“Where is the Antari now?” A ghostly hand came to rest against the ice. “Shall we send him a message?”

The column of ice shivered, and then, to Rhy’s horror, it began to grow spikes. He tried to retreat, but there was nowhere to go.

Rhy bit back a scream as the first point pierced his calf.

Pain flared through him, hot and bright, but fleeting.

I am not empty, he told himself as a second spike cut into his side. A muffled cry as another shard drove through his shoulder, sliding in and out of his collar with terrible ease.

I am not hollow.

The air caught in his chest as ice pierced a lung, his back, his hip, his wrist.

I am not dead.

He had seen his mother run through, his father killed by a dozen steel blades. And he could not save them. Their bodies were their own. Their lives, their own.

But Rhy’s was not. It was not a weakness, he realized now, but a strength. He could suffer, but it could not break him.

I am Rhy Maresh, he told himself as blood slicked the floor.

I am the king of Arnes.

And I am unbreakable.

VIII

They were nearly to the coast when Kell started to shiver.

It was a cold day, but the chill had come on from somewhere else, and just as he realized it for what it was—an echo—the pain caught up. Not a glancing blow, but sudden and violent and sharp as knives.

Not again.

It lanced through his leg, his shoulder, his ribs, opening into a full-blown assault against his nerves.

He gasped, bracing himself against the side of the boat.

“Kell?”

Lila’s voice was distant, drowned out by the pulse raging in his ears.

He knew his brother couldn’t die, but it didn’t douse the fear, didn’t stop the simple, animal panic that pounded in his blood, crying out for help. He waited for the pain to pass, the way it always had before, fading with every heartbeat like a rock thrown into a pond, the crash giving way to smaller ripples before finally smoothing.

But the pain didn’t pass.

Every breath brought a new rock, a new crash.

Lila’s hands hovered in the air. “Can I heal you?”

“No,” said Kell, breath jagged. “It’s not … his body isn’t …” His mind spun.

“Alive?” offered Holland.

Kell scowled. “Of course it’s alive.”

“But that life is not his,” countered Holland calmly. “He’s just a shell. A vessel for your power.”

“Stop.”

“You’ve cut strings from your magic and made a puppet.”

The water surged around the small boat with Kell’s temper.

“Stop.” This time the word was coming from Lila. “Before he sinks us.”

But Kell heard the question in her voice, the same one he’d asked himself for months.

Was something truly alive if it couldn’t be killed?

A week after Kell had bound his brother’s life to his, he’d woken with a sudden pain searing across his palm, white hot, as if the skin were burning. He’d stared down at the offending hand, certain the flesh would be blistered, charred, but it wasn’t. Instead, he’d found his brother sitting in his rooms before a low table with a candle on it, eyes distant as he held his hand over the flame. Kell had snatched Rhy’s fingers away, pressing a damp rag to the red and peeling skin as his brother slowly came back his senses.

“I’m sorry,” Rhy had said, a now tiring refrain. “I just needed … to know.”

“Know what?” he’d snapped, and his brother’s eyes had gone lost.

“If I’m real.”

Now Kell shuddered on the floor of the small boat, the echo of his brother’s pain fierce, unyielding. This didn’t feel like a self-inflicted wound, no candle flame or word scrawled on skin. This pain was deep and piercing, like the blade to the chest but worse, because it was coming from everywhere.

Bile filled Kell’s mouth. He thought he’d already been sick.

He tried to remember that pain was only terrifying because of what it signaled—danger, death—that without those things, it was nothing …

His vision blurred.

… just another sense …

His muscles screamed.

… a tether …

Kell shivered violently, and registered Lila’s arms circling him, thin but strong, the warmth of her narrow body like a candle against the cold. She was saying something, but he couldn’t make out the words. Holland’s voice came in and out, reduced to short bursts of incoherent sound.

The pain was smoothing—not easing, exactly, just evening into something horrible but steady. He dragged his thoughts together, focused his vision, and saw the coast approaching. Not the port at Tanek, but a stretch of rocky beach. It didn’t matter. Land was land.

“Hurry,” he murmured thickly, and Holland shot him a dark look.

“If this boat goes any faster, it will catch fire before we have a chance to crash upon those rocks.” But he saw the magician’s fingertips go white with force, felt the world part around his power.

One moment the jagged shore was rising in the distance, and the next, it was nearly upon them.

Holland rose to his feet, and Kell managed to uncoil his aching body, his mind clearing enough to think.

He had his token in hand—the swatch of fabric the queen had given him, KM stitched on the silk—and fresh blood streaked the cloth as the dinghy drew precariously close to the rocky shore. Their coats were soaked with icy water by the time they drew near enough to disembark.