“Well,” she said, “I’d get to work, if I were you.”

  * * *

  Truth be told, Lila had never spent much time in pleasure gardens.

  Not that she scorned pleasure—she enjoyed a fine wine, a sharp knife, the things Kell could do with his mouth when he put it to good use—but once a thief, always a thief. She didn’t trust the kindness, the closeness. Someone placed a glass into her hand. Someone grazed their fingers down her arm. Someone’s body whispered against hers, and every time, her muscles stiffened, and her nerves told her she was being robbed.

  Music spilled out of a large chamber, a quartet of instruments perched on a stand, spelled to play without players, but the rest of the room was full of people, some playing cards, and others smoking, and most enjoying the company provided by the Veil. The light was low, and it fell on the masks, picking out the occasional gold of a host drifting among the tapestry of black and white, and making all of them glow.

  A woman’s hand grazed Lila’s back, and she had to resist the urge to stop the bones, or check her pockets as a voice purred with feline grace. “Avan, res naster.”

  Lila turned, and found another white-dressed figure, albeit wearing far, far less of it, her face hidden behind its own gold mask.

  “Avan,” answered Lila. “Can you point me toward the library?”

  “Why go there,” she teased, “when you can stay with me?”

  “What can I say?” said Lila. “I have a love of books.”

  She could almost see the woman pouting behind her mask, but then she wrapped her arms around Lila, and turned her around, pointing down a hall.

  “That way,” she said, giving Lila a playful nudge, her embrace retreating like a tide.

  She made her way down the hall, which was lined with doors, all of them closed, gold masks hanging on the wood. The first two turned out to be locked. The next opened onto a pair of men playing cards. Someone had just lost a hand, and was stripping off his shoes. The other seemed to have lost several—he was barely clothed. Neither seemed to notice Lila as she let the door fall shut. She continued, searching room after room, discovered all the markings of a pleasure house, and none of a rebel group. She reached the end of the hall, only to discover it did not end, but turned onto an alcove, and a final door, unmarked by mask, or glass, or sign.

  She put her ear to the wood, and heard nothing from the other side. She tested the handle, and found it unlocked. The door swung open onto a large and well-appointed library, the walls lined with books, a large wooden desk in the corner, a pair of chairs set before an unlit fire.

  Lila stepped inside, and closed the door behind her.

  A clock on the wall chimed, and she took in the time. Ten.

  Lila studied the books on the wall, then went to the desk, and opened drawer after drawer, searching for something, anything, to tie this place to the Hand. She was still searching when the library door groaned open, carrying the ghost of music and voices from the house. Lila turned, and saw a man.

  He was tall, and broad enough to fill the doorway. His brown hair was cut short on the sides, but it rose over the top of his black mask. He was dressed in a navy coat with silver buttons. Her gaze went to his hands. They were scarred.

  “You’re early,” he said. His voice held the rumble of thunder.

  “Better than late,” said Lila lightly.

  “Indeed.” He did an odd thing then. He was still standing in the open door. Now, as she watched, he reached up and ran one hand down the side of the frame, as if testing the wood, before stepping forward into the library. He pulled the door shut behind him. And locked it.

  The small sound of the bolt turning might as well have been a warning shot.

  “You know,” he went on, “I hoped you would come.”

  Lila frowned. “You’ll have to forgive me,” she said. “I never forget a face, but since I can’t see yours … have we met?”

  The man continued his slow advance. “No,” he said. “We have not been introduced. But you’re no longer as anonymous as you once were, Delilah Bard.”

  He flexed his hands, scarred knuckles going white as he said her name, and Lila reflexively reached for her power. Not the air in the room, or the candles on the wall, but the bones inside his body, to halt his progress, to make him stop.

  She pulled on that magic—and felt nothing.

  No flutter, no promise, no sense of a will warring with her own. She reached then for the wooden floor, for the air, tried to spark a flame inside her hand. Nothing.

