Her grip tightened; not enough to break the little sculpture, just enough to prick her thumb on the frozen tip of the rabbit’s ear. She whispered, “As Staro,” and the animal in her hand turned from ice to polished stone.
Ren’s eyes widened, her mouth cracking into a buoyant smile, as someone gasped.
“Mas aven,” said the nursemaid, dropping the real-life rabbit in her arms, and sinking into a bow as she realized what Lila had done. What Lila was. The look on the nursemaid’s face wasn’t fear, but awe. She was clearly one of those people who believed Antari were more than gifted magicians; they were the true avatars of magic. Chosen. Blessed.
Lila knew that Kell hated such displays of worship, that they made his skin crawl, but she found it nice, now and then, to be seen as more instead of less. In another London, the woman might have crossed herself. Here, she touched her lips, whispered something against her fingertips.
“Sasha,” said Alucard gently. “Would you be so kind…”
The nursemaid came back to herself. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
Lila set the figurine in Ren’s outstretched hands, and Sasha hurried forward and lifted the child into her arms. She touched the stone rabbit, running a finger reverently down its back. “Right,” she said again. “Your mother will want to say goodnight.”
“And that’s my cue,” said Lila, turning on her heel, and heading for the palace doors. “Night night, Princess.”
“Night night!” Ren called back, as Sasha hauled her off to bed.
“She’s never bowed that deep to me,” mused Alucard, trailing Lila to the doors.
Two guards stood waiting there. They each pressed their hands to the wood, and Lila heard the hum of spellwork come to life, the bolts sliding deep within the wood. And then the doors fell open, and the cool night air rushed in. She stepped out, then glanced back and saw Alucard framed by the golden light of the hall.
“You could join me for a drink,” she said, knowing the answer before he shook his head. Lila clicked her tongue. “Fatherhood has made you a bore.”
He didn’t even pretend to act wounded. His gaze flicked past her to the night-swept city. “You’re welcome to a carriage.”
Lila snorted. “How generous! I’ll take a brace of guards and a trumpeter, too.” She spread her arms. “After all, why blend in when you can stand out?”
He offered her a lopsided grin. “You get into so much trouble that I sometimes forget, you don’t like being noticed.”
She let her arms fall back to her sides. “Hard to pick a pocket when they’re already staring at your hands.”
She smiled as she said it, but Alucard picked up on the meaning. His mood darkened. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” she said.
But as she strode down the palace stairs, she found herself humming Ren’s little tune.
Careful, careful, purred the cat.
Right before it pounced.
V
Rhy hung his crown on an apple branch.
The lovely brightness of the silver wine had thinned, leaving only a weary cotton in its wake. He knew better than to drink like this; it always tipped his spirits from cheerful to morose. Oddly, Kell swung the other way. He had gone to his rooms singing a sea shanty. Rhy should have gone to bed, too, but his bed was empty, save for the sleeping tonic waiting on the table, and he knew what would happen when he drank it. Knew the way the drug would settle over him, his body, his mind—less like a blanket and more like a pair of hands, holding him down until his limbs went heavy and his mind stopped fighting. And then in the morning, his mouth would taste like stale sugar, and Rhy would have the unshakable sense that he had forgotten something, even if all he’d forgotten was a dream.
He knew, and he wasn’t ready, and so he’d swept the crown from the bed, and kept walking, let his feet carry him past his rooms, and down the stairs, and out into the palace courtyard.
The guards had fallen in behind him, churned up like dust in his wake. But at the doors, he bade them stay.
“Your Majesty,” they said.
“It is not safe,” they said.
“The courtyard is beyond the palace wards,” they said, as if he did not know. He did—he simply did not care. Let his queen bristle. Let his lover chide. He did not need to be protected. He was the safest man in all the world. He was the Unkillable King.
And he wanted to be alone.
So he commanded them to stay put, and they obeyed, stood there bound by the light of the doorway, as if the warding were a cage, and Rhy, for once, the only one set free.