She hiccupped, sounded about to cry, when a woman arrived and swept the child up into her arms, turning to Kell to apologize. She looked at him, and as she did, cold raked its fingers over his scalp, and he realized his hood had fallen back, revealing his red hair. His black eye.
Kell flinched, bracing himself for the weight of recognition. For fear, or awe, and the scene it would bring. But there was no scene. His appearance meant nothing to her. Of course it meant nothing. He was a thousand leagues from home. He wasn’t a prince, not in this land, and as for an Antari, perhaps she didn’t even know what an Antari was. Perhaps she didn’t care.
To her, he was just a stranger at the lightless fair.
She carried the child off, and Kell watched them go, a small laugh escaping in a cloud of fog.
“Hassa,” called a voice, and it took Kell a moment to realize it was calling to him. He turned, and saw a man in one of the stalls, a scarf wrapped tight over the lower half of his face.
“Hassa!” he called again, waving Kell over. He wasn’t sure what the man was selling—the table before him was full of figurines—but it was the back wall that caught Kell’s eye.
The entire space was taken up by a single sculpture, a large and impossibly delicate thing that might have been a palace, or simply a very ornate house, its fa?ade interrupted by a series of windows.
And unlike the stall itself, whose ice was several inches thick, the sculpted house was made of frost-thin panes, and looked like it might crumble at the slightest push. That, Kell realized, was the point.
As he approached, the man running the stall started talking quickly. Rhy had always been the one with a gift for language. Kell had picked up pieces on his travels, but Fresan was new to him, a breathy melodic thing that broke down against his ears, especially when the speaker’s mouth was hidden behind a scarf.
“I’m sorry,” Kell cut in, backing away. “I don’t understand.”
He started to leave, but the man smiled, eyes crinkling in delight. “Ah. Arnesian!” he said, sliding into a broken version of the tongue. “Come. Is game.”
As he said it, he turned to the ornate house, and pointed to its many windows. In each, there was a sphere of colored ice, just large enough to touch the frame on either side.
“You break one,” he said, circling the target with a mittened hand. “But not house. Touch house. You lose.”
It was, of course, a game of magic.
Not a terribly challenging one, either—a very careful child would be able to do it. To summon an element and control it enough to melt or move one of the spheres without disrupting the fragile house. To a skilled magician, it should be simple. To an Antari, nothing at all.
“You won’t lose,” said the man, “you touch ball, just ball, you win.…”
He gestured at the prizes on the table, small figures sculpted not from ice, but a delicate translucent stone. There were animals—birds and bears, dogs and whales—but also tiny shops, fair stalls, even a replica of the archway they’d passed through. And there, at the edge, a single ship. It made Kell think of the Grey Barron. It made him think of Lila.
“You play,” said the man.
Kell swallowed. He flexed his fingers, half-frozen despite the gloves his coat had given him.
It had been three months.
Three months since the battle in Osaron’s makeshift palace. Three months since Holland and Lila and Kell combined their power to fight the dark god back. Three months since Holland had used an Inheritor to contain the demon’s power, and Kell had been caught between the two, and nearly torn apart.
Three months, and he told himself, the longer he waited, the better it would heal. But he could feel the magic pooling just beneath his skin. Waiting to be summoned. Waiting to be used.
That was the hardest part. He knew it was there, an untapped well, and every day, he found himself reaching for it, the way he had all his life, only to stop short as he remembered. Remembered the pain, the wrenching, rending agony that had torn through him when he first tried to use his power after they’d won.
But it had been three months.
Three months, he was sure, was long enough.
“How much does it cost to play?” he asked.
The man shrugged. Kell dug a hand in his pocket, hoping the coat would provide. He withdrew a handful of coins, none of them Fresan. The man surveyed the small pile, and selected an Arnesian lin, crimson with a small gold star at its center. The coin vanished into his coat.
“Good,” he said, clapping his hands. “Now, you play.”
Kell swallowed, and drew off his gloves as he decided which element he’d use. Flame was the easiest to summon, but the most likely to damage the rest of the house. Earth would be useless; there was none of it here. He could call on the water in the sphere itself, but the rest of the frame was made of the same stuff. No, it would be wind. A single breath, to knock it from its perch.
His pulse quickened in anticipation. It had been so hard to wait this long, and he felt like a starving man about to eat his first meal.
Kell took a deep breath, and raised his hand, and called his magic back.
And it came.
Rushing up to meet him like a long-lost friend.
It came, so eager, and so quick.
It came.
But so did the pain.
Not the stiffness of a muscle after too much rest, of a bone that’s been left to set, but the fresh agony of an open wound. As the wind rolled out from his fingers toward the ice-made house, the pain unspooled, tore through his chest, squeezing the air from his lungs and the strength from his limbs.
And the entire house shattered.
Kell didn’t see it happen. He was already doubled over on the icy ground, heaving, sweat slicking his skin beneath the coat, horror rising with the bile in his throat.
He struggled to stand as people turned to stare, and the man in the stall looked sadly at the broken house. “You lost,” he said, as if that wasn’t obvious.
Kell scrambled backward, desperate to get away, to escape the stalls, and the crowd, and the lightless fair. He made it through the archway before sagging to his knees and retching. It was wrong. Everything was wrong. Once upon a time, Kell Maresh had been the best magician in the world. Now, he could not even best a children’s game.
He didn’t hear Lila walking up behind him, but then she was there, a hand on his shoulder.
“Kell,” she said, and there was something in her voice, something he’d never heard before, something that sounded almost like pity. He wrenched away from her touch.
“Three months,” he gasped. He was still struggling to breathe, though now it was as much from panic as lingering pain. “Three months, and it meant nothing. It should have healed. It should have helped. But it’s still broken.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m still broken.”
He shook his head. “It’s not fair.”
Lila met his gaze, her glass eye shining in the strange light. “It never is.”
His throat tightened. “I’m an Antari, Lila.” The words clawed as they came out. “I am nothing without my power.”
She scowled. “Was I nothing, without mine?”
And before he could say that this was different, and she knew it, Vasry strolled up, his gold lashes thick with frost, a young woman on his arm. “Look,” he said cheerfully, “I found my own warmth!”
Kell shoved past them both, heading for the tunnel and the port and the ship.
Vasry’s voice trailed after. “Where’s he going?”
“To wallow,” said Lila.
But she was wrong. Kell was done wallowing, done waiting for his power to mend. He’d been wrong to wait. Wrong to think his magic was a thing that had to heal. If his power wouldn’t return on its own, he would bring it back by force.
* * *
ONE MONTH LATER
Kell was coming undone.