“You would still offer yours instead,” mused Osaron. His shell was dying fast, lit by a bloodred glow that cracked along his skin.
“I do,” said Holland.
“Tempting,” said Osaron. His black eyes burned inside his skull. In a flash, he was at Holland’s side. “But I’d rather watch you fall.”
Holland felt the push before he saw the hand, felt the force against his chest and the sudden weight of gravity as the world shifted and the platform disappeared, and the chains pulled him over the edge and down, down, down into the river below.
III
Kell saw Holland fall.
One moment the Antari was there, at the edge, and the next he was gone, plunging down into the river with no magic at hand, only the cold, dead weight of the spelled iron around him. The balcony was chaos, one guard on his knees, fighting the fog, while Lila and Alucard squared off against the animated corpse of Jinnar, who was now nothing more than charred bone.
There wasn’t time to think, to wonder, to question.
Kell dove.
The drop was farther than it seemed.
The impact knocked the air from Kell’s lungs, jarring his bones, and he gasped as the river closed over him, ice-cold and black as ink.
Far below, almost out of sight, a pale form sank to the bottom of the tainted water.
Kell swam down toward Holland, lungs aching as he fought the press of the river—not only the weight of water, but Osaron’s magic, leaching heat and focus as it tried to force its way in.
By the time he reached Holland, the man was on his knees on the river floor, his lips moving faintly, soundlessly, his body weighed down by the shackles at his wrists and the steel chains around his waist and legs. The Antari struggled to his feet but couldn’t manage any further. After a brief struggle he lost his battle with gravity and sank back to his knees, driving up a cloud of silt as the irons hit the riverbed.
Kell hovered in front of him, his own coat heavy with water, its weight enough to keep him under. He drew his dagger, slicing skin before he realized the futility—the instant the blood welled, it vanished, dissipated by the current. Kell swore, sacrificing a thin stream of air as Holland struggled to hold on to the last of his own. Holland’s black hair floated in the water around his face, his eyes closed, a resignation to his posture, as if he would rather drown than return to the world above.
As if he meant to end his life here, at the bottom of the river.
But Kell couldn’t let him do that.
Holland’s eyes flashed open as Kell took hold of his shoulders, crouching to reach his wrists where they were weighted to the river floor. The Antari shook his head minutely, but Kell didn’t let go. His whole body ached from the cold and the lack of air, and he could see Holland’s chest stuttering as he fought the urge to breathe in.
Kell wrapped his hands around the iron shackles and pulled, not with muscle but with magic. Iron was a mineral, somewhere between stone and earth on the spectrum of elements. He couldn’t unmake it, but he could—with enough effort—change its shape.
Transmuting an element was no small feat, even in a workroom with ample time and focus; doing it underwater surrounded by dark magic while his chest screamed and Holland slowly drowned was something else entirely.
Focus, Master Tieren chided in his head. Unfocus.
Kell squeezed his eyes shut and tried to remember Tieren’s instructions.
Elements are not whole unto themselves, the Aven Essen had said, but parts, each a knot on the same, ever-circling rope, one giving way onto the next and the next. There is a natural pause, but no seam.
It had been years since he’d learned to do this; ages since he’d stood in the head priest’s study with a glass in each hand, following the lines of the element spectrum as he poured the contents back and forth, turning a cup of water into sand, sand into rock, rock into fire, fire into air, air into water. On and on, slowly, painstakingly, the action never as natural as the theory. The priests could do it—they were so attuned to the subtleties of magic, the boundaries between elements porous in their hands—but Kell’s magic was too loud, too bright, and half the time he faltered, shattering the glass or spilling contents that were now half rock, half glass.
Focus.
Unfocus.
The iron was cold under his hands.
Unyielding.
Knots on a rope.
Holland was dying.
The watery world swirled darkly.
Focus.
Unfocus.
Kell’s eyes flashed open. He met Holland’s gaze, and as the metal began to soften in his hands, something flashed across the magician’s face, and Kell realized suddenly that Holland’s resignation had been a mask, veiling the panic beneath. The cuffs gave way beneath Kell’s desperate fingers, turning from iron to sand, silt that formed a cloud and then dissolved in the river’s current.
Holland lurched forward in the sudden absence of chains. He rose up, the need for air propelling him toward the surface.
Kell pushed off the river floor to follow.
Or tried to.
He lifted a few feet, only to be wrenched back down, held fast by a sudden, unseen force. The last of Kell’s air escaped in a violent stream as he fought the water’s hold. The force tightened around his legs, tried to crush the strength from his limbs, his chest, dragging his arms out to his sides in a gruesome echo of the steel frame in the White London castle.
The water before Kell shifted and swirled, the current bending around the outlines of a man.
Hello again, Antari.
Too late, Kell understood. That last moment on the balcony, when Osaron had looked not at Holland, but at him. Pushing Holland into the river, knowing Kell would save him. They’d set a trap for the shadow king, and he’d set one for them. For him.