The forest was gone, the room around him barren. Kell shivered—his coat and shirt were gone—the bare skin of his back and shoulders pressed against something cold and metal. He couldn’t move; he was standing upright, but not by his own strength. His body was being held in a kind of frame, his arms forced wide to either side, his hands bound to the vertical bars of the structure. He could feel a horizontal bar against his shoulders, a vertical one against his head and spine.
“A relic,” said an even voice, and Kell dragged his vision into focus and saw Holland standing before him. “From my predecessors.”
The Antari’s gaze was steady, his whole form still, as if sculpted from stone instead of flesh, but his black eye swirled, silvery shadows twisting through it like serpents in oil.
“What have you done?” choked Kell.
Holland tipped his head. “What should I have done?”
Kell set his teeth, forced himself to think beyond the collar’s icy pain. “You should … have stayed in Black London. You should … have died.”
“And let my people die, too? Let my city plunge into yet another war, let my world sink farther and farther toward death, knowing I could save it?” Holland shook his head. “No. My world has sacrificed enough for yours.”
Kell opened his mouth to speak, but the pain knifed through him, sharpening over his heart. He looked down and saw the seal fracturing. No. No.
“Holland,” he gasped. “Please. You have to take this collar off.”
“I will,” said Holland slowly. “When you agree.”
Panic tore through him. “To what?”
“When I was in Black London—after you sent me there—I made a deal. My body for his power.”
“His?”
But there could be only one thing waiting in that darkness to make a deal. The same thing that had crushed a world, that had tried to escape in a shard of stone. The same thing that had torn a path through his city, tried to devour Kell’s soul.
“You fool,” he snarled. “You’re the one … who told me that to let dark magic in was to lose …” His teeth were chattering. “That you were either the master … or the servant. And look … what you’ve done. You may be free of Athos’s spell … but you’ve just traded one master for another.”
Holland took Kell by the jaw and slammed his head back against the metal beam. Pain rang through his skull. The collar tightened, and the seal above his heart cracked and split.
“Listen to me,” begged Kell, the second pulse faltering in his chest. “I know this magic.”
“You knew a shadow. A sliver of its power.”
“That power destroyed one world already.”
“And healed another,” said Holland.
Kell couldn’t stop shaking. The pain was fading, replaced by something worse. A horrible, deadening cold. “Please. Take this off. I won’t fight back. I—”
“You’ve had your perfect world,” said Holland. “Now I want mine.”
Kell swallowed, closed his eyes, tried to keep his thoughts from fraying.
Let me in.
Kell blinked. The words had come from Holland’s mouth, but the voice wasn’t his. It was softer, more resonant, and even as it spoke, Holland’s face began to change. Shadow bled from one eyes into the other, consuming the emerald green and staining it black. A wisp of silver smoke curled through those eyes, and someone—something—looked out, but it wasn’t Holland.
“Hello, Antari.”
Holland’s expression continued to shift, the features of his face rearranging from hard edges into soft, almost gentle ones. The lines of his forehead and cheeks smoothed to polished stone, and his mouth contorted into a beatific smile. And when the creature spoke, it had two voices; one filling the air, a smoother version of Holland’s own, while the other echoed in Kell’s head, low and rich as smoke. That second voice twined behind Kell’s eyes, and spread through his mind, searching.
“I can save you,” it said, plucking at his thoughts. “I can save your brother. I can save everything.” The creature reached up and touched a strand of Kell’s sweat-slicked hair, as if fascinated. “Just let me in.”
“You are a monster,” growled Kell.
Holland’s fingers tightened around Kell’s throat. “I am a god.” Kell felt the creature’s will pressing against his own, felt it forcing its way into his mind with icy fingers and cold precision.
“Get out of my head.” Kell slammed forward against the binds with all his strength, cracking his forehead against Holland’s. Pain lanced through him, hot and bright, and blood trickled down his nose, but the thing in Holland’s body only smiled.
“I am in everyone’s head,” it said. “I am in everything. I am as old as creation itself. I am life and death and power. I am inevitable.”
Kell’s heart was pounding, but Rhy’s was slipping. One beat for every two. And then three. And then— The creature flashed its teeth. “Let me in.”
But Kell couldn’t. He thought of his world, of setting this creature loose upon it wearing his skin. He saw the palace crumble and the river go dark, saw the bodies fall to ash in the streets, the color bleed out until there was only black, and saw himself standing at the center, just as he had in every nightmare. Helpless.
Tears streamed down his face.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t be that.
I’m sorry, Rhy, he thought, knowing he’d just damned them both.