  Warded. The room was warded.

  “I hope you weren’t planning to rely on magic.”

  She imagined the man’s mouth drawing into a grim smile behind his onyx mask as he said it. Lila forced herself to match that imagined smirk.

  “Believe it or not,” she said, drawing a blade, “I have other tricks.”

  “Is that so?” He continued forward, close enough now that Lila would have to either attack, or step back. And she wasn’t about to step back. “Show me,” he said, but Lila was already moving.

  She leapt onto the desk and over it, slicing down toward the man’s mask. He raised his arm, and the blade came down on that instead, steel ringing against steel as it cut the coat, only to hit an armored plate. His other fist swung toward her head, but Lila was already twisting out of the way, slicing the blade along his side.

  She felt it bite through cloth and skin, but the man didn’t recoil. He didn’t even flinch. He simply turned, with shocking speed, and, before Lila could lunge back out of his reach again, he struck her, hard, across the face. Hard enough to crack the mask, which fell away. Hard enough to fill her mouth with blood. She rolled back and rose again, but her ears were ringing and her good eye blurred, and for a terrible second, she couldn’t see, her attacker nothing but a vague shape coming toward her.

  It didn’t escape her notice that he hadn’t drawn a weapon, and that he held his hands as if they were the only ones he needed. This was a man experienced in hurting others.

  “Well?” he asked. “Already out of tricks?”

  Lila’s fingers tightened on the knives, searching his clothes, the way they fell, trying to find the points that weren’t armored. The man, meanwhile, turned his head, and studied the clock on the wall instead of her.

  As if she weren’t even a threat.

  Lila was offended, but the disrespect gave her the opening she needed, and she took it, springing toward him, angling the dagger toward his throat.

  At the last moment, the masked face turned back toward her. At the same time, his hand came up, and caught the knife by the blade, wrenching it forward.

  Lila should have let go.

  Afterward, she would play the fight back in her head, over and over, and every time, she would regret that moment. She should have let go, but she didn’t, and when the man pulled the blade forward, he pulled her too, off-balance, and as he did, his other palm came to rest against the side of her head, and slammed it down into the wooden desk.

  And everything went black.

  IV

  Two horses tore across the bridge.

  They bore no royal markings, but anyone with a passing knowledge could tell they were bred well. Their coats were lush—one grey, the other white—and their hooves glinted as they galloped, as if they had been shod in gold.

  Of course, Alucard had not bothered to tell Kell where they were going, only that it was on the coin.

  “What coin?” Kell had demanded, swinging his leg over the grey mount the guards had brought him.

  Alucard had let out an exasperated sigh. “From the dead thief, on Maris’s ship,” he’d said, as if that answered everything. “It gave the time and place, where the Hand would meet.”

  Kell bristled—he did not know which bothered him more, that Lila had not told him about the coin, or that she had told Alucard instead.

  “You knew she would go,” he’d snapped as Alucard had mounted the white horse and taken the reins. “You knew, and you said nothing.”

  “I was distracted,” answered Alucard. “And I haven’t been a sailor for seven years. I have bigger concerns than the phase of the moon.”

  With that, he’d kicked his mount into motion, and Kell had had no choice but to follow, or be left behind.

  Now the bridge disappeared beneath them as they reached the northern bank, and the avenues filled by ostra-favored shops and houses. Alucard urged the horse on, slowing only as he turned at last onto a wide street.

  Helarin Way.

  He drew to a stop, and Kell stopped with him, the two dismounting as a carriage rattled past, and slowed, pulling up before the open gates of a well-lit house. It didn’t strike Kell as the kind of place rebels would meet—it had all the subtlety of a parade—but perhaps that was the idea.

  “Mind the horses,” said Alucard.

  Kell glared. “If you think you’re going in without me…” But he trailed off as Alucard shot him a long-suffering look, and held his reins out in the opposite direction. A shadow peeled away from the walls and took the ropes, first from the royal consort, then from Kell.

