His sister slid in and out of consciousness, her skin slick and hot to the touch. He couldn’t take her to the palace, that much he knew. They’d never let her in now that she was infected. Even though she was fighting it. Even though she hadn’t fallen—wouldn’t fall, Alucard was sure of it.
He had to take her home.
“Stay with me,” he told her as they reached the line of ships.
The Isle’s current was up, leaving oily streaks against the dock walls and splashing over onto the banks. Here at the river’s edge, the magic rolled off the water’s surface like steam.
Alucard dismounted, carrying Anisa up the ramp and onto the Spire’s deck.
He didn’t know if he hoped to find anyone aboard, or feared it, since only the mad and the sick and the fallen seemed to be in the city now.
“Stross?” he called. “Lenos?” But no one answered, and so Alucard took her below.
“Come back,” whispered Anisa as the night sky disappeared, replaced by the low wood ceiling of the hold.
“I’m right here,” said Alucard.
“Come back,” she pleaded again as he lowered her onto his bed, pressed a cold compress to her cheeks. Her eyes drifted open, focused, found his. “Luc,” she said, her voice suddenly crisp, clear.
“I’m here,” he said, and she smiled, fingers brushing his brow. Her eyes began to flutter shut again, and fear rippled through him, sudden, sharp.
“Hey, Nis,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Do you remember the story I used to tell you?” She shivered feverishly. “The one about the place where shadows go at night?”
Anisa curled in toward him, then, the way she used to when he told her tales. A flower to the sun, that’s what their mother used to say. Their mother, who’d died so long ago, and taken most of the light with her. Only Anisa held a candle to it. Only Anisa had her eyes, her warmth. Only Anisa reminded Alucard of kinder days.
He lowered himself to his knees beside the bed, holding her hand between his. “A girl was once in love with her shadow,” he began, voice slipping into the low, melodic tone befitting stories, even as the Spire swayed and the world beyond the window darkened. “All day they couldn’t be parted, but when night fell, she was left alone, and she always wondered where her shadow went. She would check all the drawers, and all the jars, and all the places where she liked to hide, but no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find it. Until finally the girl lit a candle, to help her search, and there her shadow was.”
Anisa murmured incoherently. Tears slipped down her hollowed cheeks.
“You see”—Alucard’s fingers tightened around hers—“it hadn’t really left. Because our shadows never do. So you see, you’re never alone”—his voice cracked—“no matter where you are, or when, no matter if the sun is up, or the moon is full, or there’s nothing but stars in the sky, no matter if you have a light in hand, or none at all, you know … Anisa? Anisa, stay with me … please …”
Over the next hour, the sickness burned through her, until she called him father, called him mother, called him Berras. Until she stopped speaking altogether, even in her fevered sleep, and sank deeper, to somewhere dreamless. The shadows hadn’t won, but the spring green light of Anisa’s own magic was fading, fading, like a fire burning itself out, and all Alucard could do was watch.
He got to his feet. The cabin swayed beneath him as he went to the mantel to pour himself a drink.
Alucard caught his reflection in the ruddy surface of the wine and frowned, tipping the glass. The smudge over his brow, where Lila had streaked a bloody finger across his skin, was gone. Rubbed away by Anisa’s fevered hand, or maybe Berras’s attack.
How strange, he thought. He hadn’t even noticed.
The cabin swayed again before Alucard realized it wasn’t the floor tipping.
It was him.
No, thought Alucard, just before the voice slid inside his head.
Let me in, it said as his hands began to tremble. The glass slipped and shattered on the cabin floor.
Let me in.
He braced himself against the mantel, eyes squeezed shut against the creeping vines of the curse as they wound through him, blood and bone.
Let me in.
“No!” he snarled aloud, slamming the doors of his mind and forcing the darkness back. Until then, the voice had been a whisper, soft, insistent, the pulse of magic a gentle but persistent guest knocking at the door. Now, it forced its way in with all its might, prying open the edges of Alucard’s mind until the cabin fell away and he was back in the Emery Estate, their father before him, the man’s hands brimming with fire. Heat burned along Alucard’s cheek from the first lingering blow.
“A disgrace,” snarled Reson Emery, the heat of his anger and magic both forcing Alucard back against the wall.
“Father—”
“You’ve made a fool of yourself. Of your name. Of your house.” His hand wrapped around the silver feather that hung from Alucard’s neck, flame licking his skin. “And it ends now,” he rumbled, tearing the sigil of House Emery from Alucard’s throat. It melted in his grip, drops of silver hitting the floor like blood, but when Alucard looked up again, the man standing before him was and was not his father. The image of Reson Emery flickered, replaced by a man made of darkness from head to toe, if darkness were solid and black and caught the light like stone. A crown glittered on the outline of his head.