This Holland’s eyes were not made of gemstones or glass. Up close, the green one was not solid emerald but paler green, shot through with filaments of silver. The black was as smooth and dark and lightless as her own.
As she studied her king, he studied her, his brow furrowed, but his expression drained of the rage she had imagined, something cautious in its stead.
“Interesting,” he said, his voice smooth and low.
His fingers dropped from her chin, and he rose again to his full height. She didn’t, not until he held out his hand, and beckoned her to her feet.
“Who are you?” he asked, the words curling around her.
“Kosika,” she said.
Holland inclined his head. “Kosika,” he echoed. The name had been nothing in her mouth, sounds she’d made a thousand times, but the way he said it, as if it were a spell, made her feel dizzy. She stole another glance at his face, and saw something soften, the line between his brow smooth and the corner of his mouth tense, ever so slightly, as if he were about to smile.
“I have been waiting for you.”
He turned, expecting her to follow, but as she took the first step, the room began to thin around them. The edges faded. Her vision narrowed. The last thing she saw was the king glancing back over his shoulder before the dream crumbled.
She was back in her bed, sunlight spilling in through the open windows, and Nasi bouncing on the edge of the cushions.
“I let you sleep as long as I could.”
Kosika closed her eyes again, trying to hold on to the dregs of her dream, to find her way back, but it was gone, and so was Holland.
“What a monster you were last night,” Nasi was saying. “I think it’s time you slept alone.”
She said it gently, clearly expecting some resistance, but Kosika instantly agreed.
II
RED LONDON
NOW
The first thing Lila noticed was that the world wasn’t moving.
She’d learned to distrust the absence of motion, the lack of bob and sway that accompanied life aboard a ship. Stillness was not only strange, but dire. It meant something had gone wrong. Before she could even place the wrongness, she was reaching beneath her pillow for the knife she kept there. But the space was empty, and the pillow was silk, and the bed beneath her was too soft, and as her mind finally caught up, it supplied a single word: palace.
Lila groaned, and rolled over.
Pale morning light spilled across the bed, and the place where Kell had been lying, dead to the world, the night before. Only now, there was nothing but a tangle of rumpled sheets. Bad enough she’d followed him into the palace. Worse, that he had left her here.
Lila threw off the covers and got up, wishing she’d barred the door the night before.
Her jacket lay cast onto a chair, along with her boots, and the handful of blades she’d bothered to shed before collapsing into bed. But the boots had been cleaned, and someone had arranged the knives left to right in descending order of size. She unsheathed one, and checked its edge. Of course. It had been sharpened. And even though no one would be foolish enough, she still found herself touching the knives she kept on even while sleeping—the ones strapped to her thigh, her hip, the small of her back—just to be sure they were still there.
Lila sighed, and crossed the massive chamber.
A marble basin sat on a shelf on the far wall, a pitcher beside and a mirror mounted overhead. She poured the water into the bowl, and even though the pitcher had likely been sitting for hours, waiting to be used, the water came out hot. Lila stared at the steam rising from the basin.
Seven years, and the casual magic of this world still took her by surprise.
Despite everything, she’d forget, and then she’d see a lantern light itself, a man breathe wind into sails, hot water spill out from a cold pitcher, and her mind would lurch, like a boot catching a crooked cobblestone. Hell, sometimes when she called on her own magic, she was still shocked that it answered.
She leaned forward, crinkled her nose as the scent of blossoms rose from the basin. Fucking royals, she thought, as she splashed the scented water onto her face, the back of her neck, ran a damp hand through her blunt-edge hair.
A glint of metal caught her eye, and she glanced up into the mirror over the bowl. Her collar was unlaced, and Kell’s ring had slipped out, and hung swinging on the end of its leather cord, the ship winking in the light. She tucked the black band back inside her tunic, but her gaze lingered on her reflection.
Two eyes stared back at her, both of them brown, one real, the other glass.
Unlike the eye she’d traded to Maris, a relic from her life back in Grey London, this one was a perfect match. As far as Lila could tell, she was the only one unsettled by the sight of it. The eerie sameness, the symmetry forged by magic, a glimpse at how she would have looked, if her real eye had not been taken as a child. Back when—as she knew now—Lila had awakened as an Antari.