by V. E. Schwab
That doorway had resisted, but this one gave.
Gave onto something marvelous.
The castle was gone, the cold less brittle, and everywhere he looked was the pulse of magic. It trailed in lines before his eyes, rising off the world like steam.
So much power.
So much potential.
Osaron stood in the middle of the street and smiled.
This was a world worth shaping.
A world that worshipped magic.
And it would worship him.
Music drifted on the breeze, as faint as far-off chimes, and all around was light and life. Even the darkest shadows here were shallow pools compared to his world, to Holland’s. The air was rich with the scent of flowers and winter wine, the hum of energy, the heady pulse of power.
The coin hung from Osaron’s fingers, and he tossed it away, drawn toward the blooming light at the center of the city. With every step he felt himself grow stronger, magic flooding his lungs, his blood. A river glowed red in the distance, its pulse so strong, so vital, while Holland’s voice was a fading heartbeat in his head.
“As Anasae,” it whispered over and over, trying to dispel Osaron as if he were a common curse.
Holland, he chided, I am not a piece of spellwork to be undone.
A scrying board hung nearby, and as his fingers brushed it, they snagged the threads of magic and the spellwork shuddered and transformed, the words shifting into the Antari mark for darkness. For shadow. For him.
As Osaron passed lantern after lantern, the fires flared, shattering glass and spilling into night while the street beneath his boots turned smooth and black, darkness spreading like ice. Spells unraveled all around him, elements morphed from one into another as the spectrum tilted, fire into air, air into water, water into earth, earth into stone, stone into magic magic magic—
A shout went up behind him, and the clatter of hooves as a carriage reared. The man clutching the reins spat at him in a language he’d never heard, but words were threaded together just like spells, and the letters unraveled and rewove in Osaron’s head, taking on a shape he knew.
“Get out of the way, you fool!”
Osaron narrowed his eyes, reaching for the horse’s reins.
“I’m not a fool,” he said. “I am a god.”
His grip tightened on the leather straps.
“And gods should be worshipped.”
Shadow spread up the reins as fast as light. It closed over the driver’s hands, and the man gasped as Osaron’s magic slid under skin and into vein, wrapped around muscle and bone and heart.
The driver didn’t fight the magic, or if he did, it was a battle quickly lost. He half leaped, half fell from the carriage seat to kneel at the shadow king’s feet, and when he looked up, Osaron saw the smoky echo of his own true form twining in the man’s eyes.
Osaron considered him; the threads of power running beneath his own command were dull, weak.
So, he thought, this is a strong world, but not all are strong within it.
He would find a use for the weak. Or weed them out. They were kindling, dry but thin, quick to burn, but not enough to keep him burning long.
“Stand,” he commanded, and when the man clambered to his feet, Osaron reached out and wrapped his fingers loosely around the driver’s throat, curious what would happen if he poured more of himself into such a modest shell. Wondering how much it could hold.
His fingers tightened, and the veins beneath them bulged, turning black and fracturing across the man’s skin. Hundreds of tiny fissures shone as the man began to burn with magic, his mouth open in a silent, euphoric scream. His skin peeled away, and his body flickered ember red and then black before he finally crumbled.
Osaron’s hand fell away, ash trailing through the night air.
He was so caught up in the moment that he almost didn’t notice Holland trying once again to surface, to claw his way through the gap in his attention.
Osaron closed his eyes, turning his focus inward.
You’re becoming unpleasant.
He wrapped the threads of Holland’s mind around his fingers and pulled until, deep in his head, the Antari let out a guttural scream. Until the resistance—and the noise—finally crumbled like the driver in the road, like every mortal thing that tried to stand in the way of a god.
In the ensuing quiet, Osaron turned his attention back to the beauty of his new kingdom. The streets, alive with people. The sky, alive with stars. The palace, alive with light—Osaron marveled at this last, for it was not a squat stone castle like in Holland’s world, but an arcing structure of glass and gold that seemed to pierce the sky, a place truly fit for a king.
