A Conjuring of Light

by V. E. Schwab

  “Go and finish your own spell, Tieren. And let me finish mine.”

  VI

  By the time Rhy returned to the palace, the light was gone and his armor was painted grey with ash. More than half of the men in the hall had died; the surviving few now marched in his wake, helms beneath their arms, faces gaunt from fever and lit by lines of silver that trailed like tears down this cheeks.

  Rhy climbed the front steps in exhausted silence.

  The silvered guards stationed at the palace doors said nothing, and he wondered if they’d known—they had to have known, letting so many of their own pass through into the fog. They wouldn’t meet their prince’s gaze, but they met one another’s, exchanging a single nod that might have been pride or solidarity, or something else Rhy couldn’t read.

  His second guard, Vis, was standing in the front hall, clearly waiting for word of Tolners. Rhy shook his head and pushed past him, past everyone, heading for the royal baths, needing to be clean, but as he walked his armor seemed to tighten around him, cutting into his throat, binding his ribs.

  He couldn’t breathe, and for an instant he thought of the river, of Kell trapped beneath the surface while he’d gasped for air above, but this wasn’t an echo of his brother’s suffering. His own chest was heaving itself against the armor plate, his own heart pounding, his own lungs coated with the ash of dead men. He had to be rid of it.

  “Your Highness?” said Vis as he fought to strip off the armor. The pieces tumbled to the floor, clanging and sending up plumes of dust.

  But his chest was still lurching, and his stomach, too, and he barely reached the nearest basin before he was sick.

  He clutched the edges of the bowl, dragging in ragged breaths as his heart finally slowed. Vis stood nearby, holding the discarded helmet in his hands.

  “It’s been a long day,” said Rhy shakily, and Vis didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t say anything, and for that, Rhy was grateful. He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, straightened, and continued toward the royal baths.

  He was already unbuttoning his tunic when he reached the doors and saw that the room beyond wasn’t empty.

  Two servants draped in silver and green stood along the far wall, and Cora perched on the stone rim of the large bath set into the floor, dipping a comb into the water and running it through her long, loose hair. The Veskan princess was wearing only a robe, open at the waist, and Rhy knew her people weren’t prudish when it came to bodies, but still he blushed at the sight of so much fair skin.

  His shirt still half buttoned, his hands slid back to his sides.

  Cora’s blue eyes drifted up.

  “Mas vares,” she said in halting Arnesian.

  “Na ch’al,” he responded hoarsely in Veskan.

  The comb came to rest in her lap as she took in his ash-streaked face. “Do you want me to go?”

  He honestly didn’t know. After hours of holding his head up, of being strong while other men fought and died, he couldn’t put on another show, couldn’t pretend that everything was all right, but the thought of being alone with his thoughts, with the shadows, not the ones outside the palace walls, but the ones that came for him at night …

  Cora was starting to rise when he said, “Ta’ch.”

  Don’t.

  She sank back to her knees as two of his own servants came forward and began to undress him with quick, efficient motions. He expected Cora to look away, but she watched steadily, a curious light in her eyes as they freed the last of his armor, unlaced his boots, unfastened the buttons at cuff and collar with hands steadier than his. The servants peeled away the tunic, exposing his bare, dark chest, smooth except for the line at his ribs, the swirling scar over his heart.

  “Clean the armor,” he said softly. “Burn the cloth.”

  Rhy stepped forward, then, a silent command that he’d see to the rest himself.

  He left his trousers on and padded barefoot straight down the beautiful inlaid steps and into the bath, the warm water embracing his ankles, his knees, his waist. The clear pool fogged around him, a clouded train of ash in his wake.

  He waded to the center of the bath and went under, folding to his knees on the basin floor. His body tried to rise, but he forced all the air from his lungs and dug his fingertips into the grate on the bath floor, and held on until it hurt, until the water smoothed around him, and the world began to tunnel, and no more ash came off his skin.

