A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic #2) - V.E. Schwab Page 0,61
his bright eyes were less amazed, more intense. He’d grown up, and Kell couldn’t help but wonder if it was all natural, the simple, inevitable progression of time, or if the last dregs of his youth had been stripped away by what had happened.
“Look,” said the prince, “I know things have been hard. Harder these past months than ever. And I know I’ve only made it worse.”
“Rhy—”
The prince held up his hand to silence him. “I’ve been difficult.”
“So have I,” admitted Kell.
“You really have.”
Kell found himself chuckling, but shook his head. “One life is a hard thing to keep hold of, Rhy. Two is …”
“We’ll find our stride,” insisted the prince. And then he shrugged. “Or you’ll get us both killed.”
“How can you say that with such levity?” snapped Kell, straightening.
“Kell.” Rhy sat forward, elbows on his knees. “I was dead.”
The words hung in the air between them.
“I was dead,” he said again, “and you brought me back. You have already given me something I shouldn’t have.” A shadow flashed across his face when he said it, there and then gone. “If it were lost again,” he went on, “I would still have lived twice. This is all borrowed.”
“No,” said Kell sternly, “it is bought and paid for.”
“For how long?” countered Rhy. “You cannot measure out what you have purchased. I am grateful for the life you’ve bought me, though I hate the cost. But what do you plan to do, Kell? Live forever? I don’t want that.”
Kell frowned. “You would rather die?”
Rhy looked tired. “Death comes for us all, Brother. You cannot hide from it forever. We will die one day, you and I.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?”
Rhy shrugged. “Not nearly as much as the idea of wasting a perfectly good life in fear of it. And to that end …” He nudged the box toward Kell.
“What is it?”
“A peace offering. A present. Happy birthday.”
Kell frowned. “My birthday’s not for another month.”
Rhy took up his tea. “Don’t be ungrateful. Just take it.”
Kell drew the box onto his knees and lifted the lid. Inside, a face stared up at him.
It was a helmet, made of a single piece of metal that curved from the chin over the top of the head and down to the base of the skull. A break formed the mouth, an arch the nose, and a browlike visor hid the wearer’s eyes. Aside from this subtle shaping, the mask’s only markings were a pair of decorative wings, one above each ear.
“Am I going into battle?” asked Kell, confused.
“Of a sort,” said Rhy. “It’s your mask, for the tournament.”
Kell nearly dropped the helmet. “The Essen Tasch? Have you lost your mind?”
Rhy shrugged. “I don’t think so. Not unless you’ve lost yours …” He paused. “Do you think it works that way? I mean, I suppose it—”
“I’m an Antari!” Kell cut in, struggling to keep his voice down. “I’m the adopted son of the Maresh crown, the strongest magician in the Arnesian empire, possibly in the world—”
“Careful, Kell, your ego is showing.”
“—and you want me to compete in an inter-empire tournament.”
“Obviously the great and powerful Kell can’t compete,” said Rhy. “That would be like rigging the game. It could start a war.”
“Exactly.”
“Which is why you’ll be in disguise.”
Kell groaned, shaking his head. “This is insane, Rhy. And even if you were crazy enough to think it could work, Tieren would never allow it.”
“Oh, he didn’t. Not at first. He fought me tooth and nail. Called it madness. Called us fools—”
“It wasn’t even my idea!”
“—but in the end he understood that approving of something and allowing it are not always the same thing.”
Kell’s eyes narrowed. “Why would Tieren change his mind?”
Rhy swallowed. “Because I told him the truth.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you needed it.”
“Rhy—”
“That we needed it.” He grimaced a little when he said it.
Kell hesitated, meeting his brother’s gaze. “What do you mean?”
Rhy shoved himself up from the chair. “You’re not the only one who wants to crawl out of their skin, Kell,” he said, pacing. “I see the way this confinement is wearing on you.” He tapped his chest. “I feel it. You spend hours training in the Basin with no one to fight, and you have not been at peace a single day since Holland, since the Danes, since the Black Night. And if you want the honest truth, unless you find some release”—Rhy stopped pacing—“I’ll end up strangling you myself.”
Kell winced, and looked down at the mask in his lap. He ran his fingers over the