“… looking for trouble.”
“Sure to find it.”
“Wouldn’t … be so sure …” The prince coughed.
His head drifted up past the men to Kell. He smiled thinly and said through bloody teeth, “Well, hello there,” as if they’d just chanced upon one another. As if he weren’t getting the shit kicked out of him behind the Blessed Waters. And as if, at this moment, Kell didn’t have the urge to let the men have at Rhy for being stupid and self-destructive enough to pick this fight in the first place (because Kell had no doubt that the prince had started it). The urge was compounded by the fact that, though the thugs didn’t know it, they couldn’t actually kill him. That was the thing about the spell scorched into their skin. Nothing could kill Rhy. Because it wasn’t Rhy’s life that held him together anymore. It was Kell’s. And as long as Kell lived, so would the prince.
But they could hurt him, and Kell wasn’t angry enough to let that happen.
“Hello, Brother,” he said, crossing his arms.
Two of the men turned toward Kell.
“Kers la?” taunted one. “A pet dog, come to nip at our heels?”
“Don’t look like he’s got much bite,” said the other.
The third didn’t even bother turning around. Rhy had said something to insult him—Kell didn’t catch the words—and now he angled a kick at the prince’s stomach. It never connected. Kell clenched his teeth and the man’s boot froze in midair, the bones in his leg willed still.
“What the—”
Kell wrenched with his mind, and the man went flying sideways into the nearest wall. He collapsed to the ground, groaning, and the other two looked on with surprise and horror.
“You can’t—” one grumbled, though the fact that Kell could was less shocking than the fact that he had. Bone magic was a rare and dangerous skill, forbidden because it broke the cardinal law: that none shall use magic, mental or physical, to control another person. Those who showed an affinity were strongly encouraged to unlearn it. Anyone caught doing it was rewarded with a full set of limiters.
An ordinary magician would never risk the punishment.
Kell wasn’t an ordinary magician.
He tipped his chin up so the men could see his eyes, and took a measure of grim satisfaction as the color bled from their faces. And then footsteps sounded, and Kell turned to find more men pouring into the alley. Drunk and angry and armed. Something stirred in him.
His heart raced, and magic surged through his veins. He felt something on his face, and it took him a moment to realize that he was smiling.
He drew his dagger from the hidden sheath against his arm and with a single fluid motion cut his palm. Blood fell to the street in heavy red drops.
“As Isera,” he said, the words taking shape in his blood and on the air at the same time. They vibrated through the alley.
And then, the ground began to freeze.
It started at the drops of blood and spread out fast like frost over the stones and underfoot until a moment later everyone in the alley was standing atop a single solid pane of ice. One man took a step, and his feet went out from under him, arms flailing for balance even as he fell. Another must have had better boots on, because he took a sure step forward. But Kell was already moving. He crouched, pressed his bloody palm to the street stones, and said, “As steno.”
Break.
A cracking sound split the night, the quiet shattering with the pane of glassy ice. Cracks shot out from Kell’s hand, fissuring the ground to every side, and as he stood, the shards came with him. Every piece not pinned by boot or body rose into the air and hung there, knifelike edges facing out from Kell like wicked rays of light.
Suddenly everyone in the alley grew still, not because he was willing the bones in their bodies, but because they were afraid. As they should be. He didn’t feel drunk now. Didn’t feel cold.
“Hey now,” said one, his hands drifting up. “You don’t have to do this.”
“It’s not fair,” growled another softly, a blade of ice against his throat.
“Fair?” asked Kell, surprised by the steadiness in his voice. “Is three against one fair?”
“He started it!”
“Is eight against two fair?” continued Kell. “Looks to me like the odds are in your favor.”
The ice began to inch forward through the air. Kell heard hisses of panic.
“We were just defending ourselves.”
“We didn’t know.”
Against the back wall, Rhy had straightened. “Come on, Kell….”
“Be still, Rhy,” warned Kell. “You’ve caused enough trouble.”
The jagged shards of ice hovered to every side, and then drifted on the air with slow precision until two or three had found each man, had charted a course for throat and heart and gut. The shards and the men that faced them waited with wide eyes and held breath to see what they would do.
What Kell would do.
A flick of his wrist, that’s all it would take, to end every man in the alley.
Stop, a voice said, the word almost too soft to hear.
Stop.
And then suddenly, much louder, the voice was Rhy’s, the words tearing from his throat. “KELL, STOP.”
And the night snapped back into focus and he realized he was standing there holding eight lives in his hand, and he’d almost ended them. Not to punish them for attacking Rhy (the prince had probably provoked them) and not because they were bad men (though several of them might have been). But just because he could, because it felt good to be in control, to be the strongest, to know that when it came down to it, he would be the one left standing.