Silver in the Bone, page 41
A trail of footsteps led back up and over the hill, heading away from the tomb and us—heading, I knew, to the portal back to our world.
I knew.
The Ring of Dispel was gone, and so was Emrys Dye.
And that sun I had felt in me, the one that had burned so bright, sank back below the dark horizon.
The light was failing by the time we started our return to the tower. Caitriona had initially suggested waiting out the darkness in one of the watchtowers—but that was before we came across the first of the Children among the trees.
They lay scattered where they had fallen from the branches. Their bodies were whole, but unmoving, as if the spark of life had simply been plucked from them.
Maybe it had.
My companions stopped, dropping behind the broken body of a hollow log, but I continued forward.
“Tamsin, wait—” Neve tried to grab hold of me, but I pulled free.
I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t curious.
I couldn’t feel anything at all.
I moved like I was at the bottom of the lake, each step forward taking more strength than the last. Each bit of ground a fight to keep underfoot.
Caitriona had fashioned a sheath for the sword so I could carry it on my back, rather than wield the heavy weapon like a torch. Between Neve and the priestesses, with their command over the mists, they were able to create enough light to guide the way.
I walked toward the nearest monster and stared down at it. Robbed of life and the terrifying instinct that had compelled it, the creature was almost pitiful. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth and its limbs drooped as I used my foot to roll it onto its back.
Its empty sockets stared up at me. Scavenger beetles had already made quick work of the eyes.
Olwen dropped onto her haunches beside the creature, her forehead creasing as she touched the shriveled gray skin of its chest.
She looked back at Caitriona and shook her head.
“The High Priestess—the revenant—gave them life, then,” Caitriona said, looking exhausted. The bandages on her face were soaked with sweat and grime. “And the curse, or whatever power sustained them, ended with her.”
Neve drew in a sharp breath as she touched one of the creatures with a single finger.
“What troubles you?” Olwen asked.
“Curses can outlive their caster,” Neve explained. “But I don’t think that’s the case here. It’s like we cut the head off from the rest of the body.”
“Is there still a chance the ritual could restore them?” Caitriona rasped out.
“I believe the best we can hope for…” Olwen swallowed. “The best that we might hope for is that the ritual will release whatever piece of their souls might still be trapped inside these bodies.”
My top lip curled back at the devastation in their faces. If they’d been stupid enough to believe the ritual would restore everything to the way it was, they deserved the pain it had won them.
“There’s never been any hope for them,” I said acidly as I continued forward through the wasted forest, stepping over the bodies in the trampled snow. The air was sharp and icy in my chest. “You just couldn’t accept it.”
With my eyes fixed on the corpses, I nearly crashed into Neve as she stepped in front of me. Her face was pinched with worry. When I moved to go around her, she moved with me, mirroring the action.
“Move,” I told her coldly.
She didn’t.
“Move,” I said again, a pressure rising in my ears.
Neve stepped forward, and before I could pull away, she gripped my shoulders. I tried to shift, but she was surprisingly strong, locking me in place. Forcing me to be still. To feel it—all of it.
I had never felt as exposed as I did then, stripped of a lifetime’s worth of lies and careful performance. The humiliating truth was bared for all to see. Hidden beneath all those cynical, cold layers wasn’t a core of strength. It was fear. It was the little girl even I’d tried to leave behind.
I slumped against Neve, my face buried in her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around me. “Please don’t turn away from us.”
Every part of me felt like it might snap. For a moment, I smelled pine and realized I’d never taken his sweater off. I pulled away, ripping it off me and letting it fall over the creature. The cold was better than having it touch my skin.
“I’m so stupid,” I said in a ragged voice. “I let it happen again.”
Alone.
Discarded for something more important. And it was more important—saving his mother, getting away from his father, all of it had outstripped whatever trust had grown between us.
If he was even telling the truth at all, that familiar voice whispered in my mind. Clever Emrys Dye, always quick to hide and lie.
The thought was enough to leave me raw. I’d told him my truth. I’d told him things not even Cabell knew.
“He is the only one who should feel shame,” Caitriona said, anger simmering in the words. “He deceived us all.”
Olwen stroked my arm, her fingers skimming over the gash she’d hastily rebandaged. “You do not have to keep the thought of him from your heart, but do not let the love in you harden because of him. He was not worthy.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I should have said something of it before, but I did not want to wound him.” Her smile was tinged with sadness. “I do recognize that sword you carry, and I do know its story. Mari told it to me years ago.”
“Then…,” I said. “What is it?”
“I believe that blade is called Dyrnwyn, or White-Hilt. It was forged in Avalon and once carried by a king, Rhydderch Hael,” Olwen explained. “It was said that the blade would burn with flames when held by someone worthy and well born.”
I stared at her.
“Are you certain?” Caitriona asked.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said dryly, but a little laugh bubbled in me at her expression as she realized the implication.
“No, I did not mean that,” she said. “Of course you are worthy.”
