Beyond that door, Kell screamed.

Beyond this world, Rhy died.

Lila didn’t have time for this.

She dragged her knives together and they sparked, caught fire. The air seared around her, and this time when Ojka threw her blade, the burning edges of Lila’s own met the length of cord, and the fire caught. It wicked along the tether, and Ojka hissed as she pulled herself back. Halfway to her hand, the cord snapped, and the knife faltered, missing its return to her fingers. A dancer, off cue. The assassin’s face burned with anger as she closed the distance to her opponent, now armed with only a single blade.

Despite that, Ojka still moved with the terrifying grace of a predator, and Lila was so focused on the knife in the woman’s hand that she forgot the room was filled with other weapons for a magician to use.

Lila dodged a flash of metal and tried to leap back, but a low stool caught her behind the knees and she stumbled, balance lost. The fire in her hands went out, and the red-haired woman was on her before she hit the floor, blade already arcing down toward her chest.

Lila’s arms came up to block the knife as it slashed down, their hilts crashing together in the air above her face. A wicked smile flashed across Ojka’s lips as the weapon in her hand suddenly extended, metal thinning into a spike of steel that drove toward Lila’s eyes—

Her head snapped sideways as metal struck glass and the sound of a sharp crack reverberated through her skull. The knife, having skidded off her false eye, made a deep scratch across the marble floor. A droplet of blood ran down her cheek where the blade had sliced skin, a single crimson tear.

Lila blinked, dismayed.

The bitch had tried to drive a knife through her eye.

Fortunately, she’d picked the wrong one.

Ojka stared down, caught in an instant of confusion.

And an instant was all Lila needed.

Her own knife, still raised, now slashed sideways, drawing a crimson smile across the woman’s throat.

Ojka’s mouth opened and closed in a mimicry of the parted skin at her neck as blood spilled down her front. She fell to the floor beside Lila, fingers wrapped around the wound, but it was wide and deep—a killing blow.

The woman twitched and stilled, and Lila shuffled backward out of the spreading pool of blood, pain still singing through her wounded calf, her ringing head.

She got to her feet, cupping one hand against her shattered eye.

Her lost second blade jutted from a sconce, and she pried it free, trailing a line of blood in her wake as she stumbled over to the door. It had gone quiet beyond. She tried the handle, but found it locked.

There was probably a spell, but Lila didn’t know it, and she was too tired to summon air or wood or anything else, so instead she simply summoned the last of her strength and kicked the door in.

VII

Kell stared up at the ceiling, the world so far above, and getting farther with every breath.

And then he heard a voice—Lila’s voice—and it was like a hook, wrenching him back to the surface.

He gasped and tried to sit up. Failed. Tried again. Pain shuddered through him as he got to one knee. Somewhere far away, he heard the crack of a boot on wood. A lock breaking. He made it to his feet as the door swung open, and there she was, a shadow traced in light, and then his vision slid away and she became a blur, rushing toward him.

Kell managed a halting step forward before his boots slipped in the pool of blood, and shock and pain plunged him briefly into black. He felt his legs buckling, then warm arms snaking around his waist as he fell.

“I’ve got you,” said Lila, sinking with him to the floor. His head slumped against her shoulder, and he whispered hoarsely into her coat, trying to form the words. When she didn’t seem to understand, he dragged his bloody, broken hands and numbed fingers once more around the collar at his throat.

“Take it … off,” choked Kell.

Lila’s gaze—was there something wrong with her eyes?—flicked over the metal for an instant before she wrapped both hands around the collar’s edge. She hissed when her fingers met the metal, but didn’t let go, grimacing as she cast her hands around until she found the clasp at the base of Kell’s neck. It came free, and she hurled the collar across the room.

Air rushed back into Kell’s lungs, heat pouring though his veins. For an instant, every nerve in his body sang, first with pain and then power as the magic returned in an electric surge. He gasped and doubled over, chest heaving and tears running down his face as the world around him pulsed and rippled and threatened to catch fire. Even Lila must have felt it, leaping back out of the way as Kell’s power surfaced, settled, every stolen drop reclaimed.

But something was still missing.

No, thought Kell. Please, no. The echo. The second pulse. He looked down at his ruined hands, wrists still dripping blood and magic, and none of it mattered. He tore at his chest, tunic ripping over the seal, which was still there, but beneath the scars and the spellwork, only one heart beat. Only one—

“Rhy—” he said, the word a sob. A plea. “I can’t … he’s …”

Lila grabbed him by the shoulders. “Look at me,” she said. “Your brother was still alive when I left. Have a little faith.” Her words were hollow, and his own fear ricocheted inside them, filling the space. “Besides,” she added, “you can’t help him from here.”

She looked around the room at the metal frame, cuffs slick with red, at the table beside it, littered with tools, at the metal collar lying on the floor before her attention returned to him. There was something wrong with her eyes—one was its usual brown, but the other was full of cracks.