“Do you know what this means?” he said, dragging his fingers through the air. “We can rekindle the fire now. We can restart the source.”
Kosika recoiled, as if struck. “The magic here is cursed. If we rekindle the fire, we rekindle the blight and—”
“No,” said Holland, shaking his head. “Raze a forest, and the rot goes with it. Before this became the source of poisoned magic, it was the source of everything. All the power in the worlds began here. It can again.” He brought his hand to rest on Kosika’s shoulder. “The walls were made to shield the other worlds. But they were also a dam. From the moment they went up, no power could flow between. From that moment, the magic became finite. Each place, left to nurture its own store. We had the most, at first, close as we were, but we used it wrong, carved it up into smaller and smaller fires, smothered each until they began to go out. My death was a breath on the embers of a dying world. Your reign, too. Together, we have kept our flame from going out. But, I fear, we have reached the limits.”
Kosika’s stomach turned as he spoke her fears aloud.
“There isn’t enough power left,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered. But Holland did not look defeated. Far from it. There was a light behind his eyes, a power to his voice.
“Do not despair. If we light the fire here, if we restart this source, our world will burn again, brighter than it ever has. You will not have to choose which tree to water. Our people will not need to bleed to thaw the winter chill. Everything I suffered. Everything I lost—it will have been worth it.”
In that moment, Kosika saw Holland as he must have been, before the Danes had bound him. She saw the boy who dreamed of healing a dying world. She saw the king, who gave everything to see the power restored. Saw the saint, who even in death could not rest, could not leave his task unfinished.
“What about the walls?” she asked.
Holland’s hand fell from her shoulder. “Let them crumble. Or tear one down, and forge the other fresh. Let the other Londons tend their embers, while we enjoy the heat.”
And then her king did something he had never done before.
Holland knelt before Kosika. Folded, gracefully, one knee resting on the splintered stones.
“My queen,” he said. “We can do this. Together.”
She wanted it. And she saw how badly he wanted it. Holland Vosijk had given so much. Had given everything. And it hadn’t been enough. But it could be. With her help.
Kosika looked around at the dead world. “How do you rekindle a fire this large?”
“The same way you do in any hearth,” he said. “Enough kindling, and a well-placed spark.”
As Holland said it, his face lit with a dazzling thing: hope. If he had asked Kosika, in that moment, to open her veins, and spill every drop of blood onto the dead soil then and there, she would have done it.
Instead, she simply nodded and said the words that would set the world ablaze.
“Show me how.”
II
RED LONDON
Kell remembered everything.
If anyone asked, he would tell them he didn’t, that the last thing he recalled was winding the golden chain around his wrist as he told Lila to use his magic, to close the door. That after that was only darkness.
But it would be a lie.
For a merciful moment, after the chain turned to a cuff around his wrist, he had felt nothing at all. The magic blinked out like a candle at the end of its wick, and he was left hollow, an empty vessel, and there was some mercy in that.
But then, it had started.
He had thought that maybe, if the magic were in someone else’s hands, it couldn’t hurt him, but as Lila called the spell, he felt it, that wrenching, bone-deep pain, and every second she had poured her power and his into the words it had gotten worse, and worse, and he would have let go, but he couldn’t, because he wasn’t in control.
The blowback had always been agony, but it had always been brief, only this time, it wasn’t, because it never ended. The pain simply mounted and mounted until he could not breathe, could not speak, and by the time the door was finally closed and the spell was done, and the shackle fell away, he was trapped inside that pain. Inside his skin.
The world outside his body went away, but he was still there, still screaming.
And then—finally—it stopped.
It stopped, and he knew that death had come at last, and it felt wonderful. It felt like his brother’s arms, like Lila’s voice, like floating off to sea.
Then Kell opened his eyes.
And saw a rabbit.
Miros hopped along the foot of his bed. A small face peered over the top of the blankets just beyond it, black curls and gold eyes staring at him.
“Ren,” said Rhy, crossing the room. “What did I tell you about bothering your uncle?”
“But he’s awake.”
Rhy turned, and saw Kell, and several emotions flickered across his face before he hauled the princess into his arms.
“Go find Alucard,” he said, kissing her hair. “Tell him I said you could have three stories.”
He set Ren down, and she bounded away, the rabbit hopping in her wake.
“That should buy us a little time,” he said, watching her go.
“What happened?” asked Kell. His voice felt raw, as if he’d been screaming.
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing,” said Kell, but the way his brother looked at him said they both knew it was a lie.
“How do you feel now?” asked Rhy.
Kell shifted, and sat up. His muscles were stiff, but nothing hurt. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. Tes did all the work.”
Kell’s head shot up. “No.”
Rhy held up his hands. “We’re both alive. So that is something.”
“You shouldn’t have risked it.”
“It wasn’t a choice,” said Rhy darkly. “It was that, or keep you drugged forever. Not that I didn’t enjoy the high, but I do have a country to run.”
Kell’s hands tightened on the sheets. “Rhy—”
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, lifting a candlestick from the table. “We don’t know if it worked.”
He held out the unlit taper.
Kell stared at the candle, but made no move, and for a terrible moment the years fell away and he was standing before the ice house game in the lightless fair, terrified to test his power only to find it broken. He was in his narrow cabin aboard the Barron, tearing himself apart, certain if he only tried hard enough, he would break through the pain. He was fighting beside Lila, swords in hand, determined not to reach for that ruined magic, trying to convince himself it wasn’t there. He was right here, right now, sitting in his royal bed, afraid of what would happen if he reached for the power and it did not come. Afraid of the pain he’d feel if it did.
But Rhy had risked his life for this. A chance to be restored.
Kell knew he had to try.
He reached out, and cupped his hand over the unlit taper. Called the warmth to the wick.
The candle sparked.
It wasn’t effortless, the way it had been once, when he was young. There was a resistance, the difference between drawing an arm through water instead of air. But it worked.
The fire bloomed under his fingers, and then, all around, as every taper in the chamber lit at once, bathing the room in flickering light. Rhy sucked in a breath, but Kell’s attention hung on the candle between them, the fragile flame growing hot beneath his palm. He stared at the fire until the pain finally came, not a wave rolling through him, only the burn of a candle against bare skin.
Kell heard Rhy hiss and he pulled back, shaking the sting out of his own hand. He looked down at his singed palm, the skin pink from the heat, and broke into a smile.
Tears slid down his face.
It was the most welcome pain Kell had ever felt.
* * *