She’d found Calla’s tent.
“What is it?” asked Manel behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“This is the last tent,” she said slowly. “Go out the flap, and head for the palace.”
Manel spat. “The palace. The royals hid inside their palace while my family died. The king and queen sat safe on their thrones while London fell and that spoiled prince—”
“Enough,” snarled Lila. “That spoiled prince is searching the streets for men like you. He’s hunting for the living and burying the dead and doing everything he can to keep one from becoming the other, so you can either help or disappear, but either way, get out.”
He looked at her long and hard, then swore beneath his breath and vanished through the tent’s flap, bells jingling in his wake.
Lila turned her attention back to the empty shop.
“Calla?” she called, hoping the woman was there, hoping she wasn’t. The lanterns that hung in the corners were unlit, the hats and scarves and hoods on the walls casting strange shapes in the dark. Lila snapped her fingers, and the light sparked in her hand, unsteady but bright as she crossed the small tent, searching for any sign of the merchant. She wanted to see the woman’s kind smile, wanted to hear Calla’s teasing words. She wanted Calla to be far, far away, wanted her to be safe.
Something cracked beneath Lila’s boot.
A glass bead, like the ones in the trunk Lila had brought ashore. The box of gold thread and ruby clasps and a dozen other tiny, beautiful things she’d given Calla to pay for the coat, and the mask, and the kindness.
The beads were scattered across the floor in a messy trail that vanished beneath the hem of a second curtain hung near the back of the stall. The light slid beneath, struck gem, and rug, and something solid.
Delilah Bard never read many books.
The few she did had pirates and thieves, and always ended with freedom and the promise of more stories. Characters sailed away. They lived on. Lila always imagined people that way, a series of intersections and adventures. It was easy when you moved through life—through worlds—the way she did. Easy when you didn’t care, when people came onto the page and walked away again, back to their own stories, and you could imagine whatever you wanted for them, if you cared enough to write it in your head.
Barron had walked into her life and refused to walk back out, and then he’d gone and died and she had to keep remembering that over and over instead of letting him live on in some version without her.
She didn’t want that for Calla.
She didn’t want to look behind the curtain, didn’t want to know the end of this story, but her hand reached out of its own traitorous accord and pulled the fabric back.
She saw the body on the floor.
Oh, thought Lila dully. There she is.
Calla, who had drawn the i’s of Lila’s name into e’s, and always sounded on the verge of laughing.
Calla, who had simply smiled when Lila walked in one night and asked for a man’s coat instead of a woman’s dress.
Calla, who’d thought Lila was in love with a black-eyed prince, even before Lila really had been. Calla, who wanted Kell to be happy just as a man, not as an aven. Who wanted her—Lila—to be happy.
The box of trinkets Lila had once brought home for the merchant now lay open on its side, spilling a hundred spots of light onto the floor around the woman’s head.
Calla was lying on her side, her short, round body curled in on itself, one hand beneath her cheek. But the other hand was pressed over her ear, as if trying to block something out, and for a moment, Lila thought—hoped—she was sleeping. Thought—hoped—she could kneel down and shake the woman gently, and she would get up.
Of course, Calla wasn’t a woman anymore. She wasn’t even a body. Her eyes—what was left of those warm eyes—were open, the same ruined shade as the rest of her, the chalky grey of hearth ash after the fire’s gone and cooled.
Lila’s throat closed.
This is why I run.
Because caring was a thing with claws. It sank them in, and didn’t let go. Caring hurt more than a knife to the leg, more than a few broken ribs, more than anything that bled or broke and healed again. Caring didn’t break you clean. It was a bone that didn’t set, a cut that wouldn’t close.
It was better not to care—Lila tried not to care—but sometimes, people got in. Like a knife against armor, they found the cracks, slid past the guard, and you didn’t know how deep they were buried until they were gone and you were bleeding on the floor. And it wasn’t fair. Lila hadn’t asked to care about Calla. She hadn’t wanted to let her in. So why did it still hurt this much?
Lila felt the tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Calla.”
She didn’t know why she said it that way, soft, as if a soft voice could wake the dead.
She didn’t know why she said it at all.
But she didn’t have time to wonder. As Lila took a step forward, a gust of winter air cut through the tent, and Calla simply … blew apart.
Lila let out a strangled cry and lunged for the curtain, but it was too late.
Calla was already gone.
Nothing but a collapsing pile of ash, and a hundred bits of silver and gold.
Something folded in Lila, then. She sank to the ground, ignoring the bite of the glass beads where they cut into her knees, fingers digging into the threadbare rug.
She didn’t mean to summon fire.
It wasn’t until the smoke tickled her lungs that Lila realized the tent was catching. Half of her wanted to let it burn, but the rest couldn’t bear the thought of Calla’s store burning away like her life, nothing left. Never to be seen again.
Lila pressed her hands together, smothering the fire.
She wiped the tears away and got up.
III
Kell stood before Holland’s cell, waiting for the man to speak.
He didn’t. Didn’t even raise his gaze to meet Kell’s own. The man’s eyes were fixed on something in the distance, beyond the bars, beyond the walls, beyond the city. A cold anger burned in them, but it seemed directed inward as much as out, at himself and the monster who had poisoned his mind, stolen his body.
“You summoned me,” said Kell at last. “I assumed you had something to say.”
When Holland still didn’t answer, he turned to go.
“One hundred and eighty-two.”
Kell glanced back. “What?”
Holland’s attention was still pointedly somewhere else. “That is the number of people killed by Astrid and Athos Dane.”
“And how many killed by you?”
“Sixty-seven,” answered Holland without hesitation. “Three before I became a slave. Sixty-four before I became a king. And none since.” At last, he looked at Kell. “I value life. I’ve issued death. You were raised a prince, Kell. I watched my whole world wither, day by day, season by season, year by year, and the only thing that kept me going was the hope that I was Antari for a reason. That I could do something to help.”
“I thought the only thing that kept you going was the binding spell branded into your skin.”
Holland cocked his head. “By the time you met me, the only thing that kept me going was the thought of killing Athos and Astrid Dane. And then you took that from me.”
Kell scowled. “I won’t apologize for depriving you of your revenge.”
Holland said nothing. Then, “When I asked you what you would have had me do upon waking in Black London, you told me that I should have stayed there. That I should have died. I thought about it. I knew that Athos Dane was dead. I could feel that much.” The chains rattled as he reached to tap the ruined branding on his chest. “But I wasn’t. I didn’t know why, but I thought of who’d I’d been, those years before they stripped me down to hate, of what I’d wanted for my world. That’s what drove me home. Not fear of death—death is gentle, death is kind—but the hope that I was still capable of something more. And the idea of being free—” He blinked, as if he’d drifted.
The words rang through Kell’s chest, echoing chords.