A latch scraped free, dragging his attention back to the little room.
Lila had flung the window open. Beyond the peaked rooftops and carriage-filled roads, the Isle’s red glow reflected up against the low clouds as day faded into night. Somewhere in the port, the Grey Barron rocked in the gentle tide, tethered in its berth.
Kell fell back onto the bed, wincing as his body struck the stiff pallet. “And to think,” he muttered, “we chose this over the palace.”
Lila rested her boot on the wooden chest. “You could stay in the palace.”
“I could,” he said. Then, tucking his hands behind his head, “You could stay on the ship.”
“I could,” she said.
“So why don’t you?”
Lila looked up at the ceiling, and he thought she would tell the truth, then, spill the words she hated to say, the ones he needed to hear, that her place was with him as his was with her. But she only shrugged and said, “I can’t stand to be on a stationary ship, chained like a beast to the dock. Makes me feel trapped.” She turned toward the bed, cocking her head as her gaze raked over him.
“This reminds me,” she said, “of the night we met. Do you remember?”
“When you robbed me, and then used the stolen magic to conjure a double who tried to kill you?” Kell crossed his ankles. “How could I forget?”
She waved her hand. “I meant after the robbery, and before the spell. When I bound you to a bed.” A glint in her eye. “Just like this one.”
“Lila, don’t,” he said, but it was too late. The wood was already peeling away from the frame. He tried to sit up, but it wrapped around his wrists like fingers, and forced him back against the narrow cot.
Lila Bard smiled, and sank onto the edge of the bed.
“Let me go,” warned Kell, but her hand settled on his chest, the gesture firm, fingers splayed, as if laying claim to the body beneath. She met his gaze, and he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought those eyes a matching set. One was vivid, alive, the other flat. The difference between an open window and a locked door.
She leaned down until her hair grazed his cheek. Until her mouth hovered over his. His chest rose and fell beneath her palm.
“Let me go,” he said again, his voice dropping low. And this time, she did. But when the binds crumbled from his wrists, Kell didn’t pull away. He reached up, threading his fingers through her hair.
“Why didn’t you stay on the ship?” he asked again, because now and then, it was not enough to dance around the truth. He wanted to hear her say it. Even if she did not wear the ring. He wanted to know that she chose to be here, with him.
Lila held his gaze so long he could have counted the shards of light in her good eye. And then, at last, almost grudgingly, she said, “Because the bed would feel empty. Without you in it.”
Kell felt his mouth tug into a smile. But before he could savor the words, she was up again, and across the narrow room, a knife in one hand and a slip of paper in the other.
“Get changed,” she said. “I doubt Kay would be welcome at court.”
Kell rolled up to his feet. He went to the basin and filled it from a pitcher. The water came out warm, thanks to a spell etched into the spout, and Kell washed his face, and ran a wet hand through his copper hair. He smelled strongly of salt and sea, and had no doubt Rhy would comment on it.
He shrugged out of his coat, and turned it inside out, from left to right, and so Kay’s black mantle fell away, replaced by one Kell hadn’t worn in months—an elegant red coat, gold buttons running down the front. The edges were trimmed in gold thread and the inside was lined with gold silk, and the whole thing smelled of palace candles and sweet floral soap. It was a coat that belonged to Kell Maresh, famed Antari, prince of Arnes, brother to the king.
It was a coat that no longer felt like it fit.
Technically, of course, it always would. Every one of the coat’s many sides were perfectly tailored to his body. It was in the magic threaded through the garment so that even when Kell’s body broadened at sea, new muscles winding over lean limbs thanks to hours of training with his swords, the coat had let itself out across the back, and drawn in at the waist, shaping itself easily to his new form.
And yet, as the crimson mantle settled on Kell’s shoulders, it felt all wrong.
He felt wrong within it.
In the mirror over the basin, a ghost stared back. Eyes mismatched, and haunted. Jaw hardened and cheeks hollowed. A single pale streak, like a scar, through his copper hair.