Why do they hate me?
Alucard looked up, past the body, to the chart that spanned the wall beyond. It had grown, like weeds in wet weather, spreading tendrils over stone.
Six months ago, when the whispers became rumors and the rumors showed no signs of dying out, he’d come to the queen, the sharpest mind he’d ever met, and the only one he trusted, and forced himself to ask.
“Is there truth to their claim that magic is failing? Is there any way to know?”
He hated the words before they left his lips. They tasted wrong, rancid with doubt, and he was scared to see the queen’s reaction, the horror on her face.
But he should have known better. Nadiya was Nadiya, after all. She had not recoiled at the question, because she had already asked, and sought the answer herself. She’d led him here, and showed him the beginnings of her map. What would become a sprawling diagram of magic, as she attempted to chart its presence and its strength, from the sealing of the doors between worlds three centuries before—she lacked the data to go further back—to Rhy’s time on the throne. That day, he’d seen the downward curve, his heart sinking with the angle.
“So there’s truth then, to the rumor?”
The queen had only shrugged. “All things in nature ebb and flow. The tide rises and falls. The seasons come and go and come again.”
“When will it come again?” he’d asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “When will the tide rise back?”
Nadiya had hesitated, her brow furrowing. She didn’t answer, which meant she didn’t know, and that was unnerving.
Alucard had stared at the chart until his vision blurred, the points and the lines between them smoothing into a shape that made the rise and fall less damning.
Maybe Nadiya was right.
But their enemies wouldn’t care.
A blunt blade was still a weapon in the wrong hands.
He’d stared at the chart for what felt like hours. And then, at last, he’d said, “Don’t tell the king.”
“It’s not Rhy’s doing,” she’d said. “The tide curves down before he takes the throne.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Alucard. “He will make himself a martyr.”
Nadiya’s fingers had come to rest on his shoulder, and he welcomed their steady weight.
“Then we protect him,” she’d said. “From the Hand, and from himself.” They stayed like that for a long time. And then her hand fell away, and she said, “I’m still missing a key piece of information.”
And Alucard knew that she meant Ren.
Ren, who was not yet five. Too young to manifest her power. Or fail to. He knew that was Rhy’s worst fear. That his daughter would be like him, born without magic. And if that happened, the Hand would use it as the spark to light the fire, and burn the kingdom down.
But Nadiya had an arsenal of magic. She would destroy anyone who came for her daughter.
And no one would. Because Alucard had no intention of waiting for Ren to come of age. No intention of letting the Hand grow any stronger.
A glint of metal caught his eye, and Alucard dragged his attention away from the wall and back to the body on the table, and the queen beyond, who was rolling up her sleeves, a sharp knife in one hand.
“Do you intend to harvest him for parts?”
He meant it as a joke. He should have known better.
Nadiya had the kind of face that seemed always about to smile. Full lips, and wide hazel eyes, and one eyebrow set ever so slightly above the other, giving her a look of mischief, which she’d passed on to Ren. There was no malice to it, only curiosity and wonder. The difference being that Ren liked to draw birds, and Nadiya would prefer to take their wings apart one feather at a time to understand exactly how they navigated currents. More than one of Ren’s pets had found their way down here … after meeting a natural end. He hoped.
He watched as the queen slid the knife across the dead assassin’s chest, the skin parting waxily beneath the steel.
“What happens to a life when the body dies?” she mused aloud. “Arnesians believe the body is a shell, a vessel for the life that animates it. That as long as we’re alive, we are full, and when we die, the vessel empties, and the power is poured back into the stream, leaving nothing but the empty shell. No memories. No mind. No spirit. If that is true, we can learn nothing from the dead.”
She took up a serrated knife, and began to saw open his ribs.
Alucard swallowed and looked away.
Nadiya chuckled. “Surely you saw worse when you were a pirate.”