Kosika brought the bandage to her arm but paused, considering the three lines. “The other worlds…”

  Holland’s mouth tightened. “Do not think of them.”

  “You wanted me to, once.”

  “I was wrong,” he said simply. “Those worlds have brought ours nothing but strife. Besides, power is not a parcel to be carried home, and so long as the walls stand, and the doors are shut fast, magic will not flow between.” He touched her arm, fingers ghosting hers as they tied the clean bandage around the fresh cuts. “What good does it do, to covet what you cannot have? I have watched kings and queens ruin themselves for less. No,” he said softly. “Let us tend our own flame, and trust that in time, the heat will be enough.”

  She studied the place where his hand hovered on her skin, and swore she could feel its weight.

  * * *

  ONE YEAR AGO

  There was a room behind the altar.

  Kosika had spent so many nights in the alcove, studying the statue of Holland Vosijk while Serak told her tales, and yet she’d forgotten that the recess stood in a tower identical to hers, and that, behind it, there was a door. She’d forgotten—until one night the candlelight caught on the wood behind the statue, and ever since it was all Kosika could think of, that door, and where it led.

  But she knew, of course.

  Even before Kosika stole up the tower steps one stormy afternoon, as rain battered the castle walls. Even before she ducked into the alcove, slipped into the narrow gap between the altar and the door. She knew there was only one place it could lead.

  To the last king’s chamber.

  Holland’s room.

  She held her breath, and turned the handle, but the door held firm, didn’t so much as jostle in a lock. Which meant it had been sealed somehow. Like a tomb. Kosika shoved her hand in her pocket, felt the triangle of steel she kept there, the size and shape of an arrowhead. She pressed her thumb to the tip until it broke the skin, blood welling as she pressed her hand to the wood.

  The words hummed in her head before she said them.

  “As Orense.”

  Open.

  The door groaned under her hand like a tree in a storm, the splinter of wood and drag of metal. The sound echoed down the tower stairs, and she hissed, waiting a moment to see if anyone would come (there were still times she felt like a child stealing through someone else’s house), but no one did, and this time, when Kosika pushed against the door, it swung open. She glanced back once over her shoulder, and stepped into the dark.

  The windows were shuttered, and only weak light spilled in from the alcove behind her, not enough to see by. But it glanced off the dark metal of a candelabra at the far side of the chamber. Kosika flexed her hand, and the tapers lit.

  She looked around.

  Holland Vosijk’s room appeared untouched. The space itself was a mirror of her own, the same curved walls, the same vaulted ceiling, the same vast bed, but a film of dust lay over everything, an echo of the pale patina that had clung to London for so many years like frost.

  Kosika tugged on the air, conjuring a gentle breeze, just strong enough to skim the dust away.

  She held her breath as she moved through the chamber, aware that she was stepping where he had stepped. Touching surfaces that he had touched. She pried open a set of shutters. This had been his view. She wanted to linger there, but rain was already dappling the windowsill, so she pushed the shutters closed again, as if the contents of the room might melt.

  Her fingers skimmed the bed where Holland had slept, the chair where he had sat, her eyes scavenging the room for clues. A grey cloak still hung on the wall. There, on the desk, a note in his own hand, the writing falling sharp and slanted as the storm.

  Vortalis once said there are no happy kings.

  That the worthy ruler is the one who understands the price of power, and is willing to pay, not with his people’s lives, but with his own.

  The greater the power, the higher the price.

  To take the throne is meager. To mend the world is dear.

  Here is what I know.

  I would bind myself again to see this place restored.

  I would bend a knee to any king.

  The entry ended there. Kosika turned through the stack, finding another.

  What have I done? Only what I must.

  Carried a spark out of the darkness to light my candle.

  Sheltered it with my body.

  Knowing I would burn.

  And then, on another scrap of paper, a single word.

  OSARON.

  The letters sent a strange chill over Kosika’s skin. It was familiar, the way Antari magic was familiar, the spells already there beneath her skin, nested in her mind before she knew their shape.

  “Osaron,” she whispered. An odd word. Not her native Maktahn. It had the air of magic. She said it again, and this time, the word changed on the way up her throat, twisting into a spell.

  “As Osaro.”

  The power surged up out of her hands. Shadow billowed through the room, pluming into a sudden, solid darkness that doused the candles and choked the light. Panic gripped Kosika. She conjured wind to banish it, but it was not smoke, and it did not so much as ripple. She conjured fire, felt the heat of it tickling her palm, but she couldn’t see the flame, couldn’t see anything. She felt like she was drowning in this darkness, wanted it gone, but there was no way to end Antari spells, only to counter them, so she searched her mind, desperate for light.

  Light.

  Light.

  Light.

  “As Illumae.” The word spilled out, and so did the stark white glow, blooming around her as swiftly as the shadows had, and driving the darkness back. The room returned, the candle flames wavering.

  Kosika let out a ragged breath, and fled the chamber, sealing the door in her wake.

  But that night, when she stood again with Serak in the alcove, her eyes drifted back to the wood at the statue’s back.

  “Tell me of the ten days,” she said.

