A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) - V.E Schwab Page 0,54

ground, and then held it out in front of her like a light.

“Stop,” she ordered. Nothing.

“Go away.” The magic faltered.

Kell pressed his hands flat into the pool of blood beneath him. “As Anasae,” he said, and coughed, the command finally passing his lips without Holland’s will to force it down.

And this time, the magic listened.

The spells broke. The chains dissolved to nothing around his legs, and Kell’s lungs filled with air. Power flooded through what little blood was left in his veins. It felt like there was nearly none.

“Can you stand?” asked Lila. She helped him to his feet, and the whole world swayed, his sight plunging into black for several horrible seconds. He felt her grip on him tighten.

“Keep it together,” she said.

“Holland …” he murmured, his voice sounding strange and faraway in his own ears. Lila looked back at the man sprawled on the ground. Her hand closed over the stone, and smoke poured out.

“Wait …” said Kell shakily, but the chains were already taking shape, first in smoke and then in the same dark metal he’d only just escaped. They seemed to grow straight out of the street and coil around Holland’s body, his waist and wrists and ankles, pinning him to the damp ground as he had pinned Kell. It wouldn’t hold him long, but it was better than nothing. At first, Kell marveled that Lila could summon something so specific. Then he remembered she didn’t need to have power. She needed only to want a thing. The stone did the rest.

“No more magic,” he warned as she shoved the stone into her pocket, the strain showing on her face. Her grip had vanished for a moment, and when he took a step forward, he nearly collapsed, but Lila was there again to catch him.

“Steady now,” she said, pulling his arm around her narrow shoulders. “I had to find my gun. Stay with me.”

Kell clung to consciousness as long as he could. But the world was dangerously quiet, the distance between his thoughts and his body growing further apart. He couldn’t feel the pain in his arm where the nail had struck—couldn’t feel much of anything, which scared him more than the pressing dark. Kell had fought before, but never like this, never for his life. He’d gotten into his fair share of scrapes (most of them Rhy’s fault) and had had his fair share of bruises, but he’d always walked away intact. He’d never been seriously hurt, never struggled to keep his own heart beating. Now he feared that if he stopped fighting, if he stopped forcing his feet forward and his eyes open, that he might actually die. He didn’t want to die. Rhy would never forgive him if he died.

“Stay with me,” echoed Lila.

Kell tried to focus on the ground beneath his boots. On the rain that had started to fall. On Lila’s voice. The words themselves began to blur together, but he held on to the sound as he fought to keep the darkness at bay. He held on as she helped him over the bridge that seemed to go on and on forever, and through the streets that wound and tipped around them. He held on as hands—Lila’s and then another’s—dragged him through a doorway and up a flight of old stairs and into a room, stripping off his blood-soaked clothes.

He held on until he felt a cot beneath him and Lila’s voice stopped and the thread was gone.

And then he finally, gratefully, plummeted down into black.

III

Lila was soaked to the bone.

Halfway across the bridge, the sky had finally opened up—not a drizzle, as London often seemed to favor, but a downpour. Within moments, they had been soaked through. It certainly didn’t make dragging the half-conscious Kell any easier. Lila’s arms ached from holding him up—she nearly fumbled him twice—and by the time she reached the back door of the Stone’s Throw, Kell was barely conscious and Lila was shivering and all she could think was that she should have kept running.

She hadn’t lived this long and stayed this free by stopping to help every fool who got himself into trouble. It was all she could do to keep herself out of trouble, and whatever else Holland was, he was clearly trouble.

But Kell had come back.

He didn’t have to—didn’t have any reason to—but he had, all the same, and the weight of it clung to her when she fled, slowing her down before finally dragging her boots to a stop. Even