What was Lila doing here? How had she gotten from the Veil to his own abandoned estate?
Alucard looked around. They were standing in the front great room, just beyond the foyer. A corridor vanished to the right, and straight ahead a staircase led up to the second floor. If they continued past those stairs, deeper into the house, on the right would be his father’s office. On the left, a sitting room with a large stone hearth.
Alucard pulled off his own mask, casting it aside as he helped Kell the rest of the way to his feet.
“Get up,” he said. “Something is wrong.”
Kell fought to steady his breathing. He stared down at the black ring, still clutched in his hand.
“It should have taken me to her,” he said. “Or at least, to the other band.”
He looked around, then turned, and started down the hall.
“Wait,” hissed Alucard, as if afraid the slightest motion would wake the sleeping house. Kell didn’t go far, only a few strides, then knelt, and when he stood again, Alucard saw what he was holding: the other ring, hanging from a broken leather cord.
At that moment, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
Alucard went very still. He wanted to believe it was a shadow. A demon. A specter, haunting his dreams. But Berras Emery was none of those things.
He was a man, and he was coming down the stairs.
“Well, well, well,” he said, punctuating each word with the thud of his boots. “Look who finally decided to come home.”
He hadn’t noticed Kell, and for once the Antari had the sense to keep his mouth shut. Alucard glanced toward him, a look that said Go. A look that said Find her. A look that said, This is my fight.
Kell retreated into the shadows.
And Alucard stepped forward, into the light, to face his brother.
VII
Few things could knock Alucard off guard, but Berras Emery was one of them. He was so thrown by his brother’s appearance on the stairs that it took him a moment to notice the air around him, the way it shone, not with Berras’s dull green threads, but a web of blazing silver, bursting from the golden ring on his right hand. The one that had vanished from the queen’s workshop. The one that now granted Berras Antari magic.
Lila’s magic.
“I’ve been waiting for this, little brother.”
“You knew where I was,” said Alucard. “You could have come to visit.”
Berras reached the bottom of the stairs. “Hiding behind your palace walls.”
“Is that why you wanted the persalis?” asked Alucard.
Berras didn’t deny it. Didn’t feign ignorance about the doormaker, or the Hand, or the plot to kill the royal family. Alucard’s family. He just looked down at the golden ring on his thumb, and smiled.
“I wonder which element I’ll use.”
Alucard took a small step back, the groan of the floorboards concealing the way they shuddered as he pulled against them, drawing not on the wood but the packed earth below.
“I thought you favored your fists?” he said, dragging the soil up between the planks of wood as Berras flexed, and the silver magic brightened in warning.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Berras. “When I end your life, it will be with my own hands. But first—”
Alucard felt the brush of someone else’s will, a fist that tried to close around his bones, but he moved, just in time, threw up his hand, and the dirt came with it, a cloud of dust that blocked Berras’s view.
The grip fell away and he lunged, intending to circle his brother. To attack him from behind. If he couldn’t see him—a massive hand shot through the cloud, and closed around Alucard’s throat, slamming him back into the nearest wall. The cloud crumbled, blown away, revealing Berras, the silver threads dancing in his slate-blue eyes.
“Amazing,” he said. “I can feel your magic. It’s racing, with your panicked heart.” His fingers tightened, a crushing force. “You’re scared.” He leaned closer. “You should be scared. You—”
Alucard grabbed the air in Berras’s lungs, and squeezed, choking off the words.
In response, his brother slammed him against the wall again, but Alucard didn’t let go. Even though he couldn’t breathe, even though his own head was beginning to spin—he crushed the air from the other man’s lungs, until, at last, he felt Berras’s fingers weaken a little around his throat. He would have to let go, thought Alucard. He would—but then Berras grinned, a feral thing full of teeth, and reared back, and threw Alucard into the wall hard enough that it crumbled, and he went crashing back, into the dark.
* * *
The door swung open, and Lila dragged her head up, hoping to see Kell.
She was disappointed.
The hired killer—the one with the black braid, Bex—ambled in, looking at Lila like she was a gift, wrapped and set beneath a Christmas tree. “Bad night?”
Lila tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. “Not sure if you’ve heard,” she said, “but you have shit taste in friends.”
“Who said they were my friends?”
Lila rolled her neck. “Then the company you keep.” The wood cut into her arms. She couldn’t move. She knew—she’d been trying for the last few minutes.
“I’m curious,” she said, trying to hide how hard it was to breathe. “What do you have against the crown?”
“Me? Nothing,” said Bex. “But a job is a job, and in my world, coin is king. Now,” she added, running her hand over the bracer on her forearm. The metal peeled away into a blade. “I guess it’s time we finish what we started.”
“Sure,” said Lila. “Just let me up.”
Bex chuckled. She brought her boot up to the chair, and leaned in. “I don’t think so.”
“Then it’s hardly a fair fight.”
Bex shrugged, and said, “No fight is truly fair.” And Lila thought, under different circumstances, they might have gotten along quite well. Hell, they might even have been friends. Or at least, the kind of acquaintances that didn’t try to kill each other.
But Bex’s blade came to rest against her cheek. It bit, the pain a whisper compared to everything else, but she felt the bead run like a tear down her face.
“Antari blood is worth a lot,” she said. “Do you really want to waste it?”
A smile twitched at the corner of Bex’s mouth. “You’re right.” The blade vanished from Lila’s cheek as she turned, moving toward a pitcher on the wall. She lifted the vessel, dumping the contents onto the floor.
“This will do,” she said. Her back was to the door, so she didn’t see what Lila did.
She sighed in relief. “You came.”
Kell stepped into the room, the black ring’s cord swinging from his fingers. “You called.” He smiled a little as he said it. That smile felt nice. Even if it faded as he noticed Bex against the wall.
“How sweet,” said the assassin, setting the pitcher down again. “But I’m afraid you’re interrupting.”
Kell looked to Lila, as if wondering why she was bound to a chair, or rather, why she was still bound, why she hadn’t used her ample magic to get herself free. And since there was no time to explain, she simply said, “This one’s all yours.”
Mercifully, Kell didn’t ask. He just drew his sword, and shifted, putting himself between Lila and Bex.
“Again, the blades,” said Bex with a smirk. “Careful, Antari, someone will wonder what’s happened to your magic.”
Lila saw Kell’s shoulders stiffen, and in that moment, Bex attacked.
She lunged toward his chest, only to drop her knife at the last instant, into her other hand, intending to drive it up from below, but Lila had taught Kell that move, one of a hundred in their sparring sessions, and so he was there, cutting downward before the blade could slice his front.
The swords clashed, and scraped, searching for skin and finding only steel.
She’d taught him well. All those months aboard the Barron, in sunshine and in rain, training the Antari out of Kell, stripping him of everything but sword, and speed. He moved as fast as Bex, even as her metal became molten, changing form, multiplying. He moved with all the grace of a born fighter.