“I’ve never been fond of subtle,” he said.
Rhy imagined Kell shaking his head, exasperation warring with amusement. Perhaps he looked foolish, but Rhy wanted to be seen, wanted his people—if they were out there, if they were in there—to know their prince was not hiding. That he was not afraid of the dark.
As they descended the palace stairs, Lila’s expression hardened, her wounded hands curled into loose fists at her sides. He didn’t know what she’d seen at the Sanctuary, but he could tell it hadn’t been pleasant, and for all her jaunty posturing, the look on her face now threw him.
“You think this is a bad idea,” he said. It wasn’t a question. But it sparked something in Lila, rekindled the fire in her eyes and ignited a grin.
“Without a doubt.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“Because,” she said, “bad ideas are my favorite kind.”
They reached the plaza at the base of the stairs, the flowers that usually lined the steps now sculptures of black glass. Smoke rose from a dozen spots on the horizon, not the simple trails from hearth fires, but the too-dark plumes of burning buildings. Rhy straightened. Lila pulled her jacket close. “Ready?”
“I don’t need a chaperone.”
“Good thing,” she said, setting off. “I don’t need a prince tripping on my heels.”
Rhy started. “You told my father—”
“That I could you keep alive,” she said, glancing back. “But you don’t need me to.”
Something in Rhy loosened. Because of all the people in his life, his brother and his parents and his guards and even Alucard Emery, Lila was the first—the only—person to treat him like he didn’t need saving.
“Guards,” he called, hardening his voice. “Split up.”
“Your Highness,” started one. “We’re not to lea—”
He turned on them. “We’ve too much ground to cover, and last time I checked, we all had a pair of working eyes”—he shot a look at Lila, realizing his error, but she only shrugged—“so put them to use, and find me my survivors.”
It was a grim pursuit.
Rhy found too many bodies, and worse, the places where bodies should have been but where only a tatter of fabric and a pile of ash were left, the rest blown away by the winter wind. He thought of Alucard’s sister, Anisa, burning from the inside out. Thought of what happened to those who lost their battle with Osaron’s magic. And what of the fallen? The thousands of people who had not fought against the shadow king, but had given in, given way. Were they still in there, prisoners of their own minds? Could they be saved? Or were they already lost?
“Vas ir,” he murmured over the bodies he found, and the ones he didn’t.
Go in peace.
The streets were hardly empty, but he moved through the masses like a ghost, their shadowed eyes passing over him, through him. He walked in gleaming gold, and still they did not notice. He called to them, but they did not answer. Did not turn.
Whatever part of me Osaron could take, it’s already gone.
Did he really believe that?
His boot slid a little on the ground, and, looking down, he saw that a piece of the street had changed, from stone to something else, something glassy and black, like the flowers on the stairs.
He knelt, brushing his gloved hand against the smooth patch. It wasn’t cold. Wasn’t warm, either. Wasn’t wet like ice. It wasn’t anything. Which made no sense. Rhy straightened, perplexed, and kept looking for something, someone, he could help.
Silvers, that’s what some were calling them, those who’d been burned by Osaron’s magic and survived. The priests, it turned out, had discovered a handful already, most rising from the fever beds that lined the Rose Hall.
But how many more waited in the city?
In the end, Rhy didn’t find the first silver.
The silver found him.
The young boy came stumbling toward him out of a house and sank to his knees at Rhy’s feet. Lines danced like light over his skin, his black hair falling over fever-bright eyes. “Mas vares.”
My prince.
Rhy knelt in his armor, scratching the plate as gold met stone. “It’s all right,” he said as the boy sobbed, tears tracing fresh tracks over the silver on his cheeks.
“All alone,” he murmured, breath hitching. “All alone.”
“Not anymore,” said the prince.
He rose and started toward the house, but small fingers caught his hand. The boy shook his head, and Rhy saw the ash dusting the boy’s front, and understood. There was no one else inside the house.
Not anymore.
II
Lila went straight for the night market.
The city around her wasn’t empty. It would have been less chilling if it were. Instead, those who’d fallen under Osaron’s spell moved through the streets like sleepwalkers carrying out remembered tasks while deep within their dreams.
The night market was a shadow of its former self, half of it burned, and the rest carrying on in that dazed and ghostly way.
A fruit vendor hawked winter apples, his eyes swimming with shadows, while a woman carried flowers, their edges frosting black. The whole thing had a haunted air, a sea of puppets, and Lila kept squinting at the air around them as if looking for the strings.
Rhy moved through the city like a specter, but Lila was like an unwelcome guest. The people looked at her when she passed, their eyes narrowing, but the cuts on her palms were still fresh, and the blood kept them at bay, even as their whispers trailed her through the streets.