A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

A cloud passed across King George’s face, and then he simply shook his head and said, “Time,” as if that one word could be to blame for everything.

He could smell Grey London (smoke) and White London (blood), but to him, Red London simply smelled like home.

Grey for the magic-less city. Red, for the healthy empire. White, for the starving world.

It was a lovely thing, that knife, a work of art, silver from tip to hilt and monogrammed with the letters K and L. The only relic from another life. A life he didn’t know. Or at least, didn’t remember.

But for all his faults, the prince wasn’t a fool, and only a fool would give someone like Kell a chance to stand out. Grey London had forgotten magic long ago. Kell wouldn’t be the one to remind them of it.

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.

The people fed on the magic and the magic fed on them until it ate their bodies and their minds and then their souls.”

Even in Red London, where magic flourished, the eye set him apart. Marked him always as other.

A time when the doors stood open at the sources, and power flowed between the worlds, and anyone with a bit of magic in their veins and a token from another world could not only tap into that power, but could also move with it, step from one London to another.

“Let’s go home.” He often found himself speaking to the magic. Not commanding, simply conversing. Magic was a living thing—that, everyone knew—but to Kell it felt like more, like a friend, like family. It was, after all, a part of him (much more than it was a part of most) and he couldn’t help feeling like it knew what he was saying, what he was feeling, not only when he summoned it, but always, in every heartbeat and every breath.

The best nights were the ones when Prince Rhy and Master Kell set out into the city, and he and Gen were allowed to follow at a distance or relieved of their duties entirely and allowed to stay for company rather than protection (everyone knew that Kell could keep the prince safer than any of his guard).

It was a voice like a shadow in the woods at night. Quiet and dark and cold.

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.

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.

“Do not lie,” warned Rhy. “Not to me.”

“Are you not loved?” whispered Rhy. “Are you not welcomed as family?” “But I’m not family, Rhy,”

I feel more like a possession than a prince.”

“There is nothing I would not give you.” Kell’s chest ached. “I know.” “You are my brother. My closest friend.” “I know.”

Kell supposed that he was a Collector, too.

Three very different Londons, in three very different countries, and Kell was one of the only living souls to have seen them all. The great irony, he supposed, was that he had never seen the worlds beyond the cities.

Antari. Magic might live in the blood, but not in the bloodline. It wasn’t passed from parent to child. It chose its own way. Chose its shape.

Their talent had always made them something to be coveted, but now their scarcity made them something to be gathered and guarded and kept. Possessed. And whether or not Rhy wanted to admit it, Kell belonged to the royal collection.

Whoever he’d been before he was brought to the palace, that person didn’t matter anymore. That person didn’t exist.

Lila Bard lived by a simple rule: if a thing was worth having, it was worth taking.

She didn’t care about the object itself, but she cared a great deal for what it bought her: freedom.

A delicious thrill ran through her chest, spurned on by the closeness of danger, and Lila wondered, not for the first time, if something was wrong with her.

Lila Bard knew in her bones that she was meant to be a pirate.

Nineteen, and every one of the years felt carved into her.

Not that Lila wanted to be pretty. Pretty wouldn’t serve her well.

Why anyone would ever pretend to be weak was beyond her.

The others all repulsed her, repelled her, but this place dragged at her like gravity, a low and constant pull. Even when she didn’t mean to, she always seemed to end up here.

She was in hiding. A wanted man. She smiled at the irony of the term.

The Shadow Thief, they called her. They’d drawn her even taller and thinner than she actually was, stretched her into a wraith, black-clad and fearsome. The stuff of fairy tales. And legends. Lila winked at the shadow before going in.

“The earth beneath your feet does not care you will be king. Nor the water in your cup. Nor the air you breathe. You must speak to them as equal, or even better, as supplicant.”

Kell wouldn’t tell Rhy that he didn’t even need to speak in order to move the water. That he could simply think the words, feel them, and the element listened, and answered.

Whatever flowed through the water—and the sand, and the earth, and the rest—flowed through him, too, and he could will it, as he would a limb, to move for him.

Blood had a will of its own, and had to be addressed not as an object, but as an equal, an adversary.

A selfish part of Kell wanted to share them with his brother, so that he wouldn’t feel so alone, so that someone else would see, would know.

Kell’s chest tightened with the familiar mixture of fear and excitement that was inextricable when it came to White London.

“I promise,” he said, wondering how many times he had said those words, how empty they’d become.

He had to show his strength while still holding fast to it. Too little, and he’d be seen as prey. Too much, and he’d be seen as a prize.

But hunger—for energy, for life—did things to people. Made them do things.

The laziness of her motions was a farce. Astrid Dane was a serpent, slow only until she chose to strike.

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.

“So I can watch the war play in your eyes every time your body obeys my will instead of yours.”

Holland liked to play at being hollow, but Athos knew it was a ruse. He might have feigned numbness, but he was hardly immune to sensation. To pain.

“Jealous?” he asked. Holland’s two-toned eyes held Athos’s, the green and the black both steady, unblinking. “He suffered,” added Athos softly. “But not like you.” He brought his mouth closer. “No one suffers as beautifully as you.”

Antari or not, the Danes made him feel like a mouse in the company of snakes.

And Kell had done nothing. Had not pleaded—or even pressed—for Athos to yield. It wouldn’t have done any good, but still. They were both Antari. Luck alone cast Holland here in ruthless White and Kell in vibrant Red. What if their fortunes had been reversed?