  And when at last he rose, breaking the surface with a ragged gasp, Cora was there, robe discarded on the edge of the bath, her long blond hair held up by some deft motion of the comb. Her hands floated from the surface of the bath like lilies.

  “Can I help?” she asked, and before he could answer, she was kissing him, her fingertips brushing his hips beneath the water. Heat flared through him, simple and physical, and Rhy fought to keep his senses as the girl’s hands caught the laces of his trousers and began to drag them loose.

  He tore his mouth free.

  “I thought you had a fondness for my brother,” he rasped.

  Cora flashed a mischievous smile. “I have a fondness for many things,” she said, pulling him close again. Her hand slid over him, and he felt himself rising as she pressed into him, her mouth soft and searching against his, and part of Rhy wanted to let her, to take her, to lose himself the way he had so many times after Alucard left, to hold off the shadows and the nightmares with the simple, welcome distraction of another body.

  His hands drifted up to her shoulders.

  “Ta’ch,” he said, easing her back.

  Her cheeks colored, hurt crossing her face before indignation. “You do not want me.”

  “No,” he said gently. “Not like this.”

  Her gaze flicked down to the place where her fingers still rested against him, her expression coy. “Your body and your mind seem to disagree, my prince.”

  Rhy flushed and took a step back through the water. “I’m sorry.” He continued to retreat until his back hit the stone side of the bath. He sank onto a bench.

  The princess sighed, letting her arms drift absently through the water in a childlike way, as if those fingers hadn’t just been questing deftly across his skin. “So it’s true,” she mused, “what they say about you?”

  Rhy tensed. He had heard most of the rumors, and all of the truths, heard men speak about his lack of powers, about whether he deserved to be king, about who shared his bed, and who didn’t, but still he forced himself to ask. “What do they say, Cora?”

  She drifted toward him—wisps of blond hair escaping her bun in the bath’s heat—and came to rest beside him on the bench, legs tucked up beneath her. She crossed her arms on the edge of the bath, and leaned her head on top, and just like that, she seemed to shed the last of her seduction and become a girl again.

  “They say, Rhy Maresh, that your heart is taken.”

  He tried to speak, but he didn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated,” he managed.

  “Of course it is.” Cora trailed her fingers through the water. “I was in love once,” she added, as if it were an afterthought. “His name was Vik. I loved him the way the moon loves the stars—that is what we say, when a person fills the world with light.”

  “What happened?”

  Her pale blue eyes drifted up. “You are the sole heir to your throne,” she said. “But I am one of seven. Love is not enough.”

  The way she said it, as if it were a simple, immutable truth, made his eyes burn, his throat tighten. He thought of Alucard, not the way he’d been when Rhy sent him away, or even as he was on the Banner Night, but the Alucard who’d lingered in his bed that first summer, lips playing against his skin as he whispered the words.

  I love you.

  Cora’s fingers stilled, splaying on the water’s surface, and Rhy noticed the deep scratches circling her wrist, the bruised skin. She caught him looking and flicked her hand, a motion of dismissal.

  “My brother has a temper,” she said absently. “Sometimes he f
orgets his strength.” And then, a small, defiant smile. “But he always forgets mine.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It is nothing that won’t heal.” She shifted. “Your scars are far more interesting.”

  Rhy’s fingers went to the mark over his heart, but he said nothing, and she asked nothing, and they settled into an easy quiet, steam rising in tendrils around them, the patterns swirling in the mist. Rhy felt his mind drifting, to shadows, and dying men, to blades between ribs, and cold, dark places slick with blood, and beyond, beyond, the silence, thick as cotton, heavy as stone.

  “Do you have the gift?”

  Rhy blinked, the visions dissolving back into the baths. “What gift?”

  Cora’s fingers curled through the steam. “In my country, there are those who look into the fog and see things that are not there. Things that haven’t happened yet. Just now, you looked like you were seeing something.”

  “Not seeing,” said Rhy. “Just remembering.”