“I’m really not,” I said, “and no offense was taken. Should we test the theory?”
I held the sword toward them, hilt-first, but all three stepped back.
“Really?” I asked.
“I don’t want a piece of metal to pass judgment on me,” Neve said, holding up her hands.
“I am content with my own sense of worth,” Olwen said simply.
Caitriona eyed it several moments longer than the others but in the end still turned away. “Tamsin, are you sure you don’t wish for us to follow him? The snow will allow us to track him with ease.”
Neve gripped my hand, watching me. Waiting for the choice to be made.
I could follow Emrys. I could probably even take the Ring of Dispel back before he presented it to Madrigal. The portal might still be open.
But there was the ritual to think of. There was Cabell and Neve and Bedivere, and the priestesses who had become friends even as I’d fought to push them away. There were the survivors at the tower, still fighting against all odds. There was Avalon—the place of beauty and life it could become again.
“No,” I said. “He’s already gone.”
“How does he plan on returning to your world,” Olwen asked, “without any of us there to open the path for him?”
Neve and I exchanged a look.
“About that…,” I began.
Olwen’s eyes widened in wonder at the story of the Hag of the Mist, the offering, and her instructions that the portal could only be used once to go into Avalon and once to return to the mortal world.
“I believe we’ll be able to open the original path back to the mortal world for you, even if the ritual isn’t successful,” Olwen said.
“It won’t fail,” I told her. It can’t.
“Are you angry with us for keeping it from you?” Neve asked, glancing at Caitriona.
Her silvery hair shimmered with the snow falling from the trees. “No, for even now, with your path home open, you have chosen to stay. With us.”
Neve smiled.
Caitriona cleared her throat, turning her back to us. “We should continue on. I do not want the others to worry more than they already have.”
I raised my head and began to walk, letting the chaos in my chest settle and a new calmness take hold. Neve smiled at me when I glanced over, and there was nothing in her warm gaze that was pitying or wary. The quiet stillness of the isle gave me the gift of sudden clarity. An understanding that the pain I’d feared for so long was the very thing that told me I had survived the loss.
We kept pace with one another as the shadows around us deepened to welcome the long night.
We stopped once to rest, giving Olwen the opportunity to check our bandages for signs of infection, but it was only for a few moments.
With the athame back in their possession, they were eager to perform the cleansing ritual, and I was growing more and more eager to get back to Cabell. After what had happened with Bedivere…I couldn’t imagine how he was feeling.
Finally, the tower came into view, its highest stones illuminated by the fires still burning in the moat. The lines of Caitriona’s face eased at the sight of it, and she doubled her pace.
But as we emerged through the last stretch of the forest, I found myself slowing.
“What is it?” Neve asked.
“Where are they?” I asked, looking around. Before we left, the Children had formed a ring around the perimeter of the tower, one we should have crossed by now.
“The revenant must have called them to her,” Neve said as we finally caught up to Caitriona on the path. She stood at the tree line, taking in the sight of the tower in the near distance, its ancient stones aglow with flame. Long streams of red flowed down the nearest wall, reflecting the light like silk. Mist lingered over the mile-long path leading down to the moat. The drawbridge, to my surprise, had already been lowered.
The Mother tree looked darker from this distance. Its upper branches were covered in white, masking what little green remained.
Olwen’s steps crunched through the snow behind me, but as she came to my side, she froze midstride. Her breathing grew ragged, the white puffs mingling with the mist. For the first time, I realized I wasn’t just smelling fire smoke. Something bitter underscored it—burned cloth, maybe.
And something worse.
“It looks like they’ve started the celebrations without us,” Neve said, squinting. “I wonder why they used red banners, though.”
And then I understood.
Caitriona gave a hoarse cry, bolting down the hill to the lowered drawbridge. Olwen was close behind her, stumbling through the snow and rocks in their way.
I couldn’t move. The darkness curled around me, pressing down on my shoulders with its icy hands, trapping me in place.
“Those aren’t banners, Neve,” I managed to choke out. “That’s blood.”
The silence of the dead had its own power, great and terrible. Like a dark pane of glass, it swallowed everything, and nothing, not even the light, reemerged.
The courtyard had become a battlefield, the arena for one final, desperate stand. A place that only swarming flies and foul wind dared to enter now.
The lower half of the Mother tree was charred black, its remaining leaves trampled into the bloodied snow. Deri was a pile of kindling beside it, still gripping the massive trunk. The bodies of sprites ringed it like a halo of death.
Every part of me strained, desperate to turn and run. I forced myself to stand there at the edge of the slaughter. I forced myself to see.
To see it all.
Betrys, fallen just before the gate, the first line of defense between the monsters and the innocents inside. Her sword gripped tight even in death. Arianwen lay near her, her body draped over Lowri’s. Seren and Rhona lay across the white steps of the tower, their hands reaching for one another amid the carnage around them. Rivers of blood had flowed over these stones and dried into rust-colored streams.
