A Universe of Wishes
Page 13
“Leave,” warned Kell again, “or I will make you.”
Alucard shook his head, muttering a soft prayer under his breath. It might have sounded like a curse, if you couldn’t see the magic gathering around his hands, the threads brightening with every word.
Kell took a single step forward before the wind slammed into him.
He threw up his arms against the sudden gale, but his boots slipped and slid over the floor until his back hit the wall. Before he could recover, Alucard pulled on the earth and stone to every side. Not enough to bring the passage down on top of them, just enough to make a barricade, bars of dirt and rock drawing lines across the narrow hall.
Kell looked more annoyed than overwhelmed.
He reached out, and the wind died, and the bars crumbled back into earth.
“Are you done?” he asked dryly, and Alucard was about to answer when all the air left his lungs, and his body buckled against the floor. It felt like he was being crushed beneath a massive weight.
This wasn’t wind magic. Wasn’t earth, or water.
No, his body screamed, this was bone.
A forbidden element, even for Antari.
“That’s”—Alucard fought to fill his lungs—“illegal.”
“So is breaking into the palace.” Kell drew a dagger from his belt, the edge glinting in the dark. He drew the blade across his skin, blood welling, crimson shot through with silver only he could see. It poured from the shallow cut.
Alucard’s body screamed in protest as he tried to rise, to move at all.
Kell touched the blood, then Alucard’s forehead.
“You know,” he said, “I could kill you just for trespassing.”
He felt the drop of blood run like a tear between his eyes, down his nose.
Two words, and the Antari could turn him to ash. To ice. To stone.
“You wouldn’t,” he hissed.
Kell drew a mark on his forehead.
“As Tascen,” he said, and the air lodged in Alucard’s chest, the world rocking violently sideways.
And then he was kneeling on the grass, the night sky wide and dark, clouds blushing with the reflected light of the Isle river.
They were in the palace orchard, between two rows of trees.
Alucard shuddered, relieved to find that he could move again. He staggered to his feet.
“Go home,” said Kell, already turning away.
“I have to see him. I have to explain—”
Kell stopped. “Do you care for my brother?”
“Yes!” hissed Alucard, exasperated.
“Then save your sweet nothings, and say them in daylight.” Kell turned back, his gaze piercing, even in the dark. “If he is nothing but a prize, a way to pass the time, then leave, and stay away.
“But if it is love,” he added, “then come back, and make your feelings known in the presence of the king. Court him in the proper way.”
Alucard shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is now,” said Kell, drawing a symbol on the nearest tree. “As Tascen,” he muttered, and then the world simply parted, and he was gone, leaving Alucard alone in the dark.
He sank back to the ground, his head in his hands.
If it is love.
But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.
Alucard could not afford to fall in love.
And so he’d told himself he wouldn’t. Told himself it was like summer fruit, savored in season but hardly mourned in winter. Told himself it would be nothing but a fun affair, a way to pass the warmest months.
He’d told himself every time he left Rhy’s bed.
Every time he felt his pulse quicken at the prince’s touch.
Every time he blushed at the prince’s smile.
He’d told himself—as if his heart would listen.
That traitorous heart, now thudding in his chest, beating out the answer like a drum.
Because, of course, it was love.
He was in love with the prince of Arnes.
And he would have to tell him. And the king and queen. And then, somehow, he would have to tell his family. But what could they do, if the Crown approved? Perhaps it would be enough. Perhaps he would be free.
Alucard fell back against the grass and sighed. He closed his eyes, whispering the truth to the trees in the orchard, testing it on his tongue.
He thought of staying there, waiting for dawn, but his clothes were rumpled, the shoulder of his coat torn, his hair a wild mess of curls.
He could not stand before the king like this.
What a shabby suitor he would make.
A suitor. The thought of declaring himself left Alucard breathless and dizzy, his confidence flagging in the dark. But he closed his eyes and thought of Rhy, summoned the prince as if he were a piece of magic.
Those gold eyes lit his way across the river.
That warm voice carried him home.
He was in love.
The knowledge hung like a chain around his neck. And yet there was a warmth to the weight, like armor in the sun.
He was in love.
He scaled the wall of the estate, swung his leg up onto his balcony, the words beating in his chest.
He was in love, and in the morning he would say it.
In the morning—
The blow came out of nowhere.
He stumbled, his vision going in and out, taking his attacker with it. Berras flickered, then resolved.
“I warned you, little brother.”
He swung again.
“Wait,” said Alucard, throwing out his hands. He knew he couldn’t stop his brother with words, or fists, but he had earth, he had wind.
The air wrapped like rope around Berras’s wrist, holding it at bay. But what his brother lacked in power, he made up for in brute force. He tore his hand free. Alucard stumbled back, but not fast enough.
Berras slammed his forehead into Alucard’s.
