A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  He was standing in a courtyard, the high walls covered in vines that threw off blossoms of lush purple—such an impossible hue, but their petals solid, soft. The air felt like the cusp of summer, a hint of warmth, the sweet scent of blossoms and tilled earth—which told him where he wasn’t, where he couldn’t be.

  And yet—

  “Holland?” called a voice he hadn’t heard in years. Lifetimes. He turned, searching for the source, and found a gap in the courtyard wall, a doorway without a door.

  He stepped through, and the courtyard vanished, the wall solid behind him and the narrow road ahead crowded with people, their clothes white but their faces full of color. He knew this place—it was in the Kosik, the worst part of the city.

  And yet—

  A pair of muddy green eyes cut his way, glinting from a shadow at the end of the lane.

  “Alox?” he called, starting after his brother, when a scream made him reel around.

  A small girl raced past, only to be swept up into the arms of a man. She let out another squeal as the man spun her around. Not a scream at all.

  A short, delighted laugh.

  An old man tugged on Holland’s sleeve and said, “The king is coming,” and Holland wanted to ask what he meant, but Alox was slipping away, and so Holland hurried after him, down the road, around the corner, and—

  His brother was gone.

  As was the narrow lane.

  All at once, Holland was in the middle of a busy market, stalls overflowing with brightly colored fruits and fresh-baked bread.

  He knew this place. It was the Grand Square, where so many had been cut down over the years, their blood given back to the angry earth.

  And yet—

  “Hol!”

  He spun again, searching for the voice, and saw the edge of a honey-colored braid vanish through the crowd. The twirl of a skirt.

  “Talya?”

  There were three of them dancing at the edge of the square. The other two dancers were dressed in white, while Talya was a blossom of red.

  He pushed through the market toward her, but when he broke the edge of the crowd, the dancers were no longer there.

  Talya’s voice whispered in his ear.

  “The king is coming.”

  But when he spun toward her, she was gone again. So was the market, and the city.

  All of it had vanished, taking the bustle and noise with it, the world plunged back into a quiet broken only by the rustle of leaves, the distant caw of birds.

  Holland was standing in the middle of the Silver Wood.

  The trunks and branches still glinted with their metallic sheen, but the ground beneath his boots was rich and dark, the leaves overhead a dazzling green.

  The stream snaked through the grove, the water thawed, and a man crouched at the edge to run his fingers through, a crown sitting in the grass beside him.

  “Vortalis,” said Holland.

  The man rose to his feet, turned toward Holland, and smiled. He started to speak, but his words were swallowed by a strong and sudden wind.

  It cut through the woods, rustling the branches and stripping the leaves. They began to fall like rain, showering the world with green. Through the downpour, Holland saw Alox’s clenched fists, Talya’s parted lips, Vortalis’s dancing eyes. There and gone, there and gone, and every time he took a step toward one, the leaves would swallow them up, leaving only their voices to echo through the woods around him.

  “The king is coming,” called his brother.

  “The king is coming,” sang his lover.

  “The king is coming,” said his friend.

  Vortalis reappeared, striding through the rain of leaves. He held out his hand, palm up.

  Holland was still reaching for it when he woke up.

  * * *

  Holland could tell where he was by the plushness of the room, red and gold splashed like paint on every surface.

  The Maresh royal palace.

  A world away.

  It was late, the curtains drawn, the lamp beside the bed unlit.

  Holland reached absently for his magic before remembering it wasn’t there. The knowledge hit like loss, leaving him breathless. He stared at his hands, plumbing the depths of his power—the place where his power had always been, where it should be—and finding nothing. No hum. No heat.

  A shuddering exhale, the only outward sign of grief.

  He felt hollow. He was hollow.

  Bodies moved beyond the door.

  The shuffle of weight, the subtle clang of armor shifting, settling.

  Haltingly, Holland drew himself upright, unearthing his body from the bed’s thick blankets, its cloudlike mass of pillows. Annoyance flickered through him—who could possibly sleep in such a state?

