The Fragile Threads of Power

Rhy dismisses his guards and casts off his crown to take a bath alone, feeling the burden of his kingship. He worries about the Hand and is determined not to cancel the solstice festival, called Sel Fera Noche. While Alucard worries the festival could be the perfect time for the Hand to attack, Rhy believes it is important to make a show of strength, especially since the Hand attributes the world’s failing magic to Rhy, who was born without magic.

These thoughts cause him to remember seven years ago when he first took the throne. Mourning the loss of his family and his brother’s new life with Lila, he got very drunk. Tieren, the aven essen, or high priest, met him in the garden and comforted him by telling him he could be a great king, or at least a very good one. He reminded Rhy that kingship had to be grown into.

Alucard watches the new recruits of the royal guard practice their sparring. He is aware of the gossip around his relationship with Rhy and his position as the king’s consort. While some people accept their relationship, others refer to him disrespectfully as the king’s “whore.” Alucard decides he needs to remind the recruits of who he is apart from Rhy. He is not an Antari, but he is a triad and controls three elements: earth, wind, and water. He spars with several recruits and wins their grudging respect.

Returning to the palace, he runs into their daughter, Tieren, who goes by Ren and is being raised by Alucard, Rhy, and Nadiya together. She loves animals and is playing with her pet rabbit. He convinces her to go with her nursemaid and take a bath and then heads to the rooms he shares with Rhy to bathe as well.

Rhy’s bath is disturbed when an attacker appears and stabs him, chanting the slogan of the Hand. Rhy laughs and points out that he is known as the “Unkillable King,” but the attacker then begins to drown him, and Rhy starts to lose consciousness. He is saved by Alucard, who kills the attacker and then furiously chastises Rhy for dismissing his guards. Rhy admits that he did so because he didn’t want to see them hurt, saying, “I will not have them die when I cannot” (176). What he does not admit to Alucard is that he hopes to lure the Hand into the open by making himself a target.

Kell feels Rhy’s pain through the connection and, after it vanishes, uses his magic ring to call Rhy. Alucard answers, and they both scold Rhy for putting himself in danger. Kell tells them that he and Lila are sailing to London and will see them soon.

In bed, Alucard pours a sleeping draught for Rhy. They are disturbed by a noise and prepare for an attacker, but it is only Ren, hiding from her mother and refusing to go to sleep. They read her a story and help her pretend to hide when Nadiya shows up. After some teasing, Ren agrees to go with her mother. As Rhy drifts off to sleep, Alucard comforts him and tells him that he is a good king but that there will always be someone who hates him merely because he is the king. Once Rhy falls asleep, Alucard leaves to find the queen.

Alucard finds Nadiya in her underground chambers, which were a wedding present from Rhy. Though there is a rumor that she is held prisoner there, the truth is that she is a skilled inventor, and the subterranean rooms are her workshop. She loathes social engagements and would rather work undisturbed. Nadiya and Alucard exchange some comfortable banter, and he watches her work.

Five years earlier, Alucard gets very drunk at Nadiya and Rhy’s wedding. Though he agrees that Rhy needs to be married and have an heir, he still feels a pang of jealousy at the thought of sharing his lover. He is alone and sulking at the feast when Nadiya finds him. She has a frank conversation with him and explains that she is fond of Rhy but does not love him the way Alucard does. She sees her marriage as a pact between the three of them and a way for her to have the freedom to live and work. She reassures Alucard, saying, “I will give him what you cannot. And you will give him what I cannot. And together, we shall be a better kind of family” (201). Promises made, the two return to the feast together.

In the present, Nadiya pauses in her work and discusses the assassination attempt with Alucard. She uses a spell of her invention on the corpse of the assassin, hoping to reveal his motives. The spell doesn’t work, and she destroys the body, telling Alucard to bring the next one to her still alive.

