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For the ones who’ve found their way home
He fought to the surface of his own mind, only to be forced back down into the dark water by a will as strong as iron. He fought, and clawed, and gasped for air, strength leaching out with every violent thrash, every desperate struggle. It was worse than dying, because dying gave way to death, and this did not.
Lila was almost impressed. “Who are you supposed to be?” she asked. “I am the messenger,” said the woman, even though Lila knew a trained killer when she saw one. “And you?” Lila drew two of her own knives. “I am the thief.”
“Told you it would wor—” Kell cut her off, taking her face in his stained hands and kissing her once, deeply, desperately. A kiss laced with blood and panic, pain and fear and relief. He didn’t ask her how she’d found him. Didn’t berate her for doing it, only said, “You are mad.”
Rhy shook his head, exasperated. “Kell isn’t the only one you fail to understand. My bond with him didn’t start with this curse. You wanted him to kill for me, die for me, protect me at all costs. Well, Mother, you got your wish. You simply failed to realize that that kind of love, that bond, it goes both ways. I would kill for him, and I would die for him, and I will protect him however I am able, from Faro and Vesk, from White London, and Black London, and from you.”
sobbing.
The darkness moved around him, every shadow swaying, dipping, and rolling the way a room did after too many drinks, and woven through it all, the colliding scents of wood fire and spring blossom, snowmelt and poppy, pipe smoke and summer wine. At turns sickly sweet and bitter, and all of it dizzying.
Sparks lit across her lips, and heat burned through her lungs, and the air around them churned as if someone had thrown all the doors and windows open. The wind rustled their hair, and Kell laughed against her. A soft, dazzling sound, too brief, but wonderful.
Her hands were bandaged, a deep scratch ran along her jaw, and Rhy watched his brother move toward her as naturally as if the world had simply tipped. For Kell, apparently, it had.
You need not shield me from the darkness. It cannot hurt me anymore. Nothing can.
It was better not to care—Lila tried not to care—but sometimes, people got in. Like a knife against armor, they found the cracks, slid past the guard, and you didn’t know how deep they were buried until they were gone and you were bleeding on the floor.
My name is Edward Archibald Tuttle, he thought, gripping the dagger, I am the third of that name, and I am not afraid.
okay Throne of Glass coded
Kell saw him coming. “Rhy—” The prince slammed his fist into his brother’s face. Kell staggered backward to the ground, and the prince reeled back in mirrored pain, cradling his own cheek.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. And this time, when he pulled her up, he seated her before him instead of behind, one arm wrapping protectively around her waist.
“I was distracted by everything about you, Lila. I still am. You’re maddening, infuriating, incredible.” She’d been teasing, but he clearly wasn’t. Everything about him—the set of his mouth, the crease in his brow, the intensity in that blue eye—was dead serious.
“I have never known what to make of you. Not since the day we met. And it terrifies me. You terrify me.” He cupped her face in both hands. “And the idea of you walking away again, vanishing from my life, that terrifies me most of all.”
“Next time I walk away,” she whispered into his skin, “come with me.” She let her gaze drift up to his throat, his jaw, his lips. “When this is all over, when Osaron is gone and we’ve saved the world again, and everyone else gets their happily ever after, come with me.”
“I never wanted to leave,” he said. “And if I’d known Rhy loved me then as much as I love him, I would never have stayed away.”
Tieren curled a finger around his beard. “Love and loss,” he said, “are like a ship and the sea. They rise together. The more we love, the more we have to lose. But the only way to avoid loss is to avoid love. And what a sad world that would be.”
She wanted to forget. Kell was halfway to his feet, coat in one hand, when she came in. Wanted to feel … “There you are,” he said, his hair mussed from sleep. “I was just coming to look for—” Lila caught him by the shoulders and pressed her mouth against his. “—you,” he finished, the word nothing but a breath between her lips. … This.
Her heart was beating hard against her ribs, some primal part of her saying run, and she was running, just not away. She was tired of running away. So she was running into Kell. And he caught her.
Kell lifted himself onto one elbow above her. He looked down at her for a long, searching moment, and then a mischievous grin flickered across his face. “All right,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”
Holland was considering his ring. “There is a difference, Miss Bard, between power and strength. Do you know what that difference is?” His eyes flicked up. “Control.”
She sat up too fast, winced. “How did you manage that?” “I simply explained that she couldn’t have them—they wouldn’t have fit—and then I gave her mine.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said again, lifting her blade to Jasta’s throat. “And maybe you’re wrong. We don’t choose what we are, but we choose what we do.” The knife was poised to bite in.
He would wonder for weeks, months, years, if he could have stopped it. If he could have summoned the strength to will the steel away. But in that moment, he had nothing left to give. The blade struck home, embedding to the hilt. Kell staggered back, braced for a pain that never came.
Kell lowered Hastra’s body, dragging the knife free of his guard’s chest as he rose. His chest was heaving, ragged breaths tearing free. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sob. Instead he crossed the deck, and cut Jasta’s throat.
He would not hide from the shadows when the shadows could not touch him.
“You’re my best thief,” he whispered, and her eyes burned.
Lila smiled. “The trick to winning a fight isn’t strength, but strategy.” Alucard raised his brows. “Who said anything about fighting?” She ignored him. “And strategy is just a fancy word for a special kind of common sense, the ability to see options, to make them where there were none. It’s not about knowing the rules.”
And there, behind him, in a halo of silver light, stood Holland.
A myth without a voice is like a dandelion without a breath of wind. No way to spread the seeds.
“Do you miss me?” His gravelly tone seemed to linger in the air. “Like an itch,” she murmured.
anoshe—until another day.
Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting.
Acina strengthen the soil, so that other things can grow.”
“Welcome to the Night Spire,” she said, flashing a smile like a knife. “You can call me Captain Bard.”
It ends, he thought—no fear, only relief, and sadness. He had tried. Had given everything he could. But he was so tired.
