“What in the ever-loving hell was that?” asked Bard.

Holland took a slow step forward, casting a shadow over Kell. “As I was saying, you cannot make a door on a moving craft. It defies the rules of transitional magic.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

The other Antari raised a brow. “Obviously, I assumed you knew.”

The color was coming back into Kell’s face, the pained furrows fading, replaced by a hot flush.

“Until we reach land,” continued Holland, “we’re no better than ordinary magicians.”

The disdain in his voice raked on Alucard’s nerves. No wonder Bard was always trying to kill him.

Lila made a sound then, and Alucard turned in time to see Kell on his feet, hands lifted in the direction of the mast. The current of magic filled his vision, power tipping toward Kell like water in a glass. A second later the gust of wind hit the ship so hard its sails snapped and the whole thing made a low wooden groan.

“Careful!” shouted Alucard, sprinting toward the wheel as the ship banked hard beneath the sudden gale.

He got the Ghost back on course as Kell drove it on with a degree of focus—of concentrated force—he’d never seen the Antari use. A level of strength reserved not for London, or the king and queen, not for Rosenal, or Osaron himself.

But for Rhy, thought Alucard.

The same force of love that had broken the laws of the world and brought a brother back to life.

Threads of magic drew taut and bright as Kell forced his strength into the sails, Holland and Lila bracing themselves as he drew past the limits of his power and leaned on theirs.

Hold on, Rhy, thought Alucard, as the ship skated forward, rising until it skimmed the surface of the water, sea spray misting the air around them as the Ghost surged anew for London.

V

Rhy descended the prison stairs.

His steps were slow, bracing. It hurt to breathe, a pain that had nothing to do with the wound to his chest, and everything to do with the fact that his mother was dead.

Bandages wove around his ribs and over his shoulder, too tight, the skin beneath already closed. Healed—if that was the word for it. But it wasn’t, because Rhy Maresh hadn’t healed in months.

Healing was natural, healing took time—time for muscle to fuse, for bones to set, for skin to mend, time for scars to form, for the slow recession of pain followed by the return of strength.

In all fairness, Rhy had never known the long suffering of convalescence. Whenever he’d been injured as a child, Kell had always been there to mend him. Nothing worse than a cut or bruise ever lasted more than the time it took to find his brother.

But even that had been different.

A choice.

Rhy remembered falling from the courtyard wall when he was twelve and spraining his wrist. Remembered Kell’s quickness to draw blood, Rhy’s quickness to stop him, because he could bear the pain more than he could bear Kell’s face when the blade sank in, the knowledge that he’d feel dizzy and ill the rest of the day from the magic’s strain. And because, secretly, Rhy wanted to know he had a choice.

To heal.

But when Astrid Dane had driven the blade between his ribs, when the darkness had swallowed him, and then receded like a tide, there’d been no choice, no chance to say no. The wound was already closed. The spell already done.

He’d stayed in bed for three days in a mimicry of convalescence. He’d felt weak and ill, but it had less to do with his mending body than the new hollowness inside it. The voice in his head that whispered wrong, wrong, with every pulse.

Now he did not heal. A wound was a wound and then it wasn’t.

A shudder went through him as he reached the bottom step.

Rhy did not want to do this.

Did not want to face her.

But someone had to handle the living, as much as someone had to handle the dead, and the king had already laid claim to the latter. His father, who was dealing with his grief as though it were an enemy, something to defeat, subdue. Who had ordered every Veskan in the palace rounded up, put under armed guard, and confined to the southern wing. His father, who had laid out his dead wife on the stone grieving block with such peculiar care, as if she were fragile. As if anything could touch her now.

In the gloom of the prison, a pair of guards stood watch.

Cora was sitting cross-legged on the bench at the back of her cell. She wasn’t chained to the wall, as Holland had been, but her delicate wrists were bound in iron so heavy her hands had to rest on the bench before her knees, making her look as though she were leaning forward to whisper a secret.

Blood dappled her face like freckles, but when she saw Rhy, she actually smiled. Not the rictus grin of the mad, or the rueful smirk of the guilty. It was the same smile she’d given him as they perched in the royal baths telling stories: cheerful, innocent.

“Rhy,” she said brightly.

“Was it your idea, or Col’s?”

She pursed her lips, sulking at the lack of preamble. But then her eyes went to the bandage that peeked through Rhy’s stiffened collar. It should have been a killing blow. It had been.

“My brother is one of the best swordsmen in Vesk,” said Cora. “Col has never missed his mark.”

“He didn’t,” said Rhy simply.

Cora’s brow crinkled, then smoothed. Expressions flitted across her face like pages flipping in a breeze, too fast to catch.

“There are rumors, in my city,” she said. “Rumors about Kell, and rumors about you. They say you di—”