The rest of the world seemed to blur around the dazzling point of that palace as he made his way through the streets. The river came into view, a pulsing red, and the air caught in his chest.
Beautiful. Wasted.
We could be so much more.
A market burned in shades of crimson and gold along the riverbank, and ahead, the palace stairs were strewn with bouquets of frost-laced flowers. As his boots hit the first step, a row of flowers lost their icy sheen and blossomed back into vivid color.
Too long, he’d been holding back.
Too long.
With every step, the color spread; the flowers grew wild, blossoms bursting and stems shining with thorns, all of it spilling down the stairs in carpets of green and gold, white and red.
And all of it thrived—he thrived—in this strange, rich world, so ripe and ready for taking.
Oh, he would do such wondrous things.
In his wake, the flowers changed again, and again, and again, petals turning now to ice, now to stone. A riot of color, a chaos of form, until finally, overcome by their euphoric transformation, they went black and smooth as glass.
Osaron reached the top of the stairs, and came face-to-face with a huddle of men waiting for him before the doors. They were speaking to him, and for a moment he simply stood and let the words spill tangled into the air, nothing but inelegant sounds cluttering his perfect night. Then he sighed and gave them shape.
“I said stop,” one of the guards was warning.
“Don’t come any closer,” ordered a second as he drew a sword, its edge glinting with spellwork. To weaken magic. Osaron almost smiled, though the gesture still felt stiff on Holland’s face.
There was only one word for stop in his tongue—anasae—and even that meant only to unravel, undo. One word for ending magic, but so many to make it grow, spread, change.
Osaron lifted one hand, a casual gesture, power spiraling down around his fingers toward these men in their thin metal shells, where it—
An explosion tore through the sky above.
Osaron craned his neck and saw, over the crown of the palace, a sphere of colored light. And then another, and another, in bursts of red and gold. Cheers reached him on the wind, and he felt the resonant beat of bodies overhead.
Life.
Power.
“Stop,” said the men in their clumsy tongue.
But Osaron was just getting started.
The air swirled around his feet, and he rose up into the night.
TWO
CITY IN SHADOW
I
Kisimyr Vasrin was a little drunk.
Not unpleasantly so, just enough to dull the edges of the winner’s ball, smooth the faces on the roof, and blur the mindless chatter into something more enjoyable. She could still hold her own in a fight—that was how she judged it, not by how many glasses she’d gone through, but how quickly she could turn the contents of her glass into a weapon. She tipped the goblet, poured the wine straight out, and watched it freeze into a knife before it landed in her other hand.
There, she thought, leaning back against the cushions. Still good.
“You’re sulking,” said Losen from somewhere behind the couch.
“Nonsense,” she drawled. “I’m celebrating.” She tipped her head back to look at her pro
tégé and added dryly, “Can’t you tell?”
The young man chuckled, eyes alight. “Suit yourself, mas arna.”
Arna. Saints, when had she gotten old enough to be called a mistress? She wasn’t even thirty. Losen swept away to dance with a pretty young noble, and Kisimyr drained her glass and settled back to watch, gold tassels jingling in her ropes of hair.
The rooftop was a pretty enough place for a party—pillars rising into pointed crowns against the night sky, spheres of hearth fire warming the late winter air, and marble floors so white they shone like moonlit clouds—but Kisimyr had always preferred the arena. At least in a fight, she knew how to act, knew the point of the exercise. Here in society, she was meant to smile and bow and, even worse, mingle. Kisimyr hated mingling. She wasn’t vestra, or ostra, just old-fashioned London stock, flesh and blood and a good turn of magic. A good turn honed into something more.
All around her, the other magicians drank and danced, their masks mounted like brooches on their shoulders or worn like hoods thrown back atop their hair. The faceless ones registered as ornament, while the more featured cast unnerving expressions on the backs of heads and cloaks. Her own feline mask sat beside her on the couch, dented and singed from so many rounds in the ring.
