Alucard grabbed the air in Berras’s lungs, and squeezed, choking off the words.

  In response, his brother slammed him against the wall again, but Alucard didn’t let go. Even though he couldn’t breathe, even though his own head was beginning to spin—he crushed the air from the other man’s lungs, until, at last, he felt Berras’s fingers weaken a little around his throat. He would have to let go, thought Alucard. He would—but then Berras grinned, a feral thing full of teeth, and reared back, and threw Alucard into the wall hard enough that it crumbled, and he went crashing back, into the dark.

  * * *

  The door swung open, and Lila dragged her head up, hoping to see Kell.

  She was disappointed.

  The hired killer—the one with the black braid, Bex—ambled in, looking at Lila like she was a gift, wrapped and set beneath a Christmas tree. “Bad night?”

  Lila tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. “Not sure if you’ve heard,” she said, “but you have shit taste in friends.”

  “Who said they were my friends?”

  Lila rolled her neck. “Then the company you keep.” The wood cut into her arms. She couldn’t move. She knew—she’d been trying for the last few minutes.

  “I’m curious,” she said, trying to hide how hard it was to breathe. “What do you have against the crown?”

  “Me? Nothing,” said Bex. “But a job is a job, and in my world, coin is king. Now,” she added, running her hand over the bracer on her forearm. The metal peeled away into a blade. “I guess it’s time we finish what we started.”

  “Sure,” said Lila. “Just let me up.”

  Bex chuckled. She brought her boot up to the chair, and leaned in. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then it’s hardly a fair fight.”

  Bex shrugged, and said, “No fight is truly fair.” And Lila thought, under different circumstances, they might have gotten along quite well. Hell, they might even have been friends. Or at least, the kind of acquaintances that didn’t try to kill each other.

  But Bex’s blade came to rest against her cheek. It bit, the pain a whisper compared to everything else, but she felt the bead run like a tear down her face.

  “Antari blood is worth a lot,” she said. “Do you really want to waste it?”

  A smile twitched at the corner of Bex’s mouth. “You’re right.” The blade vanished from Lila’s cheek as she turned, moving toward a pitcher on the wall. She lifted the vessel, dumping the contents onto the floor.

  “This will do,” she said. Her back was to the door, so she didn’t see what Lila did.

  She sighed in relief. “You came.”

  Kell stepped into the room, the black ring’s cord swinging from his fingers. “You called.” He smiled a little as he said it. That smile felt nice. Even if it faded as he noticed Bex against the wall.

  “How sweet,” said the assassin, setting the pitcher down again. “But I’m afraid you’re interrupting.”

  Kell looked to Lila, as if wondering why she was bound to a chair, or rather, why she was still bound, why she hadn’t used her ample magic to get herself free. And since there was no time to explain, she simply said, “This one’s all yours.”

  Mercifully, Kell didn’t ask. He just drew his sword, and shifted, putting himself between Lila and Bex.

  “Again, the blades,” said Bex with a smirk. “Careful, Antari, someone will wonder what’s happened to your magic.”

  Lila saw Kell’s shoulders stiffen, and in that moment, Bex attacked.

  She lunged toward his chest, only to drop her knife at the last instant, into her other hand, intending to drive it up from below, but Lila had taught Kell that move, one of a hundred in their sparring sessions, and so he was there, cutting downward before the blade could slice his front.

  The swords clashed, and scraped, searching for skin and finding only steel.

  She’d taught him well. All those months aboard the Barron, in sunshine and in rain, training the Antari out of Kell, stripping him of everything but sword, and speed. He moved as fast as Bex, even as her metal became molten, changing form, multiplying. He moved with all the grace of a born fighter.

  And then, he made a mistake.

  One of Bex’s blades gashed his arm, and the sword fell from his grip, and skated across the floor, out of Kell’s reach, and into Bex’s.

  He clutched his injured arm as she grinned.

  “The beauty of my power,” she said, kneeling to pick up the fallen sword. “Sooner or later, all steel becomes mine.”

