by V. E. Schwab
Because, of course, it wasn’t real.
A dream thing, dead inside, just like—
The floor began to soften, and she leapt back an instant before it turned to tar. Another one of Osaron’s traps.
She was sick of playing by the shadow king’s rules.
Surrounded by a palace only he could will.
Lila’s gaze swept the chamber, and then went up—up past the walls to the place where the sky shone through. She had an idea.
Lila reached out with all her strength—and part of Holland’s, part of Kell’s—and pulled, not on the air, but on the Isle.
“You cannot will the ocean,” Alucard had told her once.
But he never said anything about a river.
Blood trickled down Lila’s throat as she pressed the kerchief to her nose.
Alucard was sitting across from her, chin in one hand. “I’m honestly not sure how you’ve lived this long.”
Lila shrugged, her voice muffled by the cloth. “I’m hard to kill.”
The captain shoved to his feet. “Stubborn’s not the same thing as infallible,” he said, pouring himself a drink, “and I’ve told you three times you cannot move the fucking ocean, no matter how hard you try.”
“Maybe you’re not trying hard enough,” she muttered.
Alucard shook his head. “Everything has a scale, Bard. You cannot will the sky, you cannot move the sea, you cannot shift the whole continent beneath your feet. Currents of wind, basins of water, patches of earth, that is the breadth of a magician’s reach. That is the circumference of their power.”
And then, without warning, he lobbed the wine bottle at her head.
She was quick enough to catch it, but just barely, fumbling the cloth from her bloody nose. “What the hell, Emery?” she snapped.
“Can you fit your hand around it?”
She looked down at the bottle, her fingers wrapped around the glass, their tips a breath away from touching.
“Your hand is your hand,” said Alucard simply. “It has limits. So does your power. It can only hold so much, and no matter how hard you stretch your fingers around that glass, they will never touch.”
She shrugged, spun the bottle in her hand, and shattered it against the table.
“And now?” she said.
Alucard Emery groaned. He pinched the bridge of his nose the way he did when she was being particularly maddening. She’d taken to counting the number of times a day she could make him do it.
Her current record was seven.
Lila sat forward in her seat. Her nose had stopped bleeding, though she could still taste the copper on her tongue. She willed the broken shards up into the air between them, where they formed a cloud in the vague shape of a bottle.
“You’re a brilliant magician,” she said, “but there’s something you just don’t get.”
He slumped back into his chair. “What’s that?”
Lila smiled. “The trick to winning a fight isn’t strength, but strategy.”
Alucard raised his brows. “Who said anything about fighting?”
She ignored him. “And strategy is just a fancy word for a special kind of common sense, the ability to see options, to make them where there were none. It’s not about knowing the rules.”
Her hand fell away, and the bottle crumbled again, falling in a rain of glass.
“It’s about knowing how to break them.”
IV
It wasn’t enough, thought Holland.
For every blow they landed, Osaron avoided three, and for every one they dodged, Osaron landed three in turn. Blood began to dot the floor.
It spilled down Kell’s cheek. Dripped from Lila’s fingers. Slicked the cloth at Holland’s side.
His head spun as the other two Antari drew on his power.
Kell was busy summoning a force of wind while Lila had gone very still, her head tipped back toward the place where the bones of the ceiling met the sky.
Osaron saw the opening and moved toward her, but Kell’s wind whipped through the throne room, trapping the shadow king within a tunnel of air.
“We have to do something,” he called over the wind as Osaron slashed at the column. Holland knew it wouldn’t hold, and sure enough, moments later, the cyclone shattered, slamming Kell and Holland both backward in the blast. Lila staggered, but stayed on her feet, a trickle of red running from her nose as the pressure in the palace rose and darkness blacked the windows to either side.
Kell was just finding his feet when Osaron sprang toward her again, too fast for Kell to catch. Holland touched the gash across his ribs.
“As Narahi,” he said, the words thundering through him.
Quicken.
It was a hard piece of magic under the best circumstances, and a grueling one now, but it was worth it as the world around him slowed.
To his right, Lila still looked up. To his left, Kell was drawing his hands apart against the massive force of time, a fire sparking in slow motion between his palms. Only Osaron still moved with any semblance of speed, black eyes shifting his way as Holland spun the scythe and lunged.
They clashed together, apart, together again.
“I will make you bend.”
Weapon against weapon.
“I will make you break.”
Will against will.
“You were mine, Holland.”
His back hit a pillar.
“And you will be mine again.”
The blade raked his arm.
“Once I hear you beg.”
“Never,” Holland snarled, slashing the scythe. It should have met Osaron’s swords, but at the last instant the weapons disappeared and he caught Holland’s blade with Ojka’s bare hands, letting the steel cut deep. Blood—dead, black, but still Antari—leaked around the blade, and Osaron’s stolen face split into a grim, triumphant smile.
“As Ste—”
Holland gasped, letting go of the scythe before the spell was out.
It was a mistake. The weapon turned to ash in Osaron’s grip, and before Holland could dodge, the demon wrapped one bloody hand around his face and pinned him back against the pillar.
