The last body crumpled to the deck at Kell’s feet, and it was over. He could tell by the silence, and the sudden stilling of the threads that ran between him and Holland and Lila.
Kell swayed from exhaustion as Holland strode up the stairs, stepping over a shining pool of wetness, his hands a mess of torn flesh. In the same moment, Alucard appeared, cradling one arm against his chest. Someone had torn the sapphire from his brow, and blood ran into his eye, turning the storm grey a violent blue.
Nearby, Hastra sagged onto a crate, still shaking and pale. Kell touched the young guard’s shoulder.
“Was this the first time you took a life?”
Hastra swallowed, nodded. “I always knew that life was fragile,” he said hoarsely. “Keeping something alive is hard enough. But ending it …” He trailed off, and then, quite abruptly, turned and retched onto the deck.
“It’s all right,” said Kell, kneeling over him, his own body screaming from a dozen minor wounds as well as the hollowness that always followed a fight.
After a few seconds Hastra straightened, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “I think I’m ready to be a priest. Do you think Tieren will take me back?”
Kell squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “We can talk to him,” he said, “when we get home.”
Hastra managed to smile. “I’d like that.”
“Where’s Bard?” cut in Alucard.
Lila appeared a moment later, hauling the massive, hobbled form of the Ghost’s captain behind her.
Kell stared in shock as Lila forced Jasta to her knees on the deck. The woman’s face was swollen and streaked with blood, her hands bound with coarse rope, one leg clearly broken.
“Lila, what are you—”
“Why don’t you tell them?” said Lila, nudging Jasta with her boot. When the woman only snarled, Lila said, “It was her.”
Alucard made a disgusted sound. “Tac, Jasta. The Sea Serpents?”
It was the woman’s turn to sneer. “We can’t all be crown pets.”
Kell’s tired mind turned. It was one thing to be attacked by pirates. It was another to be made bounty. “Who hired you?”
“I found these on her,” said Lila, producing a pouch of blue gems. Not just any kind, but the small oval chips used to adorn a Faroan’s face.
“Sol-in-Ar,” muttered Kell. “What was your task?”
When Jasta answered by spitting on the deck, Lila drove her boot down into the woman’s wounded leg. A snarl escaped her throat.
“Killing the traitor would have been a perk,” she growled. “I was hired to slaughter the black-eyed prince.” Her gaze drifted up to meet Kell’s. “And a Serpent doesn’t stop until the job is done.”
The knife came out of nowhere.
One moment Jasta’s hands were empty, and the next, her last, hidden piece of steel was free and flying toward Kell’s heart. His mind caught up before his limbs, and his hands rose, too slow, too late.
He would wonder for weeks, months, years, if he could have stopped it.
If he could have summoned the strength to will the steel away.
But in that moment, he had nothing left to give.
The blade struck home, embedding to the hilt.
Kell staggered back, braced for a pain that never came.
Hastra’s curls floated up before his eyes, touched with gold even in the dark. The boy had moved like light, lunging between Kell and the knife, his arms not up to block the blade, but out, as if to catch it.
It took him in the heart.
An animal sound tore from Kell’s throat as Hastra—Hastra, who made things grow, who would have been a priest, who could have been anything he wanted and chose to be a guard, Kell’s guard—staggered, and fell.
“No!” he cried, catching the young man’s body before it hit the deck. He was already so quiet, so still, already gone, but Kell had to say something, had to do something. What was the use of so much power if people still kept dying?
“As Hasari,” he pleaded, pressing his palm to Hastra’s chest, even as the last rhythms of a pulse faded beneath Kell’s hands.
It was too late.
He had been too late.
Even magic had its limits.
And Hastra was already gone.
Curls tumbled back from eyes that had once—just—been lit with life, that now sat dark, still, open.
Kell lowered Hastra’s body, dragging the knife free of his guard’s chest as he rose. His chest was heaving, ragged breaths tearing free. He wanted to scream. He wanted to sob.
Instead he crossed the deck, and cut Jasta’s throat.
VII
Rhy groaned in pain.
It wasn’t a sudden, lancing blow, but the deep ache of muscles pushed too far, of energy drained. His head pounded and his heart raced as he sat up, trying to ground himself in the silk sheets, the warmth of the fire still smoldering in the hearth.
You are here, he told himself, trying to disentangle his mind from the nightmare.
In the dream, he had been drowning.
Not the way he’d almost drowned on the balcony, just hours—days?—ago when Kell had followed Holland into the river. No, this was slower. Rhy’s dream-self had been sinking, deeper and deeper into a wave-wracked grave, the pressure of the water crushing the air from his lungs.
But the pain Rhy felt now hadn’t followed him out of the dream.
It didn’t belong to him at all.
It belonged to Kell.
Rhy reached for the royal pin on the table, wishing he could see what was happening to his brother instead of only feeling the effects. Sometimes he thought he did, in glimpses and dreams, but nothing stuck, nothing ever stayed.