Lila exhaled a shaky cloud. “Noted.”
The cold roof burned against his flushed skin, but Kell didn’t move, not right away. He couldn’t—couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, couldn’t bring himself to do anything but look up and focus on the stars. Delicate dots of light against a blue-black sky—his sky—lined with clouds, their edges tinged red from the river, everything so normal, untouched, oblivious, and suddenly he wanted to scream because even though Lila had healed his body, he still felt broken and terrified and hollow and all he wanted to do was close his eyes and sink again, to find that dark and silent place beneath the surface of the world, the place where Rhy—Rhy—Rhy—
He forced himself to sit up.
He had to find Osaron.
“Kell,” started Lila, but he was already pushing himself forward off the roof, dropping to the street below. He could have summoned the wind to ease the fall, but he didn’t, barely felt the pain lancing up his shins when he landed on the stones. A moment later he heard the soft whoosh of a second body, and Lila landed in a crouch beside him.
“Kell,” she said again, but he was already crossing to the nearest wall, digging his knife from his coat pocket and carving a fresh line in his newly healed skin.
“Dammit, Kell—” She caught his sleeve, and there he was again, staring into those brown eyes—one whole, the other shattered. How could he have known? How could he have not?
“What do you mean, Holland’s back?”
“He—” Something splintered inside him, and Kell was back in the courtyard with the red-haired woman—Ojka—following her through a door in the world, into a London that made no sense, a London that should have been broken but wasn’t, a London with too much color—and there stood the new king, young and healthy, but unmistakable. Holland. Then, before Kell could process the Antari’s presence—the horrible cold of the spelled collar, the stunning pain of being torn away from himself, away from everything, the metal cage cutting into his wrists. And the look on Holland’s face as it became someone else’s, the jagged sound of Kell’s own voice pleading as the second heart failed within his chest and the demon turned away and—
Kell recoiled suddenly. He was back in the street, blood dripping from his fingers, and Lila was inches from his face, and he couldn’t tell if she’d kissed him or struck him, only knew his head was ringing and something deep inside him was screaming still.
“It’s him,” he said, hoarsely, “but it’s not. It’s—” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Lila. Somehow Holland made it to Black London, and something got inside. It’s like Vitari but worse. And it’s … wearing him.”
“So the real Holland is dead?” asked Lila as he drew a sigil on the stones.
“No,” said Kell, taking her hand. “He’s still in there somewhere. And now they’re here.”
Kell pressed his bloody palm flat to the wall, and this time when he said the spells, the magic rose effortlessly, mercifully, to his touch.
VIII
Emira refused to leave Rhy’s side.
Not when his screams gave way to hitching sobs.
Not when his fevered skin went pale, his features slack.
Not when his breathing stopped and his pulse failed.
Not when the room went still, and not when it exploded into chaos, and the furniture shook, and the windows cracked, and the guards had to force Alucard Emery from the bed, and Maxim and Tieren tried to draw her hands away from his body, because they didn’t understand.
A queen could leave her throne.
But a mother never leaves her son.
“Kell will not let him die,” she said in the quiet.
“Kell will not let him die,” she said in the noise.
“Kell will not let him die,” she said, over and over to herself when they stopped listening.
The room was a storm, but she sat perfectly still beside her son.
Emira Maresh, who saw the cracks in beautiful things, and moved through life afraid of making more. Emira Nasaro, who hadn’t wanted to be queen, hadn’t wanted to be responsible for legions of people, their sorrows, their follies. Who’d never wanted to bring a child into this dangerous world, who now refused to believe that her strong and beautiful boy … her heart …
“He is dead,” said the priest.
No.
“He is dead,” said the king.
No.
“He is dead,” said every voice but hers, because they didn’t understand that if Rhy was dead, then so was Kell, and that wouldn’t happen, that couldn’t happen.
And yet.
Her son wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing. His skin, so newly cool, had taken on a horrible grey pallor, his body skeletal and sunken, as if he’d been gone for weeks, months, instead of minutes. His shirt lay open, revealing the seal against his chest, the ribs so wrongly visible beneath his once-brown skin.
Her eyes blurred with tears, but she wouldn’t let them fall, because crying would mean grieving and she wouldn’t grieve her son because he was not dead.
“Emira,” pleaded the king as she bowed her head over Rhy’s too-still chest.
“Please,” she whispered, and the word wasn’t for fate, or magic, the saints or the priests or the Isle. It was for Kell. “Please.”
When she dragged her eyes up, she could almost see a glint of silver in the air—a thread of light—but with every passing second, the body on the bed bore less resemblance to her son.
Her fingers moved to brush the hair from Rhy’s eyes, and she fought back a shudder at the brittle locks, the papery skin. He was falling apart before her eyes, the silence punctuated only by the dry crack of settling bones, the sound like embers in a dying fire.
“Emira.”
“Please.”
“Your Majesty.”
“Please.”
“My queen.”
“Please.”
She began to hum—not a song, or a prayer, but a spell, one she learned when she was just a girl. A spell she’d sung to Rhy a hundred times when he was young. A spell for sleep. For gentle dreams.
For release.
She was nearly to the end when the prince gasped.
IX
One moment Alucard was being dragged from the prince’s room, and the next he was forgotten. He didn’t notice the sudden absence of weight on his arms. Didn’t notice anything but the glitter of luminescent threads and the sound of Rhy’s breath.
The prince’s gasp was soft, almost inaudible, but it rippled through the room, picked up by every body, every voice as the queen and the king and the guards inhaled in shock, in wonder, in relief.
Alucard braced himself in the doorway, his legs threatening to give.
He’d seen Rhy die.
Seen the last threads vanish into the prince’s chest, seen the prince go still, seen the impossible, immediate decay.
But now, as he watched, it was undone.
Before his eyes, the spell returned, a flame coaxed suddenly back from embers. No, from ash. The threads surged up like water over a broken levy before wrapping fierce, protective arms around Rhy’s body, and he breathed a second time, and a third, and between every inhale and exhale, the prince’s corpse returned to life.
Flesh grew taut over bone. Color flooded into hollow cheeks. As quickly as the prince had decayed, he now revived, all signs of pain and strain smoothed into a mask of calm. His black hair settled on his brow in perfect curls. His chest rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of deep sleep.
And as Rhy calmly slept, the room around him was plunged into a new kind of chaos. Alucard staggered forward. Voices spoke over one another, layered into meaningless sound. Some shouted and others whispered words of prayer, blessings for what they’d just seen, or protection from it.
Alucard was halfway to Rhy’s side when King Maxim’s voice cut through the noise.
“No one is to speak of this,” he said, his voice unsteady as he drew himself to full height. “The winner’s ball has started, and it must finish.”
“But, sir,” started a guard as Alucard reached Rhy’s bed.