*
Kell’s body shuddered on the ground. Lila took his face in her hands. It was burning up. The veins on his throat and at his temple had darkened to black, and the strain showed in the lines of his jaw, but he wasn’t moving, wouldn’t open his eyes.
“Fight this!” she shouted as his body spasmed. “You’ve come all this way. You can’t just give up.”
His back arched against the ground, and Lila pushed open Kell’s shirt and saw black spreading over his heart.
“Dammit,” she swore, trying to pry the stone out of his hand. It wouldn’t budge.
“If you die,” she snapped, “what happens to Rhy?”
Kell’s back hit the ground, and he let out a labored breath.
Lila had recovered her weapons, and now she freed her knife, weighing it in her palm. She didn’t want to have to kill him. But she could. And she didn’t want to cut off his hand, but she certainly would.
A groan escaped between his lips.
“Don’t you fucking give up, Kell. Do you hear me?”
*
Kell’s heart stuttered, skipping a beat.
“I asked so nicely,” said Vitari, his hand still buried in Kell’s chest. “I gave you the chance to give in. You made me use force.”
Heat spread through Kell’s limbs, leaving a strange cold in its wake. He heard Lila’s voice. Far away and stretched so thin, the words, an echo of an echo, barely reached him. But he heard a name. Rhy.
If he died, so would Rhy. He couldn’t stop fighting.
“I’m not going to kill you, Kell. Not exactly.”
Kell squeezed his eyes shut, darkness folding over him.
“Isn’t there a word for this?” Lila’s voice echoed through his head. “What is it? Come on, Kell. Say the blasted word.”
Kell forced himself to focus. Of course. Lila was right. There was a word. Vitari was pure magic. And all magic was bound by rules. By order. Vitari was a creation, but everything that could be created could also be destroyed. Dispelled.
“As Anasae,” said Kell. He felt a glimmer of power. But nothing happened.
Vitari’s free hand closed around his throat.
“Did you really think that would work?” sneered the magic in Kell’s shape, but there was something in his voice and in the way he tensed. Fear. It could work. It would work. It had to.
But Antari magic was a verbal pact. He’d never been able to summon it with thought alone, and here, in his head, everything was thought. Kell had to say the word. He focused, reaching with his fading senses until he could feel his body, not as it was here in this illusion, this mental plane, but as it was in truth, stretched on the bitterly cold ground of the broken courtyard, Lila crouching over it. Over him. He clung to that chill, focusing on the way it pressed into his back. He struggled to feel his fingers, wrapped around the stone so hard that they ached. He focused on his mouth, clenched shut in pain, and forced it to unlock. Forced his lips to part.
To form the words. “As An—”
His heart faltered as Vitari’s fingers tightened around it.
“No,” growled the magic, the fear bold now, twisting his impatience into anger. And Kell understood his fear. Vitari wasn’t simply a spell. He was the source of all the stone’s power. Dispelling him would dispel the talisman itself. It would all be over.
Kell fought to hold on to his body. To himself. He forced air into his lungs and out his mouth.
“As Anas—” he managed before Vitari’s hand shifted from heart to lungs, crushing the air out of them.
“You can’t,” said the magic desperately. “I am the only thing keeping your brother alive.”
Kell hesitated. He didn’t know if that was true, if the bond he’d made with his brother could be broken. But he did know that Rhy would never forgive him for what he’d done, and it wouldn’t even matter unless they both made it through.
Kell summoned the last of his strength and focused not on Vitari trying to crush his life, or on the darkness sweeping through him, but on Lila’s voice and the cold ground and his aching fingers and his bloody lips as they formed the words.
“As Anasae.”