Tired of holding the blade up, Lila attacked, and despite the weapon’s size, she still managed to move with unnatural speed. She swung and Kell lunged back, expecting the sword’s weight to carry her forward. But somehow, impossibly, she pivoted, reversing the weapon’s arc.

  He got one of the scythes up and blocked, the force ringing up his arm as they crashed together, but his second blade was already carving through the air toward her chest. Her eyes widened, and he thought, I have you, right before she let go of the broadsword entirely and ducked beneath his scythe. She sprang back, falling in a crouch as the hulking sword crashed to the deck between them.

  It was the first time Lila Bard had ever lost her blade.

  Around the deck, the voices had stopped. The crew held its breath.

  Lila looked up at Kell, a grin spreading across her face.

  She had so many different smiles. Some happy and some cruel and some positively wicked, ones full of humor and ones full of hate, and he was still learning how to read them all. But this one he knew, not because it was common, but because it was rare.

  It was pride.

  But the match wasn’t over. She hadn’t surrendered yet. Lila rose, eyes going to the blade she’d abandoned on the deck between them. She dove for it, and so did he. But as soon as Kell tried to lunge forward, something forced him to a stop. He looked down to see a sheen of ice running up over his feet. His boots were frozen to the deck.

  Lila caught up the sword, and raised it, letting its weight come to rest against his chest.

  “I win,” she said simply, and he stared in shock at the blood dripping from her free hand. She’d used magic. Not even elemental, but Antari.

  “You cheated,” he said, indignant, but Lila only shrugged.

  “I’m not the one who can’t use magic.”

  And with that she dropped the sword and strode away, leaving him to break the ice from his boots. From that day on, there were no rules.

  Kell only fought to win.

  * * *

  THREE YEARS AGO

  It took three tries to get the straps on right.

  Kell cursed softly, adjusting the buckles over his chest.

  “What in god’s name is taking so long?” demanded Lila.

  Beyond the screen, she wasn’t so much sitting in the chair as sprawling across it, one leg thrown over the side, the horned Sarows mask twirling lazily around her finger.

  “Unless there are corsets and skirts involved, you’re taking too long. If you need a hand—”

  “Be still,” growled Kell, lacing up his boots. “This was your idea.”

  In truth, it had been Alucard’s.

  After all, he was the one who’d written, asking them to put the Barron to good use. Lila had been more than ready. The trouble, of course, was Kell.

  Thanks to Lila’s ruthless sparring, he no longer fought like a prince, but he couldn’t change the fact that he still looked like one. Everywhere they docked, heads turned toward him. Clocked his eye, his hair, his bearing. If he was ever going to be someone other than Kell Maresh, Antari prince, he needed a disguise.

  Lila had pointed at the coat, with its infinite number of sides, and asked if there was one tucked in there, something that made him look less a noble and more like a pirate. Less like the fire and more like the dark.

  Kell took up the mask, and settled it onto his face.

  It had been a month since her suggestion, and in the intervening time, neither had brought it up again, until tonight, when he told her to come with him into the captain’s quarters, told her to sit there in the chair facing the wall, and wait.

  “Are you almost done?” Lila called out, but this time, he did not answer. She glanced over her shoulder. “Kell?”

  Her leg slipped from the arm of the chair and came to rest against the floor. She was about to stand when his hand came down on her shoulder.

  Lila almost startled.

  He smiled. It was hard to get the jump on her, but she clearly hadn’t heard his boots ringing on the cabin floor. Hadn’t heard the sigh of fabric, or the shift of weight. She rose and turned toward him, and he braced for some snide remark, but for once in her life, she seemed to be speechless.

  Lila stared at the stranger in her room.

  Once upon a time, he would have shifted his weight beneath the scrutiny, tugged at his clothes as if they did not fit. But tonight, he did not. Tonight, he stood perfectly still, letting her study him.

  He was dressed in a black coat, with matte black buttons that disappeared instead of catching the light, and a hood, which he’d drawn up over his hair. The entire top half of his face was concealed by a black mask, one that shielded both eyes behind a piece of gossamer.

