Skin shredding against a metal frame.
“Your Majesty,” said Kell, striving for the proper tone. “It will be done.”
*
Kell’s boots echoed on the prison stairs, each step carrying him away from the light and heat of the palace’s heart.
Growing up, Rhy’s favorite place to hide had been the royal cells. Located directly beneath the guards’ hall, carved into one of the massive stone limbs that held the palace up over the river, the cells were rarely filled. They had once been in frequent use, according to Tieren, back when Arnes and Faro were at war, but now they sat abandoned. The royal guards made use of them occasionally, saints knew for what, but whenever Rhy ran off with nothing but a laugh, or a note—come find me—Kell started by going to the cells.
They were always cold, the air heavy with the smell of damp stone, and his voice would echo as he called for Rhy—come out, come out, come out. Kell had always been better at finding than Rhy was at hiding, and the games usually dissolved into the two boys tucked into a cell, eating stolen apples and playing hands of Sanct.
Rhy always loved coming down here, but Kell thought that what his brother really loved was the going back upstairs afterward, the way he could simply shrug off his surroundings when he was done and trade the dank underbelly for lush robes and spiced tea, having been reminded how lucky he was to be a prince.
Kell had never been fond of the cells back then.
Now he hated them.
Revulsion rose in him with every step, revulsion for the memory of his imprisonment, revulsion for the man now sitting in his place.
Lanterns cast pale light over the space. It glinted where it struck metal, fanned against stone.
Four guards in full armor stood across from the largest cell. The same one Kell had occupied a few hours before. They had their weapons ready, eyes fixed on the shape beyond the bars. Kell took in the way the guards looked at Holland, the venom in their glares, and knew it was the way some wanted to look at him. All the fear and anger, none of the respect.
The White Antari sat on the stone bench at the back of the cell, shackled hand and foot to the wall behind him. A black blindfold was cinched tight over his eyes, but Kell could tell by the subtle shift of his limbs, the incline of his head, that Holland was awake.
It had been a short trip from the roof to the cell, but the guards had not been gentle. They’d stripped him to the waist to search for weapons, and fresh bruises blossomed along his jaw and across his stomach and chest, the fair skin revealing every abuse, though they’d taken care to clean the blood away. Several fingers looked broken, and the faint stutter of his chest hinted at cracked ribs.
Standing across from Holland, Kell was again taken aback by the changes in the man. The breadth of Holland’s shoulders, the lean muscle wrapping his waist, the emotionless set of his mouth, those were all still there. But the newer things—the color in Holland’s cheeks, the flush of youth—Osaron had taken those with him when he fled. The Antari’s skin looked ashen where it wasn’t bruised, and his hair was no longer the glossy black he’d briefly had as king, or even the faded charcoal Kell was more accustomed to—now it was threaded with silver.
Holland looked like someone caught between two selves, the effect eerie, disconcerting.
His shoulders rested against the icy stone wall, but if he felt the cold, he didn’t let it show. Kell took in the remains of Athos Dane’s control spell, carved into the Antari’s front—and ruined by the steel bar Kell himself had driven through his chest—before noticing the web of scars that lined Holland’s skin. There was order to the mutilations, as if whoever’d done them had done them carefully. Methodically. Kell knew from experience how easily Antari healed. To leave these kinds of scars, the wounds would have to have been very, very deep.
In the end, Holland was the one to break the silence. He couldn’t see Kell, not through the blindfold, but he must have known it was him, because when the older Antari spoke, his voice was laced with disdain. “Come to get your revenge?”
Kell took a slow breath, steadying himself.
“Leave,” he said, gesturing to the guards.
They hesitated, eyes flicking between the two Antari. One retreated without hesitation, two had the decency to grow nervous, and the fourth looked loath to miss the scene.
“King’s orders,” warned Kell, and at last they withdrew, taking with them the clank of armor, the echo of boots.
“Do they know?” asked Holland, flexing his ruined fingers. His voice had none of Osaron’s echo, only that familiar, gravelly tone. “That you abandoned them? Came to my castle of your own free will?”
Kell flicked his wrist, and the chains around Holland tightened, forcing him back against the cell wall. The gesture earned him nothing—Holland’s tone remained cold, unflinching.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Even through the blindfold, Kell could feel Holland’s gaze, the black of his left eye scraping against the black of Kell’s right.
He summoned the king’s tone as best he could.
“You will tell me everything you know about Osaron.”
A gleam of bared teeth. “And then you’ll let me go?” sneered Holland.
“What is he?”
A heavy pause, and Kell thought Holland would force him to drag the answers out. But then he answered. “An oshoc.”
Kell knew that word. It was Mahktan for demon, but what it really meant was a piece of incarnated magic. “What are his weaknesses?”
“I do not know.”
“How can he be stopped?”
“He can’t.” Holland twitched the chains. “Does this make us even?”
“Even?” snarled Kell. “If I could yet discount the atrocities you committed during the rule of the Danes, it would not change the fact that you are the one who set that oshoc free. You plotted against Red London. You lured me into your city. You bound me, tortured me, purposefully severed me from my magic, and in so doing you nearly killed my brother.”
A tilt of the chin. “If it’s worth anything—”
“It isn’t,” snapped Kell. He began to pace, torn between exhaustion and fury, his body aching but his nerves alight.
And Holland, so maddeningly calm. As if he weren’t chained to the wall. As if they were standing together in a royal chamber instead of separated by the iron bars of a prison cell.
“What do you want, Kell? An apology?”
He felt his fraying temper finally snap. “What do I want? I want to destroy the demon you’ve unleashed. I want to protect my family. I want to save my home.”
“So did I. I did what I had to—”
“No,” snarled Kell. “When the Danes ruled, they may have forced your hand, but this time, you chose. You chose to set Osaron free. You chose to be his vessel. You chose to give him—”
“Life isn’t made of choices,” said Holland. “It’s made of trades. Some are good, some are bad, but they all have a cost.”
“You traded away my world’s safety—”
Holland strained forward suddenly against his chains, and even though his voice didn’t rise, every muscle in him tightened. “What do you think your London did, when the darkness came? When Osaron’s magic consumed his world, and threatened to take ours with it? You traded away our world’s safety for your own, locked the doors and trapped us between the raging water and the rocks. How does it feel now?”
Kell wrapped his will around Holland’s skull and forced it back against the wall. The slightest clench in Holland’s jaw and the flare of his nostrils were the only signs of pain.
“Hatred is a powerful thing,” continued Holland through gritted teeth. “Hold on to it.”
And in that moment, Kell wanted to. He wanted to keep going, wanted to hear the crack of bone, wanted to see if he could break Holland the way Holland had broken him in White London.