  Ten days—that’s how long had passed between the death of the Danes and Holland’s return to claim the throne. Ten days, and in that time, no one knew where he had gone.

  Vir Serak said there were a dozen different myths. Some claimed that he was simply waiting, biding his time. Others said he was wounded in the fight, and needed time to heal, that he’d dragged his body to the Silver Wood, and the roots had wound around his limbs, and magic had seeped back into his veins.

  Others still said that he had died.

  What have I done?

  Kosika chewed her lip. She didn’t understand. She felt she should, but it was like a riddle.

  Carried a spark out of the darkness to light my candle.

  She thought of Serak’s demonstration with the lantern, the flame snuffed out, and then rekindled.

  “… in Black London.”

  Kosika’s head snapped back to Serak. “What was that?”

  “I said, there is even a version of the tale where Holland went to the burned-out world, and culled an ember from the ashes.” His heavy brow furrowed as he spoke, his eyes thrown into shadow. “But that is blasphemy. Holland Vosijk would never taint our world with such black magic.”

  “Of course not,” said Kosika, even as her mind spun over his words.

  The greater the power, the higher the price.

  I would bend a knee to any king.

  Knowing I would burn.

  The next day, she returned to Holland’s room.

  Stole up the stairs and slipped behind the altar, into his chambers. She returned to his desk, and the papers strewn across it, but this time she looked past them, to a small wooden box. At least, she guessed it was some kind of box. There was no lock, no clasp, only a stained circle on the wood and a thin line showing where a lid might join a base. When she tried to lift it, she could tell it was hollow, could hear the rattle of something inside, but the two halves held firm. Sealed, like the chamber door.

  Kosika’s hand went to her pocket. The prick of steel, a bead of blood on the pad of her thumb before she touched the small, stained circle on the wood, as Holland must have done.

  “As Orense,” she said, the words rising as they had the day before. Within the circle, the line became a seam, and then it opened.

  Inside, she found three coins.

  One was silver and stamped with a man’s face, and marks she didn’t know.

  GEOR:III. D.G BRITT.REX. F.D. 1820.

  The second was red with a gold star cut into its front.

  The third was black, and made of stone as slick as glass.

  Her fingers hovered for a moment before she reached in, fingers closing around the third, startled by how smooth it was to the touch. She held it to the meager light, could see the candle flicker through it. A new spell rose to her lips, spilled out before she thought to keep it in.

  “As Travars.”

  And then the room came apart, and she was falling.

  First through nothing, and then through the empty space where the castle should have been, the air rushing past her and the ground coming up fast, fast, fast. Kosika threw out her hands, and a wind rose up, the air twisting beneath her, around her. It caught her limbs and slowed her fall—slowed, but didn’t stop—and she landed hard, knees buckling with the impact, hands slamming into packed earth.

  One palm stung worse than the other, and when she pulled back she saw why. The black glass token had shattered between her palm and the ground, shards slicing into skin. And yet, her first thought was not the pain, it was that she’d broken something that had once belonged to Holland Vosijk.

  She scooped the largest shards back into her pocket, dug out a kerchief and wrapped it around her wounded palm as she got to her feet. And frowned.

  The castle was gone.

  Instead, she was standing on a road she didn’t know, surrounded by ruined buildings, their corpses slouched, crumbling.

  Her heart pounded in her ears, louder than any other sound until she realized, there was no other sound. A horrible quiet hung over everything. The road was empty. No horses, no carts, no signs of life.

  “Os?” she called.

  There was no answer, not even the echo of her own voice.

  It had been raining beyond her castle walls, but the ground here was dry and the air tasted wrong, like cinders on her tongue, and if there was a sun somewhere, it was well hidden, buried behind clouds that hung low and dark as smoke.

  Too late, Kosika realized what she’d done, what she’d said, given voice to the spell that let Antari travel between worlds.

  She was no longer in London.

  Or at least, no longer in hers.

  This other London looked wrong. No, not just wrong. Burned. And she knew, then, exactly where she was. Kosika scrambled backward, as if she could simply step out of the city’s reach, brought her sleeve to her mouth, not wanting to breathe in the ashes that hung on the air, stirred up when she broke her fall.

  She was in Black London.

  The world that burned so bright it ate up all its tinder and burned itself out.

  But if it had ever been a hearth, it seemed long cold, reduced to nothing but cinders. And yet, what had Serak said? Magic does not die. It waits. For what? A spark?

  Her gaze flew back to the bloody handprint she’d left on the street. She half expected it to start smoking, to kindle itself into a flame. But nothing happened. The road stretched, silent and empty. It felt like a tomb. Like Holland’s hand when she’d touched it in the Silver Wood that day. Cold and dry and dead.

  Kosika shivered and fetched the shard of black glass from her pocket, its edge dotted red.

  “As Travars,” she said again.

  The world rippled around her, the air tensing.

  But then it settled, and she was still standing there, in the unfamiliar road. Fear coiled inside Kosika, then, the sudden, horrible certainty that she was stuck, that whatever magic had brought her here was not strong enough to take her home, that Black London had her now, and would never let her go.

  The air hung heavy with ash. It left her dizzy, made it hard to breathe. Kosika fought down another swell of panic.

