Not the brisk bright pain of grazed skin but something deep. Severing.
The knife came free, and her legs folded beneath her.
She tried to breathe, choked as blood rose in her throat. Soaked her shirt.
Get up, she thought as her body slumped to the ground.
This isn’t how I die, she thought, this isn’t—
She retched blood into the street.
Something was wrong.
It hurt.
No.
Kell.
Get up.
She tried to rise, slipped in something slick and warm.
No.
Not like this.
She closed her eyes, tried desperately to summon magic.
There wasn’t any left.
All she had was Kell’s face. And Alucard’s. Barron’s watch. A ship. The open sea. A chance at freedom.
I’m not done.
Her vision slipped.
Not like this.
Her chest rattled.
Get up.
She was on her back now, the Thief circling like a vulture. Above him, the sky was turning colors like a bruise.
Like the sea before a … what?
He was getting closer, crouching down, burying a knee in her wounded chest and she couldn’t breathe and this wasn’t how it happened, and—
A blur of motion, quick as a knife, at the edge of her sight, and the man was gone. The beginnings of a shout cut off, the distant sound of a weight hitting something solid, but Lila couldn’t raise her head to see, couldn’t …
The world narrowed, the light slipping from the sky, then blotted out altogether by the shadow kneeling over her, pressing a hand to her ribs.
“Hold on,” said a low voice as the world darkened. Then: “Over here! Now!”
Another voice.
“Stay with me.”
She was so cold.
“Stay …”
It was the last thing she heard.
IX
Holland knelt over Lila’s body.
She was deathly pale, but he had been quick enough; the spell had taken hold in time. Kell was at Lila’s other side, distraught, face pale under crimson curls, checking her wounds as if he doubted Holland’s work.
If he’d gotten there first, he could have healed her himself.
Holland hadn’t thought it wise to wait.
And now there were more pressing problems.
He’d caught the slow-moving shadows flitting over the wall at the end of the alley. He rose to his feet.
“Stay with me,” Kell was murmuring to Lila’s bloody form, as if that would do any good. “Stay with—”
“How many blades do you have?” Holland cut in.
Kell’s eyes never left Lila, but his fingers went to the sheath on his arm. “One.”
Holland rolled his eyes. “Brilliant,” he said, pressing his palms together. The gash he’d made in his hand wept a fresh line of red.
“As Narahi,” he murmured.
Quicken.
Magic flared at his command, and he moved with a speed he rarely showed and had certainly never seen fit to show Kell. It was a hard piece of magic under any circumstances, and a grueling spell when done to one’s self, but it was worth it as the world around him slowed.
He became a blur, pale skin and grey cloak knifing through the dark. By the time the first man crouching on the roof above had drawn his knife, Holland was behind him. The man looked wide eyed at the place where his target had been as Holland lifted his hands and, with an elegant motion, snapped the man’s neck.
He let the limp body fall to the alley stones and followed quickly after, putting his back to Kell—who’d finally caught the scent of danger—as three more shadows, glinting with weapons, dropped from the sky.
And just like that, their fight began.
It didn’t last long.
Soon three more bodies littered the ground, and the winter air around the two Antari surged with exhaustion and triumph. Blood ran from Kell’s lip, and Holland’s knuckles were raw, and they’d both lost their hats, but otherwise they were intact.
It was strange, fighting beside Kell instead of against him, the resonance of their styles, so different but somehow in sync—unnerving.
“You’ve gotten better,” he observed.
“I had to,” said Kell, wiping the blood from his knife before he sheathed it. Holland had the strange urge to say more, but Kell was already moving to Lila’s side again as Alucard appeared at the mouth of the alley, a sword in one hand and a curl of ice in the other, clearly ready to join the fight.
“You’re late,” said Holland.
“Did I miss all the fun?” asked the magician, but when he saw Lila in Kell’s arms, her limp body covered in blood, every trace of humor left his face. “No.”
“She’ll live,” said Holland.
“What happened? Saints, Bard. Can you hear me?” said Alucard as Kell took up his useless chant again, as if it were a spell, a prayer.
Stay with me.
Holland leaned against the alley wall, suddenly tired.
Stay with me.
He closed his eyes, memories rising like bile in his throat.
Stay with me.
I
Tieren Serense had never been able to see the future.
He could only see himself.
That was the thing so many didn’t understand about scrying. A man could not gaze into the stream of life, the heart of magic, and read it as if it were a book. The world spoke its own language, as indecipherable as the chirping of a bird, the rustling of leaves. A tongue meant not even for priests.
It is an arrogant man that thinks himself a god.