A Conjuring of Light Page 2

“Very well …” said the king, the demon, the god. “But if they cannot be persuaded, I will keep your body as my own.”

And Holland agreed—how could he not?

Anything for London.

And Kell—spoiled, childish, headstrong Kell, broken and powerless and snared by that damned collar—had still refused.

Of course he had refused.

Of course—

The shadow king had smiled then, with Holland’s own mouth, and he had fought, with everything he could summon, but a deal was a deal and the deal was done and he felt Osaron surge up—that single, violent motion—and Holland was shoved down, into the dark depths of his own mind, forced under by the current of the shadow king’s will.

Helpless, trapped within a body, within a deal, unable to do anything but watch, and feel, and drown.

“Holland!”

Kell’s voice cracked as he strained his broken body against the frame, the way Holland had once, when Athos Dane first bound him. Broke him. The cage leached away most of Kell’s power; the collar around his throat cut off the rest. There was a terror in Kell’s eyes, a desperation that surprised him.

“Holland, you bastard, fight back!”

He tried, but his body was no longer his, and his mind, his tired mind, was sinking down, down—

Give in, said the shadow king.

“Show me you’re not weak!” Kell’s voice pushed through. “Prove you’re not still a slave to someone else’s will!”

You cannot fight me.

“Did you really come all the way back to lose like this?”

I’ve already won.

“Holland!”

Holland hated Kell, and in that moment, the hatred was almost enough to drive him up, but even if he wanted to rise to the other Antari’s bait, Osaron was unyielding.

Holland heard his own voice, then, but of course it wasn’t his. A twisted imitation by the monster wearing his skin. In Holland’s hand, a crimson coin, a token to another London, Kell’s London, and Kell was swearing and throwing himself against his bonds until his chest heaved and his wrists were bloody.

Useless.

It was all useless.

Once again he was a prisoner in his own body. Kell’s voice echoed through the dark.

You’ve just traded one master for another.

They were moving now, Osaron guiding Holland’s body. The door closed behind them, but Kell’s screams still hurled themselves against the wood, shattering into broken syllables and strangled cries.

Ojka stood in the hall, sharpening her knives. She looked up, revealing the crescent scar on one cheek, and her two-toned eyes, one yellow, the other black. An Antari forged by their hands—by their mercy.

“Your Majesty,” she said, straightening.

Holland tried to rise up, tried to force his voice across their—his—lips, but when speech came, the words were Osaron’s.

“Guard the door. Let no one pass.”

A flicker of a smile across the red slash of Ojka’s mouth. “As you wish.”

The palace passed in a blur, and then they were outside, passing the statues of the Dane twins at the base of the stairs, moving swiftly beneath a bruised sky through a garden now flanked by trees instead of bodies.

What would become of it, without Osaron, without him? Would the city continue to flourish? Or would it collapse, like a body stripped of life?

Please, he begged silently. This world needs me.

“There is no point,” said Osaron aloud, and Holland felt sick to be the thought in their head instead of the word. “It is already dead,” continued the king. “We will start over. We will find a world worthy of our strength.”

They reached the garden wall and Osaron drew a dagger from the sheath at their waist. The bite of steel on flesh was nothing, as if Holland had been cut off from his very senses, buried too deep to feel anything but Osaron’s grip. But as the shadow king’s fingers streaked through the blood and lifted Kell’s coin to the wall, Holland struggled up one last time.

He couldn’t win back his body—not yet—not all of it—but perhaps he didn’t need everything.

One hand. Five fingers.

He threw every ounce of strength, every shred of will, into that one limb, and halfway to the wall, it stopped, hovering in the air.

Blood trickled down his wrist. Holland knew the words to break a body, to turn it to ice, or ash, or stone.

All he had to do was guide his hand to his own chest.

All he had to do was shape the magic—

Holland could feel the annoyance ripple through Osaron. Annoyance, but not rage, as if this last stand, this great protest, was nothing but an itch.

How tedious.

Holland kept fighting, even managed to guide his hand an inch, two.

Let go, Holland, warned the creature in his head.

Holland forced the last of his will into his hand, dragging it another inch.

Osaron sighed.

It did not have to be this way.

Osaron’s will hit him like a wall. His body didn’t move, but his mind slammed backward, pinned beneath a crushing pain. Not the pain he’d felt a hundred times, the kind he’d learned to exist beyond, outside, the kind he might escape. This pain was rooted in his very core. It lit him up, sudden and bright, every nerve burning with such searing heat that he screamed and screamed and screamed inside his head, until the darkness finally—mercifully—closed over him, forcing him under and down.

And this time, Holland didn’t try to surface.