Kell wasn’t sure. Doors within worlds were harder to make but easier to use; they could only be created by Antari, but others could—hypothetically—pass through. Indeed, Kell had led Rhy through a portal once before—the day he found him on the boat—but there had been only two of them then, and now there were three.
“Don’t let go,” said Kell. He drew fresh blood over the mark and held Rhy and Lila as closely as he could, hoping the door—and the magic—would be strong enough to lead them all to sanctuary.
TWELVE
SANCTUARY & SACRIFICE
I
The London Sanctuary sat at a bend in the river near the edge of the city, a stone structure with the simple elegance of a temple and an air just as reverent. It was a place where men and women came to study magic as much as worship it. Scholars and masters here spent their lives striving to comprehend—and connect with—the essence of power, the origin, the source. To understand the element of magic. The entity in all, and yet of none.
As a child, Kell had spent as much time in the sanctuary as he had in the palace, studying under—and being studied by—his tutor, Master Tieren, but though he visited now and then, he had not been back to stay in years (not since Rhy began to throw tantrums at Kell’s every absence, insisting that the latter be not only a fixture, but also a family member). Still, Tieren insisted that he would always have a room there, and so Kell had kept the door drawn on his wall, marked by a simple circle of blood with an X drawn through.
The symbol of sanctuary.
Now he and Lila—with a bloody Rhy between them—stumbled through, out of the grandeur and current chaos of the palace and into a simple stone room.
Candlelight flickered against the smooth rock walls, and the chamber itself was narrow and high-ceilinged and sparsely furnished. The sanctuary scorned distraction, the private chambers supplied with only the essential. Kell may have been aven—blessed—but Tieren insisted on treating him as he would any other student (a fact for which Kell was grateful). As such, his room held neither more nor less than any other: a wooden desk along one wall and a low cot along another, with a small table beside it. On the table, burning, as it always burned, sat an infinite candle. The room had no windows and only one door, and the air held the coolness of underground places, of crypts.
A circle was etched into the floor, symbols scrawled around the edges. An enhancing sphere meant for meditation. Rhy’s blood trailed a path across it as Kell and Lila dragged him to the cot and laid him down as gently as possible.
“Stay with me,” Kell kept saying, but Rhy’s quiet “sure” and “all right” and “as you wish” had given way to silence and shallow breaths.
How many As Hasaris had Kell said? The words had once more become a low chant on his lips, in his head, in his heartbeat, but Rhy was not healing. How long until the magic worked? It had to work. Fear clawed its way up Kell’s throat. He should have looked at Astrid’s weapon. Should have paid attention to the metal and the markings on it. Had she done something to block his magic? Why wasn’t it working?
“Stay with me,” he murmured. Rhy had stopped moving. His eyes were closed, and the strain had gone out of his jaw.
“Kell,” Lila said softly. “I think it’s too late.”
“No,” he said, gripping the cot. “It’s not. The magic just needs time. You don’t understand how it works.”
“Kell.”
“It just needs time.” Kell pressed both hands to his brother’s chest and stifled a cry. It neither rose nor fell. He couldn’t feel a heartbeat underneath the ribs. “I can’t…” he said, gasping as if he, too, were starved of air. “I can’t…” Kell’s voice wavered as his fingers tangled in his brother’s bloody shirt. “I can’t give up.”
“It’s over,” said Lila. “There’s nothing you can do.”
But that wasn’t true. There was still something. All the warmth went out of Kell’s body. But so did the hesitation, and the confusion, and the fear. He knew what to do. Knew what he had to do. “Give me the stone,” he said.
“No.”
“Lila, give me the bloody stone before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late. He’s—”
“He’s not dead!” snapped Kell. He held out a stained and shaking hand. “Give it to me.”
Lila’s hand went to her pocket and hovered there. “There’s a reason I’m holding it, Kell,” she said.
“Dammit, Lila. Please.”
She let out a shaky breath and withdrew the stone. He ripped it from her fingers, ignoring the pulse of power up his arm as he turned back to Rhy’s body.
“You told me yourself, nothing good comes out of this,” said Lila as Kell set the stone over Rhy’s unbeating heart and pressed his palm down on top of it. “I know you’re upset, but you can’t think that this…”
But he couldn’t hear her. Her voice dissolved, along with everything else, as Kell focused on the magic coursing in his veins.
Save him, he ordered the stone.
Power sang through his blood, and smoke poured out from under his fingers. It snaked up his arm and around Rhy’s ribs, turning to blackened rope as it tangled around them. Tying them together. Binding them. But Rhy still lay there, unmoving.