“Thank you,” said Kell, accepting the square of cloth, “my queen.”
And then, to his surprise, she reached out and placed her other hand against his face, the way she had so many times, when he’d returned from one of his trips, a silent question in her eyes. Are you all right?
But now, the question altered, Will we be all right?
He nodded once, leaning into her touch.
“Come home,” she said softly.
Kell found her gaze again. “I will.”
He was the first to pull away, the queen’s fingers slipping from his jaw to his shoulder to his sleeve as he left. I will come back, he thought, and for the first time in a long time, he knew it was the truth.
*
Kell knew what he had to do next.
And knew Lila wouldn’t be happy about it.
He headed toward the royal cells, and was nearly there when he felt the gentle smoothing of his pulse, the blanket of calm around his shoulders that came with the priest’s presence. Kell’s steps faltered but didn’t stop as Tieren fell in step beside him. The Aven Essen said nothing, and the silence dragged like water around Kell’s limbs.
“It’s not what you think,” he said. “I’m not running away.”
“I never said you were.”
“I’m not doing this because I want to go,” continued Kell. “I would never—” He stumbled over the words—there was a time when he would have, when he had. “If I thought the city would be safer with me in it—”
“You’re hoping to lure the demon away.” It wasn’t a question.
At last, Kell’s steps dragged to a stop. “Osaron wants, Tieren. It is his nature. Holland was right about that. He wants change. He wants power. He wants whatever isn’t. We made an offering, and he scorned it, tried to claim my life instead. He doesn’t want what he has, he wants to take what he doesn’t.”
“And if he chooses not to follow you?”
“Then you put the city to sleep.” Kell set off again, determined. “Deprive him of every puppet, every person, so that when we return with the Inheritor, he has no choice but to face us.”
“Very well….” said Tieren.
“Is this where you tell me to be safe?”
“Oh,” said the priest, “I think the time for that is gone.”
They walked together, Kell stopping only when he reached the door that led down into the prison. He brought his hand to the wood, fingers splayed across the surface.
“I keep wondering,” he said softly, “if all of it is my fault. Where does it start, Tieren?” He looked up. “With Holland’s choice, or with mine?”
The priest looked at him, eyes bright within his tired face, and shook his head. For once, the old man didn’t seem to have the answer.
II
Delilah Bard did not like horses.
She’d never liked them, not when she only knew them for their snapping teeth, and their flicking tails, and their stomping hooves, and not when she found herself on the back of one, the night racing past so fast it blurred around her, and not now as she watched a pair of silver-scarred guards saddle up three for their ride to the port.
As far as she was concerned, nothing with so little brain should have so much force.
Then again, she could say the same about half the tournament magicians.
“If you look at animals like that,” said Alucard, clapping her on the shoulder, “it’s no wonder they hate you.”
“Yes, well, then the feeling is mutual.” She glanced around. “No Esa?”
“My cat dislikes horses almost as much as you do,” he said. “I left her in the palace.”
“God help them all.”
“Chatter chatter,” said Jasta in Arnesian, her mane of hair pulled back beneath a traveling hood. “Do you always prattle on in that high tongue?”
“Like a songbird,” preened Alucard, looking around. “Where’s His Highness?”
“I’m right here,” said Kell, without rising to the jab. And when Lila turned toward him, she saw why. He wasn’t alone.
“No,” she snarled.
Holland stood a step behind Kell, flanked by two guards, his hands bound in iron beneath a grey half cloak. His eyes met hers, one a dazzling green, the other black. “Delilah,” he said by way of greeting.
Beside her, Jasta went still as stone.
Lenos turned white.
Even Alucard looked uncomfortable.
“Kers la?” growled Jasta.
“What is he doing here?” echoed Lila.
Kell’s brow furrowed. “I can’t leave him in the palace.”
“Of course you can.”
“I won’t.” And with those two words, she realized it wasn’t only the palace’s safety he was worried about. “He comes with us.”
“He’s not a pet,” she snapped.
“See, Kell,” said Holland evenly. “I told you she wouldn’t like it.”
“She’s not the only one,” muttered Alucard.
Jasta snarled something too low and slurred for her to hear.
“We’re wasting time,” said Kell, moving to unlock Holland’s manacles.
Lila had a knife out before key touched iron. “He stays chained.”
Holland held up his cuffed hands. “You do realize, Delilah, that these won’t stop me.”
“Of course not,” she said with a feral grin. “But they’ll slow you down long enough that I can.”
Holland sighed. “As you wish,” he said, just before Jasta slammed her fist into his cheek. His head snapped sideways and his boots slid back a step, but he didn’t fall.
“Jasta!” called Kell as the other Antari flexed his jaw and spit a mouthful of blood into the dirt.
“Anyone else?” asked Holland darkly.
“I wouldn’t mind a go—” started Alucard, but Kell cut him off.
“Enough,” he snapped, the ground rumbling faintly with the order. “Alucard, since you volunteered, Holland can ride with you.”
The captain sulked at the assignment, even as he hauled the chained Antari up onto the horse.
“Try anything …” he growled.
“And you’ll kill me?” finished Holland dryly.
“No,” said Alucard with a vicious smile. “I’ll let Bard have you.”
Lenos saddled up with Jasta, this pairing just as comical, her massive frame making the sailor seem even smaller and more skeletal. He hinged forward and patted the horse’s flank as Kell swung up into his own saddle. He was infuriatingly elegant on horseback, with the regal posture that only came, Lila expected, from years of practice. It was one of those moments that reminded her—as if she could ever forget—that Kell was in so many ways a prince. She made a mental note to tell him sometime, when she was next particularly cross.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. And this time, when he pulled her up, he seated her before him instead of behind, one arm wrapping protectively around her waist.
“Don’t stab me,” he whispered in her ear, and she wished it were full night so no one could see the color rising in her cheeks.
She cast a last look up at the palace, the dark, distorted echo stretching like a shadow at its side.
“What if Osaron follows us?” she asked.
Kell glanced back. “If we’re lucky, he will.”
“You’ve an odd notion of luck,” said Jasta, kicking her horse into motion.
Lila’s own mount lurched forward beneath her, and so did her stomach. This is not how I die, she told herself as, in a thunder of hooves and fogging breath, the horses plunged into the night.
III
It was a palace fit for a king.
Fit for a god.
A place of promise, potential, power.
Osaron strode through the great hall of his newest creation, his steps landing soundlessly on polished stone. The floor flickered beneath each stride, grass and blossom and ice born with every step, fading behind him like footsteps on sand.
Columns rose up from the floor, growing more like trees than marble pillars, their stone limbs branching up and out, flowering with dark-hued glass and fall leaves and beads of dew, and in their shining columns he saw the world as it could be. So many possible transformations, such infinite potential.