The pain was a rod of searing heat.
All this time, and he still hadn’t gotten used to dying.
It stole his breath as blood dripped into the water, blooming like roses around them. His body betrayed him, sagging into the attacker’s arms.
“This is the end of the Maresh,” said the Hand.
Rhy laughed, blood spilling through gritted teeth. “Haven’t you heard?” he said softly, dragging himself upright. “I’m the Unkillable King.”
The other man’s eyes widened in shock, then horror, as Rhy took a step back, and then another, drawing his body off the blade. It hurt—saints, it hurt—but it wouldn’t be the end of him. Blood was pooling in one lung, but Rhy drew in a shaky breath, and then another, as the wound between his ribs begins to heal.
The attacker scrambled backward, slashing blindly with his sword as he tried to reach the other side of the bath. Rhy waded toward him, the pain receding in his chest, dulling into something he could stand.
The attacker dropped his sword, the blade disappearing into the bloody water as he raised his hands in surrender. Or at least, that’s what Rhy assumed he was doing. Until the man’s lips began to move.
The sound that came out had the whisper of magic, and as he spoke, something wrapped around Rhy’s legs, and pulled, forcing him down, beneath the surface. He thrashed, but the reddened water twisted around him like rope, holding him against the bottom of the pool. Beyond the roiling surface, he could just make out the assassin, fingers splayed as he held the magic, and the magic held him, the way it had his sword.
And Rhy realized, as his lungs burned and his vision blurred, that he was going to drown.
* * *
Kell was eating dinner when he began to die.
Lila was leaning against the galley counter, peeling an apple, and he’d just taken a mouthful of Raya’s latest stew when the pain erupted in his chest. The spoon fell from his fingers and he bowed his head, clutching the table as a white-hot blade drove between his ribs.
“Oh, come on,” said Lila, “I know it’s not her best, but—Kell?”
He sucked in a breath, and tasted the ghost of blood. Lila jabbed the paring knife into the fruit and set it down, starting toward him. He felt the phantom scrape of the blade dragging free, clutched at his chest even though he knew the wound wasn’t there. Wasn’t his.
Rhy.
The pain began to ebb from a sharp and violent thing into a vicious ache, and Kell drew in a ragged breath, and straightened, thinking the worst of it was over. He pulled the red ring from his finger, was about to utter the spell that connected the band to his brother’s.
But when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
He tried again, but his lungs tightened, unwilling to part with their air. He couldn’t breathe. A visceral panic seized him, coiled around his limbs. His head began to swim, and a terrible pressure formed in his chest as something changed, the terrible sensation that his lungs were filling up with water. He made it out of the galley and into the narrow hall before he swayed, and retched, half expecting the water to spill onto the wooden floor.
Nothing came up, but his lungs vised again under the strain. He tried to stand, but his body buckled, his brother’s ring falling from his fingers. His vision blurred, and then he was on his back, and Lila was kneeling over him, her face dark with worry, her mouth moving, but her voice was drowned by the pounding in his ears.
And the encroaching wall of black.
* * *
Rhy remembered wondering if they should ward the royal baths.
But magic kept the water hot, and it seemed like such a nuisance, such a waste of time and energy, so he’d opted to leave the room unwarded, and now here he was, pinned to the bottom of the bath by someone else’s power.
Something glinted on the floor nearby. The sword he’d lost. Rhy strained, trying to reach toward it, but the water only tightened, squeezing the last of the air from his chest.
His lungs burned.
His vision began to blur.
Above, the surface of the water smoothed into a pane of tinted glass. Beyond it, the man’s face contorted into a feral grin.
And then, suddenly, it changed. The amusement sloughed away, leaving only a slack horror. A few fresh drops of blood dripped and bloomed on the surface before Rhy’s failing sight, and then the man tipped forward, falling facedown into the bath. As he did, the hold on Rhy’s limbs disappeared, and he surged up out of the water, gasping for air.
He looked down at the body now floating beside him, saw the knife buried in his back, and then looked up to find Alucard Emery, who stood at the edge of the bath, wearing nothing but an open robe.
“What in the absolute fuck,” said the king’s shadow, the king’s heart, blazing with anger. Rhy only sighed, and waded to the edge of the bath, and climbed out.
Alucard marched over to the pile of clothes and flung him his robe.
“Where were your servants?” he snapped as Rhy pulled the fabric around his shoulders. Blood still wept from the wound in his chest, but it was already healing.
“I wanted to be alone,” said Rhy, sinking onto a bench at the edge of the room.
“And the guards?” demanded Alucard. “Why the saints would you banish them?”
He said nothing, only met Alucard’s gaze. Alucard, the one person who never looked away just because he was king, who had always been able to read him like a book.
“Dammit, Rhy—”
“I didn’t want them to get hurt.”
“That’s what they’re for!” roared Alucard.
Rhy shot him a dark look, and gestured down at the weeping cut between his ribs, the one that would have killed any other man. “I will not have them die when I cannot.”
Alucard let out an exhausted breath. It was an argument they’d had a dozen times over the last few years. He looked down at the body in the water, and frowned. “He looks familiar.”
“He is. I hired him last week.”
Alucard threw up his hands. “Of course you did. Never mind the protocols. You know, the ones put in place for the sole purpose of keeping this family safe.”
As if that wasn’t exactly what Rhy was trying to do. He looked at the killer’s body and sighed. The whole idea had been to take the Hand alive, for questioning. He drew a deep breath, and winced. He spit a mouthful of blood onto the tile. He was beginning to think his night couldn’t get much worse. Then, one of the rings on his right hand began to glow. The red one. Of course.
“Damn,” muttered Rhy.
“Oh, you thought he wouldn’t notice?” chided Alucard.
The king stared at the ring for a long moment, watching it grow brighter, until the light of the magic filled the room, casting the killer’s body and the bloody bath in grim relief.
“Go on,” insisted Alucard with troubling glee. “I can’t wait to see Kell’s face.”
Rhy didn’t need to see it. He could picture the expression well enough. He was still looking at the ring, wondering if he really had to answer, when Alucard walked up, snatched the red band off his finger, and stormed out into the hall.
* * *
One minute Kell had felt like he was drowning, and the next, the grip on his lungs was gone, the air flooding back into his chest. By the time he was on his feet, Lila was holding out the crimson ring. Kell grabbed it, and stormed past her.
There was only one scrying table aboard the Barron, a polished black basin in the captain’s quarters.
“As vera tan,” he said, activating the spell as he surged into Lila’s room.
The scrying table sat in the corner. Lila had clearly been using it as a hamper, several articles of clothing piled on top. He swept them all away and pressed the ring to the black stone table, and waited. For several agonizing moments, no answer came. Kell saw only his own mottled reflection, face pale, eyes wide in pain and worry and anger, in the darkened surface. Then the black pane flickered and was replaced by a face Kell knew, and loathed.