“As Narahi,” he said, the words thundering through him.
Quicken.
It was a hard piece of magic under the best circumstances, and a grueling one now, but it was worth it as the world around him slowed.
To his right, Lila still looked up. To his left, Kell was drawing his hands apart against the massive force of time, a fire sparking in slow motion between his palms. Only Osaron still moved with any semblance of speed, black eyes shifting his way as Holland spun the scythe and lunged.
They clashed together, apart, together again.
“I will make you bend.”
Weapon against weapon.
“I will make you break.”
Will against will.
“You were mine, Holland.”
His back hit a pillar.
“And you will be mine again.”
The blade raked his arm.
“Once I hear you beg.”
“Never,” Holland snarled, slashing the scythe. It should have met Osaron’s swords, but at the last instant the weapons disappeared and he caught Holland’s blade with Ojka’s bare hands, letting the steel cut deep. Blood—dead, black, but still Antari—leaked around the blade, and Osaron’s stolen face split into a grim, triumphant smile.
“As Ste—”
Holland gasped, letting go of the scythe before the spell was out.
It was a mistake. The weapon turned to ash in Osaron’s grip, and before Holland could dodge, the demon wrapped one bloody hand around his face and pinned him back against the pillar.
Overhead, a shadow was blotting out the sky. Holland’s hands wrapped around Osaron’s wrists, trying to pry them loose, and for an instant the two were locked in a strange embrace, before the shadow king leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“As Osaro.”
Darken.
The words echoed through his head and became shadow, became night, became a black cloth cinching over Holland’s sight, blotting out Osaron, and the palace, and the wave of water cresting overhead, and plunging Holland’s world into black.
*
Blood was dripping from Lila’s nose as the wave of black water curled over the palace— Too big—
Far too big—
And then it fell.
Lila let go of the river, head spinning as it came crashing down onto the palace hall. She threw her hands up to block the crushing weight, but her magic was slow—too slow—in the conjuring’s wake.
The pillar shielded Holland from the worst of the blow, but the water slammed Ojka’s body down into the floor with an audible crack. Lila dove for cover but found none, and only Kell’s quick reflexes spared them both the same fate. She felt her power dip as Kell pulled it close to his and cast it back in a shield above her head. The river fell like heavy rain, spilling in curtains around her.
Through the veil she saw Ojka’s body twitch and flex, broken pieces already knitting back together as Osaron forced the puppet up.
Nearby, Holland was on his hands and knees, fingers splayed on the flooded floor as if searching for something he’d dropped.
“Get up!” shouted Lila, but when Holland’s head swiveled toward her, she recoiled. His eyes were wrong. Not black, but shuttered, blind.
There was no time.
Osaron was up and Holland wasn’t and she and Kell were both racing forward, boots splashing in the shallow water as it spun up around them into weapons.
A sword spilled from nothing into Osaron’s hand as Holland struggled, empty-eyed. His fingers wrapped around the shadow king’s ankle, but before he could issue a spell he was being sent backward with a vicious kick, skidding across the flooded ground.
Kell and Lila ran, but they were too slow.
Holland was on his knees in front of the shadow king with his raised sword.
“I told you I would make you kneel.”
Osaron brought the blade down, and Kell slowed the weapon in a cloud of frost as Lila dove for Holland, tackling him out of the way the instant before the metal struck stone.
Lila spun up, throwing off water into shards of ice that sang through the air. Osaron flung up a hand, but he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t strong enough, and several slivers of ice found flesh before he could will them away.
There was no time to relish the victory.
With a single sweep of his arm, every drop of river water she’d summoned came together and swirled up into a column before turning to dark stone. Just another pillar in his palace.
Osaron pointed at Lila. “You will—”
She sprang at him, shocked when the now-dry floor splashed beneath her feet. The stone pooled around her ankles, one moment liquid and the next solid again, pinning her the way the floor had pinned Kisimyr on the palace roof.
No.
She was trapped, and she had the last knife out and in her hand, fire starting in the other as she braced herself for an attack that never came.
Because Osaron had turned.
And he was heading for Kell.
*
Kell had only a stolen moment as Lila fought Osaron, but he sprinted for the prison of ice.
Hold on, Rhy, he pleaded, slashing his blade at the frozen cage, only to be rebuffed by the shadow king’s will.
He tried again and again, a frustrated sob clawing up his throat.
Stop.
He didn’t know if he heard Rhy’s voice, or only felt it as he tried to reach him. His brother’s head was bowed, blood running into his amber eyes and turning them gold.
Kell—
“Kell!” shouted Lila, and he looked up, catching Ojka’s reflection in the column of ice as it surged toward him. He spun, drawing the crimson-stained water at his feet up into a spear, and lifting the weapon an instant before the shadow king struck.
Osaron’s twin blades came singing down, shattering the spear in Kell’s hands before lodging in the walls of Rhy’s prison. The ice cracked, but didn’t break. And in that moment, when Osaron’s weapons were trapped, his stolen shell caught between attack and retreat, Kell drove the broken shard of ice into Ojka’s chest.
The shadow king looked down at the wound, as if amused by the feeble attempt, but Kell’s hand was a mess from gripping the shattered spear, blood slicking hand and ice alike, and when he spoke, the spell rang through the air.
“As Steno.”
Break.
The magic tore through Ojka’s body, warring with Osaron’s will as her bones broke and mended, shattered and set, a puppet being torn apart in one breath, patched together in the next. Fighting—and failing—to hold its shape, the shadow king’s stolen shell began to look grotesque, pieces peeling, the whole thing knit together more by magic than sinew.
“That body will not hold,” snarled Kell as broken hands forced him up against his brother’s cage.
Osaron smiled a ruined grin. “You are right,” he said, as an icy spike drove through Kell’s back.
V
Someone screamed.
A single, agonized note.
But it wasn’t Kell.
He wanted to scream, but Ojka’s ruined hand was wrapped around his jaw, forcing his mouth closed. The frozen blade had pierced above his hip and come out his side, its tip coated with vivid red blood.
Beyond Osaron, Lila was trying to tear herself free, and Holland was on his hands and knees, searching the ground for something lost.
A groan escaped Kell’s throat as the shadow king prodded the tear in his side.
“This is not a mortal wound,” said Osaron. “Not yet.”
He felt the monster’s voice sliding through his mind, weighing him down.
“Let me in,” it whispered.
No, thought Kell viscerally, violently.
That darkness—the same darkness that had caught him when he fell into White London so recently—wrapped around his wounded body, warm, soft, welcoming.
“Let me in.”
No.
The column of ice burned cold against his spine.
Rhy.
Osaron echoed in his mind. Said, “I can be merciful.”
Kell felt the shards of ice slide free—not from his own body but his brother’s—pain withdrawing limb by limb. He heard the short gasp, the soft, wet sound of Rhy collapsing to the blood-slicked floor, and relief surged through him even as the cold took root again, branched, flowered.
“Let me in.”
In the corner of Kell’s vision, something flashed on the floor. A shard of metal, near Holland’s searching hand.