  He shrugged out of his coat, and turned it, abandoning the grey exterior that he’d been wearing since his trip to the Sanctuary, and exchanging it for the lightless black of Kay’s mantle. He donned it again, exhaling as the new coat settled over his shoulders with a comfortable weight.

  He slicked back his hair, and then pulled up the hood to hide the copper.

  “Oh yes,” said Alucard blandly. “They’ll never recognize you now.”

  Kell gave him a dark look, then reached into the coat’s pocket and withdrew a black mask, settling it over his cheeks. His two-toned eyes vanished.

  “What are you supposed to— No, you know what, I don’t care,” said Alucard as he turned up his collar, and strode across the street, clearly unconcerned with blending in.

  A man in white stood waiting on the front steps, his own face concealed behind a golden mask. The door was open behind him, but any view of the house beyond was hidden by the crisp black curtain that filled the doorway.

  “Welcome to the Veil,” he said, extending a gloved hand. “Do you have an invitation?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Alucard, patting his pockets. “Hm,” he said after a moment. “I must have left it in my other coat.” He smiled as he said it—the kind of smile that must have charmed others, but made Kell want to kick his teeth in. “But surely, you can make an exception.”

  The host inclined his head. “I’m afraid,” he said, “I cannot.”

  “Oh, wait,” said Kell, stepping closer and reaching into his coat. “You gave it to me.”

  Alucard cocked a brow. “I did?”

  “Yes, here it is.…” He looked down, and so did the host, only to go very still as the tip of a blade came to rest beneath his chin.

  “Walk away,” said Kell softly, and perhaps the host caught the glint of his black eye, and guessed at the identity of Alucard’s companion, or perhaps he simply did not think it was worth dying for, because as soon as Kell withdrew the point of the knife, the host turned, and strode down the stairs, tearing off his mask and casting it into the bushes as he went.

  “You know,” mused Alucard as Kell slid the knife back into his coat. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Lila Bard.”

  “So it seems,” said Kell, stepping past him and through the curtained door.

  Inside, a wall of black and white masks lined the entry hall, more than half of them now claimed. Kell opted to hold on to his own, but Alucard selected a white mask, fastening it over his face. And together, they entered the Veil.

  V

  Pain.

  Ringing, black-edged pain rolled through Lila’s head.

  She couldn’t see. Her vision was gone, replaced by a flat, black nothing that made her chest tight, panic rising like bile in her throat. She had never been afraid of the dark, because the dark wasn’t really dark. There were always shades to it, layers of shapes and shadows. But this was different. This was impenetrable. This was blindness. This was the thing Lila had been afraid of since she lost her eye. But as her skull stopped rattling, and the pain quieted enough to let her other senses speak, she blinked, and felt her lashes scrape cloth.

  Not blind.

  Blindfolded.

  She rolled her neck, which sent a fresh wave of pain through her skull. She flexed, tried to move, but her shoulders strained, and rope scratched rough over her wrists, along with something else—cold metal? Either way, it seemed her hands were bound behind her.

  Once again, Lila reached for her magic.

  And once again, it didn’t answer.

  At last, her senses cleared enough to reach beyond her own limbs, and she picked up the weight of a body shifting on the wooden floor nearby. She wasn’t alone.

  Lila swallowed, made her voice as bland as she could.

  “Is this your idea of a good time?” she asked. “Because I have notes.”

  She half expected no one to answer. But for better or worse, the body stepped closer, and the blindfold came away, showering the room in merciful light.

  Lila blinked, and looked around, surprised to discover she was no longer in the library. No longer in the Veil at all, judging by the lack of music whispering through the walls, the darker floors and grim décor, the window looking out not onto Helarin, but another street. The air was stale with dust. The room felt neglected. Unlived in. Abandoned. She was sitting in a wooden chair.

