Her gaze flicked toward him, quick and sharp as a sliver of steel. “So are you.” One of her eyes had the glassy sheen that came with too much drink. The other, the false one, had been shattered. It hung together by a shell of glass, but the inside was a starburst of color and cracks.
Lila’s knife vanished back into its sheath. She pulled off the gauntlets, one by one, and set them on the table, too. Even drunk, she moved with the fluid grace of a fighter. She reminded him of Ojka.
“Ojka,” she echoed, as if reading his mind.
Holland stilled. “What?”
Lila tapped her cheek. “The redhead with the scar and the face leaking black. She did this—tried to drive a knife into my eye—right before I cut her throat.”
The words were a dull blow. Just a small flame of hope flickering out inside his chest. Nothing left. Ash over embers. “She was following orders,” he said hollowly.
Lila lifted the keys from their hook. “Yours or Osaron’s?”
It was a hard question. When had they been different? Had they ever been the same?
He heard the clang of metal, and Holland blinked to find the cell door falling open, Lila stepping in. She pulled the door shut behind her, snapped the lock back into place.
“If you came to kill me—”
“No,” she sneered. “That can wait till morning.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because good people die, and bad people live, and it doesn’t seem very fair, does it, Holland?” Her face crinkled. “Of all the people you could kill, you chose someone who actually mattered to me.”
“I had to.”
Her fist hit him like a brick, hard enough to crack his head sideways and make the world go momentarily white. When his vision cleared, she was standing over him, knuckles bleeding.
She tried to strike him again, but this time Holland caught her wrist.
“Enough,” he said.
But it wasn’t. Her free hand swung up, fire dancing across her knuckles, but he caught that, too.
“Enough.”
She tried to pull free, but his hands vised tighter, finding the tender place where bones met. He pressed down, and a guttural sound escaped her throat, low and animal.
“It does nothing to dwell on what’s been taken from you,” he snarled. “Nothing.”
Over seven years, Holland’s life had been distilled to one desire. To see Athos and Astrid Dane suffer. And Kell had stolen that from him. Stolen the look in Astrid’s eyes as he drove the dagger through her heart. Stolen Athos’s expression as he took him apart piece by piece.
No one suffers as beautifully as you do.
Seven years.
Holland shoved Lila back. She stumbled, her shoulders hitting the bars. For a moment, the cell was filled with only the sounds of ragged breathing as they stared at one another across the narrow space, two beasts caged together.
And then, slowly, Lila straightened, flexing her hands.
“If you want your revenge,” he said, “take it.”
One of us should have it, he thought, closing his eyes. He took a steadying breath and began to count his dead, starting with Alox and ending with Ojka.
But when he opened his eyes again, Delilah Bard was gone.
*
They came to collect him just after dawn.
In truth, he didn’t know the hour, but he could feel the palace stirring overhead, the subtle warming of the world beyond the prison’s pillar. With so many years of cold, he’d learned to sense the smallest shifts in warmth, knew how to mark the passing of a day.
The guards came and freed Holland from the wall, and for a moment, he was bound by nothing but two hands before they wrapped the chains around his wrists, his shoulders, his waist. The heavy metal was hobbling, and it took all his strength to keep his feet, to climb the stairs, his stride reduced to a halting step.
“On vis och,” he told himself.
Dawn to dusk. A phrase that meant two things in his native tongue.
A fresh start. A good end.
The guards marched Holland up and through the palace halls, where men and women gathered to watch him pass. They led him out onto a balcony, a large space stripped bare except for a broad wooden platform, freshly constructed, and on it, a block of stone.
On vis och.
Holland felt the change as soon as he stepped outside, the prickling magic of the palace wards giving way to nothing but crisp air and light so bright it stung his eyes.
The sun was rising on a frigid day, and Holland, still stripped to the waist beneath the chains, felt the icy air bite viciously into his skin. But he had long ago learned not to give others the satisfaction of his suffering. And though he knew he stood at the center of a performance—had in fact orchestrated it himself—Holland could not bring himself to shiver and beg. Not in front of these people.
The king was present, and the prince, as well as four more guards, their foreheads marked with blood, and a handful of magicians, similarly stained—a young, silver-haired man, the wind jostling around his limbs; a pair of dark-skinned twins, their faces set with gems; a blond man built like a wall. There, beside them, his skin scarred by silver lines, stood an almost-familiar man with a blue gem above one eye; an old man in white robes, a drop of crimson on his brow; Delilah Bard, her shattered brown eye catching the light.
And last—just there, on the platform, beside the stone block—stood Kell, a long sword in his hands, its broad point resting on the ground.
Holland’s steps must have slowed, because one of the guards drove a gauntlet into his back, forcing him forward, up the two short steps onto the newly built dais. He came to a stop and straightened, looking out at the darkened river beyond the balcony.
So like Black London.
Too like Black London.
“Second thoughts?” asked Kell, gripping the sword.
“No,” said Holland, staring past him. “Just taking a moment to enjoy the view.”
His gaze flicked to the young Antari, took in the way he held the sword, one hand around the hilt and the other resting on the blade, pressing down just hard enough to draw a line of blood.
“If he does not come—” started Holland.
“I’ll make it quick.”
“Last time, you missed my heart.”
“I won’t miss your head,” answered Kell. “But I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Holland started to speak but forced the words down.
They served no purpose.
Still, he thought them.
I hope it does.
The king’s voice thundered through the cold morning.
“Kneel,” ordered the ruler of Arnes.
Holland stiffened at the word, his mind stuttering into another day, another life, cold steel and Athos’s smooth voice—but he let the weight of the memories, as well as the present weight of chains, pull him down. He kept his eyes on the river, the darkness moving just beneath the surface, and when he spoke, his voice was low, the words meant not for the crowd on the balcony, or for Kell, but for the shadow king.
“Help me.”
The words were nothing but a breath of fog. To the gathered crowd, it might have looked like a prayer, given to whatever gods they thought he worshipped. And in a way, it was.
“Antari,” said the king, addressing him not by name, or even title, only by what he was, and Holland wondered if Maxim Maresh even knew his given name.
Vosijk, he almost said. My name is Holland Vosijk.
But it didn’t matter now.
“You are guilty of grievous sins against the empire, guilty of practicing forbidden magic, of inciting chaos and ruin, of bringing war …”
The king’s words washed around him as Holland tipped his head back toward the sky. Birds flew high overhead, while shadows threaded through the low clouds. Osaron was there. Holland gritted his teeth and forced himself to speak, not to the men around him, not to the king or Kell, but to the presence lurking, listening.
“Help me.”
“You are sentenced to death by the blade for your crimes, your body committed to fire …”
He could feel the oshoc’s magic weaving through his hair, brushing against his skin, but still it did not come.
“If you have any words, speak them now, but know that your fate is sealed.”
He heard a new voice, then, like a vibration in the winter air.
Beg.
Holland went still.
“Have you nothing to say?” demanded the king.
Beg.