“This is dangerous.”
“This is progress,” she shot back. “Magic chooses, that’s what the priests say. Do you believe that you’ve been chosen? That the forces guiding the world decided you should be able to wield not one element but three? What makes you so deserving?” He said nothing, then. He had no answer. “Why should some arbitrary force decide who wields water or fire or stone? Who has magic and who does not?”
Alucard stilled—this was not some pursuit followed for the sake of curiosity. This was a weapon against scrutiny, a way to protect their family and their throne. He did not blame her for it. And yet.
“Nadiya,” he said, the anger slipping from his voice.
But it only mounted in hers. “Think of Rhy. Of how many people claim he should not be allowed to rule simply because he has no magic.”
“Those people are fools,” he said.
“Of course they are,” she said, “but fools have voices, and voices carry. They want to punish Rhy, Alucard, all because magic did not choose him. But we can. We can give him power.”
“By taking it from someone else.”
“It isn’t done,” she said, exasperated.
“Yes, it is.” It had to be. Because Alucard understood. Understood that if Nadiya offered Rhy power, he might take it, and if he did, those people—the ones who called him weak—wouldn’t stop, they’d simply have another, better reason to hate him. They would find out his magic was borrowed, or stolen, the balance of the world tipped unrightly in his favor, and then, when they called for his head, they would be right.
He stepped toward Nadiya, set his hands on the queen’s shoulders, and met her eyes.
“Destroy it,” warned Alucard, “or I will.”
III
WHITE LONDON
Holland Vosijk stood beside the tree in the center of Kosika’s room.
It had grown over the last year, from a knee-high sapling to a tree half as tall as the room was high, a hundred eyes staring out from its pale trunk, and its leaves the color of amber. But unlike the ones in the Silver Wood, those leaves never fell. They colored, and withered, curled in only to fan wide again when the seasons changed.
The servants whispered of the tree that had taken root overnight. Spoke of signs and miracles. They had no idea how right they were.
“How was the tithe?” asked Holland now.
“You should have come with me,” said Kosika, rising from the kol-kot board, where she’d left Nasi’s present.
His eyes found hers. “I am always with you.”
She felt warmth flood beneath her skin as he said it, turned to hide the blush and made her way to the basin. It stood waiting on a marble shelf, a bottle of salve and a length of clean cloth beside it. A castle of servants at the ready, but she preferred to tend the tithing cuts herself. They thought it was a part of the ritual, when in truth, it was privacy, so that she and her saint could speak.
Kosika rolled up her sleeve. Her head was bowed over her work, but she could feel Holland’s shadow fall over her as she cleaned the four fresh cuts that scored her forearm.
“You are troubled.”
She looked down into the basin, the water tinted with her blood. “I feel the city’s magic getting stronger. I do.” She swallowed. “But some days it feels like the soil will never be sated.”
Holland rested his hand on her head. She could feel it—no longer just the shadow of a touch, but something closer to flesh and bone. “Magic can speed the work of many things, Kosika. But change itself will always take time.”
His words were steady, but she was sure that if she turned her gaze to his, she’d see disappointment in his eyes. She was disappointing him. Her king. Her saint.
The weight of his fingers fell away. “We are working a vast and complicated spell. You must be patient.”
Kosika shook her head as she smoothed the cold salve across the inside of her arm. Patience was a word for ordinary souls. She was Antari. If she could not summon enough magic—she tried to silence the fears, knew she shouldn’t give voice to them, lest he take her thoughts as a lack of faith. But of course, he heard them anyway.
Holland sighed, soft, almost soundless. “Perhaps you are expecting too much.”
Kosika turned toward him. “What do you mean?”
He was quiet for several moments, and though one eye was black and one green, somehow, they both seemed to darken. “Only that you are young, and I am … a shadow of myself. We have done much, and if the city grows no stronger—”
“No,” she snapped.
“It is better than it was.”
“A candle is better than the dark,” she said. “But it is not enough to warm your hands by. Not enough to banish the cold from your hearth. And not enough to light a city.”
Holland considered her. A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “So stubborn, little queen. But you cannot build a fire like that from will alone.”
Kosika brought the bandage to her arm but paused, considering the three lines. “The other worlds…”
Holland’s mouth tightened. “Do not think of them.”
“You wanted me to, once.”
“I was wrong,” he said simply. “Those worlds have brought ours nothing but strife. Besides, power is not a parcel to be carried home, and so long as the walls stand, and the doors are shut fast, magic will not flow between.” He touched her arm, fingers ghosting hers as they tied the clean bandage around the fresh cuts. “What good does it do, to covet what you cannot have? I have watched kings and queens ruin themselves for less. No,” he said softly. “Let us tend our own flame, and trust that in time, the heat will be enough.”
She studied the place where his hand hovered on her skin, and swore she could feel its weight.
* * *
ONE YEAR AGO
There was a room behind the altar.
Kosika had spent so many nights in the alcove, studying the statue of Holland Vosijk while Serak told her tales, and yet she’d forgotten that the recess stood in a tower identical to hers, and that, behind it, there was a door. She’d forgotten—until one night the candlelight caught on the wood behind the statue, and ever since it was all Kosika could think of, that door, and where it led.
But she knew, of course.
Even before Kosika stole up the tower steps one stormy afternoon, as rain battered the castle walls. Even before she ducked into the alcove, slipped into the narrow gap between the altar and the door. She knew there was only one place it could lead.
To the last king’s chamber.
Holland’s room.
She held her breath, and turned the handle, but the door held firm, didn’t so much as jostle in a lock. Which meant it had been sealed somehow. Like a tomb. Kosika shoved her hand in her pocket, felt the triangle of steel she kept there, the size and shape of an arrowhead. She pressed her thumb to the tip until it broke the skin, blood welling as she pressed her hand to the wood.
The words hummed in her head before she said them.
“As Orense.”
Open.
The door groaned under her hand like a tree in a storm, the splinter of wood and drag of metal. The sound echoed down the tower stairs, and she hissed, waiting a moment to see if anyone would come (there were still times she felt like a child stealing through someone else’s house), but no one did, and this time, when Kosika pushed against the door, it swung open. She glanced back once over her shoulder, and stepped into the dark.
The windows were shuttered, and only weak light spilled in from the alcove behind her, not enough to see by. But it glanced off the dark metal of a candelabra at the far side of the chamber. Kosika flexed her hand, and the tapers lit.
She looked around.
Holland Vosijk’s room appeared untouched. The space itself was a mirror of her own, the same curved walls, the same vaulted ceiling, the same vast bed, but a film of dust lay over everything, an echo of the pale patina that had clung to London for so many years like frost.