Holland swallowed, and did something he’d never done, not in seven years of slavery and torture.
“Please,” he begged, first softly, and then louder. “Please. I will be yours.”
The darkness laughed but did not come.
Holland’s pulse began to race, the chains suddenly too tight. “Osaron,” he called out. “This body is yours. This life—what’s left of it—is yours—”
The guards were on either side of him now, gauntleted fists forcing Holland’s head forward onto the block.
“Osaron,” he growled, fighting their grip for the first time.
The laughter continued, ringing through his head.
“Gods don’t need bodies, but kings do! How will you rule without a head for your crown?”
Kell was beside him now, both hands on the sword’s hilt.
“End it,” ordered the king.
Wait, thought Holland.
“Kill him,” said Lila.
“Be still,” demanded Kell.
Holland’s vision narrowed to the wood of the platform.
“Osaron!” he bellowed as Kell’s sword sang upward.
It never came down.
A shadow swept over the balcony. One moment the sun was there, and the next, they were plunged into shade, and everyone looked up in time to see the wave of black water crest overhead and come crashing down.
Holland twisted sideways, still clinging to the stone block as the river slammed onto the platform. One of the guards was knocked over the edge, down into the roiling surf below, while the other held on to Holland.
The icy torrent knocked the blade from Kell’s hands and sent him backward across the dais, a shard of ice pinning his sleeve to the floor as the guards dove to cover the king and prince. The wave hit the steps between the platform and the balcony and splashed up, swirling first into a column, before its edges smoothed and pulled together into the shape of a man.
A king.
Osaron smiled at Holland.
“Do you see?” he said in his echoing way. “I can be merciful.”
Someone was moving across the balcony. The silver-haired magician came surging forward, the air like knives around him.
Osaron didn’t take his eyes off Holland, but he flicked his watery fingers and a spike of ice materialized, launching toward the magician’s chest. The man actually smiled as he spun around the shard, the movement light as air before shattering it with a single sharp gust.
Silver hair and swirling robes danced again toward Osaron, a blur, and then the magician slashed, one hand surrounded by a blade of wind. Osaron’s watery form parted around the magician’s wrist, then vised closed. The airborne magician slammed to a stop, pinned in the icy core of Osaron’s form. Before he could break free, the shadow king drove his own hand through the magician’s chest.
His fingers went clean through, icy black points glistening with streams of red.
“Jinnar!” screamed someone as the wind suddenly died atop the platform, and the magician collapsed, lifeless, to the ground.
Osaron shook the blood from his fingers as he climbed the steps.
“Tell me, Holland,” he said. “Do I look in need of a body?”
Using their distraction, Kell tore the icy shard free of his sleeve and threw it hard at the shadow king’s back. Holland was grudgingly, fleetingly, impressed—but it passed right through Osaron’s watery form. He turned, as if amused, to face Kell.
“It will take more than that, Antari.”
“I know,” said Kell, and Holland saw the ribbon of blood swirling in the column of water that formed Osaron’s chest the moment before Kell said, “As Isera.”
And just like that, Osaron froze.
It happened in an instant, the shadow king replaced by a statue rendered in ice.
Holland met Kell’s gaze through the frozen surface of Osaron’s torso.
He saw it first, relief turning to horror as the dead magician—Jinnar—rose to his feet. His eyes were black—not shadowed, but solid—his skin already beginning to burn with the strength of his new host. And when he spoke, a smooth, familiar voice poured out.
“It will take more than that,” said Osaron again, silver hair steaming.
Bodies were rising around him, and Holland understood too late. The wave. The water. “Kell!” he shouted. “The blood marks—”
He was cut off by a fist as the nearest guard drove a gauntleted hand into his ribs, the crimson smear on his helmet washed away by the first swell of the river. “Kneel before the king.”
The silver-scarred man and the Maresh prince both surged forward, but Kell stopped them with a jagged slash of his arm, a wall of ice surging up and cutting them off from the platform and Osaron.
Osaron, who now stood between Holland and Kell in his stolen host, his skin flaking away like curls of burning paper.
Holland forced himself up despite the weight of chains. “What a poor substitute you’ve chosen,” he said, drawing the oshoc’s attention as Kell shifted forward, blood dripping from his fingers. “How quickly it crumbles.” His voice was low amid the surge of chaos, dripping with disdain. “It is not a body for a king.”
“You would still offer yours instead,” mused Osaron. His shell was dying fast, lit by a bloodred glow that cracked along his skin.
“I do,” said Holland.
“Tempting,” said Osaron. His black eyes burned inside his skull. In a flash, he was at Holland’s side. “But I’d rather watch you fall.”
Holland felt the push before he saw the hand, felt the force against his chest and the sudden weight of gravity as the world shifted and the platform disappeared, and the chains pulled him over the edge and down, down, down into the river below.
III
Kell saw Holland fall.
One moment the Antari was there, at the edge, and the next he was gone, plunging down into the river with no magic at hand, only the cold, dead weight of the spelled iron around him. The balcony was chaos, one guard on his knees, fighting the fog, while Lila and Alucard squared off against the animated corpse of Jinnar, who was now nothing more than charred bone.
There wasn’t time to think, to wonder, to question.
Kell dove.
The drop was farther than it seemed.
The impact knocked the air from Kell’s lungs, jarring his bones, and he gasped as the river closed over him, ice-cold and black as ink.
Far below, almost out of sight, a pale form sank to the bottom of the tainted water.
Kell swam down toward Holland, lungs aching as he fought the press of the river—not only the weight of water, but Osaron’s magic, leaching heat and focus as it tried to force its way in.
By the time he reached Holland, the man was on his knees on the river floor, his lips moving faintly, soundlessly, his body weighed down by the shackles at his wrists and the steel chains around his waist and legs. The Antari struggled to his feet but couldn’t manage any further. After a brief struggle he lost his battle with gravity and sank back to his knees, driving up a cloud of silt as the irons hit the riverbed.
Kell hovered in front of him, his own coat heavy with water, its weight enough to keep him under. He drew his dagger, slicing skin before he realized the futility—the instant the blood welled, it vanished, dissipated by the current. Kell swore, sacrificing a thin stream of air as Holland struggled to hold on to the last of his own. Holland’s black hair floated in the water around his face, his eyes closed, a resignation to his posture, as if he would rather drown than return to the world above.
As if he meant to end his life here, at the bottom of the river.
But Kell couldn’t let him do that.
Holland’s eyes flashed open as Kell took hold of his shoulders, crouching to reach his wrists where they were weighted to the river floor. The Antari shook his head minutely, but Kell didn’t let go. His whole body ached from the cold and the lack of air, and he could see Holland’s chest stuttering as he fought the urge to breathe in.