Scattered throughout the market, as if someone had splashed inky water onto the ground and let it freeze, were patches of black ice. Lila stepped around them with a thief’s sure footing and a fighter’s grace.
She was making her way toward Calla’s familiar green tent at the end of the market when she saw a man pitch a basin of flaming stones into the river. He was broad and bearded, silver scars tracing his hands and throat.
“You couldn’t get me, you monster!” he was screaming. “You couldn’t hold me down.”
The basin hit the river with a crash, rippling the half-frozen water and sending up a plume of hissing steam.
And just like that, the illusion shattered.
The man selling apples and the woman with flowers and every other fallen in the marketplace broke off and turned toward the man, as if waking from a dream. Only they weren’t waking. Instead, it was like the darkness rose inside them, Osaron rousing and turning his head, looking through their eyes. They moved as a single body, one that wasn’t theirs.
“Idiot,” muttered Lila, starting toward him, but the man didn’t seem to notice. Didn’t seem to care.
“Face me, you coward!” he bellowed as part of the nearest tent tore free and lifted into the air beside him.
The crowd hummed in displeasure.
“How dare you,” said a merchant, eyes shining dully as he drew a knife.
“The king will not stand for this,” said a second, twining rope between her hands.
The air shook with the sudden urge for violence, and realization struck Lila like a blow—Osaron gained obedience from the fallen, and energy from the fevered. But he had no use for the ones who’d fought free of his spell. And what he couldn’t use …
Lila ran.
Her injured leg throbbed as she sprinted toward him.
“Look out!” she shouted, her first blade already flying. It caught the nearest attacker in the chest, buried to the hilt, but the merchant’s own knife had left his hand before he fell.
Lila tackled the scarred man to the ground as metal sang over their heads.
The stranger looked up at her in shock, but there wasn’t time. The fallen were circling them, weapons raised. The man slammed a fist into the ground, and a piece of road as wide as a market stall tipped up into a shield.
He raised another makeshift wall and turned, clearly intending to summon a third, but Lila had no desire to be entombed. She dragged the man to his feet, sprinting into the nearest tent before a steel kettle thudded against the heavy canvas side.
“Keep moving,” she called, carving her way through a second tent wall and then a third before the man hauled her to a stop.
“Why did you do that?”
Lila wrenched free. “A thank-you would be nice. I lost my fifth favorite knife out—”
He forced her back against the tent pole. “Why?” he snarled, eyes wide. They were a shocking green, flecked with black and gold.
A swift kick to the ribs with the bottom of her boot, and he went stumbling backward, though not as far as she’d hoped. “Because you were shouting your head off at nothing but shadow and mist. A tip: don’t start a fight like that if you want to live.”
“I didn’t want to live.” His voice shook as he looked down at his silver-scarred hands. “I didn’t want this.”
“A lot of people would love to trade places.”
“That monster took everything. My wife. My father. I fought through it because I thought someone would be waiting for me. But when I woke—when I—” He made a strangled sound. “You should have let me die.”
Lila frowned. “What’s your name?”
“What?”
“You have a name. What is it?”
“Manel.”
“Well, Manel. Dying doesn’t help the dead. It doesn’t find the lost. A lot of people have fallen. But some of us are still standing. So if you want to give up, walk out that curtain. I won’t stop you. I won’t save you again. But if you want to put your second chance to better use, come with me.”
She turned on her heel and slashed the next tent wall, stepping through, only to slam to a stop.
She’d found Calla’s tent.
“What is it?” asked Manel behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“This is the last tent,” she said slowly. “Go out the flap, and head for the palace.”
Manel spat. “The palace. The royals hid inside their palace while my family died. The king and queen sat safe on their thrones while London fell and that spoiled prince—”
“Enough,” snarled Lila. “That spoiled prince is searching the streets for men like you. He’s hunting for the living and burying the dead and doing everything he can to keep one from becoming the other, so you can either help or disappear, but either way, get out.”
He looked at her long and hard, then swore beneath his breath and vanished through the tent’s flap, bells jingling in his wake.
Lila turned her attention back to the empty shop.
“Calla?” she called, hoping the woman was there, hoping she wasn’t. The lanterns that hung in the corners were unlit, the hats and scarves and hoods on the walls casting strange shapes in the dark. Lila snapped her fingers, and the light sparked in her hand, unsteady but bright as she crossed the small tent, searching for any sign of the merchant. She wanted to see the woman’s kind smile, wanted to hear Calla’s teasing words. She wanted Calla to be far, far away, wanted her to be safe.