Kell looked at his brother with a mixture of surprise and awe. “You know,” he said, taking up the mask, “if you can rule half as well as you can lie, you’re going to make an incredible king.”
Rhy’s smile was a dazzling thing. “Thank you.”
IV
SASENROCHE
It was late by the time Lila made her way back to the Night Spire. Sasenroche had quieted, and it had started to sleet, an icy mix that turned to slush on the deck and had to be swept away before it froze solid.
Back in her London—old London—Lila had always hated winter.
Longer nights meant more hours in which to steal, but the people who ventured out usually didn’t have a choice, which made them poor marks. Worse than that, in winter, everything was damp and grey and bitter cold.
So many nights in her past life, she had gone to bed shivering. Nights she couldn’t afford wood or coal, so she’d put on every piece of clothing she owned and huddled down and froze. Heat cost money, but so did food and shelter and every other blasted thing you needed to survive, and sometimes you had to choose.
But here, if Lila practiced, she could summon fire with her fingertips, could keep it burning on nothing but magic and will. She was determined to master it, not just because fire was useful or dangerous, but because it was warm, and no matter what happened, Lila Bard never wanted to be cold again.
That was why Lila favored fire.
She blew out a puff of air. Most of the men stayed behind to enjoy the night on land, but Lila preferred her room on the ship, and she wanted to be alone so she could think.
London. Her pulse lifted at the thought. It had been four months since she first boarded the Night Spire. Four months since she said good-bye to a city she didn’t even know, its name the only tether to her old life. She’d planned to go back, of course. Eventually. What would Kell say, when he saw her? Not that that was her first thought. It wasn’t. It was sixth, or maybe seventh, somewhere below all the ones about Alucard and the Essen Tasch. But it was still there, swimming in her head.
Lila sighed, her breath clouding as she leaned her elbows on the ship’s slush-covered rail and looked down at the tide as it sloshed up against the hull. Lila favored fire, but it wasn’t her only trick.
Her focus narrowed on the water below, and as it did, she tried to push the current back, away. The nearest wave stuttered, but the rest kept coming. Lila’s head had begun to hurt, pounding in time with the waves, but she gripped the splintered rail, determined. She imagined she could feel the water—not only the shudder traveling up the boat, but the energy coursing through it. Wasn’t magic supposed to be the thing in all things? If that was true, then it wasn’t about moving the water, it was about moving the magic.
She thought of “The Tyger,” the poem she used to focus her mind, with its strong and steady beat … but it was a song for fire. No, she wanted something else. Something that flowed.
“Sweet dreams,” she murmured, summoning a line from another Blake poem, trying to get the feeling right. “Of pleasant streams …” She said the line over and over again until the water filled her vision, until the sound of the sloshing waves was all she could hear, and the beat of them matched the beat of her pulse and she could feel the current in her veins, and the water up and down the dock began to still, and …
A dark drop hit the rail between her hands.
Lila lifted her fingers to her nose; they came away stained with blood.
Someone tsked, and Lila’s head snapped up. How long had Alucard been standing at her back?
“Please tell me you didn’t just try to exert your will on the ocean,” he said, offering her a kerchief.
“I almost did it,” she insisted, holding the cloth to her face. It smelled like him. His magic, a strange mixture of sea air and honey, silver and spice.
“Not that I doubt your potential, Bard, but that’s not possible.”
“Maybe not for you,” she jabbed, even though in truth she was still unnerved by what she’d seen him do back in the tavern.
“Not for anyone,” said Alucard, slipping into his teacher’s voice. “I’ve told you: when you control an element, your will has to be able to encompass it. It has to be able to reach, to surround. That’s how you shape an element, and that’s how you command it. No one can stretch their mind around an ocean. Not without tearing. Next time, aim sma—”
He cut off as a clod of icy slush struck the shoulder of his coat. “Agh!” he said, as bits slipped down his collar. “I know where you sleep, Bard.”
She smirked. “Then you know I sleep with knives.”
His smile faltered. “Still?”
She shrugged and turned back to the water. “The way they treat me—”
“I’ve made my orders very clear,” he said, obviously assuming she’d been misused. But that wasn’t it.
“—like I’m one of them,” she finished.
Alucard blinked, confused. “Why shouldn’t they? You’re part of the crew.”
Lila cringed. Crew. The very word referred to more than one. But belonging meant caring, and caring was a dangerous thing. At best, it complicated everything. At worst, it got people killed. People like Barron.
“Would you rather they try to knife you in the dark?” asked the captain. “Toss you overboard and pretend it was an accident?”
“Of course not,” said Lila. But at least then she’d know how to react. Fights she recognized. Friendship? She didn’t know what to do with that. “They’re probably too scared to try it.”