VI

All day Rhy had searched the city for survivors.

In ones and sometimes twos, he found them—shaken, fragile, but alive. Most were startlingly young. Only a few were very old. And just like the magic in their veins, there was no common factor. No bond of blood, or gender, or means. He found a noble girl from House Loreni, still dressed for a tournament ball, an older man in threadbare clothes tucked in an alleyway, a mother in red mourning silks, a royal guard whose mark had failed or simply faded. All now left with the silver veins of a survivor.

Rhy stayed with them only long enough to show they weren’t alone, long enough to lead them to the palace steps for shelter, and then he was off again, back into the city, in search of more.

Before dusk, he returned to the Spire—he’d known it was too late, but had to see—and found all that was left of Anisa: a small pile of ashes, smoldering on the floor of Alucard’s cabin, beyond the cage of warped planks. A few drops of silver from her House Emery ring.

Rhy was crossing the deck in numbed silence when he caught the glint of metal and saw the woman sitting on the deck with her back to a crate and a blade in her hand.

His boots hit the wooden dock with a thud.

The woman didn’t move.

She was dressed like a man, like a sailor, a black-and-red captain’s sash across her front.

At first glance, he could tell she was from the borderlands, the coast where Arnes looked onto Vesk. She had the build of a northerner and the coloring of a local, her rich brown hair worn in two massive braids that coiled like a mane around her face. Her eyes were open, unblinking, but they looked ahead with an intensity that said she was still there, and thin lines of silver shone against her sea-tanned face.

The knife in her hand was slick with blood.

It didn’t appear to be hers.

A dozen warnings echoed in Rhy’s head—all of them in Kell’s voice—as he knelt beside her.

“What’s your name?” he asked in Arnesian.

Nothing.

“Captain?”

After several long seconds, the woman blinked, a slow, final gesture.

“Jasta,” she said, her voice hoarse, and then, as if the name had sparked something in her, she added, “He tried to drown me. My first mate, Rigar, tried to drag me into that whispering river.” She didn’t take her eyes off the ship. “So I killed him.”

“Are there any others on board?” he asked.

“Half of them are missing,” she said. “The others …” She trailed off, dark eyes dancing over the vessel.

Rhy touched her shoulder. “Can you stand?”

Jasta’s face drifted toward his. She frowned. “Has anyone told you that you look like the prince?”

Rhy smiled. “Once or twice.” He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

VII

The sun had gone down, and Alucard Emery was trying to get drunk.

So far it wasn’t working, but he was determined to see it through. He’d even made a little game:

Every time his mind drifted to Anisa—her bare feet, her fevered skin, her small arms around his neck—he took a drink.

Every time he thought of Berras—his brother’s cutting tone, the hateful smile, the hands around his throat—he took a drink.

Every time his nightmares rose like bile, or his own screams echoed in his head, or he had to remember his sister’s empty eyes, her burning heart, he took a drink.

Every time he thought of Rhy’s fingers laced through his, of the prince’s voice telling him to hold on, hold on, hold on to me, he took a very, very long drink.

Across the room, Lila seemed to be playing her own game; his quiet thief was on her third glass. It took a great deal to shake Delilah Bard, that much he knew, but still, something had shaken her. He might never be able to read the secrets in her face, but he could tell she was keeping them. What had she seen beyond the palace walls? What demons had she faced? Were they strangers or friends?

Every time he asked a question Delilah Bard would never answer, he took a drink, until the pain and grief finally began to blur into something steady.

The room rocked around him, and Alucard Emery—the last surviving Emery—slumped back in the chair, fingering the inlaid wood, the fine gold trim.

How strange it was, to be here, in Rhy’s rooms. It had been strange enough when Rhy was stretched out on his bed, but then the details, the room, everything but Rhy himself, had gone out of focus. Now, Alucard took in the glittering curtains, the elegant floor, the vast bed, now made. All signs of struggle smoothed away.

Rhy’s amber gaze kept swinging toward him like a pendulum on a heavy rope.

He took another drink.

And then another, and another, in preparation for the ache of want and loss and memory washing over him, a small boat pitching miserably against the waves.

* * *

Hold on to me.

That’s what Rhy had said, when Alucard was burning from the inside out. When Rhy was lying there beside him in the ship’s cabin, hoping desperately that his hands could keep Alucard there, and whole and safe. Keep him from vanishing again, this time forever.

Now that Alucard was alive and more or less upright, Rhy couldn’t bring himself to look at his lover, and couldn’t bear to look away, so he ended up doing both and neither.

It had been so long since Rhy’d been able to study his face. Three summers. Three winters. Three years, and the prince’s heart still cracked along the lines Alucard had made.

They were in the conservatory, Rhy and Alucard and Lila.