And then, he made a mistake.
One of Bex’s blades gashed his arm, and the sword fell from his grip, and skated across the floor, out of Kell’s reach, and into Bex’s.
He clutched his injured arm as she grinned.
“The beauty of my power,” she said, kneeling to pick up the fallen sword. “Sooner or later, all steel becomes mine.”
Her hand curled over the hilt, and Lila could almost hear Kell’s voice, in the captain’s cabin, when he’d introduced her to Kay. When she’d tried to claim one of his swords. He’d warned her not to, and still she’d grabbed the hilt, only to feel the sear of heat, the scalding pain as it burned.
Bex must have felt it now, because she gasped, and let go, dropping the blade as Kell unsheathed another, and she looked up just in time to see him drive it through her chest.
“Not every blade belongs to you,” he said, as Bex let out a wet rasp.
He drew the sword free, and she collapsed.
Lila tried to laugh, but the pain cut her off short, and then it turned into a cough, which hurt ten times worse. She gasped, tasting blood as Kell rushed toward her, hacking at the wood of the chair until she was free.
“Fucking … bracelet,” she managed, clawing at the band of gold that pressed into her skin. There was no clasp, no give. “Can’t … get it … off.”
“We’ll find a way,” he said. “But first, let’s get you up.”
He wrapped his arm around her ribs, and a pained cry tore free of her throat.
His eyes widened. “You’re hurt.”
“No shit, Kell,” she said through gritted teeth.
His fingers were already going to the tear in his sleeve. “Let me heal you.”
Lila shot him a venomous look and said, “Don’t you fucking dare.” Berras was out there somewhere, beyond the door, with Lila’s magic, and she could barely breathe, and the last thing they needed was for Kell to be crippled by the pain of mending a few ribs. After a moment, he seemed to understand, or at least, to accept that one of them had to be able to fight.
“All right,” he said. “Then lean on me.”
“I can walk,” she insisted, taking a step, only to feel her legs threaten to buckle as her broken ribs moved, and scraped inside her chest. Kell’s hand was there, gentle but firm.
“Lean on me, Lila,” he said again.
This time, grudgingly, she did.
VIII
Tes put her hands down on the table. “It’s done.”
She closed her eyes, tried to ignore the sluggish pounding of her heart, the way each pulse seemed to drag its feet.
Calin trudged across the room and stared down at the object on the desk. He cocked his head to one side in a way that reminded her of Vares. Under different circumstances, she might have found it funny. But right now, she focused all her strength on staying upright.
“Looks like a clock,” he said.
Her lungs felt heavy, but after a moment, she convinced them to inhale.
“It doesn’t matter what it looks like,” she said, the effort causing sweat to break on her skin. “Only what it is.”
She’d scribbled the spell words on a slip of paper—Erro, to open. Ferro, to close—and pushed it toward him. “The commands.” His pale gaze raked over the paper as he lifted the object. It was smaller than the last doormaker. The whole thing fit into one hand, and any other time, she would have felt proud of the work.
“Where’s the other piece?”
The words rolled over Tes, followed by a sickening horror. The other piece. The key. The final part, the one the man in the shop had never given her, the one that marked the destination. She hadn’t known about it, not when she first repaired the persalis, which was why her doormaker had cut between worlds instead of through them. She’d forgotten. She’d forgotten because she was copying her own work. She’d forgotten because this new doormaker didn’t need one.
Her gaze dropped to the cluttered table.
“Oh, that,” she said, eyes landing on one of the cogs she’d pried out of the clock. She took it up with shaking fingers, trying to pass the gesture off as careful instead of random as she held it out. “Here.”
Tes had never been a good liar, but if Calin caught the tremble in her voice, he must have assumed it was the poison. He snatched the cog, and turned away.
“Wait.” Tes rose, her legs nearly buckling beneath her. She caught herself against the table as the world tipped. “The antidote.” It was getting hard to breathe.
“Not so fast,” he said, crossing the room. “Got to make sure it works.”
He tossed the cog into the far corner, and set the clock on the floor against the wall. Tes followed, pulse flickering like a dying light inside her chest. The room swayed, and she braced herself against a chair as Calin said the word.
“Erro.”
The clock shivered on the ground.
And then it fell apart. Its wooden sides split open, and its face tipped forward, as if hinged, and out of the gaps spilled two lines of crisp white light. They burned, like fuses, spreading out to either side, and then up, tracing twin cracks through the air, until they were as tall as Calin, taller still, and then they turned again, and joined together overhead, carving the outline of the door.
The space within the doorway darkened, the wall behind the persalis blotted out, replaced by a curtain, a veil. But this time, she could see no place waiting beyond the curtain, no ghostly shimmer of another world. Only a solid, inky black.
“There,” gasped Tes. “You see? It works.”
Calin grunted, and dug a hand into his pocket, producing the antidote, the milky contents shining in the vial. But then his eyes cut to the corner, where he’d flung the cog, the cog that wasn’t a key, just a piece of metal.
“Does it?” he asked, right before he cast the antidote through the doorway.
A sob tore from Tes’s throat as the bottle disappeared into the dark. It didn’t reappear in the corner by the cog. It didn’t reappear at all. Because the door was not a door to any room, or any world. It was a door to nowhere.
And now, the antidote was gone. Her life, gone with it.
Calin rounded on her, his eyes flat with disappointment.
And in that instant, Tes did the only thing she could. She pushed him.
She was not strong enough, of course. The full force of her slamming into Calin was only enough to make him stumble half a step, more in surprise than pain. But in that half a step, his elbow met the blackened surface of the door, and the door did a strange thing. It grabbed hold of Calin.
And dragged him through.
It happened so fast. A moment’s struggle, boots sliding on wood, hands clawing for purchase, and then he was gone, voice swallowed up halfway through a shout, words cut off as cleanly as fingers beneath a sharpened knife.
Tes’s legs folded. She sank to her knees on the damp wood floor. She should have been devastated. Perhaps it was the poison’s work, but in that moment, she felt only grim resolve. She’d done the right thing.
“Ferro,” she said to the door.
Close.
But the door did not.
Tes stared at the veil of darkness inside the glowing frame. The line of light that traced its edges should have split. The veil should have fallen away as the spell retreated back into the clock.
“Ferro,” she said again, pushing the last of her strength into the word, making it solid, making it strong.
The door to nowhere stared defiantly back.
And then, she noticed the breeze.
There were no windows in this room, and yet, a gentle wind had started. It was not flowing out from the door. It was going toward it, dragging at the air, and the room, and everything in it. The scraps she’d tossed aside while she was working began to shudder and drift across the floor like leaves, vanishing into the open black mouth of the void.
Tes crawled forward to the open clock, wrapped her fingers against the front, careful not to let her hands touch the wall of black that had swallowed Calin as she tried to pry the shell away, to reach the threads inside. But as she did, the clock did a horrible thing. It broke. The frame crumbled, and was sucked into the darkness.