“Where are you going?” snapped Kell.
“Where do you think?” She didn’t know how to explain—they had a deal, she and Alucard, even if they would never say it. They watched each other’s back. “He shouldn’t go alone.”
“Leave him,” muttered Kell.
“He has a way of getting lost,” she said, buttoning her coat. “I’m—”
“I said stay—”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Lila bristled. “Funny thing, Kell,” she said coldly. “That sounded like an order.” And before he could say anything else, Lila turned up her collar against the wind and marched out.
*
Within minutes, Lila lost him.
She didn’t want to admit it—she’d always prided herself on being a clever tail, but the streets of Rosenal were narrow and winding, full of hidden breaks and turns that made it too easy to lose sight—and track—of whoever you were trying to follow. It made sense, she supposed, in a town that catered mostly to pirates and thieves and the sort who didn’t like to be tracked.
Somewhere in that maze, Alucard had simply disappeared. Lila had given up any attempts at stealth after that, let her steps fall loud, even called his name, but it was no use; she couldn’t find him.
The sun was setting fast over the port, the last light quickly giving way to shadow. In the twilight, the edges between light and dark began to blur, and everything was rendered in flattened layers of grey. Dusk was the only time Lila truly felt the absence of her second eye.
If it had been a little darker, she would have hauled herself up onto the nearest roof and scanned the town that way, but there was just enough daylight to turn the act into display.
She stopped at the intersection of four alleys, certain she’d already come this way, and was about to give up—to turn back toward the tavern and her waiting drink—when she heard the voice.
That same voice, its melody carrying on the breeze.
How do you know when the Sarows is coming …
A flick of her wrist, and a knife dropped into her palm, her free hand already reaching for the one beneath her coat.
Footsteps sounded, and she turned, bracing for the attack.
But the alley was empty.
Lila started to straighten just as a weight hit the ground behind her—boots on stone—and she spun, jumping back as a stranger’s blade sang through the air, narrowly missing her stomach.
Her attacker smiled that rotting grin, but her eyes went to the tattoo of the dagger across his throat.
“Delilah Bard,” he growled. “Remember me?”
She twirled her blades. “Vaguely,” she lied.
In truth, she did. Not his name, that she’d never caught, but she knew the tattoo worn by the cutthroats of the Copper Thief. They had sailed under Baliz Kasnov, a ruthless pirate she’d murdered—somewhat carelessly—weeks before, as part of a bet with the crew of the Night Spire. They’d scoffed at the idea that she could take an entire ship herself.
She’d proven them wrong, won the bet, even spared most of the Thieves.
Now, as two more men dropped from the rooftops behind him, and a third emerged from the lengthening shadows, she decided that act of mercy had been a mistake.
“Four on one hardly seems fair,” she said, putting her back to the wall as two more men slunk toward her, tattoos like dark and jagged wounds beneath their chins.
That made six.
She’d counted them once before, but then she’d been counting down instead of up.
“Tell you what,” said the first attacker. “If you beg, we’ll make it quick.”
Lila’s blood sang the way it always did before a fight, clear and bright and hungry. “And why,” she said, “would I want to rush your deaths?”
“Cocky bitch,” growled the second. “I’m gonna fu—”
Her knife hissed through the air and embedded itself in his throat. Blood spilled down his front as he clawed at his neck and toppled forward, and she made it under the next man’s guard before the body hit the ground, driving her serrated blade up through his chin before the first blow caught her, a fist to the jaw.
She went down hard, spitting blood into the street.
Heat coursed through her limbs as a hand grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her feet, a knife under her chin.
“Any last words?” asked the man with the rotting teeth.
Lila held up her hands, as if in surrender, before flashing a vicious smile.
“Tyger, Tyger,” she said, and the fire roared to life.
VI
Kell and Holland sat across from each other, swathed in a silence that only thickened as Kell tried to drown his annoyance in his drink. Of all the reasons for Lila to leave, of all the people for her to go with, it had to be Emery.
Across the room a group of men were deep in their cups and singing a sea shanty of some kind.
“… Sarows is coming, is coming, is coming aboard …”
Kell finished his glass, and reached for hers.
Holland was drawing his fingers through a spill on the table, the glass in front of him untouched. Now that they were back on solid ground, the color was returning to his face, but even dressed down in winter greys with a cap pulled over his brow, there was something about Holland that drew the eye. The way he held himself, perhaps, mixed with the faintest scent of foreign magic. Ash and steel and ice.
“Say something,” Kell muttered into his drink.
Holland’s attention flicked toward him, then slid pointedly away. “This Inheritor …”
“What about it?”
“I should be the one to use it.”
“Perhaps.” Kell’s answer was simple, blunt. “But I don’t trust you.” Holland’s expression hardened. “And I’m certainly not letting Lila try her hand. She doesn’t know how to use her power, let alone how to survive getting rid of it.”
“That leaves you.”
Kell looked down into the last of his ale. “That leaves me.”
If the Inheritor worked as Tieren suggested, the device absorbed a person’s magic. But Kell’s magic was all that bound Rhy’s life to his. He’d learned that from the collar, the horrible severing of power from body, the stutter of Rhy’s failing heart. Would it be like that? Would it hurt that much? Or would it be easy? His brother had known what he would do, had given his assent. He’d seen it in Rhy’s eyes when they parted. Heard it in his voice. Rhy had made his peace long before he said good-bye.
“Stop being selfish.”
Kell’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Osaron is mine,” said Holland, finally taking up his drink. “I don’t give a damn about your self-sacrificing notions, your need to be the hero. When the time comes for one of us to destroy that monster, it is going to be me. And if you try to stop me, Kell, I’ll remind you the hard way which of us is the stronger Antari. Do you understand?”
Holland met Kell’s eyes over the glass, and beyond the words and the bravado, he saw something else in the man’s gaze.
Mercy.
Kell’s chest ached with relief as he said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” said Holland coldly. “I’m not doing this for you.”
*
In the end, Vortalis had named himself the Winter King.
“Why not summer,” Holland asked, “or spring?”
Vortalis snorted. “Do you feel warmth on the air, Holland? Do you see the river running blue? We are not in the spring of this world, and certainly not in the summer. Those are the seasons for your someday king. This is winter, and we must survive it.”