He reeled, blood in his eyes and a high ringing in his ears.
“Stop!”
A flash of blond hair, magic rising like steam as Anisa surged into the room, but she was too young to fight with magic, too young to shape the wind into more than a gust, as effective as open palms shoving at a wall.
Berras turned and struck her once, across the jaw. Anisa stumbled back, as much in shock as in pain, and Alucard summoned enough wind to push her back into the hall, then forced the door shut between them.
She pounded on the wood, her small voice pleading, “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him,” as thin as a breeze, and just as useless.
Berras turned and kicked Alucard in the chest, slamming him backward.
He hit the wall with a sickening crunch, pain exploding through his shoulder and side. He staggered, trying to summon magic. The floorboards groaned, and the air churned, but before he could make sense or shape of it, a voice cleared its throat in the dark.
His father sat on the edge of the bed, fingers curled around his iron cane. When he spoke, his voice had all the warmth of stone. “What a disappointment you are.”
“Father,” gasped Alucard, pain lancing every breath. “Please, let me explain.”
He tried to twist free, but Berras wrenched his ruined shoulder until the world went white. He screamed, in pain and rage, and the whole house trembled.
“I thought you could be bent,” said his father, lifting his iron cane. “Clearly, you must be broken.”
The last thing he saw was the metal slicing through the air, before everything went black.
V
When Alucard was nine, he fell from the garden wall.
The next day it felt as if he’d bruised every bone in his body, though non
e of them were broken.
This was worse.
So much worse.
He woke on the floor, dizzy and sick. He pressed a palm to his temple, or tried, but pain screamed through his arm and across his ribs. He rolled onto his side, and retched, tried to rise, but the floor rocked under his feet, swaying violently. Tried to walk, only to find a steel cuff around his ankle, a chain running to a pole in the wall.
The world was still moving.
It swayed with a rhythmic motion, and Alucard realized the floor wasn’t solid at all.
He was on a ship.
Footsteps sounded overhead, several pairs, and someone was whistling. Alucard screamed until the boots sounded on the stairs, and a man’s face appeared in the hull.
“Oh, look who’s awake.”
“Let me go,” demanded Alucard. “I’m a son of the House of Emery.”
“Maybe back in London,” said the man. “But you’re a ways from London now.”
The words sank through him.
“Where are we? Where are you taking me?”
The captain shifted his weight.
“They paid me to break you in, thicken up that skin, but I think I’d rather sell you off at Sasenroche. See what a noble’s blood is worth.”
Alucard strained against the chain. “Let me go—I’ll pay you more.”
“You’ve got nothing on you. I checked.”
“Once you take me back to London—”
The captain barked a laugh. “Right away, sir,” he said, disappearing up the stairs.
Alucard wrenched on the chain until his body screamed, until he sank, exhausted, to his hands and knees.
He should have stayed in the palace courtyard.
Should have shed the blasted coat and waited on the steps until the sun broke over the city and the doors of the Rose Hall opened.
Alucard sat back on his heels and looked around.
He could lean on the walls of the ship, could peel the wood apart, but to what end? He did not want to sink, did not want to drown.
He tried to focus on the water against the hull, tried to draw it from the mist, the humid air, until he had a handful. He guided the water through the manacle’s keyhole and then froze it, hoping to force the pins apart, the lock open. But it did not work. He tried again, and again, and he was still trying when the shouts went up, overhead, still trying when the deck filled with racing steps, when he heard steel on steel, and screams, and the whole ship rocked with a sudden force, and a body came tumbling down the stairs and landed on the floor a few feet away.
It was the captain.
His eyes were empty, a bloody line across his throat.
Boots sounded on the steps, and a woman came into sight, lanky and dark-skinned and smiling.
“What have we here?” she mused, taking him in.
Alucard had never seen a pirate, but he was sure that was what she was. It was in the way she moved, the clothes that draped around her wiry form, the absence of light in the air around her. No magic. But she clearly knew how to use a blade.
If she knew he was a noble, would she ransom him back? Or slit his throat and leave him by the captain?
Alucard had to think, and fast. He had always been a decent liar. Most nobles learned the skill, along with flattery and politics. He rose to his feet, did his broken best to mirror her, to shed the polish of his accent, the perfect posture of his youth.
It was easy, with how much he hurt.
“Care to help a fellow wanderer?”
She cocked a brow. “Depends. What are you doing chained like a pup?”
“Bad luck,” he said, “worse friends.”
She knelt over the captain’s body, fished about until she found the key. She tossed it to him, and he undid the manacle with shaking hands. She had already left.
Above, the deck was littered with bodies.
A handful of pirates kicked them over, freeing weapons and silver and whatever else caught their eye. Alucard looked past the bloody scene to the open sea.
He squinted into the distance, but there was no sign of land.
