripped and ruined where she’d hacked herself free—as if reminding him, both of his actions, and of hers.
“I want to come,” she insisted. “I won’t tell you where the stone is. Not until you agree to let me.”
Kell’s hands curled into fist. “Those binds you summoned up for Holland won’t hold. Antari magic is strong enough to dispel them, and once he wakes, it won’t take him long to realize that and free himself and start hunting us down again. Which means I don’t have time for games.”
“It’s not a game,” she said simply.
“Then what is it?”
“A chance.” She pushed off the wall. “A way out.” Her calm shifted, and for a moment Kell glimpsed the things beneath. The want, the fear, the desperation.
“You want out,” he said, “but you have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want to come.”
“You can’t,” he said, pushing to his feet. A shallow wave of dizziness hit him, and he braced himself against the bed, waiting for it to pass.
She gave a mocking laugh. “You’re in no shape to go alone.”
“You can’t come, Lila,” he said again. “Only Antari can move between the worlds.”
“That rock of mine—”
“It’s not yours.”
“It is right now. And you said yourself, it’s pure magic. It makes magic. It will let me through.” She said it as if she were certain.
“What if it won’t?” he challenged. “What if it isn’t all-powerful? What if it’s only a trinket to conjure up small spells?” But she didn’t seem to believe him. He wasn’t sure he believed himself. He had held the stone. He had felt its power, and it felt limitless. But he did not wish for Lila to test it. “You cannot know for sure.”
“That’s my risk to take, not yours.”
Kell stared at her. “Why?” he asked.
Lila shrugged. “I’m a wanted man.”
“You’re not a man.”
Lila flashed a hollow smile. “The authorities don’t know that yet. Probably why I’m still wanted instead of hanged.”
Kell refused to let it go. “Why do you really want to do this?”
“Because I’m a fool.”
“Lila—”
“Because I can’t stay here,” she snapped, the smile gone from her face. “Because I want to see the world, even if it’s not mine. And because I will save your life.”
Madness, thought Kell. Absolute madness. She wouldn’t make it through the door. And even if the stone worked, even if she somehow did, what then? Transference was treason, and Kell was fairly certain that law extended to people, particularly fugitives. Smuggling a music box was one thing, but smuggling a thief was quite another. And smuggling a relic of Black London? chided a voice in Kell’s head. He rubbed his eyes. He could feel hers fixed on him. Treason aside, the fact remained that she was a Grey-worlder; she didn’t belong in his London. It was too dangerous. It was mad, and he’d be mad to let her try … but Lila was right about one thing. Kell did not feel strong enough to do this alone. And worse, he did not want to. He was afraid—more afraid than he wanted to admit—about the task ahead of him, and the fate that waited at its end. And someone would need to tell the Red throne—tell his mother and father and Rhy—what had happened. He could not bring this danger to their doorstep, but he could leave Lila there to tell them of it.
“You don’t know anything about these worlds,” he said, but the fight was bleeding out of his voice.
“Sure I do,” countered Lila cheerfully. “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”
You’re also human, thought Kell. A strange, stubborn, cutthroat human, but human all the same. Light, thin and watered down by rain, was beginning to creep into the sky. He couldn’t afford to stand here, waiting her out.
“Give me the stone,” he said, “and I’ll let you come.”
Lila bit back a sharp laugh. “I think I’ll hold on to it until we’re through.”
“And if you don’t survive?” challenged Kell.
“Then you can raid my corpse,” she said drily. “I doubt I’ll care.”
Kell stared at her, at a loss. Was her bravado a front, or did she truly have so little to lose? But she had a life, and a life was a thing that could always be lost. How could she fear nothing, even death?