  Her hand curled over the hilt, and Lila could almost hear Kell’s voice, in the captain’s cabin, when he’d introduced her to Kay. When she’d tried to claim one of his swords. He’d warned her not to, and still she’d grabbed the hilt, only to feel the sear of heat, the scalding pain as it burned.

  Bex must have felt it now, because she gasped, and let go, dropping the blade as Kell unsheathed another, and she looked up just in time to see him drive it through her chest.

  “Not every blade belongs to you,” he said, as Bex let out a wet rasp.

  He drew the sword free, and she collapsed.

  Lila tried to laugh, but the pain cut her off short, and then it turned into a cough, which hurt ten times worse. She gasped, tasting blood as Kell rushed toward her, hacking at the wood of the chair until she was free.

  “Fucking … bracelet,” she managed, clawing at the band of gold that pressed into her skin. There was no clasp, no give. “Can’t … get it … off.”

  “We’ll find a way,” he said. “But first, let’s get you up.”

  He wrapped his arm around her ribs, and a pained cry tore free of her throat.

  His eyes widened. “You’re hurt.”

  “No shit, Kell,” she said through gritted teeth.

  His fingers were already going to the tear in his sleeve. “Let me heal you.”

  Lila shot him a venomous look and said, “Don’t you fucking dare.” Berras was out there somewhere, beyond the door, with Lila’s magic, and she could barely breathe, and the last thing they needed was for Kell to be crippled by the pain of mending a few ribs. After a moment, he seemed to understand, or at least, to accept that one of them had to be able to fight.

  “All right,” he said. “Then lean on me.”

  “I can walk,” she insisted, taking a step, only to feel her legs threaten to buckle as her broken ribs moved, and scraped inside her chest. Kell’s hand was there, gentle but firm.

  “Lean on me, Lila,” he said again.

  This time, grudgingly, she did.

  VIII

  Tes put her hands down on the table. “It’s done.”

  She closed her eyes, tried to ignore the sluggish pounding of her heart, the way each pulse seemed to drag its feet.

  Calin trudged across the room and stared down at the object on the desk. He cocked his head to one side in a way that reminded her of Vares. Under different circumstances, she might have found it funny. But right now, she focused all her strength on staying upright.

  “Looks like a clock,” he said.

  Her lungs felt heavy, but after a moment, she convinced them to inhale.

  “It doesn’t matter what it looks like,” she said, the effort causing sweat to break on her skin. “Only what it is.”

  She’d scribbled the spell words on a slip of paper—Erro, to open. Ferro, to close—and pushed it toward him. “The commands.” His pale gaze raked over the paper as he lifted the object. It was smaller than the last doormaker. The whole thing fit into one hand, and any other time, she would have felt proud of the work.

  “Where’s the other piece?”

  The words rolled over Tes, followed by a sickening horror. The other piece. The key. The final part, the one the man in the shop had never given her, the one that marked the destination. She hadn’t known about it, not when she first repaired the persalis, which was why her doormaker had cut between worlds instead of through them. She’d forgotten. She’d forgotten because she was copying her own work. She’d forgotten because this new doormaker didn’t need one.

  Her gaze dropped to the cluttered table.

  “Oh, that,” she said, eyes landing on one of the cogs she’d pried out of the clock. She took it up with shaking fingers, trying to pass the gesture off as careful instead of random as she held it out. “Here.”

  Tes had never been a good liar, but if Calin caught the tremble in her voice, he must have assumed it was the poison. He snatched the cog, and turned away.

  “Wait.” Tes rose, her legs nearly buckling beneath her. She caught herself against the table as the world tipped. “The antidote.” It was getting hard to breathe.

  “Not so fast,” he said, crossing the room. “Got to make sure it works.”

  He tossed the cog into the far corner, and set the clock on the floor against the wall. Tes followed, pulse flickering like a dying light inside her chest. The room swayed, and she braced herself against a chair as Calin said the word.

  “Erro.”

  The clock shivered on the ground.

