Lila reached the main room, Kell on her heels. It looked like a violent storm had slammed into the house. One wall had been destroyed, the floor littered with wood, and brick, and blood.
Berras Emery was on his hands and knees, trying and failing to rise to his feet. One of his hands was soaked in blood, the other clutching his ribs—Lila hoped at least three of them were broken—and Alucard was walking toward him, blade in hand.
“You think I’m the only one,” Berras growled. “You are a fool.” He looked up, and smiled, blood staining his teeth. “Go ahead and kill me.”
Alucard’s fingers tensed on the sword.
Lila had plenty of blood on her hands, but as far as she knew, Alucard Emery had never ended a life. Perhaps that made him a good person. Or a bad pirate. But in that moment, she knew, he was going to kill his brother.
She stepped forward, in part because she would be glad to put an end to Berras, and in part because she wanted to spare her old captain, because he was, for all his airs, too kind, too caring, because it would haunt him.
“You won’t stop the Hand,” Berras was saying. “We are coming for your crown. We are coming for your king.”
Alucard raised the sword, but Lila reached out and caught his wrist. As she did, the estate doors burst open, bodies in. She turned, expecting another assault, only to see a dozen royal soldiers spilling into the house, their weapons drawn and ready for a fight. They slowed as they looked around and realized they had missed it.
They took in the two Antari, and the king’s consort, and the man on his knees.
“A little late,” snapped Lila, dropping Alucard’s arm as the soldiers came forward and fanned out around him, swords leveled on Berras.
She pushed past them, following the trail of blood, picking her way through the wreckage until she found the study, the severed fingers, and there among them, what she guessed were the remains of the golden ring, though like the cuff, it was now a chain. She pocketed it, then stepped through the debris of the ruined wall in time to see Berras make one last attempt.
As Alucard turned to face the soldiers, Berras lunged up, tried to seize the blade from his brother’s hand. But Alucard stepped back, and slashed his arm through the air, and Berras was thrown backward, into the wall. This time, when the older Emery hit the ground, he did not get up again. Lila hoped for a moment he was dead, but then she saw the rise and fall of his chest. Too bad.
Alucard turned toward the soldiers. “Arrest the leader of the Hand.”
As he spoke, a crash echoed overhead. It was more than a sound—it ran through the bones of the house, shook the air as if they were standing inside of a bell. Everyone looked up. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted move toward, but Lila did, taking the stairs as fast as her wounded body would allow.
“Lila, wait,” called Kell, but his voice was drowned out as the crash came again, a deep, rattling BOOM.
At the top of the stairs, another hall, and Lila followed the sound into a room, and saw—
A door.
Or rather, a doorway. It stood in the middle of the room, open onto black, onto nothing. There was no sign of a persalis, and the door’s edges were uneven, tattered. A breeze blew toward the open door, dragging at Lila’s tunic, and as she watched, the frame seemed to splinter, and spread, throwing cracks out through the air itself.
“You can see it too, right?” she asked as Kell arrived beside her. He nodded, gaze scraping over the door. He approached it, hand grazing the air, the wind tugging on his hair, his sleeves. Kell circled the doorway, vanishing for a moment behind the blackness as if it were a curtain before appearing again on the other side.
Only one person—and one supposedly ruined object—could have made this door. Lila searched, and found Tes on the floor behind the desk. She was curled on her side in a pool of dark hair, as if she’d fallen asleep. But her skin was grey, and she didn’t move, even when the sound shook the room again.
Lila knelt and grabbed the girl’s shoulders. “Tes. Tes, wake up.”
At first, nothing. Then, the girl opened her eyes. They were glassy, and Lila could feel her pulse flutter, unsteady beneath her skin, even as she smiled.
“I didn’t help them,” she said softly, as if she were drugged, or dreaming. “I didn’t—” Her eyes widened sharply. “Look out.”
Lila rose and turned in time to see Bex lurch into the room, blood-soaked and breath rattling in her chest even as she flung the blade at Lila’s heart.
She reached out, and the knife shuddered to a stop, inches from her skin, Bex’s will too weak to counter as her blood pumped onto the floor.
“You just don’t want to die,” said Lila, plucking the knife out of the air. “Let me help you.” She swept her hand sideways, and the wind in the room turned sharp, slamming Bex into the waiting black embrace of the open door. She fought, boots sliding, but as her arm met the surface, it seemed to grab her, dragging her limb by limb into the dark.
Lila turned back to Tes. “Where does that door lead?”
Tes gave her a weak smile. “I have no idea.” And then a shadow swept over the girl’s face, and her limbs folded. Her head hit the floor. Lila shook her, but this time she didn’t wake.
“Kell,” called Lila, and he was there beside her. “Get her out of here.”
He took the girl into his arms—she looked too young, too small, too still—but didn’t leave. He looked past Lila to the door.
“We have a problem,” he said. Lila saw it. The door was still spreading, those cracking tendrils growing wide and deep as they split the air.
“You get her out,” she said, “I’ll close it.”
Kell nodded, and was gone, leaving Lila to face the door. She touched her fingers to her cheek, where Bex had sliced her. The cut was still weeping. Her hand came away red. She touched her palms together, staining both as she approached the door.
The wind was getting stronger by the second, a sucking force. The whole thing reminded her of an open mouth, a devouring dark. But mouths were like doors. They could be closed.
She wrapped her fingers around the frame, careful not to touch the black inside, felt the door’s edges beneath her hands as she took a deep breath.
“As Staro.”
Seal.
The wind weakened as she said it, the edges of the frame narrowing beneath her hands as the door began to close. The two sides drew together, the space between them shrinking. But halfway there, they stopped. The sides of the door trembled under her grip. As if pushing back against it.
Lila scowled, and clutched the frame.
“As Staro,” she said again, but as her will slammed into the door, the door slammed back, shoving her arms apart as it sprang outward again, yawning wide. Lila staggered back as the cracks deepened and the horrible, earth-shaking sound came again.
BOOM.
Lila stared in horror at the door. It hadn’t worked. She was Antari. The strongest magician in the world. And the spell just—hadn’t worked.
The door cracked and spread, the wind whistling in her ears.
Lila didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t hear Kell return to her side until he laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You have to get out,” she called over the rushing air. He shook his head. “I can’t stop it.”
“Put on the ring!” he shouted over the tearing world. And for a single, confused second she thought he meant the black band, the one she’d been too proud to wear, until she saw the heavy gold chain in his hands. The magical device that had just torn away her power, and given it to Berras. Kell was already wrapping the chain around his wrist.
Lila shook her head. “You can’t use your magic.”
“No,” he said. “But you can.”