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“I wear my scars now,” she whispered in Ojka’s ear.

Footsteps sounded beyond the doors, the heavy tread of the Iron Guard, and Nasi pulled back hastily, nearly tipping over the bowl of water when she snagged her sleeve on the vines coiled around the platform.

But she was only nine winters old, and small as a shadow, and by the time the doors opened, she was gone.

II

In the Maresh dungeons, sleep eluded Holland.

His mind drifted, but every time it began to settle, he saw London—his London—as it crumbled and fell. Saw the colors fade back to gray, the river freeze, and the castle … well, thrones did not stay empty. Holland knew this well. He pictured the city searching for its king, heard the servants calling out his name before new blades found their throats. Blood staining white marble, bodies littering the forest as boots crushed everything he’d started like new grass underfoot.

Holland reached out automatically for Ojka, his mind stretching across the divide of worlds, but found no purchase.

The prison cell he currently occupied was a stone tomb, buried somewhere deep in the bones of the palace. No windows. No warmth. He had lost track of the number of stairs when the Arnesian guards dragged him in, half conscious, mind still gutted from Osaron’s intrusion and sudden exit. Holland barely processed the cells, all empty. The animal part of him had struggled at the touch of cold metal closing around his wrists, and in response, they’d slammed his head against the wall. When he’d surfaced, everything was black.

Holland lost track of time—tried to count, but without any light, his mind skipped, stuttered, fell too easily into memories he didn’t want.

Kneel, whispered Astrid in one ear.

Stand, goaded Athos in the other.

Bend.

Break.

Stop, he thought, trying to drag his mind back to the cold cell. It kept slipping.

Pick up the knife.

Hold it to your throat.

Stay very still.

He’d tried to will his fingers, of course, but the binding spell held, and when Athos had returned hours—sometimes days—later, and plucked the blade from Holland’s hand, and given him permission to move again, his body had folded to the floor. Muscles torn. Limbs shaking.

That is where you belong, Athos had said. On your knees.

“Stop.” Holland’s growl vibrated through the quiet of the prison, answered only by its echo. For a few breaths, his mind was still, but soon, too soon, it all began again, the memories seeping in through the cold stone and the iron cuffs and the silence.

* * *

The first time someone tried to kill Holland, he was barely nine years old.

His eye had turned black the year before, pupil widening day by day until the darkness overtook the green, and then the white, slowly poisoning him lash to lid. His hair was long enough to hide the mark, as long as he kept his head down, which Holland always did.

He woke to the hiss of metal, lunged to the side in time to almost miss the blade.

It grazed his arm before burying itself in the cot. Holland tumbled to the floor, hitting his shoulder hard, and rolled, expecting to find a stranger, a mercenary, someone marked with the brand of thieves and killers.

Instead, he saw his older brother. Twice his size, with their father’s muddy green eyes and their mother’s sad mouth. The only blood Holland had left.

“Alox?” he gasped, pain burning up his injured arm. Bright red drops flecked the floor of their room before Holland managed to press his hand over the weeping wound.

Alox stood over him, the veins on his throat already edging toward black. At fifteen, he had taken on a dozen marks, all to help bend will and bind escaping magic.

Holland was on his back on the floor, blood still spilling between his fingers, but he didn’t cry out for help. There was no one to cry out to. Their father was dead. Their mother had disappeared into the sho dens, drowned herself in smoke.

“Hold still, Holland,” muttered Alox, dragging the blade free of the cot. His eyes were red with drink or spellwork. Holland didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Not because the blade was poisoned, though he feared it was. But because every night he’d dreamed of would-be attackers, given them a hundred names and faces, and none of them had ever been Alox.

Alox, who told him stories when he couldn’t sleep. Tales of the someday king. The one with enough power to bring the world back.

Alox, who used to let him sit on makeshift thrones in abandoned rooms and dream of better days.

Alox, who had first seen the mark in his eye, and promised to keep him safe.

Alox, who now stood over him with a knife.

“Vosk,” pleaded Holland now. Stop.

“It isn’t right,” his brother slurred, intoxicated by the knife, the blood, the nearness of power. “That magic isn’t yours.”

Holland’s bloody fingers went swiftly to his eye. “But it chose me.”

Alox shook his head slowly, ruefully. “Magic doesn’t choose, Holland.” He swayed. “It doesn’t belong to those who have. It belongs to those who take.”

With that, Alox brought the knife down.

“Vosk!” begged Holland, bloody hands outstretched.

He caught the blade, pushing back with every ounce of strength, not on the weapon itself but on the air, the metal. It still bit in, blood ribboning down his palms.

Holland stared up at Alox, pain forcing the words across his lips.

“As Staro.”

The words surfaced on their own, rising from the darkness of his mind like a dream suddenly remembered, and with them, the magic surged up through his torn hands, and around the blade, and wrapped around his brother. Alox tried to pull away, but it was too late. The spell had rolled over his skin, turning flesh to stone as it spread over his stomach, climbed his shoulders, wrapped around his throat.


Tags: V.E. Schwab Shades of Magic Fantasy