  And then it fell apart. Its wooden sides split open, and its face tipped forward, as if hinged, and out of the gaps spilled two lines of crisp white light. They burned, like fuses, spreading out to either side, and then up, tracing twin cracks through the air, until they were as tall as Calin, taller still, and then they turned again, and joined together overhead, carving the outline of the door.

  The space within the doorway darkened, the wall behind the persalis blotted out, replaced by a curtain, a veil. But this time, she could see no place waiting beyond the curtain, no ghostly shimmer of another world. Only a solid, inky black.

  “There,” gasped Tes. “You see? It works.”

  Calin grunted, and dug a hand into his pocket, producing the antidote, the milky contents shining in the vial. But then his eyes cut to the corner, where he’d flung the cog, the cog that wasn’t a key, just a piece of metal.

  “Does it?” he asked, right before he cast the antidote through the doorway.

  A sob tore from Tes’s throat as the bottle disappeared into the dark. It didn’t reappear in the corner by the cog. It didn’t reappear at all. Because the door was not a door to any room, or any world. It was a door to nowhere.

  And now, the antidote was gone. Her life, gone with it.

  Calin rounded on her, his eyes flat with disappointment.

  And in that instant, Tes did the only thing she could. She pushed him.

  She was not strong enough, of course. The full force of her slamming into Calin was only enough to make him stumble half a step, more in surprise than pain. But in that half a step, his elbow met the blackened surface of the door, and the door did a strange thing. It grabbed hold of Calin.

  And dragged him through.

  It happened so fast. A moment’s struggle, boots sliding on wood, hands clawing for purchase, and then he was gone, voice swallowed up halfway through a shout, words cut off as cleanly as fingers beneath a sharpened knife.

  Tes’s legs folded. She sank to her knees on the damp wood floor. She should have been devastated. Perhaps it was the poison’s work, but in that moment, she felt only grim resolve. She’d done the right thing.

  “Ferro,” she said to the door.

  Close.

  But the door did not.

  Tes stared at the veil of darkness inside the glowing frame. The line of light that traced its edges should have split. The veil should have fallen away as the spell retreated back into the clock.

  “Ferro,” she said again, pushing the last of her strength into the word, making it solid, making it strong.

  The door to nowhere stared defiantly back.

  And then, she noticed the breeze.

  There were no windows in this room, and yet, a gentle wind had started. It was not flowing out from the door. It was going toward it, dragging at the air, and the room, and everything in it. The scraps she’d tossed aside while she was working began to shudder and drift across the floor like leaves, vanishing into the open black mouth of the void.

  Tes crawled forward to the open clock, wrapped her fingers against the front, careful not to let her hands touch the wall of black that had swallowed Calin as she tried to pry the shell away, to reach the threads inside. But as she did, the clock did a horrible thing. It broke. The frame crumbled, and was sucked into the darkness.

  And still, the door didn’t close.

  In fact, it opened further, splintered past the edges of the frame. As it did, it made a sound, like a hammer against stone.

  BOOM.

  Tes scrambled backward, tried to get to her feet, but her legs buckled, the last strength going out of her limbs.

  BOOM came the sound again, rattling through her as the doorway cracked, and threw out jagged black lines into the air to every side.

  Get up, she pleaded with her body. It didn’t listen. Get up, she tried to say aloud, but her lungs were out of air. Her heart skipped a beat, and then the world flickered, and she was on the floor, her cheek resting against the wood. She didn’t feel scared.

  The boom came again, but it sounded far away, or maybe she was.

  Tes reached her hands into her coat, and folded her fingers over the little bone owl, felt him nestle against her palm.

  She closed her eyes, and told herself the sound was the waves, crashing against the rocks back in Hanas. Told herself it was the sound of home as she drifted off to sleep.

  IX

  Alucard’s ears were ringing as he got to his hands and knees, brick debris curling around his shoulders. The room was dark, but he knew, even by the contours, where he was.

  His father’s study.