  She dragged her attention to the shadow looming over her, who was now wrapping the black blindfold casually around his fist. His cuff links were silver, modeled into feathers. Her mind flickered, but her attention was already being pulled up, to his face.

  The man who’d attacked her was no longer wearing a mask. A trimmed beard shadowed the bottom half of his face. His eyes were the dark blue-grey of storms at sea. She had the uncanny sensation that she knew him, and, at the same time, the certainty they’d never met.

  “The host at the Veil was told to keep an eye out for certain people,” he said. “The Antari prince, for one. My brother. And you.”

  Brother.

  The knowledge lurched through her. The features fell into place, laid over a different face.

  Her memory stuttered, and she was standing on a familiar ship, back when it was still named the Spire, as Alucard leaned his elbows on the rail, and spoke of the night his brother Berras beat him unconscious while their father watched. Of how he woke the next day, arm broken and ribs bruised, chained in the bottom of a ship.

  This, then, was Berras Emery.

  “Well,” said Lila, “it looks like your brother got the manners and the looks in the family.”

  Berras sneered, and stepped closer, hand raised to strike, but as he did, Lila swung her legs up and kicked him, as hard as she could, in the stomach. It would have been a paltry move, if she’d been going for any damage, but luckily she wasn’t. As her boots connected with his front, she pushed backward. The force of it was enough to make the chair tip, and it went crashing to the floor, taking Lila with it. She rolled, and when she rose, her hands were no longer bound behind her, but in front, which was an improvement. She’d reached for a blade as she fell, but she’d been divested of them all, so her hands came up empty.

  That was when she saw the gold.

  Her hands were bound with rope, but beneath the rough cord, a gold cuff circled her left wrist. It had no beginning and no end, and was pressed flush with her skin, and before she could wonder at its meaning, Berras Emery raised his own hand, and a wall of wind slammed into Lila. The floor disappeared beneath her feet as she was flung back across the room and into the stone mantle of the hearth, all the air knocked from her lungs as she was pinned by the sheer force. A moment later, the wind died, and she stumbled forward, fighting to stay on her feet.

  She didn’t understand.

  Alucard had told her once that his brother was a weak magician, that he could barely cobble together a wall from rock and earth. Rock and earth, he’d said. Not wind.

  If the room was warded, how was he using magic? And if it wasn’t warded, where was hers?

  “Clever, isn’t it?”

  An arc of flame curled through the air around Berras, unruly but bright.

  First wind, thought Lila, now fire? How was he doing it?

  “The queen should keep a closer eye over her tools. Or at least, over her company.”

  Berras flexed his hand, and Lila had just enough time to see a glint of gold before Berras made a fist, and her entire body buckled under an unseen force. She hit the floor hard, but this time, there was no wind. She tried to move, but her limbs refused, her whole skeleton groaning as she pushed back against the hold.

  Bone magic.

  “I was planning to use the bind on my brother.”

  She tried to will her body, to make it hers again, but this wasn’t one will at war against another. It was something else.

  “I thought it would be fitting,” he went on, “to kill Alucard with his own power. But I could hardly pass up yours. After all, why have a piece of magic when you can have it all?”

  Horror swept through Lila.

  The gold cuff. The gold ring. Berras wasn’t using his magic. He was using hers. Channeling it.

  “Of course, I’m not versed in Antari spells,” he said, “but that’s all right. You’ll teach them to me.”

  “Here’s one for free,” offered Lila through gritted teeth, dragging her head up as far as the working would allow. “Go fuck yourself.”

  Berras smiled, tight and humorless. “You know, of all the elements, bone really is the most useful.”

  There was an audible crack as he said it, and one of Lila’s lower ribs snapped in two. Her jaw was locked shut, but a scream still tore between her teeth.

  “The ability to control another person’s body.”

  A second rib snapped.

  “Even break it.”

  And a third.

  Lila cried out, gasping as a splintered edge dug into her lungs.

  “Oh,” she hissed, her breath uneven. “I can see why Alucard hates you.”