Ren stared up, delighted, and Lila glanced at Alucard, only to see a strange sadness sweep across his face, the far-off look of someone thrown into a memory. But then he blinked, and looked at her, and it was gone.
The child clapped, delighted, and reached for the watery shape, but it leapt away, escaping from Lila’s right hand into her left, a few wayward drops of wine dripping to the carpet in its wake. It was hard to shape an element, harder still to make it move like this, with any semblance of life.
“You know,” she said, as the rabbit bounded through the air over her head, “I learned this from Alucard.” Seven years ago, in the belly of the Barron, when it was still the Spire, and he was the captain, Alucard Emery had agreed to teach her magic. Taught her to focus her mind, to latch her will on to words.
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright.
Of course, he’d known then what Lila had only suspected—that there was more to her than flesh and blood and grit, more to her missing eye. He had that strange gift of sight, had seen the silver in the air around her the day they met, threads glowing with Antari magic. But he’d taught her all the same. How to hold an element. How to hone it. How to make it hers.
Ren’s eyes widened, her attention swiveling from the watery rabbit to her father. “Luca?”
“Yes, Luca,” said Lila, shifting the animal from hand to hand like a hot stone. “And he can do this trick, any time you like.”
Alucard shot Lila a look over his daughter’s head. Thanks, he mouthed, clearly annoyed, but she just shrugged. It served him right, for having a kid. She could have stopped there, should have stopped there, handed off the trick and freed herself from Ren’s attention.
But for some reason, she didn’t.
For some reason, she knelt, so they were eye to eye again, and cupped her hand beneath the magic. Lila’s fingers twitched, and the rabbit froze midair, crystals of frost tracing its silver skin. It fell into her waiting palm. But she wasn’t done.
“You know,” she said, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Luca can do many things. But he can’t do this.”
Her grip tightened; not enough to break the little sculpture, just enough to prick her thumb on the frozen tip of the rabbit’s ear. She whispered, “As Staro,” and the animal in her hand turned from ice to polished stone.
Ren’s eyes widened, her mouth cracking into a buoyant smile, as someone gasped.
“Mas aven,” said the nursemaid, dropping the real-life rabbit in her arms, and sinking into a bow as she realized what Lila had done. What Lila was. The look on the nursemaid’s face wasn’t fear, but awe. She was clearly one of those people who believed Antari were more than gifted magicians; they were the true avatars of magic. Chosen. Blessed.
Lila knew that Kell hated such displays of worship, that they made his skin crawl, but she found it nice, now and then, to be seen as more instead of less. In another London, the woman might have crossed herself. Here, she touched her lips, whispered something against her fingertips.
“Sasha,” said Alucard gently. “Would you be so kind…”
The nursemaid came back to herself. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
Lila set the figurine in Ren’s outstretched hands, and Sasha hurried forward and lifted the child into her arms. She touched the stone rabbit, running a finger reverently down its back. “Right,” she said again. “Your mother will want to say goodnight.”
“And that’s my cue,” said Lila, turning on her heel, and heading for the palace doors. “Night night, Princess.”
“Night night!” Ren called back, as Sasha hauled her off to bed.
“She’s never bowed that deep to me,” mused Alucard, trailing Lila to the doors.
Two guards stood waiting there. They each pressed their hands to the wood, and Lila heard the hum of spellwork come to life, the bolts sliding deep within the wood. And then the doors fell open, and the cool night air rushed in. She stepped out, then glanced back and saw Alucard framed by the golden light of the hall.
“You could join me for a drink,” she said, knowing the answer before he shook his head. Lila clicked her tongue. “Fatherhood has made you a bore.”
He didn’t even pretend to act wounded. His gaze flicked past her to the night-swept city. “You’re welcome to a carriage.”
Lila snorted. “How generous! I’ll take a brace of guards and a trumpeter, too.” She spread her arms. “After all, why blend in when you can stand out?”
He offered her a lopsided grin. “You get into so much trouble that I sometimes forget, you don’t like being noticed.”
She let her arms fall back to her sides. “Hard to pick a pocket when they’re already staring at your hands.”
She smiled as she said it, but Alucard picked up on the meaning. His mood darkened. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” she said.
But as she strode down the palace stairs, she found herself humming Ren’s little tune.
Careful, careful, purred the cat.
Right before it pounced.
V
Rhy hung his crown on an apple branch.
The lovely brightness of the silver wine had thinned, leaving only a weary cotton in its wake. He knew better than to drink like this; it always tipped his spirits from cheerful to morose. Oddly, Kell swung the other way. He had gone to his rooms singing a sea shanty. Rhy should have gone to bed, too, but his bed was empty, save for the sleeping tonic waiting on the table, and he knew what would happen when he drank it. Knew the way the drug would settle over him, his body, his mind—less like a blanket and more like a pair of hands, holding him down until his limbs went heavy and his mind stopped fighting. And then in the morning, his mouth would taste like stale sugar, and Rhy would have the unshakable sense that he had forgotten something, even if all he’d forgotten was a dream.
He knew, and he wasn’t ready, and so he’d swept the crown from the bed, and kept walking, let his feet carry him past his rooms, and down the stairs, and out into the palace courtyard.
The guards had fallen in behind him, churned up like dust in his wake. But at the doors, he bade them stay.
“Your Majesty,” they said.
“It is not safe,” they said.
“The courtyard is beyond the palace wards,” they said, as if he did not know. He did—he simply did not care. Let his queen bristle. Let his lover chide. He did not need to be protected. He was the safest man in all the world. He was the Unkillable King.
And he wanted to be alone.
So he commanded them to stay put, and they obeyed, stood there bound by the light of the doorway, as if the warding were a cage, and Rhy, for once, the only one set free.
He moved between the trees of the royal orchard, touched an apple, testing to see if it would yield. But the fruit wasn’t ready. It clung to the branches, the skin just beginning to turn pink.
“Patience,” Tieren used to say. “Patience is what makes it sweet.”
Rhy closed his eyes, and then it was no longer fall, but spring, three years before, and he was no longer alone because the Aven Essen walked beside him. There was a drag to Tieren’s steps, even in the memory, as if the white robe weighed more than he did.
Death was coming for him slowly, but coming all the same, winnowing the old priest down a little more with every day. When he spoke, his voice was thin, like wind through a reed.
“Some people have a talent for hiding their thoughts, Rhy Maresh. You do not.” His laugh was soft, an airy whisper. Only his blue eyes retained their sharpness. “I can see them hanging like a cloud over your head.”
Rhy tried to speak, only to find his throat going tight. He looked away.
A moment later, Tieren stopped walking, and rested his hand against a tree, weariness visible in every line of his face.
“Do you need to sit?” asked Rhy, but the Aven Essen brushed aside the offer.
“I fear that if I do, I won’t get up.” And then, at the look of horror in his eyes, that whispering laugh. “I’m speaking of my legs, not my life, Rhy. My joints get stiff.”