Lila didn’t have to ask when that would be.
Nonis ora.
Eleven.
Lila passed through the curtain, and stepped into a foyer full of faces. Masks. Dozens of them hung mounted to the walls—not gold, like the one worn by the host, but black, and white, and featureless—and dozens more were missing, their absence marked by golden hooks. Lila selected a black one, and settled it over her face, and though it lacked the horns that adorned her own, Lila still felt herself humming as she made her way to the back of the foyer, and the second curtain there.
How do you know the Sarows is coming, is coming, is coming aboard?
She pushed the curtain aside, and entered the Veil.
II
Alucard ran his hand over the stone wall as they descended the prison steps.
He could see the threads that danced over the rock, just as he could see the ones that carried on the draft that wafted from below, and the ones that bound Kell and Rhy together, the way that only Kell’s looked frayed, while his brother’s were mercifully unbroken. He studied the web of tendrils, the places they crossed, and tried to imagine having the gift that this girl supposedly did, being able to reach into the threads, take hold, and change them.
How many nights had he lain awake beside Rhy, studying the silver threads, watching the way they flowed out from the king’s heart? Now he tried to imagine his fingers between the narrow gaps, how careful his touch would have to be to land on only the right ones, let alone to sever and retie them without causing some catastrophic failure. The complexity was terrifying, the potential for error so great, and Alucard was left to wonder, if he could do it, would he trust himself?
He was secretly relieved he didn’t have the choice.
Kell’s shoulders tensed as they neared the royal cells, and Alucard remembered that the prince had spent time behind the bars once, for defying the late king.
“Where are the guards?” Rhy asked now as they reached the row of cells. And it was true—there should have been someone guarding the girl. But there was no one stationed, and when they reached the last cell, he saw why.
The girl was gone.
The cell stood empty, the door wide open. For a single, lurching moment, he thought she must have escaped. But the wards in the cell were still active, and there was no sign of tampering. No, someone had taken her out.
“Lila,” hissed Kell, a single, damning word as he doubled back down the row, and surged up the stairs, and Alucard found himself hoping Kell was wrong—Lila had been in a dark mood, convinced the girl was holding back. He didn’t want to know what she would do, left to her own devices.
Rhy and Alucard followed Kell back up the stairs, into the palace hall where he’d approached the nearest guard.
“Have you seen Lila?” he demanded.
“She took the girl from the prison,” said Rhy.
“Why was the cell unguarded?” asked Alucard.
The guard bowed deeply. “Your Majesties,” he said, glancing between the three as if unsure which to address, before deciding, at last, on the king. “Lila Bard did not take the prisoner.”
“How do you know?” demanded Kell.
He hesitated only a moment. “Because it was the queen.”
* * *
The night, it turned out, was full of surprises.
The three of them arrived at the queen’s workshop to find, again, no girl, and Nadiya Loreni leaning over a table. She looked at her husband and his consort and the prince as they came in, but made no motion toward them.
As Alucard moved closer, he could see why—her wrists were cuffed, and bound to the table, the metals literally fused together. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and Alucard realized how oppressively quiet it was in the workshop, as if the ambient sound had been sucked out.
She nodded at something on the table. It looked like a music box, though the threads had been pulled out and tied around it.
Ingenious, he thought, right before he smashed it.
Sound whooshed back into the room as it broke, and Nadiya sighed audibly.
“What happened?” demanded Rhy.
“She got away,” said Nadiya, as if that explained everything. “Can one of you fetch Sasha? She’s a metalworker.”
Five minutes later, the nursemaid was there, and the queen was free, rubbing her wrists.
Kell, meanwhile, had gone in search of Lila.
Alucard’s attention remained on the queen. She didn’t seem terribly upset by the assault, and he trailed her across the workshop to another surface, watching as she unrolled a length of parchment, and uncorked a bottle of black sand, which she upended into the center. He watched her make an indent in the sand, and then, watched her produce a small white bone and put it in the groove.