Overhead, a shadow was blotting out the sky. Holland’s hands wrapped around Osaron’s wrists, trying to pry them loose, and for an instant the two were locked in a strange embrace, before the shadow king leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“As Osaro.”
Darken.
The words echoed through his head and became shadow, became night, became a black cloth cinching over Holland’s sight, blotting out Osaron, and the palace, and the wave of water cresting overhead, and plunging Holland’s world into black.
* * *
Blood was dripping from Lila’s nose as the wave of black water curled over the palace—
Too big—
Far too big—
And then it fell.
Lila let go of the river, head spinning as it came crashing down onto the palace hall. She threw her hands up to block the crushing weight, but her magic was slow—too slow—in the conjuring’s wake.
The pillar shielded Holland from the worst of the blow, but the water slammed Ojka’s body down into the floor with an audible crack. Lila dove for cover but found none, and only Kell’s quick reflexes spared them both the same fate. She felt her power dip as Kell pulled it close to his and cast it back in a shield above her head. The river fell like heavy rain, spilling in curtains around her.
Through the veil she saw Ojka’s body twitch and flex, broken pieces already knitting back together as Osaron forced the puppet up.
Nearby, Holland was on his hands and knees, fingers splayed on the flooded floor as if searching for something he’d dropped.
“Get up!” shouted Lila, but when Holland’s head swiveled toward her, she recoiled. His eyes were wrong. Not black, but shuttered, blind.
There was no time.
Osaron was up and Holland wasn’t and she and Kell were both racing forward, boots splashing in the s
hallow water as it spun up around them into weapons.
A sword spilled from nothing into Osaron’s hand as Holland struggled, empty-eyed. His fingers wrapped around the shadow king’s ankle, but before he could issue a spell he was being sent backward with a vicious kick, skidding across the flooded ground.
Kell and Lila ran, but they were too slow.
Holland was on his knees in front of the shadow king with his raised sword.
“I told you I would make you kneel.”
Osaron brought the blade down, and Kell slowed the weapon in a cloud of frost as Lila dove for Holland, tackling him out of the way the instant before the metal struck stone.
Lila spun up, throwing off water into shards of ice that sang through the air. Osaron flung up a hand, but he wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t strong enough, and several slivers of ice found flesh before he could will them away.
There was no time to relish the victory.
With a single sweep of his arm, every drop of river water she’d summoned came together and swirled up into a column before turning to dark stone. Just another pillar in his palace.
Osaron pointed at Lila. “You will—”
She sprang at him, shocked when the now-dry floor splashed beneath her feet. The stone pooled around her ankles, one moment liquid and the next solid again, pinning her the way the floor had pinned Kisimyr on the palace roof.
No.
She was trapped, and she had the last knife out and in her hand, fire starting in the other as she braced herself for an attack that never came.
Because Osaron had turned.
And he was heading for Kell.
* * *
Kell had only a stolen moment as Lila fought Osaron, but he sprinted for the prison of ice.
Hold on, Rhy, he pleaded, slashing his blade at the frozen cage, only to be rebuffed by the shadow king’s will.
He tried again and again, a frustrated sob clawing up his throat.
Stop.
He didn’t know if he heard Rhy’s voice, or only felt it as he tried to reach him. His brother’s head was bowed, blood running into his amber eyes and turning them gold.
Kell—
“Kell!” shouted Lila, and he looked up, catching Ojka’s reflection in the column of ice as it surged toward him. He spun, drawing the crimson-stained water at his feet up into a spear, and lifting the weapon an instant before the shadow king struck.
Osaron’s twin blades came singing down, shattering the spear in Kell’s hands before lodging in the walls of Rhy’s prison. The ice cracked, but didn’t break. And in that moment, when Osaron’s weapons were trapped, his stolen shell caught between attack and retreat, Kell drove the broken shard of ice into Ojka’s chest.
The shadow king looked down at the wound, as if amused by the feeble attempt, but Kell’s hand was a mess from gripping the shattered spear, blood slicking hand and ice alike, and when he spoke, the spell rang through the air.
“As Steno.”
Break.
The magic tore through Ojka’s body, warring with Osaron’s will as her bones broke and mended, shattered and set, a puppet being torn apart in one breath, patched together in the next. Fighting—and failing—to hold its shape, the shadow king’s stolen shell began to look grotesque, pieces peeling, the whole thing knit together more by magic than sinew.
“That body will not hold,” snarled Kell as broken hands forced him up against his brother’s cage.
Osaron smiled a ruined grin. “You are right,” he said, as an icy spike drove through Kell’s back.
V
Someone screamed.
A single, agonized note.
But it wasn’t Kell.
He wanted to scream, but Ojka’s ruined hand was wrapped around his jaw, forcing his mouth closed. The frozen blade had pierced above his hip and come out his side, its tip coated with vivid red blood.
Beyond Osaron, Lila was trying to tear herself free, and Holland was on his hands and knees, searching the ground for something lost.
A groan escaped Kell’s throat as the shadow king prodded the tear in his side.
“This is not a mortal wound,” said Osaron. “Not yet.”
He felt the monster’s voice sliding through his mind, weighing him down.
