“I simply explained that she couldn’t have them—they wouldn’t have fit—and then I gave her mine.”
Lila looked down at Kell’s bare feet, and burst into laughter. Kell was leaning over her then, pressing a hand over her mouth—You’ll wake the boat—a ghost of whisper, a caress of air—and she fell back onto the cot, taking him down with her.
“Dammit, Lila.” He caught himself just before he slammed his head against the wall. The bed really wasn’t big enough for two. “How much did you have to drink?”
Lila’s laughter died away. “Never used to drink in company,” she mused aloud. Odd to feel herself speaking even though she didn’t think to do it. The words just spilled out. “Didn’t want to get caught unawares.”
“And now?”
That flickering grin. “I think I could take you.”
He lowered himself until his hair brushed Lila’s temple. “Is that so?” But then something caught his eye through the port window. “There’s a ship out there.”
Lila’s head spun. “How can you see it in the dark?”
Kell frowned. “Because it’s burning.”
Lila was up in an instant, the world tipping beneath her bare feet. She dug her nails deep into her palms, hoping the pain would clear her head. Danger would have to do the rest.
“What does it mean?” Kell was asking, but she was already sprinting up the stairs.
“Alucard!” she called as she reached the deck.
For a brief, terrible second, the Ghost stretched quiet around her, the deck empty, and Lila thought she was too late, but there were no corpses, and a second later the captain was there, Hastra, too, still cradling his egg. Lenos appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, shoulders tensed like he’d woken from bad dreams. Kell caught up, barefoot as he tugged on his coat.
In the distance, the ship burned, a flare of red and gold against the night.
Alucard came to a halt beside her.
“Sanct,” he swore, the flames reflected in his eyes.
“Mas aven …” started Lenos.
And then he made a strange sound, like a hiccup caught in his throat, and Lila turned in time to see the barbed blade protruding from his chest before he was wrenched back over the side, and the Sea Serpents boarded the Ghost.
III
For months, Kell had trained alone beneath the royal palace, leaving his sweat and blood to stain the Basin floors. There he’d faced a hundred enemies and fought a hundred forms, sharpened his mind and his magic, learned to use anything and everything at hand, all of it preparing—not for the tournament, which he’d never thought of entering—but for this very moment. So that when death came for him again, he would be ready.
He had trained for a fight in the palace.
Trained for a fight in the streets.
Trained for a fight in daylight and in darkness.
But Kell hadn’t thought to train for a fight at sea.
Without Alucard’s power filling the sails, the canvases collapsed, twisting the Ghost so the water struck sidelong, rocking the ship as the mercenaries spilled onto the deck.
All that was left of Lenos, after the short and fleeting splash, were the drops of blood dappling the wood. A square of calm in a night turned wild—water and wind in Kell’s ears, wood and steel beneath his feet, all of it pitching and rolling as if caught in a storm. It was so much louder and sharper than those imagined battles in the Basin, so much more terrifying than those games in the Essen Tasch, that for an instant—only an instant—Kell froze.
But then the first shout cut the air, and a flash of water surged into ice as Alucard drew a blade from the dark sea, and there was no time to think, no time to plan, no time to do anything but fight.
Kell lost sight of Lila within moments, relying on the threads of her magic—the persistent hum of her power in his veins—to tell him she remained alive as the Ghost plunged into chaos.
Hastra was grappling with a shadow, his back to the mast, and Kell flicked his wrist, freeing the slivers of steel he kept sheathed within his cuff as the first two killers came for him. His steel nails flew as they had in the Basin so many times, but now they pierced hearts instead of dummies, and for every shadow he killed, another came.
Steel whispered behind him, and Kell turned in time to dodge an assassin’s knife. It still found flesh, but sliced his cheek instead of his throat. Pain registered as a distant thing, sharpened only by sea air as his fingers brushed the cut and then caught the assassin’s wrist. Ice blossomed up his arm, and Kell let go just as another shadow caught him around the waist and slammed him sideways into the ship’s rail.
The wood broke beneath the force, and the two went crashing down into the sea. The surface was a frozen wall, knocking the air from Kell’s lungs, icy water flooding in as he grappled with the killer, the churning darkness broken only by the light of the burning ship somewhere above. Kell tried to will the water calm, or at least clear it from his eyes, but the ocean was too big, and even if he’d drawn on Holland and Lila both it wouldn’t have been enough. He was running out of air, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of Rhy, a London away, gasping for breath again. He had no choice. The next time the killer slashed with a curved knife, Kell let the blow land.
A gasp escaped in a stream of air as the blade sliced his coat sleeve and bit deep into his arm. Instantly the water began to cloud with blood.
“As Steno,” he said, the words muffled by the water, his last expelled breath, but still audible and brimming with intent. The mercenary went rigid as his body turned from human flesh to stone and plummeted down toward the sea floor. Kell surged urgently upward in reflected movement and broke through the surface of the waves. From where he was, he could see the attackers’ shallow rafts, handholds spelled from wood and steel leading up from the water to the Ghost’s deck.
Kell climbed, his arm throbbing and his waterlogged clothes weighing him down with every upward step, but he made it, hauling himself over the side.
“Sir, look out!”
Kell spun as the killer came at him, but the man was drawn up short by Hastra’s sword slashing through his back. The assassin folded, and Kell found himself staring into the young guard’s terrified eyes. Blood splattered Hastra’s face and hands and curls. He looked unsteady on his feet.
“Are you hurt?” asked Kell urgently.
Hastra shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, his voice trembling.
“Good,” said Kell, retrieving the assassin’s knife. “Then let’s take back this ship.”
IV
Holland was sitting on his cot, studying the band of silver on his thumb, when he heard Lila storming up the stairs, heard the splash of something heavy breaking water, the tread of too many feet.
He rose, and was halfway to the door when the floor tilted and his vision plunged into black, all of his power bottoming out for a sudden, lurching moment.
He scrambled for strength, felt his knees hit the floor, his body a thing severed from his power as someone else pulled on his magic as if it were a rope.
For a terrifying instant, there was nothing, and then, just as suddenly, the room was back, resolving just as it had been before, only now there were shouts overhead, and a burning ship beyond the window, and someone was coming down the steps.
Holland forced himself up, his head still spinning from the shortness of magic.
He tore the abandoned chains from the wall, wrapped them around his hands, and staggered out into the corridor.
Two strangers were coming toward him.
“Kers la?” said one as he let himself stumble, fall.
“A prisoner,” said a second, seeing the glint of metal and assuming—wrongly—that Holland was still bound.
He heard the hiss of blades sliding free from sheaths as he drew his borrowed power back in like a breath.