Kosika recoiled, as if struck. “The magic here is cursed. If we rekindle the fire, we rekindle the blight and—”
“No,” said Holland, shaking his head. “Raze a forest, and the rot goes with it. Before this became the source of poisoned magic, it was the source of everything. All the power in the worlds began here. It can again.” He brought his hand to rest on Kosika’s shoulder. “The walls were made to shield the other worlds. But they were also a dam. From the moment they went up, no power could flow between. From that moment, the magic became finite. Each place, left to nurture its own store. We had the most, at first, close as we were, but we used it wrong, carved it up into smaller and smaller fires, smothered each until they began to go out. My death was a breath on the embers of a dying world. Your reign, too. Together, we have kept our flame from going out. But, I fear, we have reached the limits.”
Kosika’s stomach turned as he spoke her fears aloud.
“There isn’t enough power left,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered. But Holland did not look defeated. Far from it. There was a light behind his eyes, a power to his voice.
“Do not despair. If we light the fire here, if we restart this source, our world will burn again, brighter than it ever has. You will not have to choose which tree to water. Our people will not need to bleed to thaw the winter chill. Everything I suffered. Everything I lost—it will have been worth it.”
In that moment, Kosika saw Holland as he must have been, before the Danes had bound him. She saw the boy who dreamed of healing a dying world. She saw the king, who gave everything to see the power restored. Saw the saint, who even in death could not rest, could not leave his task unfinished.
“What about the walls?” she asked.
Holland’s hand fell from her shoulder. “Let them crumble. Or tear one down, and forge the other fresh. Let the other Londons tend their embers, while we enjoy the heat.”
And then her king did something he had never done before.
Holland knelt before Kosika. Folded, gracefully, one knee resting on the splintered stones.
“My queen,” he said. “We can do this. Together.”
She wanted it. And she saw how badly he wanted it. Holland Vosijk had given so much. Had given everything. And it hadn’t been enough. But it could be. With her help.
Kosika looked around at the dead world. “How do you rekindle a fire this large?”
“The same way you do in any hearth,” he said. “Enough kindling, and a well-placed spark.”
As Holland said it, his face lit with a dazzling thing: hope. If he had asked Kosika, in that moment, to open her veins, and spill every drop of blood onto the dead soil then and there, she would have done it.
Instead, she simply nodded and said the words that would set the world ablaze.
“Show me how.”
II
RED LONDON
Kell remembered everything.
If anyone asked, he would tell them he didn’t, that the last thing he recalled was winding the golden chain around his wrist as he told Lila to use his magic, to close the door. That after that was only darkness.
But it would be a lie.
For a merciful moment, after the chain turned to a cuff around his wrist, he had felt nothing at all. The magic blinked out like a candle at the end of its wick, and he was left hollow, an empty vessel, and there was some mercy in that.
But then, it had started.
He had thought that maybe, if the magic were in someone else’s hands, it couldn’t hurt him, but as Lila called the spell, he felt it, that wrenching, bone-deep pain, and every second she had poured her power and his into the words it had gotten worse, and worse, and he would have let go, but he couldn’t, because he wasn’t in control.
The blowback had always been agony, but it had always been brief, only this time, it wasn’t, because it never ended. The pain simply mounted and mounted until he could not breathe, could not speak, and by the time the door was finally closed and the spell was done, and the shackle fell away, he was trapped inside that pain. Inside his skin.
The world outside his body went away, but he was still there, still screaming.
And then—finally—it stopped.
It stopped, and he knew that death had come at last, and it felt wonderful. It felt like his brother’s arms, like Lila’s voice, like floating off to sea.
Then Kell opened his eyes.
And saw a rabbit.
Miros hopped along the foot of his bed. A small face peered over the top of the blankets just beyond it, black curls and gold eyes staring at him.