There was no cot, so Tes sat cross-legged on the cool stone floor. A pair of manacles hung around her wrists. They weren’t spelled to dampen magic. They didn’t need to be. The entire cell was warded. The air had a leaden weight that reminded her of that other London, the one without magic, but that had been an almost pleasant absence—this felt like a wet blanket dousing flames.
She could see the spellwork of the ward—it was an odd, confusing magic required to negate itself. The lines of power hung suspended in the air, shivering in place, and when she pulled Vares from her pocket and set him on the ground, he sat there, lifeless, his skull drooping forward, the many tiny filaments that wove between his bones gone dark. Tes rose, and perched his little body between the bars, to see how far the wards reached.
“Vares?” she whispered, her tone rising in question.
He didn’t move.
She left him on the ledge, and sank back to the ground, and waited.
Tes studied her right hand, where Bex’s knife had gone through. Ran her fingers along her palm, the back of her hand. Nothing but a thin silver scar, painless and smooth. She knew the same was true for the wound in her side. It no longer hurt to breathe.
Behind her eyes, Kell Maresh buckled to one knee.
You could fix him, said a voice in her head. It sounded an awful lot like Lila Bard’s. Tes let her hands fall back into her lap.
“Kers la?” said a voice.
She looked up in time to see one of the soldiers pluck Vares from between the bars.
“Don’t—” she said, feigning protest, but the guard was already retreating with the owl. One stride, that was all it took for Vares to come back to life, his little bone wings flapping in the soldier’s hand. That told Tes something. Only the cell itself was warded.
The soldier gave a small, delighted laugh. “Hey, Hel,” he said. “It moves.”
As if on cue, Vares gave another flutter, and clicked his beak.
Traitor, thought Tes.
“Let me see,” said the second, holding out his hand.
The first shook his head. “Nas, you’re always breaking things.”
“Come on, then.”
“You have to be gentle.…”
At least the soldiers were occupied.
“Look at its eyes,” said the first. “One blue, one black. Just like the prince.”
“Doesn’t have red feathers, though.”
“Well, it might have, once. You never know.”
Tes rolled her eyes, and slumped onto her back, staring up at the barred ceiling.
“Think,” she whispered to herself.
This was just another kind of puzzle. A problem to be solved. The entire prison wasn’t warded, only the cell, but unfortunately, the cell was where she was currently housed. Which made things tricky, but not impossible. She studied the lines of the ward that ran overhead, traced the lines of it down the bars.
Wards were a kind of paradox. After all, they muted magic, but at their core, they were still active spells. That meant, even when they blocked power from being used, they had to make an exception for their own. And if there was a source of working magic, she could take it apart.
Tes sat up.
She glanced at the soldiers, who were now sitting on a bench, Vares perched between them, their attention wholly on the occasional movements of the dead owl. Tes turned around, putting her back to them, her attention on the bars at the other side of the cell. She rose and approached the bars, got close enough to study the iron-colored threads that wound around the cell. Sure enough, unlike her magic, which was pinned in place, the power here was flowing.
Tes reached out her cuffed hands, and rested them against the bars, as if bored. But as her fingers met the steel, she hooked one of those iron threads, and pulled and— A spasm tore through her body, the air forced from her lungs as the world went white. The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back on the cell floor, ears ringing. Tes coughed, and curled in against the pain as she tried to breathe.
“Shouldn’t do that,” said one of the soldiers blandly.
Tes groaned and sat up. The two men were now feeding Vares bites of sweetcake.
“Are you hungry, little Kell?” cooed one as the owl clacked its beak, and the crumbs tumbled through.
Her stomach growled.
“Excuse me,” she called out to the soldiers. “Could the human get something to eat?”
They ignored her.
“Assholes,” muttered Tes.
She sagged, letting her head rest on her folded arms as she wracked her mind, trying to think of a way out. She was still trying when a pair of boots echoed on the prison stairs.
Tes looked up, expecting to find Lila Bard, come to continue her interrogation. But when the woman stepped out of the shadows, the lanterns caught on a different face.
The two soldiers shot to their feet.
“Mas res,” they said, and Tes realized she was staring at the queen.
VI
Kell lay on the sofa, his coat cast off, and a cold cloth over his eyes.
The pain was receding like a tide, leaving only a weary ache in its wake. He didn’t need to see the king’s chamber to paint the picture in his mind. The slosh of spirits and scrape of glass as Rhy poured a drink from a decanter. Lila’s irritated steps as she paced the floor, each clipped stride a rebuke, the brief muffling of her boots when they crossed from stone to silk and back again.
“Judging by the soreness in my jaw,” said Rhy, “I’m guessing you’ve had a busy day.”
“Indeed,” said Kell. “There’s an inn that will need some reconstruction.”
The doors swung open, and Alucard swept in. “You left me waiting in that ruined shop,” he said. “Gone to fetch something, you said. If a crow hadn’t told me you were here, I’d still be standing around, kicking stones.”
“Apologies,” said Lila blandly. “I was busy getting my hands on the apprentice from Haskin’s. And the persalis, too.”
Alucard’s boots stopped abruptly. “You succeeded?”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“Where are they, then?”
“Lila threw the apprentice in a prison cell,” offered Kell.
“For safekeeping,” she cut in. “As for the persalis, it was, regrettably, destroyed.”
“Are you sure?” asked Rhy.
“I watched it burn,” said Lila.
“A decoy?” asked Alucard.
Kell could practically hear Lila grind her teeth. “Apparently not. I searched her, to be sure. Found nothing but a dead owl.”
“Excuse me?” said Rhy and Alucard at the same time.
“Apparently it’s a pet. It has a blue eye and a black eye and she calls it Vares.”
“I can’t decide,” said Rhy, “whether that’s charming or creepy.”
“Both,” said Kell and Lila at the same time.
“There’s more,” she went on. “She’s like you, Alucard.”
“Devastatingly handsome?” he asked, pouring a drink. “Utterly charming?”
“Humble?” added Rhy.
“She can see magic.”
Kell heard the glass stop halfway to Alucard’s mouth. “Really?”
“And unlike you,” he added, “she can touch it.”
Kell didn’t need to see Alucard’s face, but he found he wanted to. He dragged the cold cloth from his eyes, and flinched. The sun was sinking beyond the windows, shards of light knifing through the room.
“How does it feel?” he asked. “To know you’re not the best at something? That there’s someone out there who can actually put that power to good use?”
Alucard glared at Kell. It was worth opening his eyes for that. It made him feel just the slightest bit better. Until Lila ruined it by saying, “She can heal Kell’s magic.”
Rhy’s head jerked up.
Kell sighed, running a hand through his hair. “She didn’t say that.”
“She didn’t have to. She’s a fixer. She can fix this.” Lila gestured at Kell. “Fix you.”
“Let it go,” he said wearily.
“No. You may be content to live like this, but I won’t watch you—”
“You think I relish my condition?”
“I think you are resigned to it,” said Lila. “I think you have been burned by magic so badly that now you shy away from any source of heat.”
“It is not the magic that stops me.” He felt his throat tighten around the words. “I would give anything to be severed from this pain, one way or another. Every day, I pray it will hurt less, that there will come a day when I no longer reach for magic, even though the thought of living without it makes me wish that I were dead.”