A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1) - V.E Schwab Page 0,58

him as he reached for the clean tunic and shrugged it gingerly over his shoulders. “What is it?” he asked.

“You said no one would follow you.”

“I said no one could,” corrected Kell. “Because no one can, except for Holland.” Kell looked at his hands and frowned. “I just never thought—”

“One is not the same thing as none, Kell,” said Lila. And then she let out a breath and ran a hand through her cropped dark hair. “But I suppose you didn’t exactly have all your wits about you.” Kell looked up in surprise. Was she actually excusing him? “And I did hit you with a book.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Lila, waving her hand. “So this Holland. He’s like you?”

Kell swallowed, remembering Holland’s words in the alley—We may share an ability, you and I, but that does not make us equals—and the dark, almost disdainful look that crossed his face when he said it. He thought of the brand burned into the other Antari’s skin, and the patchwork of scars on his arms, and the White king’s smug smile as Holland pressed the knife into his skin. No, Holland was nothing like Kell, and Kell was nothing like Holland.

“He can also move between worlds,” explained Kell. “In that way, we are alike.”

“And the eye?” questioned Lila.

“A mark of our magic,” said Kell. “Antari. That is what we are called. Blood magicians.”

Lila chewed her lip. “Are there any others I should know about?” she asked, and Kell thought he saw a sliver of something—fear?—cross her features, buried almost instantly behind the stubborn set of her jaw.

Kell shook his head slowly. “No,” he said, “We are the only two.”

He expected her to look relieved, but her expression only grew graver. “Is that why he didn’t kill you?”

“What do you mean?”

Lila sat forward in her chair. “Well, if he’d wanted to kill you, he could have. Why bleed you dry? For the fun of it? He didn’t seem to be enjoying himself.”

She was right. Holland could have slit his throat. But he hadn’t.

It’s really quite hard to kill Antari. Holland’s words echoed in Kell’s head. But I can’t have—

Can’t have what? wondered Kell. Ending an Antari’s life might be hard, but it wasn’t impossible. Had Holland been fighting against his orders, or following them?

“Kell?” pressed Lila.

“Holland never enjoys himself,” he said under his breath. And then he looked up sharply. “Where is the stone now?”

Lila gave him a long weighing look and then said, “I have it.”

“Then give it back,” demanded Kell, surprising himself with his own urgency. He told himself it would be safest on his person, but in truth, he wanted to hold it, couldn’t shake the sense that if he did, his aching muscles would be soothed and his weak blood strengthened.

She rolled her eyes. “Not this again.”

“Lila, listen to me. You’ve no idea what—”

“Actually,” she cut in, getting to her feet, “I’m starting to get a decent idea of what it can do. If you want it back, tell me the rest.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Kell automatically.

“Try me,” she challenged.

Kell squinted at her, this strange girl. Lila Bard did seem to have a way of figuring things out. She was still alive. That said something. And she’d come back for him. He didn’t know why—cutthroats and thieves weren’t usually known for their moral compasses—but he did know that without her, he would be in a far worse state.

“Very well,” said Kell, swinging his legs off the bed. “The stone is from a place known as Black London.”

“You mentioned other Londons,” she said, as if the concept were curious, but not entirely impossible. She didn’t faze easily. “How many are there?”

Kell ran a hand through his auburn hair. It stuck up at odd angles from rain and sleep. “There are four worlds,” he said. “Think of them as different houses built on the same foundation. They have little in common, save for their geography, and the fact that each has a version of this city straddling this river on this island country, and in each, that city is called London.”

“That must be confusing.”

“It isn’t, really, when you live in only one of them and never need think of the others. But as someone who moves between, I use color to keep them straight. Grey London, which is yours. Red London, which is mine. White London, which is Holland’s. And Black London, which is no one’s.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because it fell,” said Kell, rubbing the back of his neck where the pendant cords had snapped.