  Slowly, he reached up and pushed back the hood. It slumped onto his shoulders, revealing his copper hair, no longer loose and messy but slicked back against his head. His hands slid down his front, and as he unfastened the buttons, the coat fell open onto more of that light-swallowing fabric. He shrugged out of the coat, letting it pool on the floor, revealing black trousers and a black tunic that hugged his chest, the collar wrapping like a hand around his throat. Thin ropes of black leather crossed over his ribs. Holsters.

  Lila reached out and ran her hands along the straps. He’d grown stronger with their sparring, and he tensed, muscle corded beneath her touch.

  “I must admit, Kell,” she said, letting out a soft, breathy laugh. “I am impressed.”

  “Are you?” he asked. His voice came out different. Lower. Smoother. Not stone but silk. He leaned a little closer, as if sharing a secret, and said, “And my name isn’t Kell.”

  “Oh?” asked Lila, intrigued. “What is it, then?”

  Below the mask, his mouth twitched, one corner drawing up into a grin. “You can call me Kay.”

  “Kay,” she mused, turning the sound over in her mouth as she made a slow, appraising circle. He heard the small hum of pleasure when she discovered the pair of short swords holstered against his back. They’d become his weapon of choice over the months of training, but these were special. Purchased from the forbidden market in Sasenroche. He knew she would like them, felt her fingers graze one of the leather sheaths before drifting to the hilt.

  “Not every blade belongs to you,” he said.

  “It does if I can take it.” Her hand nearly closed around the hilt, but he turned suddenly, catching her wrist.

  “I wouldn’t,” he warned, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. Sure enough, Lila twisted out of his grip, knocking him off-balance. He was fast, but she was faster, and in an instant she was behind him again, drawing one of the swords, holding it aloft like a prize for half a second, before she let out a yelp, and dropped the blade as if burned.

  It clattered to the floor, and he clicked his tongue, and knelt, and took it up again. He turned the blade so it caught the light, revealing the spellwork etched into the steel.

  “See?” he said. “I can still use magic, too.”

  He slid the sword back into its sheath and straightened, lifting his chin. In the end, he’d realized something. He didn’t have to shed all his princely airs. He could double down on them, cultivate a kind of menace, an arrogance that read as danger.

  “You let me take that sword,” she snapped, shaking the sting from her palm.

  “Pain is a quick teacher,” he said, catching her hand and bringing her burned fingers to his lips. “And I did warn you.”

  Lila’s heart quickened—he felt it through her skin.

  “I like this new you,” she said, and there was something in her voice, a naked want that made him stiffen.

  “Do you?” he purred.

  She grinned, and reached out to pull him toward her, but he beat her to it, stepping forward and pressing his body into hers. He guided her back one stride, then two, until her boots met the edge of the bed.

  With a quick, almost playful shove, he pushed her down, and she let herself fall, fingers tangling in the leather straps as she pulled him with her onto the bed. He braced himself over her, reached up to draw away the mask, but this time it was Lila who stopped him, fingers wrapped around his wrist.

  “Not yet,” she said, with a wicked grin. “I want to see what Kay can do.”

  VIII

  PORT OF VEROSE

  NOW

  He dropped onto the Crow’s deck in silence.

  Against his face, the black metal molded to his skin. It had taken time to grow accustomed to its weight, the faint shadow it carved at the edge of his vision, the ghost of the gossamer over his eyes, but now, he clung to its presence, the way he felt when he was wearing it. Like someone else entirely.

  No longer Kell, but Kay.

  Lila landed into a crouch beside him, the familiar Sarows mask fitted over her own face.

  Tav pressed himself against the mast of the unfamiliar ship, a finger to his lips. Across the deck, a Veskan sailor sat on a crate, whittling a stick with a short, sharp blade. After a moment he raised the object to his mouth, and it gave up a soft, sweet tune. In the cover of that sound, they crept forward. As it ended, Tav’s shadow crossed into the man’s light.

