She’d seen so many versions of him in the past few hours. The broken boy. The grieving brother. The determined prince. This Kell was none of those and all of them, and when he kissed her, she tasted pain and fear and desperate hope. And then he was gone, a streak of pale skin against the night as he rode for the night market.
Lila took off on foot, heading for the nearest cluster of people.
The night should have been cold enough to keep them inside, but the last day of the tournament meant the last night of celebration, and the entire city had been in the taverns, ushering out the Essen Tasch in style. Crowds were spilling out into streets, some drawn by the chaos at the river’s edge, and others still oblivious, drinking and humming and stumbling over their own feet.
They didn’t notice the lack of red light at the city’s heart, or the spreading fog, not until it was nearly upon them. Lila dragged the knife down her arm as she raced between them, pain lost beneath panic as blood pooled in her palm and she flicked her wrist, pricks of red lancing like needles through the air, marking skin. Revelers stiffened, shocked and searching for the source of the assault, but Lila didn’t linger.
“Get inside,” she called, racing past. “Lock the doors.”
But the poisoned night didn’t care about locked doors and shuttered windows, and soon Lila found herself pounding on houses, trying to beat the darkness in. A distant scream as someone fought back. A laugh as someone fell.
Her mind raced, even as her head spun.
Her Arnesian wasn’t good enough, and the more blood she lost, the worse it got, until her speech dissolved from, “There’s a monster in the city, moving in the fog, let me help….” to simply, “Stay.”
Most stared at her, wide-eyed, though she didn’t know if it was the blood or the shattered eye or the sweat streaming down her face. She didn’t care. She kept going. It was a lost cause, all of it, an impossible task when the shadows moved twice as fast as she could, and part of her wanted to give up, to pull back, to save what strength she had—only a fool fought when they knew they couldn’t win—but somewhere out there, Kell was still trying, and she wouldn’t give up until he did, so she forced herself on.
She rounded the corner and saw a woman lying in the road, pale dress pooling on the cold stones as she curled in on herself and clutched her head, fighting whatever monstrous force had clawed inside. Lila ran, hand outstretched, and was nearly to her when the woman went suddenly still. The fight went out of her limbs, and her breath clouded in the air above her face as she stretched out lazily against the cold stones, oblivious to the biting cold, and smiled.
“I can hear his voice,” she said, full of rapture. “I can see his beauty.” She turned her head toward Lila. Shadows slid through her eyes like a cloud over a field. “Let me show you.”
Without warning, the woman sprang, lunging for Lila, fingers wrapping around her throat, and for an instant, she felt the press of searing heat and burning cold as Osaron’s black magic tried to get in.
Tried—and failed.
The woman recoiled violently as if scorched, and Lila struck her hard across the face.
The woman crumpled to the ground, unconscious. It was a good sign. If she’d truly been possessed, a blade wouldn’t have stopped her, let alone a fist.
Lila straightened, aware of the magic as it swept and curled around her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that the darkness had eyes, and it was watching.
Intently.
“Come out, come out,” she called softly, twirling her knife. The shadows wavered. “What’s the matter, Osaron? Feeling shy? A little bare without a body?” She turned in a slow circle. “I’m the one who killed Ojka. I’m the one who stole Kell back.” She spun the blade between her fingers, exuding a calm she didn’t feel as the darkness shuddered around her and began to pull itself together, thickening into a column before it grew limbs, a face, a pair of eyes as black as ice at night and—
Somewhere nearby, a horse whinnied.
A shout went up—not the strangled cry of those fighting the spelled fog, but the simple, guttural sound of frustration. A voice she knew too well.
The shadows collapsed as Lila cut through them, racing toward the sound.
Toward Kell.
She found his horse first. Abandoned and galloping down the street toward her, a shallow slice along one flank.
“Dammit,” she swore, trying to decide whether to bar the horse’s path or dive out of the way. In the end she dove, letting the beast barrel past, then sprinted in the direction it had come. She followed the scent of his magic—rose and soil and leaves—and found Kell on the ground, surrounded, not by Osaron’s fog, but by men, three of them with weapons dangling from their hands. A knife. An iron bar. A plank of wood.
Kell was on his feet at least, gripping one shoulder, his face ghostly pale. He didn’t look like he had the blood left to stand, let alone strike back at the attackers. It wasn’t until she got closer that she recognized one of the men as Tav, her shipmate from the Night Spire, and another as the man who’d played Kamerov at the Banner Night before the tournament. A third was dressed in the cloak and arms of a royal guard, his half sword held at the ready.
“Listen to me,” Kell was saying. “You are stronger than this. You can fight back.”
The men’s faces contorted in glee, surprise, confusion. They spoke in their own voices, not the echoing two-speak Osaron had used on the roof, and yet there was a lilting cadence to their words, a singsong quality that chilled her.