More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Kell never noticed the faint aromatic scent of Red London clinging to his clothes, but whenever he traveled, someone invariably told him that he smelled like freshly cut flowers.
He could smell Grey London (smoke) and White London (blood), but to him, Red London simply smelled like home.
And so Kell—inspired by the lost city known to all as Black London—had given each remaining capital a color. Grey for the magic-less city. Red, for the healthy empire. White, for the starving world.
Kell tipped his head so that his copper hair tumbled out of his eyes, revealing not only the crisp blue of the left one but the solid black of the right. A black that ran edge to edge, filling white and iris both. There was nothing human about that eye. It was pure magic. The mark of a blood magician. Of an Antari.
But the thing about magic,” added Kell, “is that it preys on the strong-minded and the weak-willed, and one of the worlds couldn’t stop itself. The people fed on the magic and the magic fed on them until it ate their bodies and their minds and then their souls.”
When he flexed his fingers absently, the current stopped, the water stilling, smooth as glass, beneath him.
It fascinated him, this place, because despite its grungy appearance and grungier customers, the fact was that, by luck or design, the Stone’s Throw was always there.
men who waded into waters claiming they could swim should not need a raft.
Kell and Holland seemed to be the last of a rapidly dying breed.
So much of the Grey world was clunky, but now and then its lack of magic led to ingenuity. Take its music boxes. A complex but elegant design. So many parts, so much work, all to create a little tune.
He was, after all, Antari. And Antari could speak to blood. To life. To magic itself.
Elemental magic may speak any tongue, but Antari magic—true magic, blood magic—spoke one, and only one.
He could accuse Gen of cheating, but there was no point. Parrish himself had been cheating for the better part of an hour and still hadn’t won a single hand.
(everyone knew that Kell could keep the prince safer than any of his guard).
but Holland terrified him. He didn’t know if it was the evenness in the man’s tone or his strangely faded appearance or his haunted eyes—one black, of course, the other a milky green. Or perhaps it was the way he seemed to be made more of water and stone than flesh and blood and soul.
“I wasn’t here,” said Holland as the coin rose and fell. And by the time it hit Parrish’s palm, he was alone in the hall, staring down at the disk, wondering how it got there, and certain he was forgetting something. He clutched the coin as if he could catch the slipping memory, and hold on. But it was already gone.
A vein of power. An artery. Some thought magic came from the mind, others the soul, or the heart, or the will. But Kell knew it came from the blood. Blood was magic made manifest. There it thrived. And there it poisoned.
If red was the color of magic in balance—of harmony between power and humanity—then black was the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint.
but he could not ignore the signature of dark magic that marred his face.
A red reserved for royalty.
She always went looking for the truth in his right eye, as if it were a scrying board, something to be gazed into, seen past. But what she saw, she never shared.
The great irony, he supposed, was that he had never seen the worlds beyond the cities.
when the small shiny scar captured his attention.
Memory. He ran his thumb over the scar. Contrary to its name, the symbol wasn’t meant to help one remember. It was meant to make one forget.
Power could not be cultivated like a crop, distilled through generations. If it could, Antari would be sown and reaped. They were ideal vessels, capable of controlling any element, of drawing any spell, of using their own blood to command the world around them. They were tools, and in the wrong hands, weapons. Perhaps the lack of inheritance was nature’s way of balancing the scales, of maintaining order.
Five years. Five years he’d been someone else’s son.
Lila Bard lived by a simple rule: if a thing was worth having, it was worth taking.
Trouble is the looker, she’d answer. It keeps looking till it finds you. Might as well find it first.
The poor kept up their guards. The rich strutted around, assuming they’d be safe, so long as they stayed in the good parts of town.
Lila Bard knew in her bones that she was meant to be a pirate. All she needed was a working ship.
Caster—for all good weapons deserved a name—was
but one spread and pinned in place by stones or stolen trinkets. It was her favorite one, that map, because none of the places on it were labeled. Surely, someone knew what kind of map it was, and where it led, but Lila didn’t. To her, it was a map to anywhere.
Lila was nineteen. Nineteen, and every one of the years felt carved into her.
and then, with a last look around the room, she set fire to the dead man and the boat. Lila stood on the dock and watched the Sea King burn.
She hated that noise, hated most taverns altogether, but not the Stone’s Throw. The others all repulsed her, repelled her, but this place dragged at her like gravity, a low and constant pull.
“Why is the language of magic so hard for my tongue to master?” “Because you cannot win the elements over with your charm or your smile or your status,”
“That’s because it is hard,” said Rhy. “Just because you make it look easy doesn’t mean it is.”
The only exception was blood. Though it flowed as readily as the rest, blood itself did not obey the laws of elements—it could not be manipulated, told to move, or forced to still. Blood had a will of its own, and had to be addressed not as an object, but as an equal, an adversary. Which was why Antari stood apart. For they alone held dominion not only over elements, but also over blood.
But the thing about people, Kell had discovered, is that they didn’t really want to know. They thought they did, but knowing only made them miserable. Why fill up a mind with things you can’t use? Why dwell on places you can’t go?
After all, it had been Red London’s decision to seal itself off, leaving White London—which sat between Red and Black—trapped and forced to fight back the dark plague on its own, to seal itself in, and the corrupted magic out.
People in Kell’s world believed that magic was neither an infinite resource nor a base one. It was meant to be used but not abused, wielded with reverence as well as caution.
White London had a very different notion. Here, magic was not seen as equal. It was seen as something to be conquered. Enslaved. Controlled.
the reason Kell had named White London white: every inch of the city, day or night, summer or winter, bore the same pall, as though a fine coat of snow—or ash—had settled over everything. And everyone. The magic here was bitter and mean, and it bled the world’s life and warmth and color, leaching it out of everything and leaving only the pale and bloated corpse behind.
The power of the Sijlt—even in its half-frozen state—tethered them to the city, its magic the only remaining flicker of warmth.
or if they were simply waiting for the next magician to rise up and overthrow them. Which someone would, eventually. Someone always did.
Grey and Red London both had palaces for their rulers. White London had a fortress.
The infamous Krös Mejkt, the “Stone Forest,” was made up not of trees but of statues, all of them people. It was rumored the figures hadn’t always been stone, that the forest was actually a graveyard, kept by the Danes to commemorate those they killed, and remind any who passed through the outer wall of what happened to traitors in the twins’ London.
In Red London, using magic to control, possess, or bind the body and mind of another person was forbidden. Here, it was yet another sign of Athos and Astrid’s strength, their might—and therefore right—to rule.
he had seen Holland at the ruler’s side, but as an ally, not a servant. He had been different then, younger and more arrogant, yes, but there was also something else, something more, a light in his eyes. A fire. And then, between one visit and the next, the fire was gone, and so was the king, replaced by the Danes. Holland was still there, at their side as if nothing had changed. But he had changed, gone cold and dark, and Kell wanted to know what had happened—what had really happened.
“Our throne is not something you’re born to. It’s not held by blood. But taken by it. Someone cuts their way to the throne and holds it as long as they can—a year, maybe two—until they fall, and someone else rises.
