It didn’t take Alucard long to realize he was being followed.
They were good, he’d give them that. They blended into the surrounding night, and if he were anyone else, he wouldn’t have seen them at all, but as his eyes scanned the lamp-stained air and rain-slicked streets, the world reduced to gold and grey, their magic shone like firelight, tracing their edges in crimson and emerald and blue.
A thrill ran through him; not panic, exactly, but something more akin to glee. Part of him thrilled, the same part that had first been drawn to Lila Bard, the part that led him to compete in, and win, the world’s greatest tournament of magic. The part of him that was always a little eager for a fight.
But then one of the shadows moved, and he caught the faintest gleam of gold beneath their cloak, and his hopes died with it. They were not thieves, or killers, or rebels.
These particular shadows belonged to the palace. The res in cal, they were called. The crown’s crows.
Alucard rolled his eyes, and wiggled his fingers in a wave, and the shadows reluctantly slunk back, folding deeper into the night, no doubt carrying word of his exploits back to the palace.
He walked on, slowing only when he reached a crossing he knew all too well. To his left, the palace bridge, and at its center, the soner rast, as the palace was called, the beating heart, rising above the Isle.
To his right, the road that led up to the abandoned Emery estate.
It should have been easy enough, to turn away. But it wasn’t. There was a tug behind his ribs, like an anchor at the end of a rope. The saying came to him, then, the one he’d tried to summon in Ciara’s room.
Och ans, is farr, ins ol’ach, regh narr.
There was no easy way to translate Veskan. It was the kind of language where every word could mean a dozen things, depending on their order and their context. It’s why he’d never managed more than a frail grasp on a handful of phrases. But this one he’d held on to. This one Alucard understood.
A head gets lost, but a heart knows home.
If he turned up that road, Alucard knew what he’d find.
He closed his eyes, imagined walking through the open gate, climbing the steps, and pushing open the door, imagined Anisa throwing her arms around his neck, imagined his father, not a shadow in the doorway but a proud hand on his shoulder, his brother Berras standing by the fire, holding out a glass, saying it was about time he found his way back. Alucard stood there, imagining a life that was not, and had never been, and would never be.
The house had been a ruin in the wake of his battle with Berras, his brother poisoned by Osaron’s power. The whole thing should have been torn down—that’s what he thought every time his feet carried him there, to the open gate, every time he saw the cracked fa?ade, the sagging walls. It should have been erased. It was another scar, only this one he didn’t need to live with. Alucard knew that all he had to do was ask, and Rhy would see it razed.
But he couldn’t bring himself to give the order. It had not just been his brother’s home, his father’s. It had been his mother’s once, his sister’s, his own. And on some level, he wanted to believe it could be his again. He must have said as much to Rhy one night, after too many drinks, because the next time he’d made the weary trek to the Emery estate, he’d found it standing proud, the house repaired in loving detail, every stone and pillar and pane of glass in its place.
Alucard knew, as soon as he saw it, that he’d made a terrible mistake. He hated it. Hated the way the house sat, stately but sleeping, the doors locked and the windows dark.
It was a monument. It was a crypt.
There was nothing waiting for him but the dead.
Alucard blew out a breath, and turned left, toward the bridge.
And the palace.
And home.
IV
The White Rose stood at the window, watching Emery go.
Then she took up the length of silk that had been her dress and began the careful work of winding it back around her limbs, her chest, her waist, moving with expert fingers as she tied the one and only knot in a bow at her wrist, despite the fact she had no intention of being unwrapped again that night.
If she had, Ciara would have gone down the stairs, returning to the salon and the bar, and the waiting patrons below. Instead, she went up, past the various chambers, most already in use, and stopped only when she reached the door at the last level. Behind it lay the private quarters that served as her office, the place where the famed White Rose shed the role of host, and stepped back into that of businesswoman. She was, after all, the brothel’s owner.
The door was locked—or at least, it should have been. But as Ciara reached the landing, she was surprised to find the door ajar. If she had touched the handle, she would have found it cold—frozen, even—to the touch.