“That I could you keep alive,” she said, glancing back. “But you don’t need me to.”
Something in Rhy loosened. Because of all the people in his life, his brother and his parents and his guards and even Alucard Emery, Lila was the first—the only—person to treat him like he didn’t need saving.
“Guards,” he called, hardening his voice. “Split up.”
“Your Highness,” started one. “We’re not to lea—”
He turned on them. “We’ve too much ground to cover, and last time I checked, we all had a pair of working eyes”—he shot a look at Lila, realizing his error, but she only shrugged—“so put them to use, and find me my survivors.”
It was a grim pursuit.
Rhy found too many bodies, and worse, the places where bodies should have been but where only a tatter of fabric and a pile of ash were left, the rest blown away by the winter wind. He thought of Alucard’s sister, Anisa, burning from the inside out. Thought of what happened to those who lost their battle with Osaron’s magic. And what of the fallen? The thousands of people who had not fought against the shadow king, but had given in, given way. Were they still in there, prisoners of their own minds? Could they be saved? Or were they already lost?
“Vas ir,” he murmured over the bodies he found, and the ones he didn’t.
Go in peace.
The streets were hardly empty, but he moved through the masses like a ghost, their shadowed eyes passing over him, through him. He walked in gleaming gold, and still they did not notice. He called to them, but they did not answer. Did not turn.
Whatever part of me Osaron could take, it’s already gone.
Did he really believe that?
His boot slid a little on the ground, and, looking down, he saw that a piece of the street had changed, from stone to something else, something glassy and black, like the flowers on the stairs.
He knelt, brushing his gloved hand against the smooth patch. It wasn’t cold. Wasn’t warm, either. Wasn’t wet like ice. It wasn’t anything. Which made no sense. Rhy straightened, perplexed, and kept looking for something, someone, he could help.
Silvers, that’s what some were calling them, those who’d been burned by Osaron’s magic and survived. The priests, it turned out, had discovered a handful already, most rising from the fever beds that lined the Rose Hall.
But how many more waited in the city?
In the end, Rhy didn’t find the first silver.
The silver found him.
The young boy came stumbling toward him out of a house and sank to his knees at Rhy’s feet. Lines danced like light over his skin, his black hair falling over fever-bright eyes. “Mas vares.”
My prince.
Rhy knelt in his armor, scratching the plate as gold met stone. “It’s all right,” he said as the boy sobbed, tears tracing fresh tracks over the silver on his cheeks.
“All alone,” he murmured, breath hitching. “All alone.”
“Not anymore,” said the prince.
He rose and started toward the house, but small fingers caught his hand. The boy shook his head, and Rhy saw the ash dusting the boy’s front, and understood. There was no one else inside the house.
Not anymore.
II
Lila went straight for the night market.
The city around her wasn’t empty. It would have been less chilling if it were. Instead, those who’d fallen under Osaron’s spell moved through the streets like sleepwalkers carrying out remembered tasks while deep within their dreams.
The night market was a shadow of its former self, half of it burned, and the rest carrying on in that dazed and ghostly way.
A fruit vendor hawked winter apples, his eyes swimming with shadows, while a woman carried flowers, their edges frosting black. The whole thing had a haunted air, a sea of puppets, and Lila kept squinting at the air around them as if looking for the strings.
Rhy moved through the city like a specter, but Lila was like an unwelcome guest. The people looked at her when she passed, their eyes narrowing, but the cuts on her palms were still fresh, and the blood kept them at bay, even as their whispers trailed her through the streets.
Scattered throughout the market, as if someone had splashed inky water onto the ground and let it freeze, were patches of black ice. Lila stepped around them with a thief’s sure footing and a fighter’s grace.
She was making her way toward Calla’s familiar green tent at the end of the market when she saw a man pitch a basin of flaming stones into the river. He was broad and bearded, silver scars tracing his hands and throat.
“You couldn’t get me, you monster!” he was screaming. “You couldn’t hold me down.”
The basin hit the river with a crash, rippling the half-frozen water and sending up a plume of hissing steam.
And just like that, the illusion shattered.
The man selling apples and the woman with flowers and every other fallen in the marketplace broke off and turned toward the man, as if waking from a dream. Only they weren’t waking. Instead, it was like the darkness rose inside them, Osaron rousing and turning his head, looking through their eyes. They moved as a single body, one that wasn’t theirs.
“Idiot,” muttered Lila, starting toward him, but the man didn’t seem to notice. Didn’t seem to care.
“Face me, you coward!” he bellowed as part of the nearest tent tore free and lifted into the air beside him.
The crowd hummed in displeasure.
“How dare you,” said a merchant, eyes shining dully as he drew a knife.
“The king will not stand for this,” said a second, twining rope between her hands.
The air shook with the sudden urge for violence, and realization struck Lila like a blow—Osaron gained obedience from the fallen, and energy from the fevered. But he had no use for the ones who’d fought free of his spell. And what he couldn’t use …
Lila ran.
Her injured leg throbbed as she sprinted toward him.
“Look out!” she shouted, her first blade already flying. It caught the nearest attacker in the chest, buried to the hilt, but the merchant’s own knife had left his hand before he fell.
Lila tackled the scarred man to the ground as metal sang over their heads.
The stranger looked up at her in shock, but there wasn’t time. The fallen were circling them, weapons raised. The man slammed a fist into the ground, and a piece of road as wide as a market stall tipped up into a shield.
He raised another makeshift wall and turned, clearly intending to summon a third, but Lila had no desire to be entombed. She dragged the man to his feet, sprinting into the nearest tent before a steel kettle thudded against the heavy canvas side.
“Keep moving,” she called, carving her way through a second tent wall and then a third before the man hauled her to a stop.
“Why did you do that?”
Lila wrenched free. “A thank-you would be nice. I lost my fifth favorite knife out—”
He forced her back against the tent pole. “Why?” he snarled, eyes wide. They were a shocking green, flecked with black and gold.
A swift kick to the ribs with the bottom of her boot, and he went stumbling backward, though not as far as she’d hoped. “Because you were shouting your head off at nothing but shadow and mist. A tip: don’t start a fight like that if you want to live.”
“I didn’t want to live.” His voice shook as he looked down at his silver-scarred hands. “I didn’t want this.”
“A lot of people would love to trade places.”
“That monster took everything. My wife. My father. I fought through it because I thought someone would be waiting for me. But when I woke—when I—” He made a strangled sound. “You should have let me die.”
Lila frowned. “What’s your name?”
“What?”
“You have a name. What is it?”
“Manel.”
“Well, Manel. Dying doesn’t help the dead. It doesn’t find the lost. A lot of people have fallen. But some of us are still standing. So if you want to give up, walk out that curtain. I won’t stop you. I won’t save you again. But if you want to put your second chance to better use, come with me.”
She turned on her heel and slashed the next tent wall, stepping through, only to slam to a stop.