Eggs and glass jars, porcelain cups and mirrors.
“You could break a stone,” her father used to tease, and she didn’t know if she was clumsy or cursed, only that in her hands, things always fell apart. It had seemed a cruel joke when her element proved to be neither steel nor wind, but water—ice. Easily made. Easily ruined.
The idea of children had always terrified her—they were so small, so fragile, so easily broken. But then came Prince Maxim, with his solid strength, his steel resolve, his kindness like running water under heavy winter snow. She knew what it meant to be a queen, what it entailed, though even then she’d secretly hoped it wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen.
But it did.
And for nine months, she’d moved as if cupping a candle in a very strong wind.
For nine months, she’d held her breath, buoyed only by the knowledge that if anyone came for her son, they would have to go through her.
For nine months, she’d prayed to the sources and the nameless saints and the dead Nasaro to lift her curse, or stay its hand.
And then Rhy was born, and he was perfect, and she knew she would spend the rest of her life afraid.
Every time the prince tumbled, every time he fell, she was the one fighting tears. Rhy would spring up with a laugh, rubbing bruises away like dirt, and be off again, charging toward the next catastrophe, and Emira would be left standing there, hands still outstretched as if to catch him.
“Relax,” Maxim would say. “Boys don’t break so easily. Our son will be as strong as forged steel and thick ice.”
But Maxim was wrong.
Steel rusted and ice was only strong until a crack sent it shattering to the ground. She lay awake at night, waiting for the crash, knowing it would come.
And instead came Kell.
Kell, who carried a world of magic in his blood.
Kell, who was unbreakable.
Kell, who could protect her son.
“At first, I wanted to raise you as brothers.”
Emira didn’t know when she had started talking instead of thinking, but she heard her voice echo gently through the prince’s chamber.
“You were so close in age, I thought it would be nice. Maxim had always wanted more than one, but I—I couldn’t bring myself to have another.” She leaned forward. “I worried, you know, that you might not get along; Kell was so quiet and you so loud, like morning and midnight, but you were thick as vines from the start. And it was well enough, when the only danger came from slick stairs and bruised knees. But then the Shadows came and stole you away, and Kell wasn’t there because you two were playing one of your games. And after that, I realized you didn’t need a brother. You needed a guardian. I tried to raise Kell as a ward, then, not a son. But it was too late. You were inseparable. I thought that maybe as you aged, you would drift, Kell to magic, and you to the crown. You’re so different, I hoped that time would carve some space between you. But you grew together instead of apart….”
A flutter of movement on the bed, the shift of legs against sheets, and she was up, brushing the dark curls from his cheek, whispering, “Rhy, Rhy.”
His fingers curled in the sheets, his sleep growing shallow, restless. A word escaped his lips, little more than an exhale, but she recognized the sound and shape of Kell’s name, before, at last, her son woke up.
III
For a moment, Rhy was caught between sleep and waking, impenetrable darkness and a riot of color. A word sat on his tongue, the echo of something already said, but it melted away, thin as a wafer of sugar.
Where was he?
Where had he been?
In the courtyard, searching for Kell, and then falling, straight through the stone floor and into the dark place, the one that reached for him every time he slept.
It was dark here, too, but the subtle layered dark of a room at night. The red cushions of his bed, with their honeyed trim, were cast in variant shades of grey, the bedsheets mussed beneath him.
Dreams clung to Rhy like cobwebs—dreams of pain, of strong hands holding him up, holding him down, dreams of ice-cold collars and metal frames, of blood on white stone—but he couldn’t hold on to their shape.
His body hurt with the memory of hurting, and he collapsed back against the pillows with a gasp.
“Easy,” said his mother. “Easy.” Tears were spilling down her cheeks, and he reached out to catch one, marveling at the crystal of ice quickly melting in his palm.
He didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry.
“What’s wrong?”
She let out a stifled sound, something caught between a laugh and a sob and verging on hysterical.
“What’s wrong?” she echoed with a shudder. “You left. You were gone. I sat here with your corpse.”
Rhy shivered at that word, the darkness catching, trying to drag his mind back down into the memory of that place without light, without hope, without life.
His mother was still shaking her head. “I thought … I thought he healed a wound. I thought he brought you back. I didn’t realize he was the only thing keeping you here. That you were … that you had really …” Her voice hitched.
“I’m here now,” he soothed, even though part of him still felt caught somewhere else. He was pulling free of that place, moment by moment, inch by inch. “And where is Kell?”
The queen tensed and pulled away.
“What happened?” pressed Rhy. “Is he safe?”
Her face hardened. “I watched you die because of him.”
Frustration hit Rhy in a wave, and he didn’t know if it was only his or Kell’s as well, but the force was rocking. “I am alive again because of him,” he snapped. “How can you hate Kell, after all of this?”
Emira rocked back as if struck. “I do not hate him, though I wish I could. You have a blindness when it comes to each other, and it terrifies me. I don’t know how to keep you safe.”
“You don’t have to,” said Rhy, getting to his feet. “Kell has done it for you. He’s given his life, and saints know what else, to save—to salvage—me. Not because I am his prince. But because I am his brother. And I will spend every day of this borrowed life trying to repay him for it.”
“He was meant to be your shield,” she murmured. “Your shelter. You were never meant to be his.”
Rhy shook his head, exasperated. “Kell isn’t the only one you fail to understand. My bond with him didn’t start with this curse. You wanted him to kill for me, die for me, protect me at all costs. Well, Mother, you got your wish. You simply failed to realize that that kind of love, that bond, it goes both ways. I would kill for him, and I would die for him, and I will protect him however I am able, from Faro and Vesk, from White London, and Black London, and from you.”
Rhy went to the balcony doors and threw open the curtains, intending to shower the room in the Isle’s red light. Instead, he was met with a wall of darkness. His eyes went wide, anger dissolving into shock.
“What’s happened to the river?”
IV
Lila rinsed the blood from her hands, amazed that she had any left. Her body was a patchwork of pain—funny, how it still found ways to surprise her—and under that, a hollowness she knew from hungry days and freezing nights.
She stared down into the bowl, her focus sliding.
Tieren had seen to her calf, where Ojka’s knife had gone in; her ribs, where she’d hit the roof; her arm, where she’d drawn blood after blood after blood. And when he was done, he’d touched his fingers to her chin and tipped it up, his gaze a weight, solid but strangely welcome.
“Still in one piece?” he’d asked, and she remembered her ruined eye.
“More or less.”
The room had swayed a little, then, and Tieren had steadied her.
“You need to rest,” he’d said.
She’d knocked his hand away. “Sleep is for the rich and the bored,” she’d said. “I am neither, and I know my limits.”