The merchant’s son is feeling ill. It is a result of a curse from the Ferase Stras, but he does not realize this in his addled state. He worries that the box they stole is broken but then looks out the window of his carriage and sees a sign for Haskin’s advertising repairs. The shop is closed, but he decides to wait.

Tes leaves the shop to get dumplings and returns to find someone inside. She is alarmed but then realizes it is Nero, a con artist and her only friend. He is a few years older than Tes and very charming. He claims to have no magic, but she recognizes the purple shimmer around him for what it is—forbidden bone magic. She agrees to fix a recently acquired necklace for him so he can sell it, and he leaves just as the merchant’s son comes in. Tes recognizes his sickness as something magical and is frightened but agrees to fix the persalis, though she doesn’t know what it does. She tells him to come back in three days.

Lila and Kell settle into their room at the Setting Sun, a tavern where Kell often stayed when he needed to escape the palace when he was younger. He and Lila reminisce about their first meeting and their adventures together, including when Kell came back to help rescue her from Holland. She admits that she did not stay on the ship because she wanted to be where Kell was. They use Antari magic to enter the palace, and Kell feels ill at ease in his old princely clothes. However, Rhy welcomes him with a hug and calls him brother, and Kell thinks that this part of being back still feels like home.

Rhy and Kell sit on the rooftop hideout above Rhy’s rooms that they made as teenagers. They share a drink and swap stories of the past few months. Rhy tells Kell that he is sorry for the pain of losing magic and that he would fix it if he could.

In Alucard’s chambers, he and Lila drink wine, and she tells him about Maris and the stolen persalis. They agree that it is probably in London and worry that the persalis will be used to invade the palace. Lila tells him she is going to search the city herself.

The merchant’s son wakes up in his bed burning with fever. Two thugs named Calin and Bex are in his rooms, and they tell him that he was supposed to meet them at the docks with the box but that he didn’t show. He tries to explain that he wasn’t trying to cheat anyone and gives them the repair shop ticket. He sinks into a daze as Bex cuts his throat.

On the roof, Rhy and Kell continue to swap stories. Remembering a time they set lit lanterns floating off the rooftop, Kell tells Rhy about the Veskan ship and the lanterns. He didn’t have time to search them, but now he wonders why they were there. Rhy doesn’t seem troubled, and Kell chastises him for still planning to hold the solstice festival despite the dangers. Rhy argues with him, insisting that he is tired of feeling powerless.

Drunk, Rhy wanders the gardens and thinks about loss. He remembers the previous aven essen, Tieren, who comforted him after the death of his parents. Tieren told him that there was no surety of life after death but that he believed loved ones lived on. He is interrupted by Ezril, the current high priestess. She is very young and sarcastic, a stark contrast to Tieren, but she has come to comfort him since his guards alerted her that he was in the garden. Rhy asks Ezril what she believes, and she tells him that he should believe whatever brings him comfort since there is no certainty. He is taken aback by her bluntness, but she reminds him that he, the Unkillable King, is proof that there is still mystery in the world.

Tes spends several sleepless days and nights working on the box before finally realizing that it is a doormaker. She has never seen anything like it and is amazed that such a device could be created. Though Antari magic creates doors, and she knew this feat was theoretically possible, the idea of distilling such power into a device is shocking. She opens a door. It appears as a weird shimmer in the air, and when she touches it, she is sucked into the passage.

Tes finds herself in the alley of a city, and an old woman covered in tattoos tries to speak to her in a strange language. Horrified, she realizes that the woman’s magic is dead and hanging around her before the woman lunges for her. She scrambles back and closes the doorway, but it cuts off the woman’s finger, which rolls onto the floor of Tes’s shop. Though Tes doesn’t realize it, this was White London.

Back home, Tes realizes what she has done. The customer did not know what he had and didn’t give Tes the terminus, the piece of the persalis that marks its destination, so she opened a door into another world instead of a door here. She is frightened at the thought and decides to destroy the persalis.