  * * *

  They sat for ages in the bath, eager to leave neither the warmth nor the company. They perched side by side on the stone bench at the basin’s edge, or on the cooler tile of its rim, and spoke—not about the past, or their respective scars. Instead, they shared the present. Rhy told her about the city beyond the walls, about the curse cast over London, its strange and spreading transmutation, about the fallen, and the silvers. And Cora told him about the claustrophobic palace with its maddening nobles, the gallery where they gathered to worry, the corners where they huddled to whisper.

  Cora had the kind of voice that rang out through a room, but when she spoke softly, there was a music to it, a melody that he found lulling. She wove stories about this lord and that lady, calling them by their clothes since she didn’t always know their names. She spoke of the magicians, too, with their tempers and their egos, recounted whole conversations without a stutter or a stop.

  Cora, it seemed, had a mind like a gem, sharp and bright, and buried beneath childish airs. He knew why she did it—it was the same reason he played a rake as much as a royal. It was easier, sometimes, to be underestimated, discounted, dismissed.

  “… And then he actually did it,” she was saying. “Swallowed a glass of wine and lit a spark, and poof, burned half his beard off.”

  Rhy laughed—it felt easy, and wrong, and so very needed—and Cora shook her head. “Never dare a Veskan. It turns us stupid.”

  “Kell said he had to knock one of your magicians out cold to keep her from charging into the fog.”

  Cora cocked her head. “I haven’t seen your brother all day. Where has he gone?”

  Rhy leaned his head back against the tiles. “To find help.”

  “He’s not in the palace?”

  “He’s not in the city.”

  “Oh,” she said thoughtfully. And then her smile was back, lazy on her lips. “And what about this?” she asked, producing Rhy’s royal pin.

  He shot upright. “Where did you get that?”

  “It was in your trouser pocket.”

  He reached for it, and she pulled playfully out of reach.

  “Give it back,” he demanded, and she must have heard the warning in his voice, the sudden, shocking cold of the command, because she didn’t resist, didn’t play any games. Rhy’s hand closed over the water-warmed metal. “It’s late,” he said, rising out of the bath. “I should go.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, looking genuinely hurt.

  He ran a hand through damp curls. “You didn’t,” he lied as a pair of servants appeared, wrapping a robe around his bare shoulders. Anger burned through him, but only at himself for letting his guard slip, letting his focus drift. He should have left long ago, but he hadn’t wanted to face the shadows that came with sleep. Now his body ached, his mind blurring with fatigue. “It’s been a long day, and I’m tired.”

  Sadness washed across Cora’s face.

  “Rhy,” she mewed, “it was only a game. I wouldn’t have kept it.”

  He knelt on the bath’s tiled edge, tipped her chin, and kissed her once on the forehead. “I know,” he said.

  He left her sitting alone in the bath.

  Outside, Vis was slumped in a chair, weary but awake.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rhy as the guard rose beside him. “You shouldn’t have waited. Or I shouldn’t have stayed.”

  “It’s all right, sir,” said the man groggily, falling into step behind him.

  The palace had gone quiet around them, only the murmur of the guards on duty filling the air as Rhy climbed the stairs, pausing outside Kell’s room before remembering he wasn’t there.

  His own chamber stood empty, the lamps lit low, casting long shadows on every surface. A collection of tonics glittered on the sideboard—Tieren’s concoctions for nights when it got bad—but the warmth of the bath still clung to his limbs and dawn was only a few hours away, so Rhy set his pin on the table and fell into the bed.

  Only to be assaulted by a ball of white fur.

  Alucard’s cat had been sleeping on his pillow, and gave an indignant chirp when Rhy landed on the sheets. He didn’t have the energy to evict the cat—its violet eyes were daring him to try—so Rhy slumped back, content to share the space. He threw an arm over his eyes and was surprised to feel the soft weight of a paw prodding his arm before curling up against his side. He slid his fingers absently through the creature’s fur, letting the soft rumble of its purr and the faint, lingering scent of the captain—all sea breeze and summer wine—pull him down into sleep.

