A scrying board hung nearby, and as his fingers brushed it, they snagged the threads of magic and the spellwork shuddered and transformed, the words shifting into the Antari mark for darkness. For shadow. For him.
As Osaron passed lantern after lantern, the fires flared, shattering glass and spilling into night while the street beneath his boots turned smooth and black, darkness spreading like ice. Spells unraveled all around him, elements morphed from one into another as the spectrum tilted, fire into air, air into water, water into earth, earth into stone, stone into magic magic magic—
A shout went up behind him, and the clatter of hooves as a carriage reared. The man clutching the reins spat at him in a language he’d never heard, but words were threaded together just like spells, and the letters unraveled and rewove in Osaron’s head, taking on a shape he knew.
“Get out of the way, you fool!”
Osaron narrowed his eyes, reaching for the horse’s reins.
“I’m not a fool,” he said. “I am a god.”
His grip tightened on the leather straps.
“And gods should be worshipped.”
Shadow spread up the reins as fast as light. It closed over the driver’s hands, and the man gasped as Osaron’s magic slid under skin and into vein, wrapped around muscle and bone and heart.
The driver didn’t fight the magic, or if he did, it was a battle quickly lost. He half leaped, half fell from the carriage seat to kneel at the shadow king’s feet, and when he looked up, Osaron saw the smoky echo of his own true form twining in the man’s eyes.
Osaron considered him; the threads of power running beneath his own command were dull, weak.
So, he thought, this is a strong world, but not all are strong within it.
He would find a use for the weak. Or weed them out. They were kindling, dry but thin, quick to burn, but not enough to keep him burning long.
“Stand,” he commanded, and when the man clambered to his feet, Osaron reached out and wrapped his fingers loosely around the driver’s throat, curious what would happen if he poured more of himself into such a modest shell. Wondering how much it could hold.
His fingers tightened, and the veins beneath them bulged, turning black and fracturing across the man’s skin. Hundreds of tiny fissures shone as the man began to burn with magic, his mouth open in a silent, euphoric scream. His skin peeled away, and his body flickered ember red and then black before he finally crumbled.
Osaron’s hand fell away, ash trailing through the night air.
He was so caught up in the moment that he almost didn’t notice Holland trying once again to surface, to claw his way through the gap in his attention.
Osaron closed his eyes, turning his focus inward.
You’re becoming unpleasant.
He wrapped the threads of Holland’s mind around his fingers and pulled until, deep in his head, the Antari let out a guttural scream. Until the resistance—and the noise—finally crumbled like the driver in the road, like every mortal thing that tried to stand in the way of a god.
In the ensuing quiet, Osaron turned his attention back to the beauty of his new kingdom. The streets, alive with people. The sky, alive with stars. The palace, alive with light—Osaron marveled at this last, for it was not a squat stone castle like in Holland’s world, but an arcing structure of glass and gold that seemed to pierce the sky, a place truly fit for a king.
The rest of the world seemed to blur around the dazzling point of that palace as he made his way through the streets. The river came into view, a pulsing red, and the air caught in his chest.
Beautiful. Wasted.
We could be so much more.
A market burned in shades of crimson and gold along the riverbank, and ahead, the palace stairs were strewn with bouquets of frost-laced flowers. As his boots hit the first step, a row of flowers lost their icy sheen and blossomed back into vivid color.
Too long, he’d been holding back.
Too long.
With every step, the color spread; the flowers grew wild, blossoms bursting and stems shining with thorns, all of it spilling down the stairs in carpets of green and gold, white and red.
And all of it thrived—he thrived—in this strange, rich world, so ripe and ready for taking.
Oh, he would do such wondrous things.
In his wake, the flowers changed again, and again, and again, petals turning now to ice, now to stone. A riot of color, a chaos of form, until finally, overcome by their euphoric transformation, they went black and smooth as glass.
Osaron reached the top of the stairs, and came face-to-face with a huddle of men waiting for him before the doors. They were speaking to him, and for a moment he simply stood and let the words spill tangled into the air, nothing but inelegant sounds cluttering his perfect night. Then he sighed and gave them shape.
“I said stop,” one of the guards was warning.
“Don’t come any closer,” ordered a second as he drew a sword, its edge glinting with spellwork. To weaken magic. Osaron almost smiled, though the gesture still felt stiff on Holland’s face.
There was only one word for stop in his tongue—anasae—and even that meant only to unravel, undo. One word for ending magic, but so many to make it grow, spread, change.
Osaron lifted one hand, a casual gesture, power spiraling down around his fingers toward these men in their thin metal shells, where it—
An explosion tore through the sky above.
Osaron craned his neck and saw, over the crown of the palace, a sphere of colored light. And then another, and another, in bursts of red and gold. Cheers reached him on the wind, and he felt the resonant beat of bodies overhead.
Life.
Power.
“Stop,” said the men in their clumsy tongue.
But Osaron was just getting started.
The air swirled around his feet, and he rose up into the night.
I
Kisimyr Vasrin was a little drunk.
Not unpleasantly so, just enough to dull the edges of the winner’s ball, smooth the faces on the roof, and blur the mindless chatter into something more enjoyable. She could still hold her own in a fight—that was how she judged it, not by how many glasses she’d gone through, but how quickly she could turn the contents of her glass into a weapon. She tipped the goblet, poured the wine straight out, and watched it freeze into a knife before it landed in her other hand.
There, she thought, leaning back against the cushions. Still good.
“You’re sulking,” said Losen from somewhere behind the couch.
“Nonsense,” she drawled. “I’m celebrating.” She tipped her head back to look at her protégé and added dryly, “Can’t you tell?”
The young man chuckled, eyes alight. “Suit yourself, mas arna.”
Arna. Saints, when had she gotten old enough to be called a mistress? She wasn’t even thirty. Losen swept away to dance with a pretty young noble, and Kisimyr drained her glass and settled back to watch, gold tassels jingling in her ropes of hair.
The rooftop was a pretty enough place for a party—pillars rising into pointed crowns against the night sky, spheres of hearth fire warming the late winter air, and marble floors so white they shone like moonlit clouds—but Kisimyr had always preferred the arena. At least in a fight, she knew how to act, knew the point of the exercise. Here in society, she was meant to smile and bow and, even worse, mingle. Kisimyr hated mingling. She wasn’t vestra, or ostra, just old-fashioned London stock, flesh and blood and a good turn of magic. A good turn honed into something more.
All around her, the other magicians drank and danced, their masks mounted like brooches on their shoulders or worn like hoods thrown back atop their hair. The faceless ones registered as ornament, while the more featured cast unnerving expressions on the backs of heads and cloaks. Her own feline mask sat beside her on the couch, dented and singed from so many rounds in the ring.
Kisimyr wasn’t in the mood for a party. She knew how to feign grace, but inside she was still seething from the final match. It had been close—there was that much.