“Let go of me,” warned Lila.
The novice did not. “He’s not happy with you, Delilah Bard.”
“Let go.”
Lila’s boots skidded on the slick stone surface. Four strides to the edge of the platform. Three.
“He heard what you said about setting Kell free. And if you don’t let him in”—another giggle—“he’ll drown you in the sea.”
“Well, aren’t you creepy,” snarled Lila, trying one last time to wrench free. When that didn’t work, she drew a knife.
It was barely out of its sheath when another hand, this one massive, caught her wrist and twisted viciously until she dropped the weapon. When Lila turned, trapped now between the two, she found a royal guard, broader than Barron, with a dark beard and the ruined remains of her mark on his forehead.
“Have you met the shadow king?” he boomed.
“Oh hell,” said Lila as a third figure strode out of the garden. An old woman, barefoot and dressed in nothing but a shimmering nightgown.
“Why won’t you let him in?”
Lila had had enough. She threw up her hands and pushed, the way she had in the ring so recently. Bodily. Will against will. But whatever these people were made of now, it didn’t work. They simply bent around the force. It moved right through them like wind through wheat, and then they were dragging her again toward the precipitous drop.
Two strides.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she lied. At that moment, she wanted to hurt them all quite badly, but it wouldn’t stop the monster pulling their strings. She scrambled to think of something.
One stride, and she was out of time. Lila’s boot connected with the little girl’s chest and sent the novice stumbling away. She then flicked her fingers, producing a second knife, and drove it between the joints of the guard’s armor at the knee. Lila expected the man to buckle, to scream, to at least let go. He did none of those things.
“Oh, come on,” she growled as he pushed her half a step toward the edge, the novice and the woman barring her escape.
“The king wants you to pay,” said the guard.
“The king wants you to beg,” said the girl.
“The king wants you to kneel,” said the old woman.
Their voices all had the same horrible singsong quality, and the ledge was coming up against her heels.
“Beg for your city.”
“Beg for your world.”
“Beg for your life.”
“I don’t beg,” growled Lila, slamming her foot into the blade embedded in the guard’s knee. At last his leg buckled, but when he went down, he took her with him. Luckily he fell away from the ledge, and she rolled free and came up again, the woman’s thin arms already winding around her throat. Lila threw her off, into the approaching novice, and danced back several feet from the edge.
Now, at least, she had the garden behind her and not the stone cliff.
But all three attackers were upright again, their eyes full of shadows and their mouths full of Osaron’s words. And if Lila ran, they would simply follow.
Her blood sang with the thrill of the fight and her fingers itched to summon fire, but fire only worked if you cared about getting burned. A body without fear would never slow in the face of flame. No, what Lila needed was something of substance. Of weight.
She looked down at the broad stone platform.
It could work.
“He wants me to kneel?” she said, letting her legs fold beneath her, the cold stone hitting her knees. The fallen watched darkly as she pressed both palms to the marble floor and scoured her memory for a piece of Blake—something, anything to center her mind—but then, suddenly Lila realized she didn’t need the words. She felt for the pulse in the rock and found a steady thrum, like a plucked string.
The fallen were starting toward her again, but it was too late.
Lila caught hold of the threads and pulled.
The ground shook beneath her. The girl and the guard and the old woman looked down as fissures formed like deep roots in the stone floor. A vicious crack ran edge to edge, severing the ledge from the garden, the fallen souls from Delilah Bard. And then it broke, and the three went tumbling down into the river below with a crash and a wave and then nothing.
Lila straightened, breathless, a defiant smile cracking across her lips as a few last bits of rock tumbled free and fell clattering out of sight. Not the most elegant solution, she knew, but effective.
Within the garden, someone was calling her name.
Lenos.
She turned toward him just as a tendril of darkness wrapped around her leg, and pulled.
Lila hit the ground hard.
And kept falling.
Sliding.
Shadow was coiled around her ankle like a stubborn vine—no, like a hand, dragging her toward the edge. She skidded over the broken ground, scrambling for something, anything to hold on to as the edge came nearer and nearer, and then she was over, and falling, nothing but black river below.
Lila’s fingers caught the edge. She held on with all her strength.
The darkness held on too, pulling her down as the broken edge of the stone platform cut into her palms, and blood welled, and only then, when the first drops fell, did the darkness recoil, and let go.
Lila hung there, gasping, forcing her gashed hands to take her weight as she hauled herself up, hooked one boot on the jagged lip and dragged her body up and over.
She rolled onto her back, hands throbbing, gasping for breath.
She was still lying there when Lenos finally arrived.
He looked around at the broken platform, the streaks of blood. His eyes went saucer wide. “What happened?”
Lila dragged herself to a sitting position. “Nothing,” she muttered, getting to her feet. Blood was still sliding in fat drops down her fingers.
“This is nothing?”
Lila rolled her neck. “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she amended.
That’s when she noticed the fluffy white mass in his arms. Esa.
“She came when I called,” he said shyly. “And I think we found a way out.”
I
“Fascinating,” said Tieren, turning Alucard’s hands over, tracing a bony finger through the air above his silver-scarred wrists. “Does it hurt?”
“No,” said Alucard slowly. “Not anymore.”
Rhy watched from his perch on the back of the couch, fingers laced to keep them from shaking.
The king and Kell studied Tieren as Tieren studied the captain, spotting the heavy silence with questions that Alucard tried to answer, even though he was clearly still suffering.
He wouldn’t say what it was like, only that he’d been delirious, and in that fevered state, the shadow king had tried to get inside his mind. And Rhy did not betray him by saying more. His hands still ached from clenching Alucard’s, his body stiff from his time on the Spire floor, but if Kell felt that pain, he said nothing of it, and for that, amid so many things, Rhy was grateful.
“So Osaron does need permission,” said Tieren.
Alucard swallowed. “Most people, I imagine, give it without knowing. The sickness came on fast. By the time I realized what was happening, he was already inside my head. And the moment I tried to resist …” Alucard trailed off. Met Rhy’s gaze. “He twists your mind, your memories.”
“But now,” cut in Maxim, “his magic cannot touch you?”
“So it seems.”
“Who found you?” he demanded.
Kell shot a look at Hastra, who stepped forward. “I did, Your Majesty,” lied the former guard. “I saw him go, and—”
Rhy cut him off. “Hastra didn’t find Captain Emery. I did.”
His brother sighed, exasperated.
His mother went still.
“Where?” demanded Maxim in a voice that had always made Rhy shrink. Now, he held his ground.
“On his ship. By the time I arrived, he was already ill. I stayed with him to see if he’d survive, and he did—”
His father had flushed red, his mother pale. “You went out there, alone,” she said. “Into the fog?”
“The shadows did not touch me.”
“You put yourself at risk,” chided his father.
“I am in no danger.”
“You could have been taken.”