V.E Schwab - A Darker Shade of Magic

Kell staggered to his feet as Holland collapsed onto the damp street. A horrible sadness rolled through him as he crossed to the Antari ’s body. They had been two of a kind, a dying breed. Now he was the only one. And soon, there would be none. Perhaps that was how it should be. How it needed to be.

Kell wrapped his fingers around the bloody metal bar and pulled it free of Holland’s chest. He tossed the pole aside, the dull sound of it clanging down the road like a faltering heartbeat. Kell knelt beside Holland’s body as blood began to pool beneath it. When he felt for a pulse, he found one there. But it was shallow, fading.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It felt stupid and useless to say, but the sharpness had gone out of his anger, and his sadness, his fear, his loss—they had all dulled into a steady ache, one he felt he might never shake as he reached under the Antari ’s collar and found a White London token on a cord around his neck.

Holland knew . He’d seen the attack coming, and he hadn’t stopped it. The instant before the metal struck him from behind, Holland had stopped fighting. It was only a second, a fraction of a breath, but it had been enough to give Kell the edge, the opening. And in the sliver of time after the metal pierced his body, and before he fell, it wasn’t anger or pain that crossed his face. It was relief.

Kell snapped the cord and straightened, but couldn’t bring himself to leave the Antari there, in the street. He looked from the token to the waiting wall and then dragged Holland’s body to its feet.

VI

The first thing Kell saw when he stepped into White London was Lila brandishing two knives, both of them bloody. She’d managed to cut a path through several men—their bodies littered the street—but four or five were circling her, and more hung back and watched with hungry eyes and whispered in their guttural tongue.

“Pretty red blood.”

“Smells like magic.”

“Open her up.”

“See what’s inside.”

Kell lowered Holland’s body to the ground, and stepped forward.

“Vös rensk torejk!” he boomed, rumbling the ground for good measure. Back away from her.

A ripple went through the crowd when they saw him—some fled, but others, too curious, took only a step or two back. The moment Lila saw him, her eyes narrowed.

“You are very, very late,” she growled. Her usual calm had cracked, and underneath she looked tense with fear. “And why are you wet?” Kell looked down at his dripping clothes. He ran his hands along them, willing the water out, and a moment later, he stood, dry except for the puddle at his boots.

“I hit a snag,” he said, gesturing back toward Holland. But several dark-eyed citizens were already beginning to investigate the body. One pulled out a knife and pressed it to the dying Antari ’s wrist.

“Stop,” ordered Kell, slamming the assailants backward with a gust of wind. He hauled the Antari up over his shoulder.

“Leave him,” spat Lila. “Let them pick his bones clean.”

But Kell shook his head.

“If you don’t,” she said. “They’ll pick ours. ”

Kell turned and saw the men and women closing in around them.

The people of White London knew the orders, knew the Danes would take the head of any who touched their guest from afar, but it was night, and the lure of fresh magic and Holland’s defenseless state—“Let me make a crown from him,” murmured one; “I bet there’s still blood left,” said another—seemed to tip them off their senses. Lila and Kell moved backward until their heels met the bridge.

“Lila?” said Kell as they backed onto it.

“Yeah?” she said, her voice low and tight.

“Run.”

She didn’t hesitate, but turned and took off sprinting across the bridge. Kell’s hand shot up, and with it, a wall of stone, a barricade to buy them time. And then he, too, was running. As fast as he could, with Holland’s body over his narrow shoulder and the black magic surging in his veins.

Kell was halfway across the bridge—and Lila nearly to the other side—when the commoners finally tore down the wall and surged after them onto the structure. The moment he reached the opposite bank, Kell sank to the ground and touched his bloody hand to the floor of the bridge.

“As Steno,” he commanded, just as Holland had, and instantly, the bridge began to crumble, plunging stone and bodies down into the icy Sijlt. Kell fought for breath, his pulse thudding his ears. Lila was standing over him, glaring at Holland’s body.

“Is he dead?”

“Close enough,” said Kell, getting to his feet, hauling the Antari ’s body with him.

“I hope you made him suffer,” she spat, turning toward the looming castle.

No , thought Kell as they set off. He suffered long enough.

He could feel the people watching as they moved through the streets, but no one came out of their houses. They were too near the castle now, and the castle had eyes. Soon, it loomed before them, the stone citadel behind its high wall, the archway like a gaping mouth, leading onto the darkened courtyard and its statues.

The stone hummed against Kell’s palm, and he realized it wasn’t calling only to him now. It was calling to its other half. Beside him, Lila drew yet another blade from beneath her coat. But this one wasn’t an ordinary knife. It was a royal half-sword from Red London.

Kell’s mouth fell open. “Where did you get that?” he asked.

“Nicked it off the guard who tried to kill me,” she said, admiring the weapon. He could see the markings scrawled across the blade. Metal that disabled magic. “Like I said, you can never have too many knives.”

Kell held out his hand. “Can you spare it?”

Lila considered him a moment, then shrugged and handed it over. Kell fingered the grip as she drew out her pistol and began to reload it.

“Are you ready?” she asked, spinning the chamber.

Kell gazed through the gate at the waiting castle. “No.”

At that, she offered him the sharpest edge of a grin. “Good,” she said. “The ones who think they’re ready always end up dead.”

Kell managed a ghost of a smile. “Thank you, Lila.”

“For what?”

But Kell didn’t answer, only stepped forward into the waiting dark.

XIII

THE WAITING KING

I

A cloud of black smoke hung in the air of the white throne room, a patch of night against the pale backdrop. Its edges frayed and curled and faded, but its center was smooth and glossy, like the fragment of stone in Athos’s hand, or the surface of a scrying board, which was exactly what the king had summoned with it.

Athos Dane sat on his throne, his sister’s body in her own chair beside him, and turned the stone over in his hand as he watched the shifting image of Kell and his companion pass into the courtyard of his castle.

Where the stone’s other half had gone, so had its gaze.

The farthest London had been little more than a blur, but as Kell and his companion traveled nearer, the image in the surface had grown crisp and clear. Athos had watched the events unfold across the various cities—Kell’s flight, the girl’s cunning, his servant’s failure, and his sister’s foolishness, the wounded prince, and the slaughtered Antari .