“It’s still my home,” he said. “I was born in that world….”
He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. Kell knew what he would say.
And I will die there.
In the wake of his sacrifice, Holland didn’t look old, only tired. But it was an exhaustion that ran deep, a place once filled with power now hollowed out, leaving the empty shell behind. Magic and life were intertwined in everyone and everything, but in Antari most of all. Without it, Holland clearly wasn’t whole.
“I’m not certain this will work,” said Kell, “now that you’re—”
Holland cut him off. “You’ve nothing to lose by trying.”
But that wasn’t strictly true.
Kell hadn’t told Holland—hadn’t told anyone but Rhy, and only then out of necessity—the true extent of the damage. That when the binding ring had lodged on his finger and Holland had poured his magic—and Osaron’s, and nearly Kell’s—into the Inheritor, something had torn inside of him. Something vital. That now, every time he summoned fire, or willed water, or conjured anything from blood, it pained him.
Every single time, it hurt, a wound at the very center of his being.
But unlike a wound, it refused to heal.
Magic had always been a part of Kell, as natural as breathing. Now, he couldn’t catch his breath. The simplest acts took not only strength, but will. The will to suffer. To be hurt.
Pain reminds us that we’re alive.
That’s what Rhy had said to him, when he first woke to find their lives tethered. When Kell caught him with his hand over the flame. When he learned of the binding ring, the cost of its magic.
Pain reminds us.
Kell dreaded the pain, which seemed to worsen every time, felt ill at the thought of it, but he would not deny Holland this last request. Kell owed him that much, and so he said nothing.
Instead, he looked around at the rise, the city beneath them. “Where are we now, in your world? Where will we be, once we step through?”
A flicker of relief crossed Holland’s face, quick as light on water.
“The Silver Wood,” he said. “Some say it was the place where magic died.” After a moment he added, “Others think it’s nothing, has never been anything but an old grove of trees.”
Kell waited for the man to say more, but he just rose slowly to his feet, leaning ever so slightly on a cane, only his tense white knuckles betraying how much it took for him to stand.
Holland put his other hand on Kell’s arm, signaling his readiness, and so Kell drew his knife and cut his free hand, the discomfort so simple compared to the pain that waited. He pulled the White London token from around his neck, staining the coin red, and reached out to rest his hand on the bench.
“As Travars,” he said, Holland’s voice echoing softly beneath his as they both stepped through.
* * *
Pain reminds us …
Kell clenched his teeth against the spasm, reaching out to brace himself against the nearest thing, which was not a bench or a wall but the trunk of a tree, its bark smooth as metal. He leaned against the cool surface, waiting for the wave to pass, and when it did, he dragged his head up to see a small grove, and Holland, a few feet away, alive, intact. A stream cut into the ground before him, little more than a ribbon of water, and beyond the grove, White London rose in stony spires.
In Holland’s absence—and Osaron’s—the color had begun to leach back out of the world. The sky and river were a pale grey once more, the ground bare. This was the White London Kell had always known. That other version—the one he’d glimpsed in the castle yard, in the moments before Ojka closed the collar around his throat—was like something from a dream. And yet Kell’s heart ached to see it lost, and to see Holland bear that loss, the smooth planes of his mask finally cracking, the sadness showing through.
“Thank you, Kell,” he said, and Kell knew the words for what they were: a dismissal.
Yet he felt rooted to the spot.
Magic made everything feel so impermanent, it was easy to forget that some things, once changed, could never be undone. That not everything was either changeable or infinite. Some roads kept going, and others had an end.
For a long moment the two men stood in silence, Holland unable to move forward, Kell unable to step back.
At last, the earth released its hold.
“You’re welcome, Holland,” said Kell, dragging himself free.
He reached the edge of the grove before he turned back, looking at Holland for a last time, the other Antari standing there at the center of the Silver Wood, his head tipped back, his green eyes closed. The winter breeze tousled white hair, ruffled ash-black clothes.
Kell lingered, digging in the pockets of his many-sided coat, and when at last he turned to go, he set a single red lin on a tree stump. A reminder, an invitation, a parting gift, for a man Kell would never see again.
VI
Alucard Emery paced outside the Rose Hall, dressed in a blue so dark it registered as black until it caught the light just so. It was the color of the sails on his ship. The color of the sea at midnight. No hat, no sash, no rings, but his brown hair was washed and pinned back with silver. His cuffs and buttons shone as well, polished to beads of light.
He was a summer sky at night, speckled with stars.
And he had spent the better part of an hour assembling the outfit. He couldn’t decide between Alucard, the captain, and Emery, the noble. In the end, he had chosen neither. Today he was Alucard Emery, the man courting a king.