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“when the last king was killed, several tried to claim his crown, but in the end, it came down to three. Astrid, Athos, and Holland.”
But they didn’t kill him. Instead, they bound him.
The whole city knew of Athos’s penchant—and his prowess—for binding spells. Marks that stripped away a person’s freedom, their identity, their soul.
“He suffered,” added Athos softly. “But not like you.” He brought his mouth closer. “No one suffers as beautifully as you.” There it was, in the corner of Holland’s mouth, the crease of his eye. Anger. Pain. Defiance.
“The bodies in my floor all trusted someone. Now I walk on them to tea.”
which meant the stone didn’t simply follow an order. It interpreted. It created. Was this the way magic had worked in Black London? Without walls, without rules, without anything but want and will?
The compulsion spell already cast on him had stripped the man’s resistance and allowed the other magic to slip right in, through vein and brain and muscle, taking hold of everything it touched, the once-red core of life now burning pure and dark.
Lila Bard might have been a thief but she wasn’t a beggar.
Relieving a man of his pocket watch was one thing. Relieving him of his shoes was quite another.
Most people here couldn’t see the echoes of spellwork, or at least, they didn’t notice them. The marks, like most magic, passed beneath the spectrum of their senses.
The Kell that was Kell glared at the Kell that wasn’t.
“You can’t go around making people.”
But then he tried to loosen his hold on the weapon and couldn’t.
And Lila left feeling empty, hungry, and hollow in a new and terrifying way. Or maybe it was the same kind of hunger she’d always felt, and now the missing thing had a name: magic.
On the not-so-rare occasion that a fight broke out, the regulars were more concerned for the safety of their drinks (they’d sooner save a pitcher from a shaking table than step in to help the man whose falling body shook it),
His clothes were dark grey, and he wore a simple short cloak held by a silver clasp. His skin was pale, made paler by the dark wood bar beneath his hands, his hair a strange, colorless shade just shy of black.
But his eyes. One was greyish green. The other was pitch-black. “My name is Holland.”
Looking into Kell’s eye had been like looking through a window into a new world. Strange and confusing, but not frightening. Looking into Holland’s eye made her skin crawl. Dark things swirled just beneath the smooth black depths.
His grip wasn’t crushing; if anything, his hold was casual, confident, and Lila had been around cutthroats long enough to know that the ones you truly had to fear were the ones who gripped their guns loosely, like they’d been born holding them.
Holland’s power smelled metallic, like heated steel. It singed the air.
There was something else in that magic—not a smell, but a sense all the same—something sharp, like anger, like hate.
He pulled aside his collar to reveal the mark scorched into the skin over his heart. “This is the brand.” The skin was silvery, the mark strangely fresh, and even though Kell couldn’t see Holland’s back, he knew the symbol went all the way through. A soul seal. A spell burned not only into one’s body, but into one’s life. Unbreakable.
“Am I late?”
But Kell had come back.
And even though the stone was safely in her pocket, she could smell it, too, its scent washing over the alley. Like sea and wood smoke. Salt and darkness.
“What happened?” asked Barron. Lila wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. It had been a very strange night.
“Running a tavern, you meet all kinds. Running this tavern, you meet all kinds, and then some.”
“And I did hit you with a book.” “What?” “Nothing,” said Lila, waving her hand.
Grey London, which is yours. Red London, which is mine. White London, which is Holland’s. And Black London, which is no one’s.”
In their cleanse, they did not stop at objects and artifacts. They slit the throats of everyone they even suspected of possessing—of having come in contact with—Black London’s corrupted magic.” Kell brought his fingers to his blackened eye. “It is said that some mistook Antari’s marks for such corruption and dragged them from their houses in the night. An entire generation slaughtered before they realized that, without the doors, such magicians would be their only way of reaching out.”
“It is Vitari. In a way, I suppose it is pure. But it is pure potential, pure power, pure magic.”
His own skin sang for the talisman, thirsted for it, and that scared him more than anything.
Only strong magic would be able to unmake such a thing, but as the talisman was magic itself, he doubted that magic could ever be made to destroy it.
“Because I can’t stay here,” she snapped, the smile gone from her face. “Because I want to see the world, even if it’s not mine. And because I will save your life.”
Kell did not feel strong enough to do this alone. And worse, he did not want to.
“There’s Dull London, Kell London, Creepy London, and Dead London,”
“Death comes for everyone,” she said simply. “I’m not afraid of dying. But I am afraid of dying here.” She swept her hand over the room, the tavern, the city. “I’d rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
“How many coats do you suppose there are inside that one?” she asked casually, as if inquiring about the weather, and not a complex enchantment. “I’m not exactly sure,” said Kell, digging in a gold-embroidered pocket and sighing inwardly with relief as his fingers skimmed a spare coin. “Every now and then I think I’ve found them all, and then I stumble on a new one. And sometimes, old ones get lost. A couple of years ago I came across a short coat, an ugly green thing with patched elbows. But I haven’t seen it since.”
Kell managed an echo of her smile, and she gasped. “What’s that on your face?” The smile vanished. “What?” “Never mind,” she said, laughing. “It’s gone.”
“You said yourself,” she added, “that everyone has a mix of humanity and magic in them.
“As Travars,” he said. The wall gave way, and the traveler and the thief stepped forward and through.
(he had not stopped her, had long since learned that it was futile to try, and had long since resolved to be instead an anchor, there and ready when she wandered back, which she invariably did).
Had it really been only a matter of hours
When Kell called his city Red London, she assumed he’d picked the color for some arbitrary—or at least ordinary—reason. Now she could see that he meant it literally.
She’d done it. Delilah Bard had finally escaped, sailed away. Not with a ship, but with a stone.
She expected it to be bulky, if not outright unruly, but to her surprise, the coat fit perfectly,
The musicians continued on, but the music lingered in the air, hanging over the crowd like a tent ceiling, as if sound itself could be made physical.
but when she turned back to the parade, she caught the prince looking at her.
It may be clever, but so was she.
and she spun to find Kell standing there,
