After all, Kell was the one who’d resisted, the one who’d refused to yield.

Now will you kneel?

The invisible bonds forced Kell to the river floor. His lungs flamed as he tried to push back against the river. Tried, and failed. Panic tore through him.

Now will you beg?

He closed his eyes and tried to fight against the need for air that screamed through his chest, drowning his senses. His vision flickered with spots of white light and hollow black.

Now will you let me in?

IV

Lila saw Kell vanish over the balcony’s edge.

At first, she thought he must have been knocked over, that surely he wouldn’t have willingly jumped into the black water, not for Holland, but then she remembered his words—it could have been me—and she realized, with icy clarity, that Kell hadn’t told her the truth. The execution was a farce. Holland was never supposed to die.

It had all been a trap, and Osaron hadn’t taken the bait, and now Holland was sinking to the bottom of the Isle, and Kell was going with him.

“Fucking hell,” muttered Lila, shrugging out of her coat.

On the balcony, Jinnar had collapsed, body crumbling to muddy ash, while those who’d fallen to Osaron’s spell were being subdued. A pair of silver-scarred guards fought to regain order while a third fought the fever raging through him. The king shoved past his own guard, scouring the balcony, while Alucard shielded Rhy, who had one hand to his chest as if he couldn’t breathe.

Because, of course, he couldn’t breathe. Kell wasn’t the only one drowning.

Lila turned, mounted the balcony edge, and jumped.

The water cut like knives. She sputtered, shocked by the pain and the cold, and she was going to kill someone when this was over.

Without the weight of her coat, her body rebelled, trying with every stride to lift her toward the surface, toward air, toward life. Instead she swam down, lungs burning, icy water stinging her open eyes, toward the shape on the river floor. She expected it to be Holland, weighed down by chains. But the figure was thrashing freely, his hair a tangled cloud.

Kell.

Lila kicked toward him when a hand caught her arm. She twisted around behind her to see Holland, now free of chains.

She brought up her boot to kick him away, but the water gripped it and his fingers tightened as he forced her back around to face the struggling figure on the river floor.

For a sick, frozen moment she thought he wanted her to watch Kell die.

But then she saw it, the faint outline of something—someone—hovering in the water before him.

Osaron.

Holland pointed at himself and then the shadow king. He pointed at her and then Kell. And then he let go, and she understood.

They dove as one, but Holland reached the bottom first, landing in a plume of silt that caught the edges of the shadow king like dust catching light.

Lila reached Kell’s side in the cover of the clouded water and tried to pull him up, pull him free, but Osaron’s will held firm. She flung a desperate hand toward Holland, a speechless plea, and the magician spread his arms and shoved.

The river recoiled, flung away in every direction, carving out a column of air with Kell and Lila at its center. Kell and Lila, but not Holland.

Lila drew in a deep breath, lungs aching, while Kell collapsed to the river floor, gasping and heaving up water.

Get him out, mouthed Holland, hands trembling from the force of holding the river—and Osaron—at bay.

With what? Lila wanted to say. They might be able to breathe, but they were still standing at the bottom of the river, Kell only half conscious and Lila with all her strength but none of his skill. She couldn’t craft wings of air, couldn’t sculpt a set of stairs from ice. Her gaze went to the silt floor.

The column of air swayed around them.

Holland was losing his hold.

Shadows grew, curling in the water around the faltering Antari, like roaming limbs, fingers, mouths.

She wanted to leave him, but Kell had brought them here, to this point, all for Holland’s bloody life. Leave him. Save him. Damn him. Lila snarled and, keeping one hand on Kell’s sleeve, thrust the other out toward the column, widening the circle until Holland staggered forward, safely within.

Safe being a relative thing.

Holland drew in ragged breaths, and Kell, finally recovering his senses, pressed his palms to the damp river floor. It began to rise, a disk of earth beneath their feet surging toward the surface as the column collapsed below.

They broke the surface and scrambled onto the riverbank beneath the palace, dropping to the ground soaked and half frozen, but alive.

Holland was the first to recover, but before he was even halfway to his feet, Lila had a knife against his throat.

“Steady now,” she said, her own limbs shaking.

“Wait—” Kell began to speak, but the king and his men were already on them, the guards forcing Holland back to his knees on the icy bank. When they realized he was no longer chained, half of them lunged forward, blades drawn, the other half away. But Holland made no move to strike. Lila kept her knife out all the same until the king’s men had hauled their prisoner back toward the cells. In their wake, Rhy came storming down the riverbank. The prince’s jaw was set, his cheeks red, as if he’d almost drowned. Because, of course, he had.

Kell saw him coming.

“Rhy—”

The prince slammed his fist into his brother’s face.

Kell staggered backward to the ground, and the prince reeled back in mirrored pain, cradling his own cheek.

Rhy grabbed Kell by the soaking collar of his coat. “I’ve made my peace with death,” he said, jabbing a finger at Holland’s retreating form. “But I refuse to die for him.”