II
The White London fortress rose in a column of sharp light out of the shadowed stone courtyard. Lila slipped into the forest of statues to fulfill her part of the plan while Kell made his way toward the waiting steps. He laid Holland’s body on a stone bench and ascended the stairs, one hand curled around the royal blade, the other around the Black London talisman.
Go ahead, Kell, Holland had goaded. Use the stone. It will consume you faster, but you might just win.
He wouldn’t. He vowed not to. His recent use in battle had only spurred the darkness on. Black threads now coiled up past his elbow and toward his shoulder, and Kell couldn’t afford to lose any more of himself. As it was, every heartbeat seemed to spread the poison more.
His pulse thudded in his ears as he climbed the steps. Kell wasn’t foolish enough to think he could sneak up on Athos—not here. He had to know that Kell was coming, yet he let him approach his doors without assault. The ten empty-eyed guards that usually flanked the stairs were gone, the way cleared for Kell. The unhindered path was itself a challenge. An act of arrogance befitting White London’s king.
Kell would rather have faced an army than the unmanned doors and whatever waited on the other side. Every forward step that went unchecked, unobstructed, only made him more nervous for the next. By the time he reached the landing at the top, his hands were trembling and his chest was tight.
He brought his shaking fingertips to the doors and forced a last breath of cold air into his lungs. And then he pushed. The castle doors opened under his touch, requiring neither force nor magic, and Kell’s shadow spilled forward into the corridor. He took a step over the threshold, and the torches of the chamber lit with pale fire, trailing up against the vaulted ceilings and down the hall and revealing the faces of the dozen guards who lined it.
Kell sucked in a breath, bracing himself, but the soldiers did not move.
“They won’t lay a hand on you,” came a silvery voice. “Not unless you try to flee.” Athos Dane stepped out of the shadows, dressed in his usual pristine white, his faded features rendered colorless by the torchlight. “The pleasure of killing you will be mine. And mine alone.”
Athos held the other half of the black stone loosely in one hand, and a thrum of power spiked through Kell’s body at the sight of it.
“Astrid will sulk, of course,” continued Athos. “She wanted you as a pet, but I have always maintained that you were more trouble alive than dead. And I think recent events would serve as evidence of that.”
“It’s over, Athos,” said Kell. “Your plan failed.”
Athos smiled grimly. “You are like Holland,” he said. “Do you know why he could not take the crown? He never relished war. He saw bloodshed and battle as means to an end. A destination. But I have always relished the journey. And I promise you, I’m going to savor this.”
His fingers tightened over his half of the stone, and smoke poured forth. Kell didn’t hesitate. He willed the armor—and the guards within—from their places against the wall and into a barricade between himself and the king. But it was not enough. The smoke went over, and under, and through, and reached for Kell, trying to twine around his arms. He willed the wall of guards forward into Athos, and sliced at the smoke with the royal sword. But the king did not drop the stone, and the magic was clever and moved around Kell’s blade, catching hold of his wrists and turning instantly into forged chains that ran not down to the floor but out to the walls on either side of the antechamber hall.
The metal pulled taut, forcing Kell’s arms wide as Athos vaulted over the guards and landed smoothly, effortlessly in front of him. The chains cinched, cutting into Kell’s already wounded wrists, and his stolen sword tumbled from his fingers as Athos produced a silver whip. It uncoiled from his hand, cascading to the floor, its forked tip licking the stone.
“Shall we see how well you suffer?”
As Athos went to raise the whip, Kell wrapped his fingers around the chains. The blood on his palm was nearly dry, but he grabbed the metal hard enough to reopen the gash.
“As Orense,” he said an instant before the whip cracked through the air, and the chains released Kell just in time for him to dodge the forked silver. He rolled, fetching up the discarded blade, and pressed his bleeding palm to the floor stones, remembering Holland’s attack.
“As Steno,” he said. The floor stone cracked into a dozen sharp shards under his fingers. Kell rose, the jagged pieces rising with him, and when he cast his hand out, they shot forward toward the king. Athos casually held up his hand in response, the stone clutched within, and a shield took shape in front of him, the slivers of rock shattering uselessly against it.
Athos smiled darkly. “Oh, yes,” he said, lowering the shield. “I’m going to enjoy this.”
*
Lila wove through the forest of statues, their heads bowed in surrender, hands up in plea.
She circled the vaulting fortress—it looked like a cathedral, if a cathedral were built on stilts and had no stained glass, only steel and stone. Still, the fortress was long and narrow like a church with one main set of doors on the north side, and three smaller, albeit still impressive, entrances at the south, east, and west sides. Lila’s heart hammered as she approached the south entrance, the path to the stairs lined by stone supplicants.
She would have preferred to scale the walls and go in by an upper window, something more discreet than marching up the stairs, but she had no rope and no hook, and even if she’d had the necessary outfittings for such a jaunt, Kell had warned her against it.
The Danes, he had told her, trusted no one, and the castle was as much trap as it was a king’s seat. “The main doors face north,” he’d said, “I’ll go by those. You enter through the south doors.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“In this place,” he’d answered, “everything is dangerous. But if the doors deny you, at least the fall won’t be as steep.”
So Lila had agreed to go by the doors despite her nagging fear that they were traps. It was all a trap. She reached the south stairs and pulled her horned mask down over her eyes before scaling the steps. At the top, the doors gave way without resistance, and again Lila’s gut told her to go, to run the other way, but for the first time in her life, she ignored the warning and stepped inside. The space beyond the doors was dark, but the moment she crossed the threshold, lanterns flared to light, and Lila froze. Dozens of guards lined the walls like living suits of armor. Their heads twisted toward the open door, toward her, and she steeled herself against the impending assault.
But it never came.
Kell had told her that White London was a throne taken—and held—by force, and that this type of ascension didn’t usually inspire loyalty. The guards here were clearly bound by magic, trapped under some kind of control spell. But that was the problem with forcing people to do things they didn’t want to do. You had to be so specific. They had no choice but to follow orders, but they probably weren’t inclined to go above and beyond them.
A slow smile drew across her lips.
Whatever order King Athos had given his guards, it didn’t seem to extend to her. Their empty eyes followed her as she moved down the hall as calmly as possible. As if she belonged there. As if she had not come to kill their queen. She wondered, as she moved past them, how many wanted her to succeed.
The halls in the red palace had been labyrinthine, but here there was a simple grid of lines and intersections, further proof that the castle had once been something like a church. One hall gave onto another before putting her out in front of the throne room, just as Kell had said it would.
But Kell had also said the hall would be empty.
And it was not.