She scrambled for the knife she kept against her back, but the man caught her wrist and twisted it viciously up.
Lila was trapped. She waited for the surge of power she’d felt in the arena, waited for the world to slow and her strength to return, but nothing happened.
So she did something unexpected—she laughed.
She didn’t feel like laughing—pain roared through her shoulder, and she could barely breathe—but she did it anyway, and was rewarded by confusion spreading like a stain across Ver-as-Is’s face.
“You’re pathetic,” she spat. “You couldn’t beat me one-on-one, so you come at me with three? All you do is prove how weak you really are.”
She reached for magic, for fire or earth, even for bone, but nothing came. Her head pounded, and blood continued to trickle from the wound at her side.
“You think yours are the only people who can spell metal?” Ver-as-Is hissed, bringing the knife to her throat.
Lila met his gaze. “You’re really going to kill me, just because you lost a match.”
“No,” he said. “Like for like. You cheated. So will I.”
“You’ve already lost!” she snapped. “What’s the fucking point?”
“A country is not a man, but a man is a country,” he said, and then, to his men, “Get rid of him.”
The other two began to drag her toward the docks.
“Can’t even do it yourself,” she chided. If the jab landed, he didn’t let it show, just turned and began to walk away.
“Ver-as-Is,” she called after him. “I’ll give you a choice.”
“Oh?” He glanced back, pale-green eyes widening with amusement.
“You can let me go right now, and walk away,” she said, slowly. “Or I will kill you all.”
He smiled. “And if I let you go, I suppose we will part as friends?”
“Oh no,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m going to kill you either way. But if your men let me go now, I won’t kill them as well.”
For a moment, she thought she felt the arm at her throat loosen. But then it was back, twice as tight. Shit, she thought, as Ver-as-Is came toward her, spinning the knife in his hand.
“If only words were weapons …” he said, bringing the blade down. The handle crashed against her temple, and everything went black.
IV
Lila woke like a drowning person breaking the surface of water.
Her eyes shot open, but the world stayed pitch-black. She opened her mouth to shout, and realized it was already open, a cloth gag muffling the sound.
There was a throbbing ache in the side of her head that sharpened with every motion, and she thought she might be sick. She tried to sit up, and she quickly discovered that she couldn’t.
Panic flooded through her, the need to retch suddenly replaced by the need to breathe. She was in a box. A very small box.
She went still, and she exhaled shakily when the box didn’t shift or sway. As far as she could tell, she was still on land. Unless, of course, she was under it.
The air felt suddenly thinner.
She couldn’t tell if the box was actually a coffin, because she couldn’t see the dimensions. She was lying on her side in the darkness. She tried again to move and realized why she couldn’t—her hands and feet had both been tied together, her arms wrenched behind her back. Her wrists ached from the coarse rope that circled them, her fingers numb, the knots tight enough that her skin was already rubbing raw. The slightest attempt to twist free caused a shudder of needle-sharp pain.
I will kill them, she thought. I will kill them all. She didn’t say the words aloud because of the gag … and the fact that there wasn’t much air in the box. The knowledge made her want to gasp.
Stay calm.
Stay calm.
Stay calm.
Lila wasn’t afraid of many things. But she wasn’t fond of small, dark spaces. She tried to survey her body for knives, but they were gone. Her collected trinkets were gone. Her shard of stone was gone. Anger burned through Lila like fire.
Fire.
That’s what she needed. What could go wrong with fire in a wooden box? she wondered drily. Worst case, she would simply burn herself alive before she could get out. But if she was going to escape—and she was going to escape, if only to kill Ver-as-Is and his men—then she needed to be free of the rope. And rope burned.
So Lila tried to summon fire.
Tyger Tyger, burning bright …
Nothing. Not even a spark. It couldn’t be the knife wound; that had dried, and the spell dried with it. That was how it worked. Was that how it worked? It seemed like it should work that way.
Panic. More panic. Clawing panic.
She closed her eyes, and swallowed, and tried again.
And again.
And again.
* * *
“Focus,” said Alucard.
“Well it’s a little hard, considering.” Lila was standing in the middle of his cabin, blindfolded. The last time she’d seen him, he was sitting in his chair, ankle on knee, sipping a dark liquor. Judging by the sound of a bottle being lifted, a drink being poured, he was still there.
“Eyes open, eyes shut,” he said, “it makes no difference.”
Lila strongly disagreed. With her eyes open, she could summon fire. And with her eyes shut, well, she couldn’t. Plus, she felt like a fool. “What exactly is the point of this?”
“The point, Bard, is that magic is a sense.”
“Like sight,” she snapped.
“Like sight,” said Alucard. “But not sight. You don’t need to see it. Just feel it.”
“Feeling is a sense, too.”
“Don’t be flippant.”
Lila felt Esa twine around her leg, and resisted the urge to kick the cat. “I hate this.”
Alucard ignored her. “Magic is all and none. It’s sight, and taste, and scent, and sound, and touch, and it’s also something else entirely. It is the power in all powers, and at the same time, it is its own. And once you know how to sense its presence, you will never be without it. Now stop whining and focus.”
* * *
Focus, thought Lila, struggling to stay calm. She could feel the magic, tangled in her pulse. She didn’t need to see it. All she needed to do was reach it.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to trick her mind into thinking that the darkness was a choice. She was an open door. She was in control.
Burn, she thought, the word striking like a match inside her. She snapped her fingers and felt the familiar heat of fire licking the air above her skin. The rope caught, illuminating the dimensions of the box—small, very small, too small—and when she turned her head, a grisly face stared back at her, which resolved into the demon’s mask right before Lila was thrown by searing pain. When the fire hovered above her fingers, it didn’t hurt, but now, as it ate through the ropes, it burned.
She bit back a scream as the flame licked her wrists before finally snapping the rope. As soon as her hands were free, she rolled over the fire, plunging herself back into darkness. She tugged the gag off and sat up to reach her ankles, smacking her head against the top of the box and swearing roundly as she fell back. Maneuvering carefully, she managed to reach the ropes at her feet and unknot them.