A Darker Shade of Magic (28 page)

“Tell me something, Kell,” she said as they stepped back onto the curb when the men were gone. “The commoners treat you like a noble yet you hide from the guards like a thief. Which is it?”

“Neither,” he answered, silently willing her to let the matter go.

But Lila wouldn’t. “Are you some kind of valiant criminal?” she pressed. “A Robin Hood, all hero to the people and outlaw to the crown?”

“No.”

“Are you wanted for something?”

“Not exactly.”

“In my experience,” observed Lila, “a person is either wanted or they’re not. Why would you hide from the guards if you’re not?”

“Because I thought they might be looking for me.”

“And why would they be doing that?”

“Because I’m missing.”

He heard Lila’s steps slow. “Why would they care?” she asked, coming to a stop. “Who are you?”

Kell turned to face her. “I told you—”

“No,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Who are you
here
? Who are you to
them
?”

Kell hesitated. All he wanted was to cross through his city as quickly as possible, retrieve a White London token from his rooms, and get the wretched black stone out of this world. But Lila didn’t look like she planned on moving until he answered her. “I belong to the royal family,” he said.

In the matter of hours he’d known Lila, he’d learned that she didn’t surprise easily, but at this claim, her eyes finally went wide with disbelief. “You’re a
prince
?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Like the pretty fellow in the carriage? Is he your brother?”

“His name is Rhy, and no.” Kell cringed when he said it. “Well … not exactly.”

“So
you’re
the black-eyed prince. I have to admit, I never took you for a—”

“I’m not a prince, Lila.”

“I suppose I can see it, you are rather arrogant and—”

“I’m
not a
—”

“But what’s a member of the royal family doing—”

Kell pushed her back against the brick wall of the alley. “I’m not a
member
of the royal family,” he snapped. “I
belong
to them.”

Lila’s forehead crinkled. “What do you mean?”

“They own me,” he said, cringing at the words. “I’m a possession. A trinket. So you see, I grew up in the palace, but it is not my home. I was raised by the royals, but they are not my family, not by blood. I have worth to them and so they keep me, but that is not the same as belonging.”

The words burned when he spoke them. He knew he wasn’t being fair to the king and queen, who treated him with warmth if not love, or to Rhy, who had always looked on him as a brother. But it was true, wasn’t it? As much as it pained him. For all his caring, and for theirs, the fact remained he was a weapon, a shield, a tool to be used. He was not a prince. He was not a son.

“You poor thing,” said Lila coldly, pushing him away. “What do you want? Pity? You won’t find it from me.”

Kell clenched his jaw. “I didn’t—”

“You have a house if not a home,” she spat. “You have people who care for you if not about you. You may not have everything you want, but I’d wager you have everything you could ever
need
, and you have the audacity to claim it all forfeit because it is not love.”

“I—”

“Love doesn’t keep us from freezing to death, Kell,” she continued, “or starving, or being knifed for the coins in our pocket. Love doesn’t buy us anything, so be glad for what you have and who you have because you may want for things but you
need
for nothing.”

She was breathless by the time she finished, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.

And for the first time, Kell saw Lila. Not as she wanted to be, but as she was. A frightened, albeit clever, girl trying desperately to stay alive. One who had likely frozen and starved and fought—and almost certainly killed—to hold on to some semblance of a life, guarding it like a candle in a harsh wind.

“Say something,” she challenged.

Kell swallowed, clenched his hands into fists at his sides, and looked at her hard. “You’re right,” he said.

The admission left him strangely gutted, and in that moment, he just wanted to go home (and it was a home, far more of one than Lila probably had). To let the queen touch his cheek, and the king his shoulder. To swing his arm around Rhy’s neck and toast to his birthday and listen to him ramble and laugh.

It ached, how badly he wanted it.

But he couldn’t.

He had made a mistake. He had put them all in danger, and he had to make it right.

Because it was his duty to protect them.

And because he loved them.

Lila was still staring, waiting for the catch in his words, but there was none.

“You’re right,” he said again. “I’m sorry. Compared to your life, mine must seem a jewel—”

“Don’t you dare pity me, magic boy,” growled Lila, a knife in her hand. And just like that, the scared street rat was gone, and the cutthroat was back. Kell smiled thinly. There was no winning these battles with Lila, but he was relieved to see her back in threatening form. He broke her gaze and looked up at the sky, the red of the Isle reflecting off the low clouds. A storm was coming. Rhy would sulk at that, too, spiteful of anything that might dampen the splendor of his day.

“Come on,” said Kell, “we’re almost there.”

Lila sheathed her blade and followed, this time with fewer daggers in her eyes.

“This place we’re headed,” she said. “Does it have a name?”

“Is Kir Ayes,” said Kell. “The Ruby Fields.” He had not told Lila yet that her journey would end here. That it had to. For his peace of mind and for her safety.

“What are you hoping to find there?”

“A token,” said Kell. “Something that will grant us passage to White London.” He parsed through the shelves and drawers in his mind, the various trinkets from the various cities glittering behind his eyes. “The inn itself,” he went on, “is run by a woman named Fauna. You two should get along splendidly.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re both—”

He was about to say
hard as tacks
, but then he rounded the corner and came to a sharp stop, the words dying on his tongue.