Kisimyr wasn’t in the mood for a party. She knew how to feign grace, but inside she was still seething from the final match. It had been close—there was that much.
But of all the people to lose to, it had to be that obnoxious pretty-boy noble, Alucard Emery.
Where was the bastard, anyway? No sign of him. Or the king and queen, for that matter. Or the prince. Or his brother. Strange. The Veskan prince and princess were here, roaming as if in search of prey, while the Faroan regent held his own small court against a pillar, but the Arnesian royal family was nowhere to be seen.
Her skin prickled in warning, the way it did the instant before a challenger made their move in the ring. Something was off.
Wasn’t it?
Saints, she couldn’t tell.
A servant in red and gold swept past, and she plucked a fresh drink from the tray, spiced wine that tickled her nose and warmed her fingers before it touched her tongue.
Ten more minutes, she told herself, and she could go.
She was, after all, a victor, even if she hadn’t won this year.
“Mistress Kisimyr?”
She looked up at the young vestra, beautiful and tan, eyelids painted gold to match his sash. She cast a look around for Losen, and sure enough found her protégé watching, looking smug as a young cat offering up a mouse. “I’m Viken Rosec—” started the noble.
“And I’m not in the mood to dance,” she cut in.
“Perhaps, then,” he said coyly, “I could keep your company here.”
He didn’t wait for permission—she could feel the sofa dip beside her—but Kisimyr’s attention had already drifted past him, to the figure standing at the roof’s edge. One minute that stretch was empty, dark, and then the next, as a last firework lit the sky, he was there. From here, the man was nothing but a silhouette against the darker night, but the way he looked around—as if taking in the rooftop for the first time—set her on edge. He wasn’t a noble or a tournament magician, and he didn’t belong to any of the entourages she’d seen throughout the Essen Tasch.
Curiosity piqued, she rose from the couch, leaving her mask on the cushions beside Viken as the stranger stepped forward between two pillars, revealing skin as fair as a Veskan’s, but hair blacker than her own. A midnight blue half cloak spilled over his shoulders, and on his head, where a magician’s mask might be, was a silver crown.
A royal?
But she’d never seen him before. Never caught this particular scent of power, either. Magic rippled off him with every step, woodsmoke and ash and fresh-turned earth, at odds with the flowered notes that filled the roof around them.
Kisimyr wasn’t the only one to notice.
One by one the faces at the ball turned toward the corner.
The stranger’s own head was bowed slightly, as if considering the marble floor beneath his polished black boots. He passed a table on which someone had left a helmet, and drew a finger almost absently along the metal jaw. As he did, it crumbled to ash—no, not ash, but sand, a thousand glittering specks of glass.
A cold breeze brushed them away.
Kisimyr’s heart quickened.
Without thinking, her own feet carried her forward, matching him step for step as he crossed the roof until they both stood at opposite edges of the broad polished circle used for dancing.
The music stopped abruptly, broke off into half-formed chords and then silence as the strange figure strode into the center of the floor.
“Good evening,” said the stranger.
As he spoke, he raised his head, black hair shifting to reveal two all-black eyes, shadows twisting in their depths.
Those close enough to meet his gaze tensed and recoiled. Those farther afield must have felt the ripple of unease, because they too began to edge away.
The Faroans watched, gems dancing in their darkened faces as they tried to understand if this was some kind of show. The Veskans stood stock still, waiting for the stranger to draw a weapon. But the Arnesians roiled. Two guards peeled away to send word through the palace below.
Kisimyr held her ground.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted,” he continued, his voice becoming two—one soft, the other resonant, one scattered on the air like that pile of sand, the other crystal clear inside her head.
His black eyes tracked over the roof. “Where is your king?”
The question rang through Kisimyr’s skull, and when she tried to force his presence back, the stranger’s attention flicked toward her, landing like a stone.
“Strong,” he mused. “Everything here is strong.”
