He didn’t hear Lila walking up behind him, but then she was there, a hand on his shoulder.
“Kell,” she said, and there was something in her voice, something he’d never heard before, something that sounded almost like pity. He wrenched away from her touch.
“Three months,” he gasped. He was still struggling to breathe, though now it was as much from panic as lingering pain. “Three months, and it meant nothing. It should have healed. It should have helped. But it’s still broken.” He raked his hands through his hair. “I’m still broken.”
He shook his head. “It’s not fair.”
Lila met his gaze, her glass eye shining in the strange light. “It never is.”
His throat tightened. “I’m an Antari, Lila.” The words clawed as they came out. “I am nothing without my power.”
She scowled. “Was I nothing, without mine?”
And before he could say that this was different, and she knew it, Vasry strolled up, his gold lashes thick with frost, a young woman on his arm. “Look,” he said cheerfully, “I found my own warmth!”
Kell shoved past them both, heading for the tunnel and the port and the ship.
Vasry’s voice trailed after. “Where’s he going?”
“To wallow,” said Lila.
But she was wrong. Kell was done wallowing, done waiting for his power to mend. He’d been wrong to wait. Wrong to think his magic was a thing that had to heal. If his power wouldn’t return on its own, he would bring it back by force.
* * *
ONE MONTH LATER
Kell was coming undone.
That’s how it felt, as he stood in the center of the cabin, shirt open and sleeves rolled, sweat dripping down his skin. His coat had been flung over a chair, and a wine bottle lay empty on the floor nearby. A candle sat on the table, the small flame staring at him, steady and waiting.
Kell kept his own quarters on the ship. Unlike the captain’s chamber, this one was small and sparse, little more than a bed and a chest and a basin. But it was his, as the upstairs room in the Setting Sun had been, a place to be alone. With his thoughts. With his power.
He took a deep breath, held his hand out, and dragged the fire toward him.
The moment it answered, so did the pain. As bright and brutal as a white-hot knife, slicing into his skin. Carving a path behind his ribs. Telling him to stop.
He might have, if not for himself, then for his brother, Rhy, whose life was bound to his, who felt every ounce of hurt as if it were his own. Their suffering was a shared cord. Wound one of them, and the other suffered, too, and Kell could never bring himself to cause his brother hurt.
But he had quickly learned that this particular pain belonged to him alone. It was not a physical thing. It did not live in his body, but the fabric of his soul. And so, he pressed on, as he had every night since they’d visited Fresa and the lightless fair.
He held the fire in his palm, teeth gritted in pain as he reached out with his other hand, toward a glass, calling the water inside it. It rose, drifting in a ribbon toward him, but Kell’s limbs had begun to shake, his copper hair plastered to his skin with sweat.
He could do this.
He had to do this.
He was Kell Maresh. Antari magician and adopted prince. He had traveled across worlds, been known and feared by the rulers of Grey London, and Red, and White. He had faced Vitari and the darkness it tried to breed inside him, had bested all but Lila in the Essen Tasch, had fought against Holland, and then beside him, had watched the other Antari sacrifice everything he had, everything he was, to save their cities. Holland, who had not survived the battle. But Kell had.
He had survived all those horrors.
And he would survive this. He—
He staggered and lost his hold. The flame extinguished, the water fell in drops like rain, and his legs buckled beneath him, one knee cracking against the wooden floor.
“Get up,” he hissed through gritted teeth.
His muscles trembled, but after a moment, he rose, bracing himself against the table. He reached for the empty glass, but instead of taking it up, he swept it from the table. Watched it shatter as it hit the floor.
“Pick it up,” he told himself, wrapping his will around the shards.
The pieces shivered.
“Pick it up,” he growled as they rose, slowly, haltingly, into the air. Kell’s chest hitched. His hands trembled.
Put it back together, he thought.
Put yourself back together.
The shards floated toward each other, rattling like chimes when they knocked together, drifted apart. The white-hot knife drove between his ribs, and Kell’s hold faltered. He overcorrected, flinging all his will at the shards of glass. They crashed together, crumbling to sand, and Kell sagged, gasping, to the floor.