“You might have known them before you came here,” he lectured, “before you took up magic. But power has its own boundaries.”
She’d brushed him off, though in truth she was tired in a way she’d rarely known, a tired that went down far past skin and muscle and even bone, dragged its fingers through her mind until everything rippled and blurred. A tired that made it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to be.
Tieren had sighed and turned to go as she dug the stone shard of Astrid’s cheek from her coat pocket. “I guess I’ve answered the question.”
“When it comes to you and questions, Miss Bard,” said the priest without looking back, “I think we’ve only just begun.”
Another drop of blood hit the water, clouding the basin, and Lila thought of the mirror in the black market at Sasenroche, the way it had nicked her fingers, taken blood in trade for a future that could be hers. On one side, the promise, on the other, the means. How tempting it had been, to turn the mirror over. Not because she wanted what she’d seen, but simply because there was power in the knowing.
Blood swirled in the bowl between her hands, twisting into almost-shapes before dissolving into a pinkish mist.
Someone cleared their throat, and Lila looked up.
She’d nearly forgotten the boy standing by the door. Hastra. He’d led her here, given her a silver cup of tea—which sat abandoned on the table—filled the basin, then taken up his place by the door to wait.
“Are they afraid I’ll steal something, or run away?” she’d asked when it was clear he’d been assigned to mind her.
He’d flushed, and after a moment said bashfully, “Bit of both, I think.”
She’d nearly laughed. “Am I a prisoner?” she’d asked, and he’d looked at her with those wide earnest eyes and said, in an English softened by his smooth Arnesian accent, “We are all prisoners, Miss Bard. At least for tonight.”
Now he fidgeted, looking toward her, then away, then back again, eyes snagging now on the reddening pool, now on her shattered eye. She’d never met a boy who wore so much on his face. “Something you want to ask me?”
Hastra blinked, cleared his throat. At last, he seemed to find the nerve. “Is it true, what they say about you?”
“What is it they say?” she asked, rinsing the final cut.
The boy swallowed. “That you’re the third Antari.” It gave her a shiver to hear the words. “The one from the other London.”
“No idea,” she said, wiping her arm with a rag.
“I do hope you’re like him,” the boy pressed on.
“Why’s that?”
His cheeks flushed. “I just think Master Kell shouldn’t be alone. You know, the only one.”
“Last time I checked,” said Lila, “you have another in the prison. Maybe we could start bleeding him instead.” She wrung the rag, red drops falling to the bowl.
Hastra flushed. “I only meant …” He pursed his lips, looking for the words, or perhaps the way to say them in her tongue. “I’m glad that he has you.”
“Who says he does?” But the words had no bite. Lila was too tired for games. The ache in her body was dull but persistent, and she felt bled dry in more ways than one. She stifled a yawn.
“Even Antari need sleep,” said Hastra gently.
She waved the words away. “You sound like Tieren.”
His face lit up as if it were praise.
“Master Tieren is wise.”
“Master Tieren is a nag,” she shot back, her gaze drifting again to the reflection in the clouded pool.
Two eyes stared up, one ordinary, the other fractured. One brown, the other just a starburst of broken light. She held her gaze—something she’d never been keen to do—and found that, strangely, it was easier now. As if this reflection were somehow closer to the truth.
Lila had always thought of secrets like gold coins. They could be hoarded, or put to use, but once you spent them, or lost them, it was a beast to get your hands on more.
Because of that, she’d always guarded her secrets, prized them above any take.
The fences back in Grey London hadn’t known she was a street rat.
The street patrols hadn’t known she was a girl.
She herself didn’t know what had happened to her eye.
But no one knew it was fake.
Lila dragged her fingers through the water one last time.
So much for that secret, she thought.
And she was running out of ones to keep.
“What now?” she asked, turning toward the boy. “Do I get to inflict wounds on someone else? Make some trouble? Challenge this Osaron to a fight? Or shall we see what Kell is up to?”
As she ticked off the options, her fingers danced absently over her knives, one of which was missing. Not lost. Simply loaned.
Hastra held the door for her, looking balefully back at the abandoned cup.
“Your tea.”
Lila sighed and took up the silver cup, its contents long cold.
She drank, cringing at the bitter dregs before setting it aside, and following Hastra out.
V
Kell didn’t realize he was looking for Lila, not until he collided with someone who wasn’t her.
“Oh,” said the girl, resplendent in a green-and-silver dress.
He caught her, steadying them both as the Veskan princess leaned into him instead of away. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d been running, her eyes glassy with tears. At only sixteen, Cora still had the long-limbed gait of youth and the body of a young woman. When he first saw her, he’d been struck by that contrast, but now, she looked all child, a girl playing dress-up in a world she wasn’t ready for. He still couldn’t believe that this was the one Rhy had been afraid of.
“Your Highness.”
“Master Kell,” she answered breathlessly. “What is going on? They won’t tell us anything, but the man on the roof, and that awful fog, now the people in the streets—I saw them, through the window, before Col pulled me away.” She spoke quickly, her Veskan accent making her trip over every few words. “What will happen to the rest of us?”
She was flush against him now, and he was grateful he’d stopped at his own room to put on a shirt.
He eased her back gently. “So long as you stay in the palace, you will be safe.”
“Safe,” she echoed, gaze slanting toward the nearest doors, glass panes frosted with winter chill and streaked with shadow. “I think I’d only feel safe,” she added, “with you beside me.”
“How romantic,” said a dry voice, and Kell turned to see Lila leaning against the wall, Hastra a few strides behind. Cora stiffened in Kell’s arms at the sight of them.
“Am I interrupting?” asked Lila.
Cora said “yes” at the same time Kell said “no.” The princess shot him a wounded look, then turned her annoyance on Lila. “Leave,” she ordered in the imperious tone peculiar to royalty and spoiled children.
Kell cringed, but Lila only raised a brow. “What was that?” she asked, strolling forward. She was half a head taller than the Veskan royal.
To her credit, Cora didn’t retreat. “You are in the presence of a princess. I suggest you learn your place.”
“And where is that, Princess?”
“Beneath me.”
Lila smiled at that, one of those smiles that made Kell profoundly nervous. The kind of smile usually followed by a weapon.
“Sa’tach, Cora!” Her brother, Col, rounded the corner, his face tight with anger. At eighteen, the prince had none of his sister’s childlike features, none of her lithe grace. The last traces of youth lingered in his darting blue eyes, but in every other way he was an ox, a creature of brute strength. “I told you to stay in the gallery. This isn’t a game.”
A storm cloud crossed Cora’s face. “I was looking for the Antari.”
“And now you have found him.” He nodded once at Kell, then took his sister’s arm. “Come.”
Despite the difference in size, Cora wrenched free, but that was the sum of her defiance. She shot Kell an embarrassed look, and Lila a venomous one, before following her brother out.
“Don’t kill the messenger,” said Lila when the two were gone, “but I think the princess is trying to get into your”—her gaze trailed Kell up and down—“good graces.”