Kell skimmed the spell and frowned. “An eternal flame?”

Rhy absently plucked one of the lin from the floor and shrugged. “First thing I grabbed.” He tried to sound as if he didn’t care about the stupid spell, but his throat was tight, his eyes burning. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, skipping the coin across the ground as if it were a pebble on water. “I can’t make it work.”

Kell shifted his weight, lips moving silently as he read over the priest’s scrawl. He held his hands above the paper, palms cupped as if cradling a flame that wasn’t even there yet, and began to recite the spell. When Rhy had tried, the words had fallen out like rocks, but on Kell’s lips, they were poetry, smooth and sibilant.

The air around them warmed instantly, steam rising from the penned lines on the scroll before the ink drew in and up into a bead of oil, and lit.

The flame hovered in the air between Kell’s hands, brilliant and white.

He made it look so easy, and Rhy felt a flash of anger toward his brother, hot as a spark—but just as brief.

It wasn’t Kell’s fault Rhy couldn’t do magic. Rhy started to rise when Kell caught his cuff. He guided Rhy’s hands to either side of the spell, pulling the prince into the fold of his magic. Warmth tickled Rhy’s palms, and he was torn between delight at the power and knowledge that it wasn’t his.

“It isn’t right,” he murmured. “I’m the crown prince, the heir of Maxim Maresh. I should be able to light a blasted candle.”

Kell chewed his lip—Mother never chided him for the habit—and then said, “There are different kinds of power.”

“I would rather have magic than a crown,” sulked Rhy.

Kell studied the small white flame between them. “A crown is a sort of magic, if you think about it. A magician rules an element. A king rules an empire.”

“Only if the king is strong enough.”

Kell looked up, then. “You’re going to be a good king, if you don’t get yourself killed first.”

Rhy blew out a breath, shuddering the flame. “How do you know?”

At that, Kell smiled. It was a rare thing, and Rhy wanted to hold fast to it—he was the only one who could make his brother smile, and he wore it like a badge—but then Kell said, “Magic,” and Rhy wanted to slug him instead.

“You’re an arse,” he muttered, trying to pull away, but his brother’s fingers tightened.

“Don’t let go.”

“Get off,” said Rhy, first playfully, but then, as the fire grew brighter and hotter between his palms, he repeated in earnest, “Stop. You’re hurting me.”

Heat licked his fingers, a white-hot pain lancing through his hands and up his arms.

“Stop,” he pleaded. “Kell, stop.” But when Rhy looked up from the glowing fire to his brother’s face, it wasn’t a face at all. Nothing but a pool of darkness. Rhy gasped, tried to scramble away, but his brother was no longer flesh and blood but stone, hands carved into cuffs around Rhy’s wrists.

This wasn’t right, he thought, it had to be a dream—a nightmare—but the heat of the fire and the crushing pressure on his wrists were both so real, worsening with every heartbeat, every breath.

The flame between them went long and thin, sharpening into a blade of light, its tip pointed first at the ceiling, and then, slowly, horribly, at Rhy. He fought, and screamed, but it did nothing to stop the knife as it blazed and buried itself in his chest.

Pain.

Make it stop.

It carved its way across his ribs, lit his bones, tore through his heart. Rhy tried to scream, and retched smoke. His chest was a ragged wound of light.

Kell’s voice came, not from the statue, but from somewhere else. Somewhere far away and fading. Don’t let go.

But it hurt. It hurt so much.

Stop.

Rhy was burning from the inside out.

Please.

Dying.

Stay.

Again.

* * *

For a moment, the black gave way to streaks of color, a ceiling of billowing fabric, a familiar face hovering at the edge of his tear-blurred sight, stormy eyes wide with worry.

“Luc?” rasped Rhy.

“I’m here,” answered Alucard. “I’m here. Stay with me.”

He tried to speak, but his heart slammed against his ribs as if trying to break through.

It redoubled, then faltered.

“Have they found Kell?” said a voice.

“Get away from me,” ordered another.

“Everyone out.”

Rhy’s vision blurred.

The room wavered, the voices dulled, the pain giving way to something worse, the white-hot agony of the invisible knife dissolving into cold as his body fought and failed and fought and failed and failed and—

No, he pleaded, but he could feel the threads breaking one by one inside him until there was nothing left to hold him up.

Until Alucard’s face vanished, and the room fell away.

Until the darkness wrapped its heavy arms around Rhy, and buried him.

V

Alucard Emery wasn’t used to feeling powerless.

Mere hours earlier, he’d won the Essen Tasch and been named the strongest magician in the three empires. But now, sitting by Rhy’s bed, he had no idea what to do. How to help. How to save him.

The magician watched as the prince curled in on himself, deathly pale against the tangled sheets, watched as Rhy cried out in pain, attacked by something even Alucard couldn’t see, couldn’t fight. And he would have—would have gone to the end of the world to keep Rhy safe. But whatever was killing him, it wasn’t here.