But Holland shook his head. “You would know.” His mouth was a small, bitter line. “The magic in that place is not subtle. It has a mind and a will of its own.” He studied the altar. “Trust me,” he muttered, and her mind went to the writings in his room.
“The ten days,” she said. “The ten days you vanished from the world. That is where you went.”
Holland did not look at her. “I would have done anything, to see our world restored. And so I did.”
The worthy ruler is the one who understands the price.…
“Black London is the source of all magic,” he said. “It is a wellspring. But every drop comes at a cost.”
He told her, then, what happened in the ten days after the Danes fell, and before he took the throne. How he’d been mortally wounded, forced into Black London. How he’d lain there, lifeblood leeching into the ruined soil. How he would have died, had he not met Osaron—Osaron, the shadow king, the center of the flame that burned the world to ash, now reduced to an ember in an empty world. How he carried that ember out in his own form, to rekindle the magic of their world.
What have I done? Only what I must. Carried a spark out of the darkness to light my candle. Sheltered it with my body. Knowing I would burn.
“In the end,” he said, “it cost me everything.” He looked to the window, open onto the summer night. “But it worked.”
“And Osaron?” she asked, hating the way the word snaked across her tongue.
Holland clenched his teeth. “Osaron wanted what all flames want. To spread unchecked. To burn.” He met her gaze. “But that fire, at least, has been put out. Extinguished with my own.”
And yet, thought Kosika, you are still here.
But she said nothing.
* * *
One night, Holland told her of the other Londons.
Not of the fallen world—he did not like to speak of it—but of the other two, whose tokens she’d seen in the box. The first, and farthest, where magic was forgotten, and the other, closer, where it burned so much brighter than their own. That world, which the Danes had coveted, and so many kings and queens before them, as if its magic was a prize that could be taken back.
He told her of Kell Maresh, the Antari who called that world home. Told her of Delilah Bard, the Antari from the world beyond, who thrived despite its absent magic.
He explained how to travel between the four worlds, spoke of them as if they were doors, not lining the same hall, but set one before another, so that to reach the farthest, she would have to pass through the one that sat between. He taught her these things, as if she had any desire to set foot beyond the boundaries of her own world. But she did not.
“I don’t see the point,” she told him. “Why should I care about the other worlds?”
And for the first time, she saw a shadow of displeasure cross Holland’s face. She flinched from it, afraid that she had angered him. But then the shadow passed, and he only sighed and said, “Perhaps you will not have to.”
But he told her no more stories that night.
And the next, he wasn’t there.
Kosika dreamed of the castle as usual, searched the halls, the throne room, and the tower altar, even traipsed barefoot across the courtyard. But she couldn’t find Holland. Panic bloomed behind her ribs as she called out for her saint, her king, voice echoing through the empty halls, and she began to fear that he was gone, gone for good, that whatever had possessed this past week had been nothing but a strange and fleeting vision. The waiting place, he’d called this space, and it felt empty now, hollow in a way it had never been, and as she searched, the panic grew, and grew, and by the time she woke, it had wound itself around her ribs, made it hard to breathe.
He was gone, she thought. Gone.
Grief wrapped itself around her as she sat up, flinging off the sheets, and—
There he was.
Holland stood at the window of her chamber. It was the first time she had dreamed of him in daylight, and he looked different. The sun caught the white of his hair, and the silver of his cloak and pin, light tracing his edges even as it poured through his body, as if he were a curtain.
“There you are,” she said, relief overcoming the strange sensation of waking from one dream into another. “I have been looking everywhere.”
Holland glanced over his shoulder. “I am right here.” He turned his attention back to the window. “Come and see.”
She rose, surprised by how cold the stone floor felt on her bare feet, her senses keen even though she was still dreaming. She joined Holland at the window, felt the almost weight of his hand as it came to rest on her shoulder, the other gesturing out and down to the courtyard below. The leaves were changing on the trees, the red and gold so bright it looked like they were burning.
A moment later the door flew open behind them, and Kosika turned, Holland’s touch falling away as Nasi barreled in. There was a sweet bun in her mouth, another on a plate.
“Oh good, you’re up,” she said.
Kosika realized, with some surprise, that she was indeed awake.
Nasi flopped down on the nearest chair. “What are you doing at the window?”
She looked back, sure that she would find the room behind her empty. But Holland was still there, one hand resting on the sill.
Not a dream.
“I have never been a dream,” he said evenly, and Kosika expected Nasi to startle at the sound of his voice, but the other girl didn’t seem to notice, sprawling across the sheets in the presence of the Summer Saint.
“She cannot see me.”
His voice rang so clearly, not in Kosika’s mind but through the room itself. As if he were standing there. As if—
“Again you doubt me,” said Holland, his voice taking on a darker note.
Kosika pressed her palms against her eyes. It was one thing to see someone in your dreams, in the in-between, the shadow realm of sleep, and quite another to see them standing in the living world, especially when no one else could. She was afraid then, of what he was, and wasn’t, afraid that she wasn’t blessed, but mad.
“What’s wrong?” asked Nasi. A moment later Kosika felt cool fingers brush her forehead, and looked up into her friend’s scarred face. She wanted to tell her—but what would she say? That she was seeing phantoms? That her dreams were following her out of sleep?
Holland stepped behind Nasi, his eyes dark, impatient.
“Is your faith in me so fragile? That it bows and breaks under the slightest breeze?”
“No,” said Kosika, quickly, only to realize she’d spoken aloud. Nasi was staring at her, confused. “I don’t feel well,” she said. “Could you fetch some tea?”
Nasi searched her face another moment, then kissed her temple, and said of course. The moment she was gone, Kosika turned to face the king.
“Why can’t she see you?”
“Because I did not choose Nasi,” he said. “I chose you.” Those words, like a hand smoothing rumpled sheets. Followed too quickly by the disappointment on his face. “Tell me, Kosika, did I choose wrong?”
“No,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation.
She wanted him to be real. She wanted to believe. And as if he knew her mind, Holland stepped closer.
“Hold out your hands,” he said, and she did, cupping them before her. To her surprise, he held out his own, and brought them to rest around hers, and she could almost feel them, like a breeze brushing her knuckles, grazing her skin.
“I chose you in the Silver Wood,” he said, and as he spoke, she felt a sudden flush of heat, a warmth that kindled at her very core, spreading through her chest and down her arms to the place where Holland’s fingers swallowed hers.
“I chose you,” he said, “to be my hands.”
Something began to happen in the room around them. Crumbs of dirt rose from the floor, where they had lodged between stones, and beads of moisture squeezed themselves out of the air, and warmth dragged itself from the sunlight in the window and all these fragments gathered in the space between her palms, and began to grow. Out of everything, and out of nothing, a seed, a sprout, a sapling that threw roots down between her fingers—and his fingers—and reached its narrow limbs to the ceiling and sky as it grew in the space between their bodies. It was a silver tree, its bark tender and pale.