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The table was piled high with tokens and trinkets and rare magic. A vial of hope sand. A water blade. A coat that concealed an infinite number of sides.
“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.”
“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.”
The people had only a candle’s light of life inside them, not the fire to which the darkness was accustomed. So little heat, so easily extinguished. The moment he got inside, he burned them up to nothing, blood and bone to husk and ash in no time at all.
And in his desperation, he found himself drawn on—drawn back—to the place where he had started: the Stone’s Throw. He wondered at the pull of the odd little tavern. It was a flicker of warmth in the cold, dead city. A glimmer of light, of life, of magic.
He hadn’t felt the stone leeching his energy, but now that it was gone, it was like someone had doused his fire.
But when the game of Sanct had been in its last hand, and he’d known that he had won, he’d baited Fletcher with the one thing he wouldn’t refuse. “Anesh,” he’d conceded. “If you win, I’ll work for you.”
“We can’t all turn blood and whispers into weapons.”
“Crime isn’t that complicated,” she said. “People steal because taking something gives them something. If they’re not in it for the money, they’re in it for control. The act of taking, of breaking the rules, makes them feel powerful. They’re in it for the sheer defiance.” She turned away. “Some people steal to stay alive, and some steal to feel alive. Simple as that.”
There was an energy in the air, and even though he knew the buzz was most likely coming from the festival itself, it still made him nervous. It wasn’t just that there was more power than usual. It felt different.
Battles may be fought from the outside in, but wars are won from the inside out.”
“It was my idea, I confess, giving you the stone, allowing you to carry it across the line.”
My life is his life, thought Kell. His life is mine. Bind it to mine and bring him back.
“Tell me, do you underestimate everyone, or just me? Is it because I’m a girl?” “It’s because you’re a human,”
It was bound to his hand, and yet it hung at the outside of his senses; he had to fight to remember it was there with him. Inside of him. Every time he remembered, it was like waking from a dream, full of panic and fear, only to be dragged down into sleep again.
Holland knew. He’d seen the attack coming, and he hadn’t stopped it. The instant before the metal struck him from behind, Holland had stopped fighting. It was only a second, a fraction of a breath, but it had been enough to give Kell the edge, the opening. And in the sliver of time after the metal pierced his body, and before he fell, it wasn’t anger or pain that crossed his face. It was relief.
She’d wanted freedom. She’d wanted adventure. And she didn’t think she minded dying for it. She only wished dying didn’t hurt so much.
“How did you know she wasn’t me?” Kell managed an exhausted smile. “Because she said please.” Lila stared at him, aghast. “Is that a joke?”
It drew itself together, coiling in front of him, coalescing until it was first a shadow and then a man. He was shaped like Kell, from his height and his hair to his coat, but every inch of him was the smooth and glossy black of the recovered stone.
“You were made for me, Antari,” he said. “A perfect vessel. I will wear your skin forever.”
“What sons our parents have,” said Kell gently. “Between the two of us, we’ll tear the whole world down.”
They got to their feet, neither willing to walk away just yet, and Kell looked down at Delilah Bard, a cutthroat and a thief, a valiant partner and a strange, terrifying girl.
He would see her again. He knew he would. Magic bent the world. Pulled it into shape. There were fixed points. Most of the time those points were places. But sometimes, rarely, they were people. For someone who never stood still, Lila still felt like a pin in Kell’s world. One he was sure to snag on.
Lila knew one thing: The world was hers. The worlds were hers. And she was going to take them all.
and in time, the brothers came to realize that what they took for weakness in each other was simply a different kind of strength.”
“they came to admire each other’s strengths, and longed to be more alike, and so the brother born of flesh spilled some of his blood, and the brother born of magic spilled some of his power, and from these two substances, they made a thread. And then they bound themselves together, so that each became a part of the other. A thread so strong, so full of love, that it never broke.”
For example, the item on her desk, which resembled nothing so much as an old but rather ordinary book, was in fact a purchase of the rarest order, and quite possibly the most dangerous thing aboard the Ferase Stras. Even after all this time, it still smelled of ash and cold stone. Of a world lost. Consumed. Abandoned.
And magic set into the child’s palm a single, smooth stone, the kind perfect for skipping on a river. The child’s eyes went wide with joy, and the magic watched as the boy turned and cast the stone, and it skipped all the way across the river, causing ripple after ripple after ripple through the world.
