Kell knew what he had to do. Some part of him had known since the moment the stone had passed into his hands.
“It belongs in Black London,” he said. “I have to take it back.”
Lila cocked her head. “But how can you? You don’t know what’s left of it, and even if you did, you said the world was sealed off.”
“I don’t know what’s left of it, no, but Antari magic was originally used to make the doors between the worlds. And Antari magic would have been used to seal them shut. And so it stands to reason that Antari magic could open them again. Or at least create a crack.”
“Then why haven’t you?” challenged Lila, a glint in her eye. “Why hasn’t anyone? I know you’re a rare breed, but you cannot tell me that in the centuries since you locked yourselves out, no Antari has been curious enough to try and get back in.”
Kell considered her defiant smile, and was grateful, for humanity’s sake, that she lacked the magic to try. As for Kell, of course he’d been curious. Growing up, a small part of him never believed Black London was real, or that it had ever been—the doors had been sealed for so long. What child didn’t wish to know if his bedtime stories were the stuff of fiction or of truth? But even if he’d wanted to break the seal—and he didn’t, not enough to risk the darkness on the other side—he’d never had a way.
“Maybe some were curious enough,” said Kell. “But an Antari needs two things to make a door: the first is blood, the second is a token from the place they want to go. And as I told you, the tokens were all destroyed.”
Lila’s eyes widened. “But the stone is a token.”
“The stone is a token,” echoed Kell.
Lila gestured to the wall where Kell had first come in. “So you open a door to Black London, and what? Throw the stone in? What on earth have you been waiting for?”
Kell shook his head. “I can’t make a door from here to there.”
Lila let out an exasperated noise. “But you just said—”
“The other Londons sit between,” he explained. A small book rested on the table by the bed. He brushed his thumb over the pages. “The worlds are like pieces of paper,” he said, “stacked one on top of the other.” That’s how he’d always thought of it. “You have to move in order.” He pinched a few pages between his fingers. “Grey London,” he said, letting one fall back to the stack. “Red London.” He let go of a second. “White London.” The third page fluttered as it fell. “And Black.” He let the rest of the pages fall back to the book.
“So you’ll have to go through,” said Lila.
It sounded so simple when she put it like that. But it wouldn’t be. No doubt the crown was searching for him in Red London, and saints only knew who else (had Holland compelled others there? Were they searching, too?), and without his pendants, he’d have to hunt down a new trinket to get from there to White London. And once he made it that far—if he made it that far—and assuming the Danes weren’t on him in an instant, and assuming he was able to overcome the seal and open a door to Black London, the stone couldn’t simply be thrown in. Doors didn’t work that way. Kell would have to go with it. He tried not to think about that.
“So,” said Lila, eyes glittering. “When do we go?”
Kell looked up. “We don’t.”
Lila was leaning back against the wall, just beside the place he’d cuffed her to the wood—the board was ripped and ruined where she’d hacked herself free—as if reminding him, both of his actions, and of hers.
“I want to come,” she insisted. “I won’t tell you where the stone is. Not until you agree to let me.”
Kell’s hands curled into fist. “Those binds you summoned up for Holland won’t hold. Antari magic is strong enough to dispel them, and once he wakes, it won’t take him long to realize that and free himself and start hunting us down again. Which means I don’t have time for games.”
“It’s not a game,” she said simply.
“Then what is it?”
“A chance.” She pushed off the wall. “A way out.” Her calm shifted, and for a moment Kell glimpsed the things beneath. The want, the fear, the desperation.
“You want out,” he said, “but you have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I want to come.”
“You can’t,” he said, pushing to his feet. A shallow wave of dizziness hit him, and he braced himself against the bed, waiting for it to pass.
She gave a mocking laugh. “You’re in no shape to go alone.”
“You can’t come, Lila,” he said again. “Only Antari can move between the worlds.”
“That rock of mine—”
“It’s not yours.”
“It is right now. And you said yourself, it’s pure magic. It makes magic. It will let me through.” She said it as if she were certain.
