“But do you know what happens to a fire when it’s trapped?”
Kosika watched the light shiver and shrink.
“It goes out,” she whispered.
“It goes out,” echoed Serak, sadness heavy in his throat. Kosika could not take her eyes from the flame. She watched as the light began to thin, retreating from a tall flame to a short one, from gold to blue, felt a twist of panic as the life retreated down the wick, until it met the pool of wax and—
—died.
A thin tendril of smoke rose from the candle, clouding the lantern. For a moment, they stood in silence in the full dark, and she held her breath, and wondered if the lesson was done. But then, Serak spoke again.
“Here is the difference, Kosika. Magic does not die.”
Serak lifted the lantern off the candle, setting it aside.
“Magic withdraws. It resists.”
He held his own hands out to either side of the extinguished candle, brows furrowing with the effort.
“It grows harder and harder to kindle again, but—”
A small spark. A tiny flash of blue, and then flame slowly returned, small and fragile, but burning. And Serak smiled.
“That is what Holland did for us,” he said, lowering his hands. “What will you do?”
Kosika studied the solitary candle, its light barely reaching the walls.
What will I do? she wondered, and then held out her hand, not toward the single, burning flame, but the hundred darkened candles lining the alcove. She flexed her fingers, and the tapers burst to life, fire spreading in a wave until the entire space blazed with light.
* * *
NOW
No one followed Kosika into the woods.
Not her soldiers, or her Vir. Not Serak, or Lark. Not even Nasi. The Silver Wood was now a sacred site, and no one else was allowed to pass within. Her cloak dragged in her wake, snagging on new growth until her fingers found the clasp. It came free, and the heavy cloth slid from her shoulders, and pooled in her wake, and she continued on, until she found the place where Holland had died.
She knelt, and ran her fingers through the grass that grew, as it always did, beneath the tree, as soft and green as the day she found him.
Even after all these years, she’d never told anyone that she’d been there. The first to find the dead king’s body. Perhaps the Vir would welcome the knowledge, see it as further proof of her claim to magic and the throne. Or perhaps they would say that she’d taken his strength, stolen it from his cooling skin. Kosika didn’t know, and didn’t care. The truth of that day, like the power in her veins, did not belong to them.
Kosika drew her blade, and made a fourth cut along the inside of her arm. A private tithe. Let the red drops fall like rain onto the patch of grass below the tree.
She knew the right spell now. The Antari word she’d wanted in the courtyard the day she nearly died.
As Athera.
To grow.
But she didn’t say it. Didn’t need to. The golden leaves shimmered overhead. The roots ran strong and deep below. They had been watered well.
She rose, and hauled the heavy cloak back over her shoulders as, beyond the woods, the drums finally stopped beating. They didn’t end all at once, but trailed off like a slowing pulse, as word spread through the city that the ritual was done.
Part Six
THE STRANDS CONVERGE
I
RED LONDON
There were plenty of things that set Delilah Bard apart.
But perhaps the most important, at least here, in this London, was this.
She didn’t need magic.
Sure, it made things interesting, but she’d been raised in a world without spells, without shortcuts. And despite her eye, or perhaps because of it, she’d learned the importance of close study. Of observation, exploration, boots on pavement.
Lila had no doubt the palace was doing everything it could to find the Hand. And yet. The fact was, Alucard may have played at pirate, but he’d never stopped being noble, Rhy was the literal king as well as the target, and Kell could practice being a swashbuckling sailor all he liked, could shed his coat and call himself Kay, but he had been the best magician in the world for the first twenty-two years of his life, and he was still, and would always be, a prince. All three men had been born and raised in power. That was how they saw the world. That was how they saw their city—from the stronghold of the soner rast.
But a city was so much more than that.
It didn’t have one face, one mood. It could call itself one name, but in truth, it was made up of a hundred smaller worlds, private and communal, domestic and wild. A handful were dazzling bright spots and a few were lightless corners, but the vast majority fell somewhere between.