Kosika studied the crack in the air. “Leave me,” she said. The words came out tight, and sharp, and so she cleared her throat and added, “For a moment. Please.”
Serak bowed his head, and stepped out of the tent. As the flap fell, Holland took the Vir’s place, his image warping slightly through the mark. Kosika studied the ripple. Perhaps it was nothing, but the longer she stared, the more it resembled a door. A way out. A way in.
She had resolved, long ago, not to dwell on the existence of those other worlds. And yet here they were, pressing in on hers.
“There was a time before the walls,” said Holland. “There will be a time after.” His two-toned eyes scraped over the mark. “If it is a crack, it is the first. Perhaps the walls themselves will hold another hundred years.”
“And if they don’t?”
Holland frowned, one pale hand drifting up, grazing the air around the mark. “Nothing made can last forever.”
But she was looking at his hand, the crack, the way his fingers leaned against it, as if it were solid. Kosika started forward, blood already staining her fingertips. Cracks could be mended, she told herself. Wounds could be healed.
“Kosika,” said Holland, wearily, but she was already reaching up, her hand to the mark and the spell spilling out.
“As Hasari.”
The air shivered. Her pulse filled her ears, and Kosika braced herself for the wrench of her magic being poured into the world, the hollowing she’d felt when her power had been forced down into the soil, but she didn’t care what it took, not if it fixed the wall, not if it kept her world safe, and—
Nothing happened.
The blood found no purchase. A single red bead slid down her palm, and maybe her eyes had simply adjusted to the light inside the tent, but the mark on the air seemed, if anything, more real.
XI
RED LONDON
Tes woke to a gossamer sky.
Twilight stretched over her head in wide swaths of blue, and violet, cut through with narrow lines of gold. The ground beneath her was soft as down.
If this was death, she thought, it didn’t feel so bad.
But then she remembered, she had seen this sky before.
In Kell Maresh’s room.
Tes shot upright, realizing she was alive, alive, and lying in the prince’s bed.
Vares—her Vares—sat on the table just beside her. She knew it was just clever magic, she’d designed it herself, but when she moved, he fluttered his bone wings, as if he for one was glad she was alive, and awake. That first one, she didn’t understand, but as she leaned over to stroke the little owl’s skull, and said, “I’m glad to see you too,” she saw the figure by the balcony doors, staring out at the river, and the city.
Lila Bard stood, arms crossed, her coat cast off and her chin lifted, as if savoring the sunlight that poured in through the glass. But her face was drawn, her jaw tight.
“Oh good,” she said without turning, and Tes realized the Antari could see the bed in the door’s reflection. “You’re finally awake.” She turned and came toward the bed, stopping at the ornate wooden frame, one shoulder tipped against the gilded post. “That was a close call.”
“The door—” started Tes.
“It’s closed.” Lila’s mouth was a grim line. “You made quite a mess.”
Tes bristled. “I was just trying to stop them.”
Lila studied her. “Why?” Tes balked, but the Antari only shrugged, as if it were a fair question. “They wanted you to make a persalis. You know how. So why didn’t you give them what they wanted?”
“Because they’d use it to hurt people. To kill them.”
“But you would have lived.”
“They wanted me to make a weapon.”
“Surely you’ve done that before.”
“I didn’t want to be a weapon,” snapped Tes, exasperated. “You’re an Antari, you should understand. People want power and if they can’t have it themselves, they want to have the ones who do. If I’d made that persalis, it wouldn’t have stopped. They would have found other things for me to fix, to make. So I didn’t.”
Lila nodded, finally satisfied by the answer.
“You lied, you know,” said Tes. The Antari cocked a brow. “When you healed me before, you said that was the first and only time you’d bleed for me.”
A smirk tugged at the corner of Lila’s mouth. She shrugged. “I changed my mind,” she said. “It happens sometimes.”
“Thank you,” said Tes.
Lila’s expression hardened. “I didn’t do it from the kindness of my heart. You owe me a favor. Now get up,” she said. “I’m calling it in.”
* * *
The last time Tes had left the prince’s chamber, it had been under guard. Now the soldiers stood against the walls, staring past her as if she were not there, though they did bow their heads to Lila as she led Tes down the hall, toward a pair of ornate doors that stood waiting at the end.
A little girl sat on a cushioned bench outside those doors, a white-haired woman at her side. The woman was holding a children’s book, and the girl was holding a rabbit, its fur the color of honey. Her black curls tumbled into her face as she whispered to it in a soft but constant stream, the way Tes sometimes did with the owl. She was young—four, maybe five, too young for her magic to come in, but Tes thought she could just make out the ghostly glow of light on the air around her, though it was too faint to have a color yet.
A white cat sat beneath the bench, amethyst eyes glaring out at Lila, as if personally offended by the Antari’s presence. But it shrank back into the shadow of the seat as Lila paused, and brought her hand to the child’s black curls, in a gesture that was almost gentle.
“Hello, Ren,” she said. “Are you guarding the room?”
The little girl looked up, revealing eyes that were a burnished gold. She nodded. “We have to be quiet, though,” she said in a whisper. “The prince is sleeping.”
Pain lanced across Lila’s face, carved a furrow between her eyes.
“But it’s okay,” continued the child. “I brought him Miros, and Sasha said that when he wakes, I can go in and read him a story from my book.”
Lila’s hand fell away from the girl’s head. “That sounds like a very good idea.”
The child’s gold eyes went past her, landing on Tes. Or more specifically, the skeleton bird in Tes’s hand. Her mouth turned down. “Is your owl dead?”
In answer to the question, Vares fluttered his bone wings, and the girl’s face opened in delight. Tes found herself holding out the bird for her to see. “Would you look after him for me? For a little while.”
The child reached out and accepted him carefully, as if he were made of glass instead of bone and spell. She balanced him on the rabbit’s back—the creature didn’t seem to mind—and stroked his beak. “What’s his name?”
“Vares.”
The girl’s gold eyes widened. “Like me!” she said, for a moment forgetting the need to whisper, and Tes startled, eyes widening. The word vares could mean prince—or princess. Which meant this little girl was in fact Tieren Maresh, the heir to the throne.
She flinched from the sound of her own voice, glanced at the doors, then scooted closer, and gestured for Tes lean in. “Are you the one who’s going to wake him up?” she asked.
Tes’s stomach sank. She’d known, somehow, this was the favor. But before she could answer, Lila laid a hand against the doors and said, “She’s going to try.”
The pattern on the doors was the chalice and sun, a massive M carved into the center, the lines filled with gold, and still, Tes was surprised when she followed Lila into the room, and found herself standing in front of the king.
Rhy Maresh slumped forward in a chair, looking twice his age.