  VII

  There was a moment, when a ship first put out to sea.

  When the land fell away and the world stretched wide, nothing but water and sky and freedom.

  It was Lila’s favorite time, when anything could happen and nothing yet had. She stood on the deck of the Ghost as Tanek parted around them, and the wild night opened its arms.

  When she finally went below, Jasta was waiting at the base of the stairs.

  “Avan,” said Lila casually.

  “Avan,” rumbled Jasta.

  It was a narrow hall, and she had to sidestep the captain in order to get by. She was halfway past when Jasta’s hand shot out and closed around her throat. Lila’s feet left the floor and then she was hanging, pinned roughly against the wall. She scrambled for purchase, too stunned to summon magic or reach her blade. By the time she finally freed the one she kept strapped to her ribs, the captain’s hand had withdrawn and Lila was sagging back against the wall. One leg buckled before she managed to catch herself.

  “What the everloving hell was that for?”

  Jasta just stood there, looking down at Lila as if she hadn’t just tried to strangle her. “That,” said the captain, “was for insulting my ship.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she snarled.

  Jasta simply shrugged. “That was a warning. Next time, I throw you over.”

  With that, the captain held out her hand. It seemed a bad idea to take it, but a worse idea to refuse. Before Lila could decide, Jasta reached down and hauled her upright, gave her a sturdy pat on the back, and walked away, whistling as she went.

  Lila watched the woman go, rocked by the sudden violence, the fact that she hadn’t seen it coming. She holstered her blade with shaking fingers, and went to find Kell.

  * * *

  He was in the first cabin on the left.

  “Well, this is cozy,” she said, standing in the doorway.

  The cabin was half the size of a closet, and about as welcoming. With just enough space for a single cot, it reminded Lila a bit too much of the makeshift coffin she’d been buried in by a bitter Faroan during the tournament.

  Kell was sitting on the cot, turning a royal pin over in his fingers. When he saw her, he tucked it in his pocket.

  “Room for another?” she asked, feeling like a fool even as she said it. There were only four cabins, and one was being used as a cell.

  “I think we can make do,” said Ke
ll, rising to his feet. “But if you’d rather…”

  He took a step toward the door, as if to go. She didn’t want him to.

  “Stay,” she said, and there it was, that flickering smile, like an ember, coaxed with every breath.

  “All right.”

  A single lantern hung from the ceiling, and Kell snapped his fingers, pale fire dancing above his thumb as he reached up to light the wick. Lila turned in a careful circle, surveying the cubby. “A bit smaller than your usual accommodations, mas vares?”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said, pulling her back toward him, and she was about to say it again just to tease him when she saw the look in his eyes and relented, running her hands along his coat.

  “All right.”

  He pulled her close, brushing his thumb against her cheek, and she knew he was looking at her eye, the spiral of fractured glass.

  “You really didn’t notice?”

  Color spread across his fair cheeks, and she wondered, absently, if his skin freckled in the summer. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I was distracted by your charm?”

  Lila let out a low, sharp laugh. “My knives, perhaps. My quick fingers. But not my charm.”

  “Wit, then. Power.”

  She flashed a wicked smile. “Go on.”

  “I was distracted by everything about you, Lila. I still am. You’re maddening, infuriating, incredible.” She’d ben teasing, but he clearly wasn’t. Everything about him—the set of his mouth, the crease in his brow, the intensity in that blue eye—was dead serious. “I have never known what to make of you. Not since the day we met. And it terrifies me. You terrify me.” He cupped her face in both hands. “And the idea of you walking away again, vanishing from my life, that terrifies me most of all.”

  Her heart was racing, banging out that same old song—run, run, run—but she was tired of running, of letting things go before she had the chance to lose them. She pulled Kell closer.

  “Next time I walk away,” she whispered into his skin, “come with me.” She let her gaze drift up to his throat, his jaw, his lips. “When this is all over, when Osaron is gone and we’ve saved the world again, and everyone else gets their happily ever after, come with me.”