The sky was a crisp blue sheet, drawn tight behind the sun. It stretched, cloudless and bare, save for a single black-and-white bird that soared overhead. As it crossed into the sphere of light, the bird became a flock, shattering like a prism when it meets the sun.
Holland craned his neck, mesmerized by the display, but every time he tried to count their number, his vision slid out of focus, strained by the dappled light.
He didn’t know where he was.
How he’d gotten here.
He was standing in a courtyard, the high walls covered in vines that threw off blossoms of lush purple—such an impossible hue, but their petals solid, soft. The air felt like the cusp of summer, a hint of warmth, the sweet scent of blossoms and tilled earth—which told him where he wasn’t, where he couldn’t be.
And yet—
“Holland?” called a voice he hadn’t heard in years. Lifetimes. He turned, searching for the source, and found a gap in the courtyard wall, a doorway without a door.
He stepped through, and the courtyard vanished, the wall solid behind him and the narrow road ahead crowded with people, their clothes white but their faces full of color. He knew this place—it was in the Kosik, the worst part of the city.
And yet—
A pair of muddy green eyes cut his way, glinting from a shadow at the end of the lane.
“Alox?” he called, starting after his brother, when a scream made him reel around.
A small girl raced past, only to be swept up into the arms of a man. She let out another squeal as the man spun her around. Not a scream at all.
A short, delighted laugh.
An old man tugged on Holland’s sleeve and said, “The king is coming,” and Holland wanted to ask what he meant, but Alox was slipping away, and so Holland hurried after him, down the road, around the corner, and— His brother was gone.
As was the narrow lane.
All at once, Holland was in the middle of a busy market, stalls overflowing with brightly colored fruits and fresh-baked bread.
He knew this place. It was the Grand Square, where so many had been cut down over the years, their blood given back to the angry earth.
And yet—
“Hol!”
He spun again, searching for the voice, and saw the edge of a honey-colored braid vanish through the crowd. The twirl of a skirt.
“Talya?”
There were three of them dancing at the edge of the square. The other two dancers were dressed in white, while Talya was a blossom of red.
He pushed through the market toward her, but when he broke the edge of the crowd, the dancers were no longer there.
Talya’s voice whispered in his ear.
“The king is coming.”
But when he spun toward her, she was gone again. So was the market, and the city.
All of it had vanished, taking the bustle and noise with it, the world plunged back into a quiet broken only by the rustle of leaves, the distant caw of birds.
Holland was standing in the middle of the Silver Wood.
The trunks and branches still glinted with their metallic sheen, but the ground beneath his boots was rich and dark, the leaves overhead a dazzling green.
The stream snaked through the grove, the water thawed, and a man crouched at the edge to run his fingers through, a crown sitting in the grass beside him.
“Vortalis,” said Holland.
The man rose to his feet, turned toward Holland, and smiled. He started to speak, but his words were swallowed by a strong and sudden wind.
It cut through the woods, rustling the branches and stripping the leaves. They began to fall like rain, showering the world with green. Through the downpour, Holland saw Alox’s clenched fists, Talya’s parted lips, Vortalis’s dancing eyes. There and gone, there and gone, and every time he took a step toward one, the leaves would swallow them up, leaving only their voices to echo through the woods around him.
“The king is coming,” called his brother.
“The king is coming,” sang his lover.
“The king is coming,” said his friend.
Vortalis reappeared, striding through the rain of leaves. He held out his hand, palm up.
Holland was still reaching for it when he woke up.
*
Holland could tell where he was by the plushness of the room, red and gold splashed like paint on every surface.
The Maresh royal palace.
A world away.
It was late, the curtains drawn, the lamp beside the bed unlit.
Holland reached absently for his magic before remembering it wasn’t there. The knowledge hit like loss, leaving him breathless. He stared at his hands, plumbing the depths of his power—the place where his power had always been, where it should be—and finding nothing. No hum. No heat.
A shuddering exhale, the only outward sign of grief.
He felt hollow. He was hollow.
Bodies moved beyond the door.
The shuffle of weight, the subtle clang of armor shifting, settling.
Haltingly, Holland drew himself upright, unearthing his body from the bed’s thick blankets, its cloudlike mass of pillows. Annoyance flickered through him—who could possibly sleep in such a state?
It was kinder, perhaps, than a prison cell.
Not as kind as a quick death.
The act of rising took too much, or perhaps there was simply too little left to give; he was out of breath by the time his feet met the floor.
Holland leaned back against the bed, gaze traveling over the darkened room, finding a sofa, a table, a mirror. He caught his reflection there, and stilled.
His hair, once charcoal—then briefly, vibrantly black—was now a shock of white. An icy shroud, sudden as snowfall. Paired with his pale skin, it rendered him nearly colorless.
Except for his eyes.
His eyes, which had so long marked his power, defined his life. His eyes, which had made him a target, a challenge, a king.
His eyes, both of which were now a vivid, almost leafy green.
V
“Are you sure about this?” asked Kell, looking out at the city.
He thought—no, he knew—it was a terrible idea, but he also knew the choice wasn’t his.
A single deep crease cut Holland’s brow. “Stop asking.”
They were on a rise overlooking the city, Kell on his feet and Holland on a stone bench, recovering his breath. It had clearly taken all of his strength to make the climb, but he had insisted on doing it, and now that they were here, he was insisting on this as well.
“You could stay here,” offered Kell.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Holland answered flatly. “I want to go home.”
Kell hesitated. “Your home isn’t exactly kind to those without power.”
Holland held his gaze. Against his pale complexion and shock of newly white hair, his eyes were an even more vivid shade of green, and all the more startling now that they both were. And yet, Kell still felt like he was looking at a mask. A smooth surface behind which Holland—the real Holland—was hiding even now. Would always hide.
“It’s still my home,” he said. “I was born in that world….”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Kell knew what he would say.
And I will die there.
In the wake of his sacrifice, Holland didn’t look old, only tired. But it was an exhaustion that ran deep, a place once filled with power now hollowed out, leaving the empty shell behind. Magic and life were intertwined in everyone and everything, but in Antari most of all. Without it, Holland clearly wasn’t whole.
“I’m not certain this will work,” said Kell, “now that you’re—”
Holland cut him off. “You’ve nothing to lose by trying.”
But that wasn’t strictly true.
Kell hadn’t told Holland—hadn’t told anyone but Rhy, and only then out of necessity—the true extent of the damage. That when the binding ring had lodged on his finger and Holland had poured his magic—and Osaron’s, and nearly Kell’s—into the Inheritor, something had torn inside of him. Something vital. That now, every time he summoned fire, or willed water, or conjured anything from blood, it pained him.
Every single time, it hurt, a wound at the very center of his being.
But unlike a wound, it refused to heal.
Magic had always been a part of Kell, as natural as breathing. Now, he couldn’t catch his breath. The simplest acts took not only strength, but will. The will to suffer. To be hurt.