  Either her magic was not strong enough.

  Or she wasn’t using it right.

  There was no other spell, it would have come to her, but she studied the splintered token in her hand, and thought of the other two coins in the box in Holland’s room. She could guess where they led.

  Three worlds.

  Three keys.

  But there were four, including hers. There had been no key to her own London, but obviously he’d needed one. Kosika turned out her pockets, finding no tokens, only the other shards of the Black London glass, and her arrow-point knife. It had been a gift from Vir Serak, its small handle carved from a branch in the Silver Wood. It already had her blood on it, but she unraveled the kerchief from her wounded palm and swept the blade lightly through the welling red for good measure.

  This will work, she assured herself. And then, aloud, “This will work.” She said it as if it were a spell, something willed into being. And then she closed her fingers over the narrow blade and forced that will into the words.

  “As Travars,” she said again, and this time, Black London shivered, and came apart like smoke. She didn’t fall so much as lurch, the sudden off-balance sensation of a missed step, and then her feet were on the ground again, not a crumbling road but a polished stone floor.

  She was back in the castle, not up in Holland’s tower but the great hall below.

  And the great hall wasn’t empty. Far from it: a dozen members of the guard lined the walls, and servants dotted the space where three Vir were holding court with a handful of nobles. And maybe the room had been bustling with motion before her sudden, unexpected arrival, but now it lurched to a stop. A servant dropped their tray. Glass shattered. The three Vir turned, and the four nearest soldiers lunged forward, hands going to their hilts before they realized the ashen figure in the center of the hall was in fact their queen.

  Kosika couldn’t blame them.

  A small cloud of soot swirled up around her, and a few drops of blood fell from her hand where she had gripped the blade, and for a single, horrible moment, she thought she might faint. But the moment passed, and Kosika stayed on her feet.

  The soldiers dropped into a bow, but the Vir started toward her, and she could see the questions in their eyes as they went from her face to the blood dripping from her hand. And Kosika knew she could not tell them where she’d been.

  But then she remembered that she did not have to. She was not some child, in need of scolding. She was an Antari. She was their queen. She owed them no explanation, so she turned in silence, and headed for the stairs, leaving a trail of ash and blood in her wake.

  IV

  RED LONDON

  NOW

  Berras Emery sat forward as the carriage rolled through the gates.

  The horses slowed, drawing to a stop before the house.

  Once upon a time, it had belonged to a reclusive nobleman named Astel, but Astel had perished in his bed during the Tide seven years before. Not that anyone save Berras seemed to care—though, admittedly, his concern was more for the property than its previous owner.

  He had descended on the house one night, much the way the Veil did now, but unlike the pleasure garden, Berras hadn’t disappeared at dawn. If anyone had noticed his arrival, perhaps they assumed he was a distant nephew come to see to his uncle’s affairs, a man as private and unfriendly as Astel had been. The Emery heir brought nothing from his old life, and hired only one servant, the driver, who was paid well to be incurious.

  The same driver now opened the carriage door, bowing deeply as Berras stepped out. He looked up at the house. He hadn’t just chosen it because it was empty, with no apparent heir. It was also tall—three stories—and from the study windows on the top floor, he had a view not only of this street, but the one directly to the north, and the Emery estate.

  What was left of it.

  For months it had sat, little more than a ruin, but then, from those study windows, he’d seen movement. Berras had watched as it was painstakingly restored, as if by a loving hand. Only to then sit dark, neglected. Waiting.

  It taunted Berras, a brazen baited trap. For he was sure that if he stepped back into that house—by right, his house—he would wake to a knife at his throat, to guards dragging him from his bed and into a palace cell, forcing him to kneel on the cold stone and beg forgiveness from his brother, or mercy from his king.

  Berras Emery had no intention of doing either.

  * * *

  Inside the stolen house, the lamps had been lit. Their pale glow spilled out of his office, along with the soft crackle of a fire he hadn’t started.

  Berras sighed, rolling his neck as he crossed the hall. He could see Bex in his chair, her legs up on his desk, and Calin sprawled on the sofa, arms stretched along its back. Berras paused only to brush his fingers down the doorframe before he entered.

  “Get your feet off my table,” he said, shrugging out of his coat.

  Bex sat up, her boots thudding as they hit the floor. Calin’s pale eyes drifted open. He looked tired, or bored.

  “Tac?” Berras gave a cursory look around the room. “I take it your presence here means you have it.”

  Bex glanced at Calin. Calin didn’t look back. She shifted her weight, and Berras knew before she had the nerve to say the words.

  “We don’t.”

  He closed his eyes. The Hand was gathering in less than a day. The bitch in the white mask was right. Without the persalis, this plan—his plan—wouldn’t work.

  “I hope you mean not yet,” he said through clenched teeth. Judging by their faces, they did not. “What happened?”

  “It’s not our fault,” offered Calin, chewing on the words before he spat them out.

  “One of your thieves fucked up,” said Bex. “He broke the persalis getting it off the ship, and then, instead of bringing it to us, he took it to a repair shop in the shal, gave it to some girl to fix. A tinkerer.”