Who could laugh like that, in a world like this?
She reminded him of Alox. Not the way he’d disappear for hours, or days, come home with blood caking his clothes, but the way her presence could make him forget about the darkness, the cold, the dying world outside their door.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as he set her down.
“Nothing,” he said, kissing her temple. “Nothing at all.”
And perhaps that wasn’t strictly true, but there was a startling truth beneath the lie: for the first time in his life, Holland was something like happy.
He stoked the fire with a glance, and Talya pulled him onto the cot they shared, and, then, tearing off pieces of bread and sipping cold wine, she told him the stories of the someday king. Just the way Alox had. The first time, Holland had flinched at the words, but didn’t stop her because he liked the way she told them, so full of energy and light. The stories were her favorite—and so he let her talk.
By the third or fourth telling, he’d forgotten why the stories sounded so familiar.
By the tenth, he’d forgotten that he’d first heard them from someone else.
By the hundredth time, he’d forgotten about that other life.
That night, they lay wrapped in blankets, and she ran her fingers through his hair, and he felt himself drifting from the rhythm of the touch and the heat of the fire.
That was when she tried to cut his heart out.
She was fast, but he was faster, the knife’s tip sinking only an inch before Holland came to his senses and forced her bodily away. He was up, on his feet, clutching his chest as blood leaked between his fingers.
Talya just stood there in the middle of their tiny room, their home, the blade hanging from her fingers.
“Why?” he asked, stunned.
“I’m sorry, Hol. They came to me in the market. Said they’d pay in silver.”
He wanted to ask when, ask who, but he never got the chance.
She lunged at him again, tightly, swiftly, all her dancer’s grace, and the knife whistled sweetly toward him. It happened so fast. Without thinking, Holland’s fingers twitched, and her knife twisted in her grip, freezing in the air even as the rest of her kept moving forward. The blade sank smoothly between her own ribs.
Talya looked at him then with such surprise and indignation, as if she’d thought he’d let her kill him. As if she’d thought he’d simply surrender.
“Sorry, Tal,” he said as she tried to breathe, to speak, and couldn’t.
She tried to take a step and Holland caught her as she fell, all that dancer’s grace gone out of her limbs at the end.
Holland stayed there till she died, then laid her carefully on the floor, got to his feet, and left.
V
“He wants what?” said the king, looking up from the map.
“An execution,” repeated Kell, still reeling.
As Tosal, those had been Holland’s words.
“It must be a trick,” said Isra.
“I don’t think so,” started Kell, but the guard wasn’t listening.
“Your Majesty,” she said, turning to Maxim. “Surely he wants to draw Osaron in so he can escape….”
As Tosal.
To confine.
Kell had used the blood spell only once in his life, on a bird, a small sunflit he’d caught in the Sanctuary gardens. The sunflit had gone perfectly still in his hands, but it hadn’t died. He could feel its heart beating frantically beneath its feathered breast while it lay motionless, as if paralyzed, trapped inside its own body.
When Tieren had found out, the Aven Essen was furious. Blood spell or not, Kell had broken the cardinal rule of power: he had used magic to harm a living creature, to alter its life. Kell had apologized profusely, and said the words to dispel what he’d done, to heal the damage, but to his shock and horror, the commands had no effect. Nothing he said seemed to work.
The bird didn’t revive.
It just lay there, still as death, in his hands.
“I don’t understand.”
Tieren shook his head. “Things are not so simple, when it comes to life and death,” he’d said. “With minds and bodies, what is done cannot always be undone.” And then he’d taken up the sunflit, and brought it to his chest, and broken its neck. The priest had set the lifeless bird back in Kell’s hands.
“That,” said Tieren grimly, “was a kinder end.”
He had never tried the spell again, because he’d never learned the words to undo it.
“Kell.”
The king’s voice jarred him out of the memory.
Kell swallowed. “Holland did what he did to save his world. I believe that. Now he wants it to be over.”
“You’re asking us to trust him?” challenged Isra.
“No,” said Kell, holding the king’s gaze, “I’m asking you to trust me.”
Tieren appeared in the doorway.
Ink stained his fingers, and fatigue hollowed out his cheeks. “You called for me, Maxim?”
The king exhaled heavily. “How long until your spell is ready?”
The Aven Essen shook his head. “It is not a simple matter, putting an entire city to sleep. The spell must be broken down into seven or eight smaller ones and then positioned around the city to form a chain—”
“How long?”
Tieren made an exasperated sound. “Days, Your Majesty.”
The king’s gaze returned to Kell. “Can you end it?”
Kell didn’t know if Maxim was asking if he had the will or the strength to kill another Antari.
I’m not looking for kindness, Kell. I’m looking to finish what I started.
“Yes,” he answered.
The king nodded and swept his hand over the map. “The palace wards do not extend to the balconies, do they?”
“No,” said Tieren. “It is all we can do to keep them up around the walls, windows, and doors.”
“Very well,” said the king, letting his knuckles fall to the table’s edge. “The north courtyard, then. We’ll raise a platform overlooking the Isle, and hold the ritual at dawn, and whether or not Osaron comes …” His dark eyes landed on Kell. “Holland dies by your hand.”
The words followed Kell into the hall.
Holland dies by your hand.
He sank back against the map room doors, exhaustion winding around his limbs.
It’s rather hard to kill an Antari.
By the blade.
A kinder end.
As Tosal.
He pushed off the wood and started for the stairs.
“Kell?”
The queen was standing at the end of the hall, looking out a pair of balcony doors at the shadow of her city. Her eyes met his in the reflection in the glass. There was a sadness in them, and he found himself taking a step toward her before he stopped. He didn’t have the strength.
“Your Majesty,” he said, bowing before he turned and walked away.
VI
All day Rhy had searched the city for survivors.
In ones and sometimes twos, he found them—shaken, fragile, but alive. Most were startlingly young. Only a few were very old. And just like the magic in their veins, there was no common factor. No bond of blood, or gender, or means. He found a noble girl from House Loreni, still dressed for a tournament ball, an older man in threadbare clothes tucked in an alleyway, a mother in red mourning silks, a royal guard whose mark had failed or simply faded. All now left with the silver veins of a survivor.
Rhy stayed with them only long enough to show they weren’t alone, long enough to lead them to the palace steps for shelter, and then he was off again, back into the city, in search of more.
Before dusk, he returned to the Spire—he’d known it was too late, but had to see—and found all that was left of Anisa: a small pile of ashes, smoldering on the floor of Alucard’s cabin, beyond the cage of warped planks. A few drops of silver from her House Emery ring.
Rhy was crossing the deck in numbed silence when he caught the glint of metal and saw the woman sitting on the deck with her back to a crate and a blade in her hand.
His boots hit the wooden dock with a thud.
The woman didn’t move.