  It was kinder, perhaps, than a prison cell.

  Not as kind as a quick death.

  The act of rising took too much, or perhaps there was simply too little left to give; he was out of breath by the time his feet met the floor.

  Holland leaned back against the bed, gaze traveling over the darkened room, finding a sofa, a table, a mirror. He caught his reflection there, and stilled.

  His hair, once charcoal—then briefly, vibrantly black—was now a shock of white. An icy shroud, sudden as snowfall. Paired with his pale skin, it rendered him nearly colorless.

  Except for his eyes.

  His eyes, which had so long marked his power, defined his life. His eyes, which had made him a target, a challenge, a king.

  His eyes, both of which were now a vivid, almost leafy green.

  V

  “Are you sure about this?” asked Kell, looking out at the city.

  He thought—no, he knew—it was a terrible idea, but he also knew the choice wasn’t his.

  A single deep crease cut Holland’s brow. “Stop asking.”

  They were on a rise overlooking the city, Kell on his feet and Holland on a stone bench, recovering his breath. It had clearly taken all of his strength to make the climb, but he had insisted on doing it, and now that they were here, he was insisting on this as well.

  “You could stay here,” offered Kell.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Holland answered flatly. “I want to go home.”

  Kell hesitated. “Your home isn’t exactly kind to those without power.”

  Holland held his gaze. Against his pale complexion and shock of newly white hair, his eyes were an even more vivid shade of green, and all the more startling now that they both were. And yet, Kell still felt like he was looking at a mask. A smooth surface behind which Holland—the real Holland—was hiding even now. Would always hide.

  “It’s still my home,” he said. “I was born in that world.…”

  He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Kell knew what he would say.

  And I will die there.

  In the wake of his sacrifice, Holland didn’t look old, only tired. But it was an exhaustion that ran deep, a place once filled with power now hollowed out, leaving the empty shell behind. Magic and life were intertwined in everyone and everything, but in Antari most of all. Without it, Holland clearly wasn’t whole.

  “I’m not certain this will work,” said Kell, “now that you’re—”

  Holland cut him off. “You’ve nothing to lose by trying.”

  But that wasn’t strictly true.

  Kell hadn’t told Holland—hadn’t told anyone but Rhy, and only then out of necessity—the true extent of the damage. That when the binding ring had lodged on his finger and Holland had poured his magic—and Osaron’s, and nearly Kell’s—into the Inheritor, something had torn inside of him. Something vital. That now, every time he summoned fire, or willed water, or conjured anything from blood, it pained him.

  Every single time, it hurt, a wound at the very center of his being.

  But unlike a wound, it refused to heal.

  Magic had always been a part of Kell, as natural as breathing. Now, he couldn’t catch his breath. The simplest acts took not only str
ength, but will. The will to suffer. To be hurt.

  Pain reminds us that we’re alive.

  That’s what Rhy had said to him, when he first woke to find their lives tethered. When Kell caught him with his hand over the flame. When he learned of the binding ring, the cost of its magic.

  Pain reminds us.

  Kell dreaded the pain, which seemed to worsen every time, felt ill at the thought of it, but he would not deny Holland this last request. Kell owed him that much, and so he said nothing.

  Instead, he looked around at the rise, the city beneath them. “Where are we now, in your world? Where will we be, once we step through?”

  A flicker of relief crossed Holland’s face, quick as light on water.

  “The Silver Wood,” he said. “Some say it was the place where magic died.” After a moment he added, “Others think it’s nothing, has never been anything but an old grove of trees.”

  Kell waited for the man to say more, but he just rose slowly to his feet, leaning ever so slightly on a cane, only his tense white knuckles betraying how much it took for him to stand.

  Holland put his other hand on Kell’s arm, signaling his readiness, and so Kell drew his knife and cut his free hand, the discomfort so simple compared to the pain that waited. He pulled the White London token from around his neck, staining the coin red, and reached out to rest his hand on the bench.

  “As Travars,” he said, Holland’s voice echoing softly beneath his as they both stepped through.

