A Darker Shade of Magic (22 page)

I

Kell woke up in Lila’s bed for the second time that night.

Though at least this time, he discovered, there were no ropes. His hands rested at his sides, bound by nothing but the rough blanket that had been cast over him. It took him a moment to remember that it was Lila’s room, Lila’s bed, to piece together the memory of Holland and the alley and the blood, and afterward, Lila’s grip and her voice, as steady as the rain. The rain had stopped falling now, and low morning light was creeping into the sky, and for a moment all Kell wanted was to be home. Not in the shoddy room in the Ruby Fields, but at the palace. He closed his eyes and could almost hear Rhy pounding on his door, telling him to get dressed because the carriages were waiting, and so were the people.

“Get ready or be left behind,” Rhy would say, bursting into the room.

“Then leave me,” Kell would groan.

“Not a chance,” Rhy would answer, wearing his best prince’s grin. “Not today.”

A cart clattered past outside, and Kell blinked, Rhy fading back into nothing.

Were they worried about him yet, the royal family? Did they have any idea what was happening? How could they? Even Kell did not know. He knew only that he had the stone, and that he needed to be rid of it.

He tried to sit up, but his body cried out, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from voicing it. His skin, his muscle, his very bones … everything ached in a steady, horrible way, as if he were nothing but a bruise. Even the beat of his heart in his chest and the pulse of his blood through his veins felt sore, strained. He felt like death. It was as close as he had ever come, and closer than he ever wished to be. When the pain—or at least the novelty of it—lessened, he forced himself upright, bracing a hand against the headboard.

He fought to focus his vision, and when he managed, he found himself looking squarely into Lila’s eyes. She was sitting in that same chair at the foot of the bed, her pistol in her lap.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, the question primed on her tongue, as if she’d been waiting.

Kell squinted. “Do what?”

“Come back,” she said, the words low. “Why did you come back?” Two words hung in the air, unsaid but understood.
For me.

Kell fought to drag his thoughts together, but even they were as stiff and sore as the rest of him. “I don’t know.”

Lila seemed unimpressed by the answer, but she only sighed and returned her weapon to the holster at her waist. “How are you feeling?”

Like hell
, thought Kell. But then he looked down at himself and realized that, despite his aching body, the wound at his arm, where the nail had driven through, as well as the one across his stomach from the cutthroat’s stolen sword, were nearly healed. “How long was I asleep?”

“A few hours,” said Lila.

Kell ran a hand gingerly over his ribs. That didn’t make sense. Cuts this deep took days to mend, not hours. Not unless he had a—

“I used this,” said Lila, tossing a circular tin his way. Kell plucked it out of the air, wincing a little as he did. The container was unmarked, but he recognized it at once. The small metal tin contained a healing salve. Not just any healing salve, but one of his own, the royal emblem of the chalice and rising sun embossed on its lid. He’d misplaced it weeks ago.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“In a pocket in your coat,” said Lila, stretching. “By the way, did you
know
that your coat is more than one coat? I’m pretty sure I went through five or six to find that.”

Kell stared at her, slack-jawed.

“What?” she asked.

“How did you know what it was for?”

Lila shrugged. “I didn’t.”

“What if it had been
poison
?” he snapped.

“There’s really no winning with you,” she snapped back. “It smelled fine. It seemed fine.” Kell groaned. “And obviously I tested it on myself first.”

“You did
what
?”

Lila crossed her arms. “I’m not repeating myself just so you can gape and glare.” Kell shook his head, cursing under his breath as she nodded at a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. “Barron brought those for you.”

Kell frowned (saints, even his brow hurt when it furrowed). He and Barron had a
business
agreement. He was pretty sure it didn’t cover shelter and personal necessities. He would owe him for the trouble—and it
was
trouble. Both of them knew it.

Kell could feel Lila’s eyes hanging on him as he reached for the clean tunic and shrugged it gingerly over his shoulders. “What is it?” he asked.

“You said no one would follow you.”

“I said no one
could
,” corrected Kell. “Because no one can, except for Holland.” Kell looked at his hands and frowned. “I just never thought—”

“One is not the same thing as none, Kell,” said Lila. And then she let out a breath and ran a hand through her cropped dark hair. “But I suppose you didn’t exactly have all your wits about you.” Kell looked up in surprise. Was she actually excusing him? “And I did hit you with a book.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Lila, waving her hand. “So this Holland. He’s like you?”

Kell swallowed, remembering Holland’s words in the alley—
We may share an ability, you and I, but that does not make us equals—
and the dark, almost disdainful look that crossed his face when he said it. He thought of the brand burned into the other
Antari
’s skin, and the patchwork of scars on his arms, and the White king’s smug smile as Holland pressed the knife into his skin. No, Holland was nothing like Kell, and Kell was nothing like Holland.

“He can also move between worlds,” explained Kell. “In that way, we are alike.”

“And the eye?” questioned Lila.

“A mark of our magic,” said Kell. “
Antari.
That is what we are called. Blood magicians.”

Lila chewed her lip. “Are there any others I should know about?” she asked, and Kell thought he saw a sliver of something—fear?—cross her features, buried almost instantly behind the stubborn set of her jaw.