“How far are we,” he asked, “from London?”
But the pirate only laughed and clapped a hand on his back. His vision went white with pain. When it cleared, the pirate was swinging her leg over the rail. Beyond a set of wooden planks, another ship waited, pitch-black against the pale blue tide.
“Welcome to the Moonless,” she said proudly. “Seven years at sea, and never been caught.”
* * *
Three days later, the Moonless was caught.
It pulled up alongside an empty vessel, an easy mark, only to find the ship swarming with soldiers. It was bait, dangled in the open waters, waiting for a catch.
Alucard was no pirate then.
He dropped the act. He tried to explain, to tell the soldiers who he was. But either they didn’t believe him or they didn’t care.
He was taken to Hasinar. It was a floating prison, an island off the southern coast, the kind of place where people went in and bodies came out.
He told them that he belonged to a noble house, told them that the Crown would have their heads.
He did not know if that was true, but he said it anyway.
He would have told them anything to get off that blasted rock.
When they didn’t listen, he fought.
He fought until they pinned his broken arm against his back, fought until they forced the steel cuff around his throat, its surface etched with spells, and his magic dropped like a stone in the sea.
At last, Alucard lay in the darkened cell and thought of home, of Rhy, not the pain in his eyes at the Summer Feast but the way he smiled in bed, the way he hummed when he was falling asleep, ringed fingers running through his hair.
VI
In the end, an emissary came.
Days or weeks, he didn’t know, but the cell door eventually scraped open, and he was led out into a leaden day, loaded onto a boat, and ferried back to London. The red light of the river should have been a welcome beacon, but it was not. His brother met him at the docks, and when Berras’s arms closed around him, his bones, still healing, screamed in protest, but he did not.
Their father, he learned, was dead.
And he knew he should have felt more than relief.
But he didn’t.
Alucard was ushered home, past Anisa’s desperate hugs, her worried clinging, and dressed in the rich blue and bright silver of the Emery line, the cloth cut to hide the ruins of his wrists, the bruises that blossomed at his throat. He was made to look the part of a noble and then marched to the royal palace, to the Rose Hall, to face the king and queen, his heart pounding with every forward step, hoping and dreading that the prince would be there.
But as he stepped through, he saw that the place beside the thrones was empty.
Only Kell waited at the open door, those two-tone eyes hard and unblinking. Alucard grabbed Kell’s arm, and the Antari looked at him with such bald loathing, it nearly burned his hand. But he did not withdraw.
“I must see him.”
“Oh, you must?” sneered Kell. “You are owed nothing.” That black eye, unreadable, but the blue glowed with anger. “Twice you broke my brother’s heart. You will not have another chance. Get on your ship and sail away. You are not welcome here.”
“This is my home,” snapped Alucard.
“It was. You burned it down.”
Then Berras’s hand, heavier than any chain on his shoulder, as he was led forward like a reckless child. As he dropped to one knee before the king and queen.
“We are sorry to hear about your father,” said Queen Emira.
Then you did not know him well enough, thought Alucard.
“I have, Your Majesty,” said Alucard, and it was true. He had learned that blood was crueler than water. Had learned the value of his own freedom. Learned that pain was a thing to be endured, and love was not worth the cost.
“Very well,” said the king, and he was pardoned.
It was, he knew, a kindness granted only by his birth, a mercy bought and paid for by his family name.
And so, he was forgiven.
Forgiven, but not free.
King Maxim’s voice rang low through the hall. “Your brother says you long to sail,” announced the king, “and so you sail for me.”
What is the difference between a pirate and a privateer?
The approval of a king.
The ship, he learned, was waiting at the docks.
It was a gift, and a dismissal.
From the palace.
From London.
Alucard felt numb as Berras marched him down the marble steps, past the tents of the market that wouldn’t open until dark, when he was already gone, toward the docks.
The ship stood proud, a gleaming midnight vessel, its name painted silver along the polished wood.
The Night Spire.
Alucard approached the ramp, feeling less like the captain of a ship and more like a prisoner, sentenced to a floating cell.
He heard the footsteps crashing down the dock and spun, hoping, hoping, hoping—but it was Anisa, the light of her magic trailing in the air like sparks.
Berras reached to catch her arm, but she was too quick, around him in an instant, burying her face against Alucard’s front.
“Do you have to go?” she whimpered.
He lifted her chin. “Nis,” he said, managing a smile. “It is a mission from the king himself. It is an honor. You wouldn’t want me to refuse.”
Tears streamed down his sister’s face, but she shook her head, and he hugged her close, only to be met by a soft squeak, a mew from somewhere beneath her cloak.
She opened it, revealing the small white kitten. “Her name’s Esa. A cat is good luck aboard a ship,” she said, pressing the kitten into his arms, “and she will keep you safe.”