  “Och vel?” he asked, rising to his feet. He must have taken them for shipmates, but his face fell as Lila stepped forward, the horns of her mask curling to points above her head.

  “Nice ship,” she said, running her hand along the rail, and the man was so surprised, he didn’t notice Kay behind him, not until the arm wrapped around his throat.

  He could have cut the man down—these days he knew exactly where to drive the blade, how to end a life—but instead he forced the cloth against the man’s nose and mouth, held his own breath as the plume of dreamsquick clouded the air with the force of the struggle before all the fight went out of him.

  The body slumped in Kay’s arms, and he lowered it to the deck as a second Veskan spilled out of the doorway and came to an abrupt halt, taking in the scene: the two masked figures and the legs of the man they’d drugged jutting out from behind a crate. But he didn’t see Tav, in the shadow by the door, not until he was on him, slamming the cloth over the Veskan’s mouth. He should have gone down in seconds, but he didn’t. He thrashed, and struggled, clawing at Tav, who was half his size and having trouble staying on. More than once he nearly flung Tav off, even as one knee finally buckled, and then the other, the fight only going out of him when his head pitched forward onto the deck.

  For a moment, no one moved.

  Tav rocked back on his heels, chest heaving from the effort. Lila cocked her head, and Kay held his breath as they waited for the third Veskan. But there was no sign of them. With any luck, they’d left the others to stand guard and gone to bed, would never know that they were there.

  Tav rolled up to his feet. “Could’ve helped,” he muttered, dusting himself off.

  “Oh, I would’ve,” whispered Lila, as she turned toward the hold, “but it was too much fun to watch.”

  As they went down into the hold, light bloomed in Lila’s palm, and his own hand prickled, a phantom longing in his fingers. He tried to put it from his mind as Tav tossed him an iron bar, and he used it to pry open the nearest crate. The nails groaned, and the wood gave with a crack, and Kay paused, listening for sounds above. None came. He shifted the lid off the box. Inside, he found spirits in thin stoppered bottles, amber vials of tark, a liquor that went down like honey but landed like stone. He had tried it once, at Rhy’s behest, and woken the next morning with no memory and wet hair, only to learn he’d gone swimming in the Isle. In winter. Without any clothes. Now he cringed at the sight of the tark, but Tav swiped a vial and pocketed it before he could put the lid back on the box.

  Nearby, Lila let out a small whistle. He turned and saw her elbows-deep in a carton, and a moment later, she emerged holding her prize aloft: a blade. Kay rolled his eyes. He knew there was no point in telling her to put it back. It had already disappeared inside her coat.

  Tav snapped his fingers, calling them over to a third crate.

  It was full of paper lanterns. They were folded almost flat, but when he held one up, it bloomed open into a pale white moon. Kay frowned, the sight of it tugging on something in his mind. A memory he couldn’t place. He held the lantern up in the hold’s thin light, and saw the ghost of spellwork on the inside of the paper shell. It was small, and tight, and he was still trying to read it when a voice rang out overhead.

  “Oster? Han’ag val rach? Oster?”

  Oster, he guessed, was one of the men now napping on the deck, lungs full of dreamsquick.

  Metal glinted at the edge of Kay’s sight. Lila had drawn one of her knives. He shook his head, and swept past her, up the steps.

  “Ag’ral vek,” he called out in Veskan as he reached the deck. I’m right here.

  It was a poor impression, but it wasn’t meant to hold, only to make the man on deck hesitate, which he did, right until he saw the masked figure standing there, swathed in black. The man squinted at Kay, as if trying to make sense of the stranger on his ship.

  “You’re not Oster,” he grumbled, the words muffled by drink.

  “No,” said Kay. “I’m not.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. And then—everything did.

  The man flung out his hand and Kay felt the Crow’s deck slant drastically, the water shifting beneath the boat. But a blade, he’d learned, had one distinct advantage over relying on the elements: it was far quicker to summon. His sword sang free of its sheath before the wave crested the side of the ship. He surged forward while the Veskan was still calling the water to him.

