Holland stepped off first, steadying himself atop sea-slicked rocks.
Kell started to follow, and slipped. He would have crashed down into the surf, had Holland not been there to catch his wrist and haul him up onto the shore. Kell turned back for Lila, but she was already beside him, her hand in his and Holland’s on his shoulder as Kell pressed the swatch of cloth to the rock wall and said the words to take them home.
The freezing mist and the jagged coast instantly vanished, replaced by the smooth marble of the Rose Hall, with its vaulted ceiling, its empty thrones.
There was no sign of Rhy, no sign of the king and queen, until he turned and saw the wide stone table in the middle of the hall.
Kell stilled, and somewhere behind him, Lila drew in a short, shocked breath.
It took him a moment to process the shapes that lay on top, to understand that they were bodies.
Two bodies, side by side atop the stone, each draped with crimson cloth, the crowns still shining in their hair.
Emira Maresh, with a white rose, edged in gold, laid over her heart.
Maxim Maresh, the petals of another rose scattered across his chest.
The cold settled in Kell’s bones.
The king and queen were dead.
IX
Alucard Emery had imagined his death a hundred times.
It was a morbid habit, but three years at sea had given him too much time to think, and drink, and dream. Most of the time his dreams started with Rhy, but as the nights lengthened and the glasses emptied, they invariably turned darker. His wrists would ache and his thoughts would fog, and he’d wonder. When. How.
Sometimes it was glamorous and sometimes it was gruesome. A battle. A stray blade. An execution. A ransom gone wrong. Choking on his own blood, or swallowing the sea. The possibilities were endless.
But he never imagined death would look like this.
Never imagined that he would face it alone. Without a crew. Without a friend. Without a family. Without even an enemy, save the faceless masses that filled the waiting ships.
Fool, Jasta would have said. We all face death alone.
He didn’t want to think of Jasta. Or Lenos. Or Bard.
Or Rhy.
The sea air scratched at the scars on Alucard’s wrists, and he rubbed at them as the ship—it wasn’t even his ship—rocked silently in the surf.
The Veskans’ green and silver were drawn in, the ships floating grimly, resolutely, a mountainous line along the horizon.
What were they waiting for?
Orders from Vesk?
Or from within the city?
Did they know about the shadow king? The cursed fog? Was that what held them at bay? Or were they simply waiting for the cover of night to strike?
Sanct, what good was it to speculate?
They hadn’t moved.
Any minute they could move.
The sun was sinking, turning the sky a bloody red, and his head was pounding from the strain of holding the mist for as long as he had. It was beginning to thin, and there was nothing he could do but wait, wait, and try to summon the strength to—
To do what? challenged a voice in his head. Move the sea?
It wasn’t possible. That wasn’t just a line he’d fed Bard to keep her from doing herself in. Everything had limits. His mind raced, the way it had been racing for the last hour, stubbornly, doggedly, as if it might finally round a corner and find an idea—not a mad notion parading as a plan, but an actual idea—waiting for him.
The sea. The ships. The sails.
Now he was just listing things.
No. Wait. The sails. Perhaps he could find a way to—
No.
Not from this distance.
He would have to move the Ghost, sail her right up to the ass end of the Veskan fleet and then—what?
Alucard rubbed his eyes.
If he was going to die, he could at least think of a way to make it count.
If he was going to die—
But that was the problem.
Alucard didn’t want to die.
Standing there on the prow of the Ghost, he realized with startling clarity that death and glory didn’t interest him nearly as much as living long enough to go home. To make sure Bard was alive, to try to find any remaining members of the Night Spire. To see Rhy’s amber eyes, press his lips to the place where his collar curved into his throat. To kneel before his prince, and offer him the only thing Alucard had ever held back: the truth.
The mirror from the floating market sat in its shroud on a nearby crate.
Four years for a gift that would never be given.
Movement in the distance caught his eye.
A shadow gliding across the twilit sky—now a bruised blue instead of bloody red. His heart lurched. It was a bird.
It plunged down onto one of the Veskan ships, swallowed up by the line of mast and net and folded sail, and Alucard held his breath until his chest ached, until his vision spotted. This was it. The order to move. He didn’t have much time.
The sails …
If he could damage the sails …
Alucard began to gather every piece of loose steel aboard the ship, ransacked the crates and the galley and the hold for blades and pots and silverware, anything he could fashion into something capable of cutting. Magic thrummed in his fingers as he willed the surfaces sharp, molded serrated edges into the sides.
He lined them up like soldiers on the deck, three dozen makeshift weapons that could rend and tear. He tried to ignore the fact that the sails were down, tried to smother the knowledge that even he didn’t have the ability control this many things at once, not with any delicacy.
But brute force was better than nothing.
All he had to do was bring the Ghost in range to strike. He was lifting his attention to his own sails when he saw the Veskan sails draw taut.