The hall was a little worse for wear, but Kell had managed to keep most of the damage confined to the bodies of the three magicians.
Drawn by the noise, the inner doors flew open, and the doorway filled with people—some magicians, others nobles, all straining to see into the foyer. Three magicians laid out, and Kell standing at their center. Just what he needed. A scene. The whispers were starting, and Kell could feel the weight of eyes and words as they landed on him.
“Do you yield?” he asked the crumpled forms, unsure which exactly he was addressing.
A huddle of Faroans looked rather amused as Brost struggled to his feet, still clutching his nose.
A pair of Veskans went to rouse Sar, and while most of the Arnesians hung back, Jinnar, the wind mage with the silver hair, went straight to Losen and helped the grieving youth to his feet.
“Come on,” he said, his voice slower and softer than Kell had ever heard it. Tears were streaming silently down Losen’s cheeks, and Kell knew they didn’t stem from bruised ribs or wounded pride.
“I didn’t reach for her on the roof,” he murmured. “I didn’t …”
Kell knelt to clean a drop of blood from the marble floor before it stained, and heard the king’s heavy steps before he saw the crowd part around him, Hastra on his heels.
“Master Kell,” said Maxim, sweeping his gaze over the scene. “I’ll thank you not to bring down the palace.” But Kell could sense the approval lacing the king’s words. Better a show of strength than a tolerance of weakness.
“Apologies, Your Majesty,” said Kell, bowing his head.
The king turned on his heel, and that was that. A mutiny subdued. An instant of chaos restored to order.
Kell knew as well as Maxim how important that was right now, with the city clinging to every shred of power, every sign of strength. As soon as the magicians had been led or carried out, and the hall emptied of spectators, he slumped into a chair along the wall, its cushion still smoking faintly from the incident. He patted it out, then looked up to find his former guard still standing there, warm eyes wide beneath his cap of sun-kissed hair.
“No need to thank me,” said Kell, waving his hand.
“It’s not that,” said Hastra. “I mean, I’m grateful, sir, of course. But …”
Kell had a sickening feeling in his stomach. “What is it now?”
“The queen is asking for the prince.”
“Last time I checked,” said Kell, “that wasn’t me.”
Hastra looked to the floor, to the wall, to the ceiling, before mustering the courage to look at him again. “I know, sir,” he said slowly. “But I can’t find him.”
Kell had felt the blow coming, but it still struck. “You’ve searched the palace?”
“Pillar to spire, sir.”
“Is anyone else missing?”
A hesitation, and then, “Captain Emery.”
Kell swore under his breath.
Have you seen Alucard? Rhy had asked, staring out the palace windows. Would he know if the prince had been infected? Would he feel the dark magic swarming in his blood?
“How long?” asked Kell, already moving toward the prince’s chambers.
“I’m not certain,” said Hastra. “An hour, maybe a little more.”
“Sanct.”
Kell burst into Rhy’s rooms, taking up the prince’s gold pin from the table and jabbing it into his thumb, harder than necessary. He hoped that wherever Rhy was, he felt the prick of metal and knew that Kell was coming.
“Should I tell the king?” asked Hastra.
“You came to me,” said Kell, “because you have more sense than that.”
He knelt, drawing a circle in blood on Rhy’s floor, and pressed his palm flat, the gold pin between flesh and polished wood. “Guard the door,” he said, and then, to the mark itself, and the magic within, “As Tascen Rhy.”
The floor fell away, the palace vanished, replaced by an instant of darkness and then, just as swiftly, by a room. The ground rocked gently beneath his feet, and Kell knew before taking in the wooden walls, the portal windows, that he was on a ship.
He found the two of them lying on the floor, foreheads pressed together and fingers intertwined. Alucard’s eyes were closed, but Rhy’s were open, gaze fixed on the captain’s face.
Anger rose in Kell’s throat.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he snapped, “but this is hardly the time for a lover’s—”
Rhy silenced Kell with a look. The amber in his eyes was shot with red, and that’s when Kell noticed how pale the captain was, how still.
For a second, he thought Alucard Emery was dead.
Then the captain’s eyes drifted wearily open. Bruises stood out beneath them, giving him the gaunt look of a person who’d been ill for a very long time. And something was wrong with his skin. In the low cabin light, silver—not molten bright, but the dull shine of scarred flesh—ribboned at his wrists, his collar, his throat. It traced paths up his cheeks like tears, flashed at his temples. Threads of light that traced the paths where the blue of veins should be, had been.
But there was no curse in his eyes.
Alucard Emery had survived Osaron’s magic.
He was alive—and when he spoke, he was still his infuriating self.
“You could have knocked,” he said, but his voice was hoarse, his words weak, and Kell saw the darkness in Rhy’s expression—not the product of any spell, only fear. How bad had it gotten? How close had he been?
“We have to go,” said Kell. “Can Emery stand, or …” His voice trailed off as his eyesight sharpened. Across the cabin, something had moved.
A shape, piled on the captain’s bed, sat up.
It was a girl. Dark hair fell around her face in sleep-messed waves, but it was her eyes that stilled him. They were not curse-darkened. They were nothing. They were empty.
“Anisa?” started Alucard, struggling to get to his feet. The name stirred something in Kell. A memory of reading scrolls, tucked next to Rhy, in the Maresh library.
Anisa Emery, twelfth in line to the throne, the third child of Reson, and Alucard’s younger sister.
“Stay back,” ordered Kell, barring the captain’s path but keeping his gaze on the girl.
Kell had seen death before, witnessed the moment when a person ceased to be a person and became simply a body, the flame of life extinguished, leaving only a shell. It was as much a feeling as a sight, the sense of missing.
Staring at Anisa Emery, Kell had the horrible sense that he was already looking at a corpse.
But corpses didn’t stand.
And she did.
The girl swung her legs out of bed, and when her bare feet hit the floor, the wooden boards began to petrify, color leaching out of the timber as it withered, decayed. Her heart glowed through her chest like a coal.
When she tried to speak, no sound came out, only the crackling of embers, as the thing in her continued to burn.
Kell knew that the girl was already gone.
“Nis?” said her brother again, stepping toward her. “Can you hear me?”
Kell caught the captain’s arm and hauled him back just as the girl’s fingers brushed Alucard’s sleeve. The fabric greyed under her touch. Kell shoved Alucard into Rhy’s arms and turned back toward Anisa, reaching out to hold her at bay with his will, and when that didn’t work—it wasn’t her will he was fighting, not anymore, but the will of a monster, a ghost, a self-made god—he bent the ship around them, wood peeling away from the cabin walls to bar her path. She was disappearing from them, board by board, and then suddenly Kell realized he was warring with a second will—Alucard’s.
“Stop!” shouted the captain, struggling against Rhy’s grip. “We can’t leave her, I can’t leave her, not again—”
Kell turned and punched Alucard Emery in the stomach.
The captain doubled over, gasping, and Kell knelt before them, quickly drew a second circle on the cabin floor.
“Rhy, now,” said Kell, and as soon as the prince’s hand met his shoulder, he said the words. The burning girl vanished, the cabin fell away, and they were back in Rhy’s room, crouched on the prince’s inlaid floors.
Hastra wilted in relief at the sight of them, but Alucard was already fighting to his feet, Rhy straining to hold him back, murmuring “Solase, solase, solase” over and over.