It was that stench, of death, of decay—that was the only thing that felt real. Olwen was moving, stumbling, among the bodies, screaming and sobbing as she desperately checked them for life.
Caitriona ran for the tower, climbing through the remains of everything she had known and loved. The once-mighty doors to the great hall were splintered and torn from their hinges. And when her anguished shouts echoed across the courtyard, I knew no one inside had survived.
Neve said something behind me, her voice ragged and breaking, but I was selfish. I could only think of one thing. One name.
Cabell.
My brother…he…It wasn’t possible.
None of this was possible. It wasn’t real.
I took off at a run, searching the bodies, turning them over to reveal the agony of their deaths, ravaged faces, torn and devoured. I knew I was screaming when it became impossible to draw a breath, calling his name, pleading with whatever gods might actually exist.
The dead were inescapable, the echoes of their sheer terror in those final moments hovering around us in the mist. The animals lay slaughtered in the stable. The men and women were draped over the walls, bodies broken and skin gaping. Aled and Dilwyn were in Olwen’s garden. Angharad and countless others were in the courtyard field, where a few sprouts had emerged from the dirt to be baptized in gore.
Where was Cabell? Where?
I ran to the dungeons, to the springs, to the path beneath the armory, until, finally, I saw that the door to the kitchen had been torn off, and a memory of Bedivere’s voice broke through the searing panic in my mind. The last hope of Avalon.
I clambered over the bodies of Children and Avalonians alike to get inside. The cabinet had separated from the wall, blocked by a man’s body, and I ripped it open the rest of the way, sliding down the blood-slicked ladder.
And after everything I had seen, what lay below in the fairy path was what brought the bile burning up my throat.
Gore rose above the top of my boots, black and thick in the darkness. I pulled my flashlight out of my bag, my hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it as I surveyed the bodies around me. What was left of them.
Anyone who had dared to come down here had been trapped. The door leading up into the grove was shut. Locked. And with no hope of escape, they’d been torn to shreds.
My flashlight beam swept over the massacre, and I held my breath so I wouldn’t have to take in the overpowering stench of death. Pieces of Bedivere’s familiar armor were scattered among the bodies. The cold snaked around me as the light ran across a piece of worn brown leather.
I saw my hand reach down to the blood-drenched ground, my fingers dipping into the dark, grisly pool to retrieve it. The piece of leather was the size of my palm, still recognizable as a jacket collar. I saw myself turn it over, saw a child’s careful stitching, once yellow, now crimson, and the letters LAR. Beneath it, like a hidden curse sigil, was a tattooed patch of pale skin.
I leaned over and vomited up everything in my stomach. Gasping, retching, until I lost all feeling in my hands and dropped the cloth and the flashlight.
The darkness swallowed me, and I didn’t know where to turn, didn’t know which way was out. A pain like nothing I’d ever felt before split me in two, and all I could do was hold on to the wall behind me to try to keep from drowning in what was left of the dead.
Of Cabell.
I cried, the sound echoing on the stone walls, my whole body heaving. Everything…everything for this. For the person I loved most in the world to have suffered this—the pain and fear in this dark, that moment of knowing he wouldn’t get out, of being reduced to nothing more than memory and this…this…
I couldn’t find my way out, and I had no place to go. So I stayed, the tears pouring out of me, hoping and praying I would just die of the pain, until Neve at last came and led me out.
I stood alone on the curtain wall, gazing out into the dark forest. Time was playing games with my mind, and here, in a place of almost endless night, it seemed to matter even less. A part of me hoped that if I just stood here, letting the cold wind do what it would to me, I’d become stone too. I wouldn’t have to untangle the bonfire of thoughts in my mind, or ease the throbbing in my chest.
My eyes watered from the cold, but tears wouldn’t come. The well deep inside me had emptied in an almost frightening way. When it filled again, it was with a familiar poison. One I deserved every burning drip of.
You did this.
You brought him here because you thought you knew best.
It was all for nothing.
You got what you deserved.
And he died hating you.
My brother—the sensitive, brilliant, talented, charming one. The best not just of the Larks but of any world. Avalon had brought him nothing but pain and death. I never should have asked him to come with me.
I never should have gone looking for Nash.
The weight of the loss hit again, knocking the breath from my body. Cabell had been so close to the end of his nightmare. So close to breaking free of the darkness that had tried to smother every last trace of hope he’d had. To devour him.
I couldn’t close my eyes without imagining it. How quickly and savagely death had come for all of them—within hours of the isle’s salvation.
A sickening fury crept through me, bringing the taste of bile to my mouth again. There was no Goddess or any other god. There was no fate. There had only ever been the cruel uncertainties of life.
The isle’s mist roamed between the trees, spreading its long, searching fingers toward the tower. The last of the Nine’s magic had dwindled, and the fires inside the moat were no longer burning. I stared down into it, eyes skimming over the bones, the charred wood, the swords and shields that had fallen in and become distorted with heat.