  He spun and slammed the hilt of his sword into the Veskan’s temple as the water rose over their heads. The light went out of the man’s eyes, and he folded, hitting the deck with a thud. As he collapsed, so did his hold on the wave. Kay dropped to one knee, bracing himself as the torrent crashed down on top of him, sudden and shockingly cold.

  He rose to his feet, soaked through and shivering, but victorious. Beneath him, the ship bobbed once, violently, as the water settled, but it had been a large wave, and he watched as a ripple carried down the docks, setting all the other ships rocking in their berths.

  Sanct, he thought as lanterns lit on half of the surrounding boats, and a handful of sailors took to their decks to see who’d been foolish enough to mess with the tide in the bay.

  “Really?” hissed Lila, halfway out of the hold. “You couldn’t have just—”

  But then she cut off, head whipping to the right. He heard it at the same time. Stross, too loud, on the dock below, asking someone if they knew the way to the Merry Host. Too loud, and too late, as boots came thudding up the ramp. Several pairs of boots.

  The crew of the Crow had come back.

  He flicked his fingers, a silent signal, and Lila and Tav retreated a step, back into the shadow of the hold. Kay turned and pressed himself against the mast as three more Veskans stomped onto the deck.

  “Oster?” they called out. “Aroc? Esken?”

  They began to mutter amongst themselves, and they might have thought the two they’d left behind had gotten bored, or bitter, had gone to entertain themselves.

  They might have. If not for the body lying in the center of the waterlogged deck.

  Kay swore to himself as he heard them rush to the fallen sailor. He drew his second sword and stepped out from behind the mast to face the new arrivals.

  Two men and a woman, tall as houses, their hair ranging from blond to white. Their gazes were steady and sober. Either they hadn’t been drinking, or they knew how to hold their liquor. The two men drew weapons—one a hatchet, the other a broadsword—while the third spread out her arms, the air filling with the scent of magic. The water on the deck rose up, freezing to ice around her hands. She flicked her wrist, and a shard shot like an arrow across the deck.

  At him.

  Kay’s blade came up just in time, and the ice shattered against the steel. The sound rang out like a starting bell, and the bodies on the deck surged into motion.

  He danced back, cutting down the next three shards, then ducked as the hatchet buried itself in the mast where his head had been. It freed itself from the wood, returning to the Veskan’s hand. Two magicians, then.

  The deck froze beneath his feet as he leapt up onto the nearest crate, landed on dry wood, and found himself face-to-face with the largest man, who was easily a head taller, and three times as wide, the broadsword raised over his head.

  Kay twisted out of the way just before the sword cleaved a trench in the ship’s deck. It lodged, buried a foot into the wood, and he swept his blade across the man’s bare throat—or meant to. The Veskan’s arm came up to block the blow, and the steel met armor instead, hard enough to make the blade ring in Kay’s grip.

  Tav and Lila were on the deck now—out of the corner of his eye, he saw them, going head-to-head with the other two sailors, Tav quick on his feet, slicing the ropes that bound the sails so they fell in heavy sheets, covering the icy deck, and Lila, fire licking down her knives as she melted a path through an ice-made shield, and kicked the wielder back into the rail hard enough to make it splinter.

  She was grinning.

  Of course she was grinning.

  The woman sagged onto the deck, and—

  “Look out,” shouted Kay as the hatchet whistled through the air, straight toward Lila’s back. But she was already dropping to the deck. She landed like a cat to her hands and knees as the ax sailed past, and then she was up again, her daggers in one hand, and this time, when the hatchet flew back toward the Veskan’s hand, she caught it. Plucked the weapon out of the air as if it were her own, and turned and buried it in the man’s chest.

  So much for letting them live, he thought, just as his attacker’s broadsword came free with a scrape. He jumped back as the massive blade swung toward him. He twisted out of the Veskan’s reach, or tried, but the man’s mouth began to move and he had just enough time to curse that there were three magicians, wielding magic as well as weapons, before a wall of wind slammed into him from behind, knocking the breath from his body as he fell to the deck, one of his blades skating from his grip and vanishing under the crumpled sail.