Across the room, Lila drove the dagger she was holding into the wall, pinning the slip of paper there. On it was a symbol, one of the first he’d ever done, a simple circle cut through by a cross. A shortcut. Antari magic could take a person to the same place in different worlds, or different places in the same one. But the latter required a marker.
“Remind me again,” said Lila, “why we couldn’t use your brother’s ring?”
A marker—or a token. The first would take you to a place, the other to a person.
“Because,” said Kell, “I know better than to walk in on Rhy unannounced.” It had been nearly a year since their last visit, and they’d made the mistake that time of traveling directly to the king. They had ended up standing in his private chambers, and Kell had seen far more of Alucard Emery than he’d ever wanted to.
Lila shrugged, and set to work, drawing her thumb along the knife’s edge, just deep enough to cut. She used the blood to copy the symbol onto the wall, but he could tell her mind was elsewhere.
“Still thinking of the night we met?”
He’d been joking, but she didn’t laugh. “I think about it often,” she said as her touch whispered against the wall. “When Holland found me, you already had the stone. There was no reason for you to come back.”
“It wasn’t your fight,” said Kell. “He was using you to get to me.”
“Still,” she said. “It only worked because you let it.”
“Yes. I did.” And then, “Good thing you came back for me, too.”
Lila tilted her head, examining her work. “Indeed.”
He paused, leaning on the basin. It must be the room, or the red light of the Isle, but he was feeling nostalgic. “Why did you?”
“Well, I had so much fun with Holland the first time, I thought—”
“Lila.”
She tugged the knife from the wall. “I supposed I owed you. I got away that night because you took my place. I had lost the fight. You know how I hate losing. Turns out I hate it even more when someone else is losing for me. Now,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“No.”
Lila smiled. “Good.”
He joined her at the wall. She tugged at the collar of his coat, then reached up and ruffled his copper hair so it fell in messy curls around his face. Then she took his hand, and placed her other on the symbol.
“As Tascen.”
The world didn’t tear open.
It simply fell away.
It didn’t hurt, not as it did when Kell performed a spell himself, but it felt wrong, as if he were a passenger, dragged along in the wake of someone else’s magic.
Then the world took shape again, and the Setting Sun was gone, replaced by the royal palace. Kell reached out and steadied himself against a tapestried wall, waiting for the shallow wave of dizziness to pass before he followed Lila out of the alcove and into his royal chambers. He looked around, at the bed heaped high with pillows, the golden tray balanced on the sofa’s edge, the balcony giving way to crimson dusk.
Home.
The word rose up like bile. He forced it down.
This room belonged to a different Kell, the one whose coat no longer fit. The one who had sat at a gilded table downstairs, trying to teach Rhy magic, the one for whom it came as easily as air. And standing there, amid the memories, he flinched, because of how badly he wanted to be that Kell again. To have that life back. But it was gone.
He had become someone else. By necessity, not choice.
And yet, this place called him back. Wrapped its arms around him in a strange embrace, and made promises it couldn’t keep.
Kell went to the bed, ran a hand over the silk pillows. It had been nearly a year since he’d last set foot in this room, and yet, it looked as though he’d only just left. The hearth was clean, and waiting to be lit. Books sat exactly where he’d left them, their covers free of dust. A pitcher of clean water waited by a marble basin. He imagined Rhy giving the orders, imagined servants drawing the curtains back each day, and returning them each night, going through the motions as if his brother might arrive at any moment.
Kell heard the bedroom doors swing open, and turned in time to see Lila vanish into the hall, followed moments later by the sound of armor as bodies scrambled into motion.
“Sanct,” he muttered, hurrying after. He reached the hall, and found three soldiers squaring off, blocking Lila’s way. At the sight of Kell they dropped their swords and sank into a bow, three plated knees striking the floor like bells.