A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) - V.E. Schwab Page 0,14

on the wine at that, then glowered at Alucard. He was laughing—it was an easy, natural sound, though it made the cat ruffle her fur. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, regaining his composure. Lila felt as though she were the color of the liquor in her glass. Her face burned. It made her want to punch him.

“Come keep me company,” he tried again, “and I’ll keep your secret.”

“And let the crew think you’re bedding me?”

“Oh, I doubt they’ll think that,” he said with a wave of his hand. Lila tried not to feel insulted. “And I promise, I want only the pleasure of your conversation. I’ll even help you with your Arnesian.”

Lila rapped her fingers on the arm of the chair, considering. “All right,” she said. She got to her feet and crossed to his desk, where her knife still sat atop the maps. She thought of the way he’d plucked it out of her grip. “But I want a favor in return.”

“Funny, I thought the favor was allowing you to remain on my ship, despite the fact you’re a liar, a thief, and a murderer. But please, do go on.”

“Magic,” she said, returning the blade to its holster.

He raised the sapphire-studded brow. “What of it?”

She hesitated, trying to choose her words. “You can do it.”

“And?”

Lila pulled Kell’s gift from her pocket and set it on the table. “And I want to learn.” If she was going to have a chance in this new world, she needed to learn its true language.

“I’m not a very good teacher,” said Alucard.

“But I’m a fast learner.”

Alucard tipped his head, considering. Then he took up Kell’s box and released the clasp, letting it fall open in his palm. “What do you want to know?”

Lila returned to the chair and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “Everything.”

V

THE ARNESIAN SEA

Lila hummed as she made her way through the belly of the ship. She shoved one hand in her pocket, fingers closing around the shard of white stone she kept there. A reminder.

It was late, and the Night Spire had sailed on from the picked-over bones of the Copper Thief. The thirteen pirates she hadn’t killed would be waking soon, only to find their captain dead and their ship sacked. It could be worse; their throats could have been slit along those inked blades. But Alucard preferred to let the pirates live, claiming that catch and release made the seas more interesting.

Her body was warm from wine and pleasant company, and as the ship swayed gently beneath her feet, the sea air wrapping around her shoulders, and the waves murmuring their song, that lullaby she’d wanted for so long, Lila realized she was happy.

A voice hissed in her ear.

Leave.

Lila recognized that voice, not from the sea, but from the streets of Grey London—it belonged to her, to the girl she’d been for so many years. Desperate, distrustful of anything that wasn’t hers, and hers alone.

Leave, it urged. But Lila didn’t want to.

And that scared her more than anything.

She shook her head and hummed the Sarows song as she reached her own cabin, the chords like a ward against trouble, even though she hadn’t found any aboard her own ship in months. Not that it was her ship, not exactly, not yet.

Her cabin was small—barely big enough for a cot and a trunk—but it was the only place on the ship where she could be truly alone, and the weight of her persona slid from her shoulders like a coat as she closed the door.

A single window interrupted the wooden boards of the far wall, moonlight reflecting against the ocean swells. She lifted a lantern from the trunk’s top and it lit in her hand with the same enchanted fire that filled Alucard’s hearth (the spell wasn’t hers, and neither was the magic). Hanging the light on a wall hook, she shucked her boots as well as her weapons, lining them up on the trunk, all save the knuckled knife, which she kept with her. Even though she now had a room of her own, she still slept with her back to the wall and the weapon on her knee, the way she had in the beginning. Old habits. She didn’t mind so much. She hadn’t had a good nights’ sleep in years. Life on the Grey London streets had taught her how to rest without ever really sleeping.

Beside her weapons sat the small box Kell had given her that day. It smelled like