“What if it won’t?” he challenged. “What if it isn’t all-powerful? What if it’s only a trinket to conjure up small spells?” But she didn’t seem to believe him. He wasn’t sure he believed himself. He had held the stone. He had felt its power, and it felt limitless. But he did not wish for Lila to test it. “You cannot know for sure.”
“That’s my risk to take, not yours.”
Kell stared at her. “Why?” he asked.
Lila shrugged. “I’m a wanted man.”
“You’re not a man.”
Lila flashed a hollow smile. “The authorities don’t know that yet. Probably why I’m still wanted instead of hanged.”
Kell refused to let it go. “Why do you really want to do this?”
“Because I’m a fool.”
“Lila—”
“Because I can’t stay here,” she snapped, the smile gone from her face. “Because I want to see the world, even if it’s not mine. And because I will save your life.”
Madness, thought Kell. Absolute madness. She wouldn’t make it through the door. And even if the stone worked, even if she somehow did, what then? Transference was treason, and Kell was fairly certain that law extended to people, particularly fugitives. Smuggling a music box was one thing, but smuggling a thief was quite another. And smuggling a relic of Black London? chided a voice in Kell’s head. He rubbed his eyes. He could feel hers fixed on him. Treason aside, the fact remained that she was a Grey-worlder; she didn’t belong in his London. It was too dangerous. It was mad, and he’d be mad to let her try … but Lila was right about one thing. Kell did not feel strong enough to do this alone. And worse, he did not want to. He was afraid—more afraid than he wanted to admit—about the task ahead of him, and the fate that waited at its end. And someone would need to tell the Red throne—tell his mother and father and Rhy—what had happened. He could not bring this danger to their doorstep, but he could leave Lila there to tell them of it.
“You don’t know anything about these worlds,” he said, but the fight was bleeding out of his voice.
“Sure I do,” countered Lila cheerfully. “There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,” she recited, ticking them off on her fingers. “See? I’m a fast learner.”
You’re also human, thought Kell. A strange, stubborn, cutthroat human, but human all the same. Light, thin and watered down by rain, was beginning to creep into the sky. He couldn’t afford to stand here, waiting her out.
“Give me the stone,” he said, “and I’ll let you come.”
Lila bit back a sharp laugh. “I think I’ll hold on to it until we’re through.”
“And if you don’t survive?” challenged Kell.
“Then you can raid my corpse,” she said drily. “I doubt I’ll care.”
Kell stared at her, at a loss. Was her bravado a front, or did she truly have so little to lose? But she had a life, and a life was a thing that could always be lost. How could she fear nothing, even death?
Are you afraid of dying? Holland had asked him in the alley. And Kell was. Had always been, ever since he could remember. He feared not living, feared ceasing to exist. Lila’s world may believe in Heaven and Hell, but his believed in dust. He was taught early that magic reclaimed magic, and earth reclaimed earth, the two dividing when the body died, the person they had combined to be simply forfeit, lost. Nothing lasted. Nothing remained.
Growing up, he had nightmares in which he suddenly broke apart, one minute running through the courtyard or standing on the palace steps, the next scattered into air and ash. He’d wake sweat-soaked and gasping, Rhy shaking his shoulder.
“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” he asked Lila now.
She looked at him as if it were a strange question. And then she shook her head. “Death comes for everyone,” she said simply. “I’m not afraid of dying. But I am afraid of dying here.” She swept her hand over the room, the tavern, the city. “I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
Kell considered her for a long moment. And then he said, “Very well.”
Lila’s brow crinkled distrustfully. “What do you mean, ‘very well’?”
“You can come,” clarified Kell.
Lila broke into a grin. It lit up her face in a whole new way, made her look young. Her eyes went to the window. “The sun is almost up,” she said. “And Holland’s likely looking for us by now. Are you well enough to go?” she asked.
It’s really quite hard to kill Antari.
Kell nodded as Lila pulled the cloak around her shoulders and holstered her weapons, moving with brisk, efficient motions, as if afraid that if she took too long, he would revoke the offer. He only stood there, marveling.
“Don’t you want to say good-bye?” he asked, gesturing at the floorboards and somewhere beneath them, Barron.
Lila hesitated, considering her boots and the world below them. “No,” she said softly, her voice uncertain for the first time since they’d met.