Kell nodded, and without a word, Lila slipped thief-smooth into the shadows around the roof’s edge.

“No one?” goaded the shadow king.

He brought a boot to rest on Kisimyr’s remains, and they gave way like ash beneath his step. “For all your strength, you surrender so easily.”

Kell took a single breath and forced himself forward, out of the shelter at the circle’s edge, and into the light. When Osaron saw him, he actually smiled.

“Kell,” said the monster. “Your resilience surprises me. Have you come to kneel before me? Have you come to beg?”

“I’ve come to fight.”

Osaron tipped his head. “The last time we met, I left you screaming.”

Kell’s limbs shook, not with fear but anger. “The last time we met, I was in chains.” The air around him sang with power. “Now I’m free.”

Osaron’s smile widened. “But I have seen your heart, and it is bound.”

Kell’s hands curled into fists. The marble beneath his feet trembled and began to splinter. Osaron flicked his wrist, and the night came crashing down on Kell. It crushed the air from his lungs, forcing him toward his knees. It took all his strength to stay upright under the weight, and after a horrible second he realized it wasn’t the air straining against him—Osaron’s will pressed against his very bones. Kell was Antari. No one had ever managed to will his body against him. Now his joints ground together, his limbs threatening to crack.

“I will see you kneel before your king.”

“No.”

Kell tried again to summon the marble floor, and the stone trembled as will clashed against will. He kept his feet, but realized by the almost bored expression on the other Antari’s face that the shadow king was toying with him.

“Holland,” Kell snarled, trying to subdue the horror. “If you are in there, fight. Please—fight.”

A sour look crossed Osaron’s face, and then something crashed behind Kell, armor against wood as more guards barreled onto the roof, Maxim at their center.

The king’s voice boomed through the night. “How dare you set foot in my palace?”

Osaron’s attention flicked to the king, and Kell gasped, suddenly free from the weight of the creature’s will. He staggered a step, already freeing his knife and drawing blood, red drops falling to the pale stone.

“How dare you claim to be king?”

“I have more claim than you.”

Another twitch of those long fingers, and the king’s crown sailed from his head—or it would have if Maxim hadn’t snatched it from the air with terrifying speed. The king’s eyes glowed, as if molten, as he crushed the crown between his hands, and drew it out into a blade. A single, fluid gesture that spoke of days long past, when Maxim Maresh had been the Steel Prince instead of the Golden King.

“Surrender, demon,” he ordered, “or be slain.”

At his back, the royal guards raised their swords, spellwork scrawled along the edges. The sight of the king and his guards seemed to shake the other magicians from their stupor. Some began to retreat, ushering their own royals off the roof or simply fleeing, while a few were bold enough to advance. But Kell knew they were no match. Not the guards, not the magicians, not even the king.

But the king’s appearance had bought Kell something.

An advantage.

With Osaron’s attention still on Maxim, Kell sank into a crouch. His blood had spread in brittle fractures across the stone floor, thin lines of red that reached and wrapped around the monster’s boot.

“As Anasae,” he ordered. Dispel. The words had been enough, once, to purge Vitari from the world. Now, they did nothing. Osaron shot him a pitying glance, shadows twisting in his pitch black eyes.

Kell didn’t retreat. He forced his hands flat. “As Steno,” he ordered, and the marble floor shattered into a hundred shards that rose and hurled themselves at the shadow king. The first one found home, burying itself in Osaron’s leg, and Kell’s hopes rose before he realized his mistake.

He hadn’t gone for the kill.

That first stone blade was the only one to land. With nothing but a look, the rest of the shards faltered, slowed, stopped. Kell pushed with all his force, but his own body was one thing to will, and a hundred makeshift blades another, and Osaron quickly won, turning the stone fragments outward like the spokes on a wheel, the dazzling edges of a sun.

Osaron’s hands drifted lazily up, and the shards trembled, like arrows on taut strings, but before he could unleash them on the guards and the king and the magicians on the roof, something passed through him.

A flinch. A shudder.

The shadows in his eyes went green.

Somewhere deep inside his body, Holland was fighting back.

The fragments of stone tumbled to the ground as Osaron stood frozen, all his attention focused inward.

Maxim saw the chance, and signaled.

The royal guards struck, a dozen men falling on one distracted god.

And for an instant, Kell thought it would be enough.

For an instant—

But then Osaron looked up, flashing black eyes and a defiant smile. And let them come.

“Wait!” shouted Kell, but it was too late.

The instant before the guards fell on the shadow king, the monster abandoned its shell. Darkness poured from Holland’s stolen body, as thick and black as smoke.

The Antari collapsed, and the shadow that was Osaron moved, serpentine, across the roof. Hunting for another form.