The Emery Estate had stood for centuries.
And now it was coming down.
Alucard had ruined it, after all.
It took all his strength to hold the structure up around them, and by the time they crossed the threshold, he was dizzy from the effort.
Anisa’s head lolled against his chest.
“Stay with me, Nis,” he said. “Stay with me.”
He mounted his horse with the aid of a low wall, and kicked the beast into motion, riding through the gate as the rest of the estate came tumbling down.
I
WHITE LONDON
Nasi stood before the platform and did not cry.
She was nine winters old, for crow’s sake, and had long ago learned to look composed, even if it was fake. Sometimes you had to pretend, everyone knew that. Pretend to be happy. Pretend to be brave. Pretend to be strong. If you pretended long enough, it eventually came true.
Pretending not to be sad was the hardest, but looking sad made people think you were weak, and when you were already a foot too short and a measure too small, and a girl on top of that, you had to work twice as hard to convince them it wasn’t true.
So even though the room was empty, save for Nasi and the corpse, she didn’t let the sadness show. Nasi worked in the castle, doing whatever needed to be done, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to be in here. Knew the northern hall was off limits, the private quarters of the king. But the king was missing, and Nasi had always been good at sneaking, and anyway, she hadn’t come to snoop, or steal.
She’d only come to see.
And to make sure the woman wasn’t lonely.
Which Nasi knew was ridiculous, because dead people probably didn’t feel things like cold, or sad, or lonely. But she couldn’t be sure, and if it was her, she would have wanted someone there.
Besides, this was the only quiet room left in the castle.
The rest of the place was plunging into chaos, everyone shouting and searching for the king, but not in here. In here, candles burned, and the heavy doors and walls held in all the quiet. In here, at the center of the chamber, on a platform of beautiful black granite, lay Ojka.
Ojka, laid out in black, hands open at her sides, a blade resting in each palm. Vines, the first things to bloom in the castle gardens, were wound around the platform’s edge, a dish of water at Ojka’s head and a basin of earth at her feet, places for the magic to go when it left her body. A black cloth was draped over her eyes, and her short red hair made a pool around her head. A piece of white linen had been wrapped tight around her neck, but even in death a line of blackish-red stained through where someone had cut her throat.
Nobody knew what had happened. Only that the king was missing, and the king’s chosen knight was dead. Nasi had seen the king’s prisoner, the red-haired man with his own black eye, and she wondered if it was his fault, since he was missing, too.
Nasi clenched her hands into fists, and felt the sudden bite of thorns. She’d forgotten about the flowers, wild things plucked from the edge of the castle yard. The prettiest ones hadn’t blossomed yet, so she’d been forced to dig up a handful of pale buds studded with vicious thorns.
“Nijk sh?st,” she murmured, setting the bundle of flowers on the platform, the tail of her braid brushing Ojka’s arm as she leaned forward.
Nasi used to wear her hair loose so it covered the scars on her face. It didn’t matter that she could barely see through the pale curtain, that she was always tripping and stumbling. It was a shield against the world.
And then one day Ojka passed her in the corridor, and stopped her, and told her to pull the hair off her face.
She hadn’t wanted to, but the king’s knight stood there, arms crossed, waiting for her to obey, and so she had, cringing as she tied back the strands. Ojka surveyed her face, but didn’t ask her what had happened, if she’d been born that way (she hadn’t) or caught off-turn in the Kosik (she had). Instead, the woman had cocked her head and said, “Why do you hide?”
Nasi could not bring herself to answer Ojka, to tell the king’s knight that she hated her scars when Ojka had darkness spilling down one side of her face and a silver line carving its way from eye to lip on the other. When she didn’t speak, the woman crouched in front of her and took her firmly by the shoulders.
“Scars are not shameful,” said Ojka, “not unless you let them be.” The knight straightened. “If you do not wear them, they will wear you.” And with that, she’d walked away.
Nasi had worn her hair back ever since.
And every time Ojka had passed her in the halls, her eyes, one yellow, the other black, had flicked to the braid, and she’d nodded in approval, and everything in Nasi had grown stronger, like a starving plant fed water drop by drop.
“I wear my scars now,” she whispered in Ojka’s ear.
Footsteps sounded beyond the doors, the heavy tread of the Iron Guard, and Nasi pulled back hastily, nearly tipping over the bowl of water when she snagged her sleeve on the vines coiled around the platform.
But she was only nine winters old, and small as a shadow, and by the time the doors opened, she was gone.
II
In the Maresh dungeons, sleep eluded Holland.
His mind drifted, but every time it began to settle, he saw London—his London—as it crumbled and fell. Saw the colors fade back to gray, the river freeze, and the castle … well, thrones did not stay empty. Holland knew this well. He pictured the city searching for its king, heard the servants calling out his name before new blades found their throats. Blood staining white marble, bodies littering the forest as boots crushed everything he’d started like new grass underfoot.
Holland reached out automatically for Ojka, his mind stretching across the divide of worlds, but found no purchase.
The prison cell he currently occupied was a stone tomb, buried somewhere deep in the bones of the palace. No windows. No warmth. He had lost track of the number of stairs when the Arnesian guards dragged him in, half conscious, mind still gutted from Osaron’s intrusion and sudden exit. Holland barely processed the cells, all empty. The animal part of him had struggled at the touch of cold metal closing around his wrists, and in response, they’d slammed his head against the wall. When he’d surfaced, everything was black.
Holland lost track of time—tried to count, but without any light, his mind skipped, stuttered, fell too easily into memories he didn’t want.
Kneel, whispered Astrid in one ear.
Stand, goaded Athos in the other.
Bend.
Break.
Stop, he thought, trying to drag his mind back to the cold cell. It kept slipping.
Pick up the knife.
Hold it to your throat.
Stay very still.
He’d tried to will his fingers, of course, but the binding spell held, and when Athos had returned hours—sometimes days—later, and plucked the blade from Holland’s hand, and given him permission to move again, his body had folded to the floor. Muscles torn. Limbs shaking.
That is where you belong, Athos had said. On your knees.
“Stop.” Holland’s growl vibrated through the quiet of the prison, answered only by its echo. For a few breaths, his mind was still, but soon, too soon, it all began again, the memories seeping in through the cold stone and the iron cuffs and the silence.
*
The first time someone tried to kill Holland, he was barely nine years old.
His eye had turned black the year before, pupil widening day by day until the darkness overtook the green, and then the white, slowly poisoning him lash to lid. His hair was long enough to hide the mark, as long as he kept his head down, which Holland always did.
He woke to the hiss of metal, lunged to the side in time to almost miss the blade.