“What do you mean?” asked Rhy.
“A magician to hold the spell in place.”
“One of the priests, then—” started Maxim.
Tieren shook his head. “The demands of such a spell are too steep. The wrong mind will break….”
Understanding hit Rhy.
“No,” he said, “not you—” even as his father’s order came down:
“See it done.”
The Aven Essen nodded. “Your Majesty,” said Tieren, adding, “once it’s started, I won’t be able to help you with—”
“It’s all right,” interrupted the king. “I can finish it myself. Go.”
“Stubborn as ever,” said the old man, shaking his head. But he didn’t argue, didn’t linger. Tieren turned on his heel, robes fluttering, and called to three of his priests, who fell into his wake. Rhy hurried after them.
“Tieren!” he called. The old man slowed but didn’t stop. “What is my father talking about?”
“The king’s business is his own.”
Rhy stepped in front of him. “As the royal prince, I demand to know what he is doing.”
The Aven Essen narrowed his eyes, then flicked his fingers, and Rhy felt himself forced physically out of the way as Tieren and his three priests filed past in a flurry of white robes. He brought a hand to his chest, stunned.
“Don’t stand there, Prince Rhy,” called Tieren, “when you could help to save us all.”
Rhy pushed off the wall and hurried after them.
Tieren led the way to the guards’ hall, and into the sparring room.
The priests had stripped the space bare, all of the armor and weapons and equipment cleared save for a single wooden table on which sat scrolls and ink, empty vials lying on their sides, the dustlike contents glittering in a shallow bowl.
Even now, with the walls trembling, a pair of priests were hard at work, steady hands scrawling symbols he couldn’t read across the stone floor.
“It’s time,” said Tieren, stripping off his outer robe.
“Aven Essen,” said one of the priests, looking up. “The final seals aren’t—”
“It will have to do.” He undid the collars and cuffs of his white tunic. “I will anchor the spell,” he said, addressing Rhy. “If I stir or die, it will break. Do not let that happen, so long as Osaron’s own curse holds.”
It was all happening too fast. Rhy reeled. “Tieren, please—”
But he stilled as the old man turned and brought his weathered hands to Rhy’s face. Despite everything, a sense of calm washed through him.
“If the palace falls, get out of the city.”
Rhy frowned, focusing through the sudden peace. “I will not run.”
A tired smile spread across the old man’s face. “That is the right answer, mas vares.”
With that, his hands were gone, and the wave of calm vanished. Fear and panic surged, raging anew through Rhy’s blood, and when Tieren crossed into the circle of the spell, the prince fought the urge to pull him back.
“Remind your father,” said the Aven Essen, “that even kings are made of flesh and bone.”
Tieren sank to his knees in the center of the circle and Rhy was forced to retreat as the five priests began their work, moving with smooth, confident motions, as if the palace weren’t threatening to collapse around them.
One took up a bowl of spelled sand and poured the grainy contents around the traced white line of the circle. Three others took up their places as the last held a burning taper out to Rhy and explained what to do.
He cradled the small flame as if it were a life while the five priests joined hands, heads bowed, and began to recite a spell in a language Rhy himself couldn’t speak. Tieren closed his eyes, lips moving in time with the spell, which began to echo against the stone walls, filling the room like smoke.
Beyond the palace, another voice whispered through the cracks in the wards. “Let me in.”
Rhy knelt, as he’d been told to do, and touched the taper to the sand line that traced the circle.
“Let me in.”
The others continued the spell, but as the sand’s end lit like a fuse, Tieren’s lips stopped moving. He drew a deep breath, and then the old priest began to exhale slowly, emptying his lungs as the flameless fire burned its way around the circle, leaving a charred black line in its wake.
“Let me in,” snarled the voice, echoing in the room as the final inches of sand burned away and the last of the air left the priest’s lungs.
Rhy waited for Tieren to breathe again.
He didn’t.
The Aven Essen’s kneeling form slumped sideways, and the other priests were there to catch him before he hit the floor. They lowered his body to the stone, laying him out within the circle as if he were a corpse, cushioning his head, lacing his fingers. One took the taper from Rhy’s hands and nested it in the old man’s.
The flickering flame went suddenly steady.
The whole room held its breath as the palace shuddered a final time, and then went still.
Beyond the walls, the whispers and the shouts and the pounding of fists and bodies all … stopped, a heavy silence falling like a sheet over the city.
The spell was done.
VII
“Give me the ring,” said Holland.
Lila raised a brow. It wasn’t a question or a plea. It was a demand. And considering that the speaker had spent most of the trip chained in the hold, it struck her as a fairly audacious one.
Alucard, who was still cradling the silver band, started to refuse him, but Holland rolled his eyes and flicked his fingers, and the ring shot out of the captain’s hand. Lila lunged for it, but Kell caught her arm and the ring landed in Holland’s waiting palm.
He turned the band between his hands.
“Why should we let him have it?” she snarled, pulling free.
“Why?” echoed Holland as a sliver of silver came flying toward her. She plucked the second ring out of the air. A moment later, Kell caught the third. “Because I’m the strongest.”
Kell rolled his eyes.
“Want to prove it?” growled Lila.
Holland was considering his ring. “There is a difference, Miss Bard, between power and strength. Do you know what that difference is?” His eyes flicked up. “Control.”
Indignation flared like a match, not just because she hated Holland, hated what he was insinuating, but because she knew he was right. For all her raw power, it was just that, raw. Unformed. Wild.
She knew he was right, but her fingers still itched for a knife.
Holland sighed. “Your distrust is all the more reason to let me do it.”
Lila frowned. “How do you figure?”
“The original ring is the anchor.” He slipped it onto his thumb. “As such, it is bound to its copies, not the other way around.”
Lila didn’t follow. It wasn’t a feeling she relished. The only thing she relished less was the look in Holland’s eyes, the smug look of someone who knew she was lost.
“The rings will bind our power,” he said slowly. “But you can break the connection whenever you want, whereas I will be tethered to the spell.”
A cruel smile cut across Lila’s face. She clicked her tongue. “Can’t go a day without chaining yourself to someone, can y—”
He was on her in an instant, his fingers wrapped around her throat and her knife against his. Kell threw up his hands in exasperation, Jasta called out a warning about getting blood on her ship, and a second blade came to rest below Holland’s jaw.
“Now, now,” said Alucard casually, “I know, I’ve thought of killing you both, but in the interest of the greater good, let’s try to keep this civil.”
Lila lowered her knife. Holland let go of her throat.
They each took a single step back. Annoyance burned through Lila, but so did something else. It took her a second to recognize it. Shame. It sat, a cold weight, steaming in her stomach. Holland stood there, features carefully set as if the blow hadn’t landed, but it clearly had.
She swallowed, cleared her throat. “You were saying …?”
Holland held her gaze.
“I’m willing to be the anchor of our spell,” he said carefully. “As long as we three are bound, my power will be yours.”