Osaron’s twin blades came singing down, shattering the spear in Kell’s hands before lodging in the walls of Rhy’s prison. The ice cracked, but didn’t break. And in that moment, when Osaron’s weapons were trapped, his stolen shell caught between attack and retreat, Kell drove the broken shard of ice into Ojka’s chest.

The shadow king looked down at the wound, as if amused by the feeble attempt, but Kell’s hand was a mess from gripping the shattered spear, blood slicking hand and ice alike, and when he spoke, the spell rang through the air.

“As Steno.”

Break.

The magic tore through Ojka’s body, warring with Osaron’s will as her bones broke and mended, shattered and set, a puppet being torn apart in one breath, patched together in the next. Fighting—and failing—to hold its shape, the shadow king’s stolen shell began to look grotesque, pieces peeling, the whole thing knit together more by magic than sinew.

“That body will not hold,” snarled Kell as broken hands forced him up against his brother’s cage.

Osaron smiled a ruined grin. “You are right,” he said, as an icy spike drove through Kell’s back.

V

Someone screamed.

A single, agonized note.

But it wasn’t Kell.

He wanted to scream, but Ojka’s ruined hand was wrapped around his jaw, forcing his mouth closed. The frozen blade had pierced above his hip and come out his side, its tip coated with vivid red blood.

Beyond Osaron, Lila was trying to tear herself free, and Holland was on his hands and knees, searching the ground for something lost.

A groan escaped Kell’s throat as the shadow king prodded the tear in his side.

“This is not a mortal wound,” said Osaron. “Not yet.”

He felt the monster’s voice sliding through his mind, weighing him down.

“Let me in,” it whispered.

No, thought Kell viscerally, violently.

That darkness—the same darkness that had caught him when he fell into White London so recently—wrapped around his wounded body, warm, soft, welcoming.

“Let me in.”

No.

The column of ice burned cold against his spine.

Rhy.

Osaron echoed in his mind. Said, “I can be merciful.”

Kell felt the shards of ice slide free—not from his own body but his brother’s—pain withdrawing limb by limb. He heard the short gasp, the soft, wet sound of Rhy collapsing to the blood-slicked floor, and relief surged through him even as the cold took root again, branched, flowered.

“Let me in.”

In the corner of Kell’s vision, something flashed on the floor. A shard of metal, near Holland’s searching hand.

The Inheritor.

Kell’s mind was slipping with the pain as he called it toward him, but as the cylinder rose into the air, his power failed, suddenly, completely. As if severed, stolen.

Snatched away by a thief.

* * *

Lila couldn’t move.

The floor gripped her legs in a stone embrace, bones threatening to break with every motion. Across the chamber Kell was trapped and bleeding, and she couldn’t reach him, not with her hands, couldn’t force Osaron away. But she could draw him to her. She pulled on the tether between them, stealing Kell’s magic, and Osaron’s attention with it. Power flared like light before Lila’s eyes, and the demon spun toward her, a moth drawn to a flame.

Look at me, she wanted to say as Osaron abandoned Kell. Come to me.

But as soon as those black eyes leveled on her, she would have given everything to get loose. To be free.

Kell was horribly pale, his fingers slipping over the blade of ice driven through his side. Holland clutched at a pillar and struggled to his feet. The Inheritor sat on the ground nearby, but before Lila could summon it, Osaron was there, one mangled hand knotted in her hair and a blade against her throat.

“Let go,” he whispered, and whether he meant her knife or her will, she didn’t know. But at least she had his attention now. She let the weapon fall with a clatter to the floor.

He forced her face toward his, her gaze toward his, felt him sliding through her mind, probing thoughts, memories.

“So much potential.”

She tried to pull away, but she was pinned, the floor gripping her ankles and Osaron her scalp and the blade still at her throat.

“I am what you saw in the mirror at Sasenroche,” said the shadow king. “I am what you dream of being. I can make you unstoppable. I can set you free.”

Across the throne room, Kell had finally summoned the strength to break free. The ice shattered around him and he collapsed to the floor. Osaron didn’t turn. His attention was on her, eyes dancing hungrily in the light of her power.

“Free,” she said softly, as if pondering the word.

“Yes,” whispered the shadow king.

In the black of his eyes, she saw it, that version of herself.

Unbeatable.

Unbreakable.

“Let me in, Delilah Bard.”

It was tempting, even now. Her hand drifted up to Ojka’s arm. A dancer’s embrace. Bloody fingers digging into ruined flesh.

Lila smiled. “As Illumae.”

Osaron wrenched back, but he was too late.

Ojka’s body began to burn.

The blade slashed blindly at Lila’s throat but she dodged, and then it was gone, tumbling from Ojka’s hand as the corpse went up in flames.

Smoke poured from the thrashing body, first the acrid stuff of burning flesh, and then the dark fog of Osaron’s power as it was finally forced to flee its shell.