“Is that the Ruby Fields?” asked Lila at his shoulder.

“It is,” said Kell quietly. “Or, it was.”

There was nothing left but ash and smoke.

The inn, and everything in it, had been burned to the ground.

IV

It had been no ordinary fire.

Ordinary fires didn’t consume metal as well as wood. And ordinary fires spread. This one hadn’t. It had traced the edges of the building and burned in a near-perfect inn-shaped blaze, only a few tendrils scorching the street stones that circled the building.

No, this was spellwork.

And it was fresh. Warmth still wafted off the ruins as Kell and Lila waded through them, searching for something—
anything
—that might have survived. But nothing had.

Kell felt sick.

This kind of fire burned hot and fast, and the edges suggested a binding circle. It wouldn’t simply have contained the flames. It would have contained everything. Everyone. How many people had been trapped inside? How many corpses now in the wreckage, reduced to bone, or merely ash?

And then Kell thought, selfishly, of his room.

Years of collecting—music boxes and lockets, instruments and ornaments, the precious and the simple and the strange—all gone.

Rhy’s warning—
give up this foolishness before you’re caught
—echoed in his head, and for an instant, Kell was glad that he’d been robbed of the bounty before it could be discovered. And then the weight of it sank in. Whoever did this, they hadn’t
robbed
him—at least, that hadn’t been the point. But they’d stripped him of his loot to cut him off. An
Antari
could not travel without tokens. They were trying to corner him, to make sure that if he managed to flee back into Red London, he would have nothing at his disposal.

It was a measure of thoroughness that reeked of Holland’s own hand. The same hand that had ripped the London coins from Kell’s throat and cast them away into the dark.

Lila toed the melted remains of a kettle. “What now?”

“There’s nothing here,” said Kell, letting a handful of ash slide through his fingers. “We’ll have to find another token.” He brushed the soot from his hands, thinking. He wasn’t the only person in Red London with a trinket, but the list was short, as he’d been far more willing to trade in artifacts from the novel, harmless Grey than the warped and violent White. The king himself had a token, passed down over the years. Fauna had one, a trinket as part of their deal (though Fauna, he feared, was now buried somewhere in the rubble).

And Fletcher had one.

Kell cringed inwardly.

“I know a man,” he said, which wasn’t the half of it, but was certainly simpler than explaining that Fletcher was a petty criminal who’d lost a bounty to him in a game of Sanct when Kell was several years younger and several shades more arrogant, and Kell had gifted him the White London trinket as either a peace offering (if he felt like lying to himself) or a jab (if he was being honest). “Fletcher. He keeps a shop by the docks. He’ll have a token.”

“Yes, well, let’s hope they haven’t burned
his
shop down as well.”

“I’d like to see them tr—” The words died in Kell’s throat. Someone was coming. Someone who smelled of dried blood and burning metal. Kell lunged for Lila, and she got out half a word of protest before he clamped one hand over her mouth and shoved the other into her pocket. His fingers found the stone and folded over it, and power surged through his body, coursed through his blood. Kell caught his breath as a shudder ran through him, but there was no time to dwell on the sensation—at once thrilling and terrifying—and no time to hesitate
. Conviction
, Holland had said,
conviction is key
, so Kell did not waffle, did not waver.

“Conceal us,”
he ordered the talisman.

And the stone obliged. It sang to life, its power ringing through him as—between one heartbeat and the next—black smoke enveloped Kell and Lila both. It settled over them like a shadow, a veil; when he brought his fingers to it, they met something that was more than air and less than cloth. When Kell looked down at Lila, he could see her, and when she looked up, she could clearly see him, and the world around them was still perfectly visible, albeit tinted by the spell. Kell held his breath and hoped the stone had done its task. He didn’t have a choice. There was no time to run.

Just then Holland appeared at the mouth of the side street.

Kell and Lila both tensed at the sight of him. He looked slightly crumpled from his time on the alley floor. His wrists were red and raw beneath his wrinkled half-cloak. His silver clasp was tarnished, his collar flecked with mud, and his expression as close to anger as Kell had ever seen it. A small crease between his brows. A tightness in his jaw.

Kell could feel the stone shudder in his hand, and he wondered if Holland was drawn to it, or if it was drawn to Holland.

The other
Antari
was holding something—a flattened crystal, the size and shape of a playing card—up to his lips, and speaking into it in his low even way.

“Öva sö taro,”
he said in his native tongue.
He is in the city.

Kell couldn’t hear the other person’s answer, but after a pause, Holland answered,
“Kösa”—I’m sure
—and slipped the crystal back into his pocket. The
Antari
tipped his shoulder against the wall and studied the charred ruins of the inn. He stood there, as if lost in thought.

Or waiting.

The steadiness of his gaze made Lila fidget ever so slightly against Kell, and he tightened his grip over her mouth.

Holland squinted. Perhaps in thought. Perhaps at them. And then he spoke.

“They screamed while the building was burning,” he said in English, his voice too loud to be meant only for himself. “All of them screamed by the end. Even the old woman.”

Kell gritted his teeth.

“I know you’re here, Kell,” continued Holland. “Even the burned remains cannot hide your scent. And even the stone’s magic cannot hide the stone. Not from me. It calls to me the way it does to you. I would find you anywhere, so end this foolishness and face me.”