  * * *

  Pain reminds us …

  Kell clenched his teeth against the spasm, reaching out to brace himself against the nearest thing, which was not a bench or a wall but the trunk of a tree, its bark smooth as metal. He leaned against the cool surface, waiting for the wave to pass, and when it did, he dragged his head up to see a small grove, and Holland, a few feet away, alive, intact. A stream cut into the ground before him, little more than a ribbon of water, and beyond the grove, White London rose in stony spires.

  In Holland’s absence—and Osaron’s—the color had begun to leach back out of the world. The sky and river were a pale grey once more, the ground bare. This was the White London Kell had always known. That other version—the one he’d glimpsed in the castle yard, in the moments before Ojka closed the collar around his throat—was like something from a dream. And yet Kell’s heart ached to see it lost, and to see Holland bear that loss, the smooth planes of his mask finally cracking, the sadness showing through.

  “Thank you, Kell,” he said, and Kell knew the words for what they were: a dismissal.

  Yet he felt rooted to the spot.

  Magic made everything feel so impermanent, it was easy to forget that some things, once changed, could never be undone. That not everything was either changeable or infinite. Some roads kept going, and others had an end.

  For a long moment the two men stood in silence, Holland unable to move forward, Kell unable to step back.

  At last, the earth released its hold.

  “You’re welcome, Holland,” said Kell, dragging himself free.

  He reached the edge of the grove before he turned back, looking at Holland for a last time, the other Antari standing there at the center of the Silver Wood, his head tipped back, his green eyes closed. The winter breeze tousled white hair, ruffled ash-black clothes.

  Kell lingered, digging in the pockets of his many-sided coat, and when at last he turned to go, he set a single red lin on a tree stump. A reminder, an invitation, a parting gift, for a man Kell would never see again.

  VI

  Alucard Emery paced outside the Rose Hall, dressed in a blue so dark it registered as black until it caught the light just so. It was the color of the sails on his ship. The color of the sea at midnight. No hat, no sash, no rings, but his brown hair was washed and pinned back with silver. His cuffs and buttons shone as well, polished to beads of light.

  He was a summer sky at night, speckled with stars.

  And he had spent the better part of an hour assembling the outfit. He couldn’t decide between Alucard, the captain, and Emery, the noble. In the end, he had chosen neither. Today he was Alucard Emery, the man courting a king.

  He’d lost the sapphire above his eye and gained a new scar in its place. It didn’t wink in the sun, but it suited him anyway. The silver threads that traced over his skin, relics of the shadow king’s poison, shone with their own faint light.

  I rather like the silver, Rhy had said.

  Alucard rather liked it, too.

  His fingers felt bare without his rings, but the only absence that mattered was the silver feather he’d worn wrapped around his thumb. The mark of House Emery.

  Berras had survived the fog unscathed—which was to say he’d fallen to it—and woken in the street with the rest, claiming he had no memory of what he’d said or done under the shadow king’s spell. Alucard didn’t believe a word of it, had kept his brother’s company only long enough to tell him of the estate’s destruction and Anisa’s death.

  After a long silence, Berras had said only, “To think, the line comes down to us.”

  Alucard had shaken his head, disgusted. “You can have it,” he’d said, and walked away. He didn’t throw the ring at his brother, as good as that would have felt. Instead he simply dropped it in the bushes on his way out. The moment it was gone, he felt lighter.

  Now, as the doors to the Rose Hall swung open, he felt dizzy.

  “The king will see you,” said the royal guard, and Alucard forced himself forward, the velvet bag hanging from his fingers.

  * * *

  The hall wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty, either, and Alucard suddenly wished he’d requested a private meeting with the prince—the king.

  Vestra and ostra were gathered, some waiting for an audience, others simply waiting for the world to return to normal. The Veskan entourage was still confined to its quarters, while the Faroan assembly had divided, half sailing home with Lord Sol-in-Ar, the others lingering in the palace. Councilors, once loyal aides to Maxim, stood ready to advise, while members of the royal guard lined the hall and flanked the dais.