  Growing up, he was never allowed in here. Berras either. They only ever went as far as the doorway, and then, only when their father summoned them. But from that doorway, Alucard had learned every detail of the chamber. His father’s dark wood desk. The glass windows that rose behind it, their panes stained midnight blue and traced with silver.

  Now, the door hung shut, but the wall was open.

  Alucard rose, and turned toward the ragged tear. Berras stood, waiting, on the other side. As if even now, he were loath to enter. But then he splayed his fingers, and the rest of the wall between them crumbled.

  He stepped into the room.

  Alucard had already drawn his blade, and as Berras crossed the threshold, he sliced through the air, but as the metal cut toward his brother, it melted, falling to the floor in molten silver drops, and Berras’s fist connected with Alucard’s jaw.

  His head snapped to the side and he staggered. His lip split open, blood dripping down his chin.

  “Any other night,” he said, as Alucard wiped his mouth, “I’d take my time, but tonight, I’m in a hurry.”

  This time he saw the way the silver flashed in the air, just before his brother struck. As the broken bricks rose around Berras, his own hand shot toward his father’s desk, and it scraped over the floor as its massive weight turned on its end, and came soaring into the space between the brothers the instant before Berras’s rocks hurled themselves into Alucard, smashing against the desk instead. Alucard didn’t wait—he shoved against the upright desk with all his strength, sent it slamming forward into Berras.

  Heard it splinter as it struck—

  And broke, with all the force of waves crashing against cliffs, and exactly as much use. Berras stood, unmoved, as the desk, reduced to slivers, crumbled around him.

  “Why?” asked Alucard. “Why did you create the Hand?”

  Berras flexed and the lamps burst to life on every wall, showering the study in light. “You have forgotten what it means,” he said, “to be an Emery.”

  But as he spoke, the lamps he’d lit caught fire, consumed by the sudden force of too much magic. They began to burn, scorching up the walls, filling the room with acrid smoke. Something occurred to Alucard. Berras wasn’t used to having this much magic. He wielded it like a mallet, clumsy and blunt.

  “If it means being a traitor,” he said, eyes cutting across the study, “I’m glad I gave it up.”

  Berras came toward him and Alucard retreated half a step for every one his brother took, letting the distance shrink between them.

  “An Emery deserves to sit on the throne,” said Berras. “Not kneel behind it.”

  Alucard reached to draw his second blade, only to feel Berras’s will slam down around his bones with sudden, crushing force. His gasped as his ribs cinched, and his jaw locked shut, and his limbs froze. His brother stepped toward him, cracking his knuckles.

  “Admit it,” said Alucard, through gritted teeth. “You’re jealous.”

  Berras’s hand tightened, and so did the force on Alucard’s body. “I’d rather be a traitor than the king’s whore.”

  Alucard met his brother’s eyes, and smiled. “Well, that makes one of us.”

  He couldn’t move, but he could still see, and as the gold ring glinted on Berras’s right fist and he drew it back to land a blow that surely would have shattered bone, Alucard cut his gaze toward the stained-glass window, and it shattered, as if he’d slammed his hand against it instead of his will.

  Having magic was a gift.

  But using it took practice.

  Every element Alucard had gained was another one he had to juggle. It was one thing to have access to wind, and water, and earth—it was another thing to use them at the same time. There was a reason most magicians could only focus on a single one.

  The window caved in, shards of blue and silver glass flying forward, and Berras did what any inexperienced magician would. He flung out his right hand to stop the shards of glass, dropping his hold on Alucard’s body as he did.

  The shards dragged to a stop, easily rebuffed by Berras’s stolen power, and hung suspended, but Alucard was already moving, drawing that second sword and slashing the blade up, through Berras’s right hand.

  He roared in pain as a hundred shards of broken glass rained down onto the floor, Berras’s severed fingers landing dully among the shine. The golden ring sloughed off, became a thin chain again. He screamed, and lunged for his brother with his other fist, but Alucard was ready, the wind at his back, and it met Berras with more force than a body—even his—could muster.