“Who are you?” demanded Kisimyr, her own voice sounding thin by comparison.
The man seemed to consider this a moment and then said, “Your new king.”
That sent a ripple through the crowd.
Kisimyr stretched out one arm, and the nearest pitcher of wine emptied, its contents sailing toward her fingers and hardening into an icy spear.
“Is that a threat?” she said, trying to focus on the man’s hands instead of those eerie black eyes, that resonant voice. “I am a high magician of Arnes. A victor of the Essen Tasch. I bear the favored sigil of the House of Maresh. And I will not let you harm my king.”
The stranger cocked his head, amused. “You are strong, mage,” he said, spreading his arms as if to welcome her embrace. His smile widened. “But you are not strong enough to stop me.”
Kisimyr spun her spear once, almost idly, and then lunged.
She made it two steps before the marble floor splashed beneath her feet, stone one instant and water the next, and then, before she could reach him, stone again. Kisimyr gasped, her body shuddering to a halt as the rock hardened around her ankles.
Losen was starting toward her, but she held a hand up without taking her gaze off the stranger.
It wasn’t possible.
The man hadn’t even moved. Hadn’t touched the stone, or said anything to change its shape. He’d simply willed it, out of one form, and into another, as if it were nothing.
“It is nothing,” he said, words filling the air and slinking through her head. “My will is magic. And magic is my will.”
The stone began to climb her shins as he continued forward, crossing to her in long, slow strides.
Behind him, Jinnar and Brost moved to attack. They made it to the edge of the circle before he sent them back with a flick of his wrist, their bodies crashing hard into pillars. Neither rose.
Kisimyr growled and summoned the other facet of her power. The marble rumbled at her feet. It cracked, and split, and still the stranger came toward her. By the time she staggered free, he was there, close enough to kiss. She didn’t even feel his fingers until they were already circling her wrist. She looked do
wn, shocked by the touch, at once feather-light and solid as stone.
“Strong,” he mused again. “But are you strong enough to hold me?”
Something passed between them, skin to skin, and then deeper, spreading up her arm and through her blood, strange and wonderful, like light, like honey in her veins, sweet and warm and—
No.
She pushed back, trying to force the magic away, but his fingers only tightened, and suddenly the pleasant heat became a burn, the light became a fire. Her bones went hot, her skin cracked, every inch of her ablaze, and Kisimyr began to scream.
II
Kell told them everything.
Or, at least, everything they needed to know. He didn’t say that he’d gone with Ojka willingly, still fuming from his imprisonment and his fight with the king. He didn’t say that he’d condemned the prince’s life and his own rather than agreeing to the creature’s terms. And he didn’t say that, at some point, he’d given up. But he did tell the king and queen of Lila, and how she’d saved his life—and Rhy’s—and brought him home. He told them of Holland’s survival, and Osaron’s power, of the cursed metal collar, and the Red London token in the demon’s hand.
“Where is this monster now?” demanded the king.
Kell sagged. “I don’t know.” He needed to say more, to warn them of Osaron’s strength, but all he could manage was, “I promise, Your Majesty, I will find him.” His anger didn’t rage—he was too tired for that—but it burned coldly in his veins.
“And I will kill him.”
“You will stay here,” said the king, gesturing to the prince’s bed. “At least until Rhy wakes.”
Kell started to protest, but Tieren’s hand settled again on his shoulder, and he felt himself sway beneath the priest’s influence. He sank into a chair beside his brother’s bed as the king left to summon his guards.
Beyond the windows, the fireworks had begun, showering the sky in red and gold.
Hastra, who hadn’t taken his eyes from the sleeping prince, stood against the wall nearby, whispering softly. His brown curls were touched with gold in the lamplight, and he was turning something over and over in his fingers. A coin. And at first Kell thought the words were some spell for calm, remembering that Hastra had once been destined for the Sanctuary, but soon the words registered as simple Arnesian. It was a prayer, of sorts, but he was asking for, of all things, forgiveness.