A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) - V.E Schwab Page 0,56

archly.

“You know what he is then?” she asked.

“Do you?” challenged Barron.

“In a way,” she retorted. “First I took him for a mark.”

Barron ran a hand through his hair, and Lila realized for the first time that it was thinning. “Christ, Lila,” he muttered. “What did you take?”

Her gaze flicked to the bottom drawer of the chest, then drifted back to Kell. He looked deathly pale against the dark blanket on her bed, and he wasn’t moving, save for the faint rise and fall of his chest.

She took him in, the magical young man in her bed, first so guarded, now exposed. Vulnerable. Her eyes trailed up the lines of his stomach, over his wounded ribs, across his throat. They wandered down his arms, bare but for the knife strapped to his forearm. She hadn’t touched it this time.

“What happened?” asked Barron.

Lila wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. It had been a very strange night.

“I stole something, and he came looking for it,” she said quietly, unable to draw her eyes from Kell’s face. He looked younger asleep. “Took it back. I thought that was the end of that. But someone else came looking for him. Found me instead …” She trailed off, then picked up. “He saved my life,” she said, half to herself, brow crinkling. “I don’t know why.”

“So you brought him here.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lila, turning toward Barron. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” The words stung even as she said them. “As soon as he wakes—”

Barron was shaking his head. “I’d rather you here than dead. The person who did this”—he waved a hand at Kell’s body—“are they dead?”

Lila shook her head.

Barron frowned. “Best tell me what they look like, so I know not to let them in.”

Lila described Holland as best she could. His faded appearance. His two-toned eyes. “He feels like Kell,” she added. “If that makes sense. Like—”

“Magic,” said Barron matter-of-factly.

Lila’s eyes widened. “How do you … ?”

“Running a tavern, you meet all kinds. Running this tavern, you meet all kinds, and then some.”

Lila realized she was shivering, and Barron went in search of another tunic for Kell while she changed. He came back with an extra towel, a small pile of clothes, and a steaming bowl of soup. Lila felt ill and grateful at the same time. Barron’s kindness was like a curse, because she knew she had done nothing to deserve it. It wasn’t fair. Barron did not owe her anything. Yet she owed him so much. Too much. It drove her mad.

Still, her hunger had finally caught up with her fatigue, and the cold in her skin was quickly becoming the cold in her bones, so she took the soup and mumbled a thank-you and added the cost to the coin she already owed, as if this kind of debt could ever be paid.

Barron left them and went below. Outside, the night wore on. The rain wore on, too.

She didn’t remember sitting down, but she woke up an hour or so later in her wooden chair with a blanket tossed over her shoulders. She was stiff, and Kell was still asleep.

Lila rolled her neck and sat forward.

“Why did you come back?” she asked again, as if Kell might answer in his sleep.

But he didn’t. Didn’t mumble. Didn’t toss or turn. He just lay there, so pale and so still that now and then Lila would hold a piece of glass to his lips to make sure he hadn’t died. His bare chest rose and fell, and she noticed that, present injuries aside, he had so few scars. A faint line at his shoulder. A much fresher one across his palm. A ghosted mark in the crook of his elbow.

Lila had too many scars to count, but she could count Kell’s. And she did. Several times.

The tavern below had quieted, and Lila got to her feet and burned a few more herbs. She turned her silver watch and waited for Kell to wake. Sleep dragged at her bones, but every time she thought of rest, she imagined Holland stepping through her wall, the way Kell had. Pain echoed through her arm where he’d gripped her, a small jagged burn the only relic, and her fingers went to the Flintlock at her hip.

If she had another shot, she wouldn’t miss.

VIII

AN ARRANGEMENT

I

Kell woke up in Lila’s bed for the second time that night.

Though at least this time, he discovered, there were no ropes. His hands rested at his sides, bound by nothing