And still, the door didn’t close.
In fact, it opened further, splintered past the edges of the frame. As it did, it made a sound, like a hammer against stone.
BOOM.
Tes scrambled backward, tried to get to her feet, but her legs buckled, the last strength going out of her limbs.
BOOM came the sound again, rattling through her as the doorway cracked, and threw out jagged black lines into the air to every side.
Get up, she pleaded with her body. It didn’t listen. Get up, she tried to say aloud, but her lungs were out of air. Her heart skipped a beat, and then the world flickered, and she was on the floor, her cheek resting against the wood. She didn’t feel scared.
The boom came again, but it sounded far away, or maybe she was.
Tes reached her hands into her coat, and folded her fingers over the little bone owl, felt him nestle against her palm.
She closed her eyes, and told herself the sound was the waves, crashing against the rocks back in Hanas. Told herself it was the sound of home as she drifted off to sleep.
IX
Alucard’s ears were ringing as he got to his hands and knees, brick debris curling around his shoulders. The room was dark, but he knew, even by the contours, where he was.
His father’s study.
Growing up, he was never allowed in here. Berras either. They only ever went as far as the doorway, and then, only when their father summoned them. But from that doorway, Alucard had learned every detail of the chamber. His father’s dark wood desk. The glass windows that rose behind it, their panes stained midnight blue and traced with silver.
Now, the door hung shut, but the wall was open.
Alucard rose, and turned toward the ragged tear. Berras stood, waiting, on the other side. As if even now, he were loath to enter. But then he splayed his fingers, and the rest of the wall between them crumbled.
He stepped into the room.
Alucard had already drawn his blade, and as Berras crossed the threshold, he sliced through the air, but as the metal cut toward his brother, it melted, falling to the floor in molten silver drops, and Berras’s fist connected with Alucard’s jaw.
His head snapped to the side and he staggered. His lip split open, blood dripping down his chin.
“Any other night,” he said, as Alucard wiped his mouth, “I’d take my time, but tonight, I’m in a hurry.”
This time he saw the way the silver flashed in the air, just before his brother struck. As the broken bricks rose around Berras, his own hand shot toward his father’s desk, and it scraped over the floor as its massive weight turned on its end, and came soaring into the space between the brothers the instant before Berras’s rocks hurled themselves into Alucard, smashing against the desk instead. Alucard didn’t wait—he shoved against the upright desk with all his strength, sent it slamming forward into Berras.
Heard it splinter as it struck—
And broke, with all the force of waves crashing against cliffs, and exactly as much use. Berras stood, unmoved, as the desk, reduced to slivers, crumbled around him.
“Why?” asked Alucard. “Why did you create the Hand?”
Berras flexed and the lamps burst to life on every wall, showering the study in light. “You have forgotten what it means,” he said, “to be an Emery.”
But as he spoke, the lamps he’d lit caught fire, consumed by the sudden force of too much magic. They began to burn, scorching up the walls, filling the room with acrid smoke. Something occurred to Alucard. Berras wasn’t used to having this much magic. He wielded it like a mallet, clumsy and blunt.
“If it means being a traitor,” he said, eyes cutting across the study, “I’m glad I gave it up.”
Berras came toward him and Alucard retreated half a step for every one his brother took, letting the distance shrink between them.
“An Emery deserves to sit on the throne,” said Berras. “Not kneel behind it.”
Alucard reached to draw his second blade, only to feel Berras’s will slam down around his bones with sudden, crushing force. His gasped as his ribs cinched, and his jaw locked shut, and his limbs froze. His brother stepped toward him, cracking his knuckles.
“Admit it,” said Alucard, through gritted teeth. “You’re jealous.”
Berras’s hand tightened, and so did the force on Alucard’s body. “I’d rather be a traitor than the king’s whore.”
Alucard met his brother’s eyes, and smiled. “Well, that makes one of us.”
He couldn’t move, but he could still see, and as the gold ring glinted on Berras’s right fist and he drew it back to land a blow that surely would have shattered bone, Alucard cut his gaze toward the stained-glass window, and it shattered, as if he’d slammed his hand against it instead of his will.
Having magic was a gift.
But using it took practice.
Every element Alucard had gained was another one he had to juggle. It was one thing to have access to wind, and water, and earth—it was another thing to use them at the same time. There was a reason most magicians could only focus on a single one.
The window caved in, shards of blue and silver glass flying forward, and Berras did what any inexperienced magician would. He flung out his right hand to stop the shards of glass, dropping his hold on Alucard’s body as he did.
The shards dragged to a stop, easily rebuffed by Berras’s stolen power, and hung suspended, but Alucard was already moving, drawing that second sword and slashing the blade up, through Berras’s right hand.
He roared in pain as a hundred shards of broken glass rained down onto the floor, Berras’s severed fingers landing dully among the shine. The golden ring sloughed off, became a thin chain again. He screamed, and lunged for his brother with his other fist, but Alucard was ready, the wind at his back, and it met Berras with more force than a body—even his—could muster.
It should have been enough to knock his brother back a dozen feet.
But Berras had always seemed made of more than flesh and bone. Hatred was a heavy thing, and it kept his boots on the ground, though they slid as he struggled to stay upright, mouth yawning wide in a pained and furious growl.
Alucard crooked his fingers, and the wooden fragments of their father’s broken desk rose up, and flung themselves into Berras, pummeling his brother until at last, he lost his footing and crashed backward, out of their father’s study and into the ghost of the house where they had lived, slamming into the far wall with so much force the building shook.
Berras fell forward to his hands and knees, chest heaving, ruined right hand bleeding. Alucard stepped over the glass, and the ring, and the fingers he’d cleaved away, Berras’s blood a slick red smear on the edge of his blade as he went to meet his brother.
It was time to end the Emery line, once and for all.
* * *
Bodies were too fucking fragile.
One damaged piece, thought Lila, and suddenly, the whole thing fell apart. It hurt to breathe, hurt to walk, hurt to speak, hurt to lean on Kell, and hurt to stand without him, but one thing kept Lila going and that was the knowledge of what she’d do to Berras Emery when she found him. A fantasy greatly aided when, halfway down the hall, the golden manacle around her wrist suddenly let go, falling to the floor in a pile of delicate chain.
As it did, Lila felt her magic come rushing back, into her lungs, her blood, the marrow of her bones. It didn’t unbreak her ribs, but it was a salve, quieting the pain.
She flicked her fingers, and the chain rose up into her waiting hand as somewhere, nearby, a roar tore through the air, an animal howl.
“What is that?” asked Kell, but a crash went up and she pulled away, quickening her pace, the pain receding in her body and her mind.
The howl had sounded like Berras, which meant he was suffering without her. And that wouldn’t do.