“Let me in,” it whispered.
No, thought Kell viscerally, violently.
That darkness—the same darkness that had caught him when he fell into White London so recently—wrapped around his wounded body, warm, soft, welcoming.
“Let me in.”
No.
The column of ice burned cold against his spine.
Rhy.
Osaron echoed in his mind. Said, “I can be merciful.”
Kell felt the shards of ice slide free—not from his own body but his brother’s—pain withdrawing limb by limb. He heard the short gasp, the soft, wet sound of Rhy collapsing to the blood-slicked floor, and relief surged through him even as the cold took root again, branched, flowered.
“Let me in.”
In the corner of Kell’s vision, something flashed on the floor. A shard of metal, near Holland’s searching hand.
The Inheritor.
Kell’s mind was slipping with the pain as he called it toward him, but as the cylinder rose into the air, his power failed, suddenly, completely. As if severed, stolen.
Snatched away by a thief.
* * *
Lila couldn’t move.
The floor gripped her legs in a stone embrace, bones threatening to break with every motion. Across the chamber Kell was trapped and bleeding, and she couldn’t reach him, not with her hands, couldn’t force Osaron away. But she could draw him to her. She pulled on the tether between them, stealing Kell’s magic, and Osaron’s attention with it. Power flared like light before Lila’s eyes, and the demon spun toward her, a moth drawn to a flame.
Look at me, she wanted to say as Osaron abandoned Kell. Come to me.
But as soon as those black eyes leveled on her, she would have given everything to get loose. To be free.
Kell was horribly pale, his fingers slipping over the blade of ice driven through his side. Holland clutched at a pillar and struggled to his feet. The Inheritor sat on the ground nearby, but before Lila could summon it, Osaron was there, one mangled hand knotted in her hair and a blade against her throat.
“Let go,” he whispered, and whether he meant her knife or her will, she didn’t know. But at least she had his attention now. She let the weapon fall with a clatter to the floor.
He forced her face toward his, her gaze toward his, felt him sliding through her mind, probing thoughts, memories.
“So much potential.”
She tried to pull away, but she was pinned, the floor gripping her ankles and Osaron her scalp and the blade still at her throat.
“I am what you saw in the mirror at Sasenroche,” said the shadow king. “I am what you dream of being. I can make you unstoppable. I can set you free.”
Across the throne room, Kell had finally summoned the strength to break free. The ice shattered around him and he collapsed to the floor. Osaron didn’t turn. His attention was on her, eyes dancing hungrily in the light of her power.
“Free,” she said softly, as if pondering the word.
“Yes,” whispered the shadow king.
In the black of his eyes, she saw it, that version of herself.
Unbeatable.
Unbreakable.
“Let me in, Delilah Bard.”
It was tempting, even now. Her hand drifted up to Ojka’s arm. A dancer’s embrace. Bloody fingers digging into ruined flesh.
Lila smiled. “As Illumae.”
Osaron wrenched back, but he was too late.
Ojka’s body began to burn.
The blade slashed blindly at Lila’s throat but she dodged, and then it was gone, tumbling from Ojka’s hand as the corpse went up in flames.
Smoke poured from the thrashing body, first the acrid stuff of burning flesh, and then the dark
fog of Osaron’s power as it was finally forced to flee its shell.
The palace shuddered with the sudden loss of his power, his control. The floor loosened around her boots and Lila stumbled forward, free, as Osaron struggled to find form.
The shadows swirled, fell apart, swirled again.
The Osaron that took shape was a ghost of himself.
A brittle facade, transparent and flat. His edges bled and blurred, and through his spectral center she could see Kell clutching the wound across his front. Rhy, struggling to rise.
This was it.
Her chance.
Their chance.
She flexed her fingers, reaching for the Inheritor. It trembled on the ground and rose toward her.
And then it fell, tumbled back to the floor as her strength vanished. It was like being swallowed by a wave in reverse. All the power flooding suddenly, violently, away. Lila gasped as the world tilted beneath her, legs buckling, her vision dim.
Magic was such a new thing that the absence of it shouldn’t have hurt so much, but Lila felt gutted as every last ounce of power was wrenched away. She cast about for Kell, certain that he had stolen her strength, but Kell was still on the ground, still bleeding.
The shadow king loomed over her, hands splayed, and the air began to coil around Lila’s throat, tightening until she couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.
And there, behind him, in a halo of silver light, stood Holland.
* * *
Holland couldn’t see.
The darkness was everywhere, raging around him like a storm, swallowing the world. But he could hear. And so he heard Kell being stabbed, heard Ojka burn, heard the Inheritor as Lila called it from the ground, and knew it was his chance. And when he drew on the binding ring, and pulled the magic of the other two Antari to him, he found a kind of sight. The world took shape not in light and dark, but in ribbons of power.
The strands glowed, flowing around and through Lila’s kneeling form, and Kell’s, and Rhy’s, all of it drawn in silver light.
And there, right in front of him, the absence.
A man in the shape of a void.
A void in the shape of a man.
No longer a puppet. Just a piece of rotten magic, smooth and black and empty.