  King Rhy Maresh sat on his father’s throne, his mother’s empty seat beside him. Kell stood at his side, head bowed over his brother in quiet conversation. Master Tieren was at Rhy’s other side, looking older than ever, but his pale blue eyes were sharp among the hollows and wrinkles of his face. He rested a hand on Rhy’s shoulder as he spoke, the gesture simple, warm.

  Rhy’s own head was tipped down as he listened, the crown a heavy band of gold in his hair. There was sadness in his shoulders, but then Kell’s lips moved, and Rhy managed a fleeting smile, like light through clouds.

  Alucard’s heart lifted.

  He scanned the room quickly and saw Bard leaning against one of the stone planters, cocking her head the way she always did when she was eavesdropping. He wondered if she’d picked any pockets yet this morning, or if those days were over.

  Kell cleared his throat, and Alucard was startled to realize that his feet had carried him all the way to the dais. He met the king’s amber eyes, and saw them soften briefly with, what—happiness? concern?—before Rhy spoke.

  “Captain Emery,” he said, his voice the same, and yet different, distant. “You requested an audience.”

  “As you promised I might, Your Majesty, if I returned”—Alucard’s gaze flicked to Kell, the shadow at the king’s shoulder—“without killing your brother.”

  A murmur of amusement went through the hall. Kell scowled, and Alucard immediately felt better. Rhy’s eyes widened a fraction—he’d realized where this was going, and he had obviously assumed Alucard would request a private meeting.

  But what they’d had—it was more than stolen kisses between silk sheets, more than secrets shared only by starlight, more than a youthful dalliance, a summer fling.

  And Alucard was here to prove it. To lay his heart bare before Rhy, and the Rose Hall, and the rest of London.

  “Nearly four years ago
,” he began, “I left your … court, without explanation or apology. In doing so, I fear I wounded the crown and its estimation of me. I have come to make amends with my king.”

  “What is in your hand?” asked Rhy.

  “A debt.”

  A guard stepped forward to retrieve the parcel, but Alucard pulled away, looking back to the king. “If I may?”

  After a moment, Rhy nodded, rising as Alucard approached the dais. The young king descended the steps and met him there before the throne.

  “What are you doing?” asked Rhy softly, and Alucard’s whole body sang to hear this voice, the one that belonged not to the king of Arnes, but to the prince he’d known, the one he’d fallen in love with, the one he’d lost.

  “What I promised,” whispered Alucard, gripping the mirror in both hands and tipping its surface toward the king.

  It was a liran.

  Most scrying dishes could share the contents of one’s mind, ideas and memories projected on the surface, but a mind was a fickle thing—it could lie, forget, rewrite.

  A liran showed only the truth.

  Not as it had been remembered, not as one wanted to remember it, but as it had happened.

  It was no simple magic, to sift truth from memory.

  Alucard Emery had traded four years of his future for the chance to relive the worst night of his past.

  In his hands, the mirror’s surface went dark, swallowing Rhy’s reflection and the hall behind him as another night, another room, took shape in the glass.

  Rhy stiffened at the sight of his chamber, of them, tangled limbs and silent laughter in his bed, his fingers trailing over Alucard’s bare skin. Rhy’s cheeks colored as he reached out and touched the mirror’s edge. As he did, the scene flared to life. Mercifully, the sound of their pleasure didn’t echo through the throne room. It stayed, caught between them, as the scene unspooled.

  Alucard, rising from Rhy’s bed, trying to dress while the prince playfully undid every clasp he fastened, unlaced every knot. Their final parting kiss and Alucard’s departure through the maze of hidden halls and out into the night.

  What Rhy couldn’t see—then or now—in the mirror’s surface was Alucard’s happiness as he made his way across the copper bridge to the northern bank, his racing heart as he climbed the front steps to the Emery estate. Couldn’t feel the sudden horrible stutter of that heart when Berras stood waiting in the hall.