Holland’s blood sang, magic flooding his veins anew as the intruder’s hand tangled in his hair, wrenching his head back to expose his throat. For a single beat, he let them think they’d won, let them think it would be so easy, and could almost feel their guard lower, their tension ebb.
And then he sprang, twisting up and free in a smooth, almost careless motion and wrapping the chains around his foe’s throat before turning the vise from iron to stone. He let go and the man toppled forward, clawing uselessly at his neck as Holland drew the blade from his hip and sliced the second man’s throat.
Or tried to.
The killer was fast, dodging back one step, two, dancing around the blade the way Ojka used to, but Ojka never stumbled, and the killer did, erring just long enough for Holland to knock him over and drive the sword down through his back, skewering the man to the floor.
Holland stepped over the writhing bodies and toward the steps.
The scythe came out of nowhere, singing in its special way.
If Athos and Astrid hadn’t favored the vicious curls of steel, if Holland hadn’t dreamed of using the curved blades to cut their throats—he would have never recognized the tone, would not have known how and when to duck.
He dropped to a knee as the scythe embedded in the wall above his head, and turned just in time to catch a second blade with his bare hands. The steel cut quick and deep, even as he fought to cushion the blow, willing metal and air and bone. The killer leaned into the blade, and Holland’s blood dripped thickly to the floor, triumph turning to fear on the man’s face as he realized what he’d done.
“As Isera,” said Holland, and ice surged out from his ruined palms, swallowing blade and skin in the space of a breath.
The scythe slipped from frozen fingers, Holland’s own hands singing with pain. The cuts were deep, but before he could bind them, before he could do anything, a cord wrapped around his throat. His hands went for his neck, but two more cords came out of nowhere, cinching each wrist and forcing his arms wide.
“Hold him,” ordered an assassin, stepping over and around the few bodies littering the corridor. In one hand she held a hook. “They want the eye intact.”
Holland didn’t lash out. He went still, taking stock of their weapons and counting the lives he’d add to his list.
As the killer stalked toward him, his hands began to prickle with unfamiliar heat. The echo of someone else’s magic.
Lila.
Holland smiled, wrapped his fingers around the ropes, and pulled—not on the cords themselves, but on the other Antari’s spell.
Fire erupted down the ropes.
The twisted threads snapped like bones, and Holland was free. With a slash of his hand, the lanterns shattered, the corridor went dark, and he was on them.
V
The Sea Serpents were good.
Frighteningly good.
Certainly better than the Copper Thieves, better than all the pirates Lila had come across in those months at sea.
The Serpents fought like it mattered.
Fought like their lives were on the line.
But so did she.
Lila ducked as a curved blade embedded itself in the mast behind her, spun away from a sword as it cut the air. Someone tried to loop a cord around her throat, but she caught it, twisted free, and slid her knife between a stranger’s ribs.
Magic thudded through her veins, drawing the ship in lines of life. The Serpents moved like shadows, but to Lila, they shone with light. Her blades slipped under guards, found flesh, freed blood.
A fist caught her jaw, a knife grazed her thigh, but she didn’t stop, didn’t slow. She was humming with power, some of it hers and some of it borrowed and all of it blazing.
Blood ran into Lila’s good eye, but she didn’t care because every time she took a life, she saw Lenos.
Lenos, who’d feared her.
Lenos, who’d been kind despite that.
Lenos, who’d called her a portent, a sign of change.
Lenos, who’d seen her, before she knew to recognize herself. Lenos, who’d died with a barb in his chest and the same sad confusion she’d felt in the alley at Rosenal, the same horrible understanding scrawled across his face,
She could feel Kell and Holland fighting too, on opposite sides of the ship, feel the flex and pull of their magic in her veins, their pain a phantom limb.
If the Serpents had magic, they weren’t using it. Perhaps they were just trying to avoid damaging the Ghost, since they’d already sunk their own ship, but Lila would be damned if she went down trying to spare this shitty little craft. Fire flared in her hands. The floorboards groaned as she pulled on them. The ship tipped violently beneath her.
She would sink the whole fucking boat if she had to.
But she didn’t get the chance. A hand shot out and grabbed her by the collar, hauling her behind a crate. She freed the knife from her hidden arm sheath, but the attacker’s other hand—so much larger than her own—caught her wrist and pinned it back against the wood beside her head.
It was Jasta, towering over her, and for a moment Lila thought the captain was trying to help, trying for some reason to pull her out of harm’s way, to spare her from the fight. Then she saw the body slumped on the deck.
Hano.
The girl’s eyes shone in the dark, open, empty, a clean cut across her throat.
Anger rolled through Lila as understanding struck. Jasta’s insistence on steering the Ghost, on going with them to the floating market. The sudden danger on the docks at Rosenal. The drinking game, earlier this evening, with its too-strong drink.
“You’re with them.”
Jasta didn’t deny it. Only flashed a ruthless smile.
Lila’s will ground against the turncoat captain’s, and the other woman was forced back, away. “Why?”
The woman shrugged. “Out here, coin is king.”
Lila lunged, but Jasta was twice as fast as she looked, and just as strong, and a second later Lila was being slammed back into the side of the ship, the rail catching her in the ribs hard enough to knock the air from her lungs.
Jasta stood exactly where she’d been before, looking almost bored.
“My orders are to kill the Arnesian princeling,” she said, freeing a blade from her hip. “No one ever told me what to do with you.”
Cold hatred surged through Lila’s veins, overtaking even the heat of power. “If you wanted to kill me, you should have done it already.”
“But I do not have to kill you,” said Jasta as the ship continued to swarm with menacing shadows. “You are a thief and I am a pirate, but we are both knives. I see it in you. You know you don’t belong. Not here, with them.”
“You’re wrong.”
“You can pretend all you like,” sneered Jasta. “Change your clothes. Change your language. Change your face. But you will always be a knife, and knives are good for one thing and one thing only: cutting.”
Lila let her hands fall back to her side, as if considering the traitor’s words. Blood dripped from her fingers, and her lips moved slowly, almost imperceptibly, the words—As Athera— lost beneath Jasta’s preening and the clash of metal to every side.
Lila raised her voice. “Maybe you’re right.”
Jasta’s smile widened. “I know how to spot a knife, always have. And I can teach you—”
Lila clenched her fist, pulling on the wood, and the crates behind Jasta slammed forward. The woman spun, tried to dodge, but Lila’s whispered magic had worked—As Athera, to grow—and the ship boards had branched up over Jasta’s boots while she was gloating. She went crashing to the deck beneath the heavy boxes.
Jasta let out a strangled curse in a language Lila didn’t speak, her leg pinned beneath the weight, the snap of bone hanging on the air.
Lila squatted in front of her.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said again, lifting her blade to Jasta’s throat. “And maybe you’re wrong. We don’t choose what we are, but we choose what we do.” The knife was poised to bite in.
“Make sure you cut deep,” goaded Jasta as blood welled around the tip, spilling in thin lines down her throat.
“No,” said Lila, withdrawing.
“You won’t kill me?” she sneered.
“Oh, I will,” said Lila. “But not until you tell me everything.”
VI
The ship was blood and steel and death.
And then it wasn’t.