Kell shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, “We are the only two.”

He expected her to look relieved, but her expression only grew graver. “Is that why he didn’t kill you?”

“What do you mean?”

Lila sat forward in her chair. “Well, if he’d wanted to kill you, he could have. Why bleed you dry? For the fun of it? He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.”

She was right. Holland could have slit his throat. But he hadn’t.

It’s really quite hard to kill Antari.
Holland’s words echoed in Kell’s head.
But I can’t have—

Can’t have
what
?
wondered Kell. Ending an
Antari
’s life might be hard, but it wasn’t impossible. Had Holland been fighting against his orders, or following them?

“Kell?” pressed Lila.

“Holland never enjoys himself,” he said under his breath. And then he looked up sharply. “Where is the stone now?”

Lila gave him a long weighing look and then said, “I have it.”

“Then give it back,” demanded Kell, surprising himself with his own urgency. He told himself it would be safest on his person, but in truth, he wanted to
hold
it, couldn’t shake the sense that if he did, his aching muscles would be soothed and his weak blood strengthened.

She rolled her eyes. “Not this again.”

“Lila, listen to me. You’ve no idea what—”

“Actually,” she cut in, getting to her feet, “I’m starting to get a decent idea of what it can do. If you want it back, tell me the rest.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Kell automatically.

“Try me,” she challenged.

Kell squinted at her, this strange girl. Lila Bard did seem to have a way of figuring things out. She was still alive. That said something.
And
she’d come back for him. He didn’t know why—cutthroats and thieves weren’t usually known for their moral compasses—but he did know that without her, he would be in a far worse state.

“Very well,” said Kell, swinging his legs off the bed. “The stone is from a place known as Black London.”

“You mentioned other Londons,” she said, as if the concept were curious, but not entirely impossible. She didn’t faze easily. “How many are there?”

Kell ran a hand through his auburn hair. It stuck up at odd angles from rain and sleep. “There are four worlds,” he said. “Think of them as different houses built on the same foundation. They have little in common, save for their geography, and the fact that each has a version of this city straddling this river on this island country, and in each, that city is called London.”

“That must be confusing.”

“It isn’t, really, when you live in only one of them and never need think of the others. But as someone who moves between, I use color to keep them straight. Grey London, which is yours. Red London, which is mine. White London, which is Holland’s. And Black London, which is no one’s.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because it fell,” said Kell, rubbing the back of his neck where the pendant cords had snapped. “Lost to darkness. The first thing about magic that you have to understand, Lila, is that it is not inanimate. It is alive. Alive in a different way than you or I, but still very much alive.”

“Is that why it got angry?” she asked. “When I tried to get rid of it?”

Kell frowned. He’d never seen magic
that
alive.

“Nearly three centuries ago,” he said slowly, working out the math (it seemed further away, the effect of being so long referred to as simply “the past”), “the four worlds were twined together; magic and those who wielded it able to move between them with relative ease through any one of the many sources.”

“Sources?”

“Pools of immense natural power,” explained Kell. “Some small, discreet—a copse of trees in the Far East, a ravine on the Continent—others vast, like your Thames.”

“The Thames?” said Lila with a derisive snort. “A source of magic?”

“Perhaps the greatest source in the world,” said Kell. “Not that you’d know it here, but if you could see it as it is in
my
London …” Kell trailed off. “As I was saying, the doors between the worlds were open, and the four cities of London intermingled. But even with constant transference, they were not entirely equal in their power. If true magic were a fire, then Black London sat closest to the heat.” By this logic, White London stood second in strength, and Kell knew it must have, though he could not imagine it now. “It was believed that the power there not only ran strong in the blood, but pulsed like a second soul through everything. And at some point, it grew too strong and overthrew its host.

“The world sits in balance,” said Kell, “humanity in one hand, magic in the other. The two exist in every living thing, and in a perfect world, they maintain a kind of harmony, neither exceeding the other. But most worlds are not perfect. In Grey London—your London—humanity grew strong and magic weak. But in Black London, it was the other way around. The people there not only held magic in their bodies, they let magic into their minds, and it took them as its own, burning up their lives to fuel its power. They became vessels, conduits, for its will, and through them, it twisted whim into reality, blurring the lines, breaking them down, creating and destroying and corrupting everything.”

Lila said nothing, only listened and paced.

“It spread like a plague,” continued Kell, “and the other three remaining worlds retreated into themselves and locked their doors to prevent the spread of sickness.” He did not say that it had been
Red
London’s retreat, its sealing off of itself, that forced the other cities to follow, and left White London pinned between their closed doors and Black London’s seething magic. He did not say that the world caught between was forced to fight the darkness back alone. “With the sources restricted, and the doors locked, the remaining three cities were isolated and began to diverge, each becoming as they are now. But what became of Black London and the rest of its world, we can only guess. Magic requires a living host—it can thrive only where life does, too—so most assume that the plague burned through its hosts and eventually ran out of kindling, leaving only charred remains. None know for sure. Over time, Black London became a ghost story. A fairy tale. Told so many times that some don’t even think it real.”