Chapter 25
25
Lyra
Courtyard gardens surrounding Stonegate were alight in golden torches. An open fire pit burned with sage and hickory wood, and long oak tables were arranged with opulent tiered platters of iced cakes, saffron braids, and crisp wafers that were sweetened with honeysuckle.
I smoothed my hands over the blue satin of the gown I’d found laid out on the bed. Not as warm as my woolen tunics and skirts back home, but the breeze around Stonegate did not cut as sharp as the shores of the Green Fjord.
On a dais, tall wooden chairs were draped in black satin. Queen Ingir sat between King Damir and Prince Thane. Each royal bore a circlet made of black iron and in the center was a likeness of the white wolf head.
The queen chattered with her son, ignoring Damir, and the king drank from a golden horn, his eyes locked on one of the nearby courtiers spinning and dancing with partners.
“Ly.” Kael pushed through the sea of fine gowns and tunics. A wide grin painted his face, like he was alive at long last.
My heart squeezed and I could not help but wrap my arms around him and hold him close.
Kael grunted, patting my back. “Not that I don’t enjoy feeling wanted, but what’s all this for?”
“I’ve missed you.”
He chuckled. “We ate the nightly meal together last night.”
“I know.” I forced a grin to conceal the swell of disquiet growing tighter in my belly.
Kael used his thumb to tilt my chin. “You’re unsettled about the ceremony?”
“I wish I’d learned so much more about craft. I feel like I have no choice but to fall into that…place.”
“What place?”
I sighed. “Nothing. Melding is simply consuming at times.”
“I felt that way when I was first learning how to use my own craft. Remember what happened after I helped old Fen go to Salur?”
I nodded. One Jul season, Thorian had gifted Kael and me an old wolfhound. For two summers Fen was our constant companion, until one day the hound stumbled down one of the rocky hillsides near the fjord.
The beast was in such pain, Kael couldn’t stand it.
For the first time, he used his bone craft to decay the bones until Fen gently faded to Salur. Kael grew ill with chills and nightmares for three days.
“It becomes more natural.” Kael nudged my arm. “We might have different craft, but if you give in to it, if you let it flow when it roars within you, I’ve found it becomes as natural as a draw of air. Craft is yours to command, Ly,” he said, voice soft. “No one else commands your power, even if it feels that way being here. Stand firm, do not fear it. I believe the magic in our blood can sense it and will not trust us in return.”
I considered the idea for a pause. Fear was potent and sour the few times I’d used my magic. I’d been terrified when Kael was dying, terrified to prove my worth to the king. What if fear made the shadow? A projection of my terror.
With a forced smile, I squeezed Kael’s arm. “You seem at ease, at least.”
“I miss home, don’t mistake me, but I was made to be a Stav, Ly.” Kael looked at the crowd almost wistfully. “No one cares I’m the unwanted son of a jarl. No one cares that I come from nothing. They see me as one of theirs, a part of a great warrior clan.”
Selfish of me, but there was a stab of envy at the awe in Kael’s voice. We’d grown together, and I never cared that Jarl Jakobson disowned him, I’d always seen him as mine.
We kept close to each other, me the silent one at his side, Kael the boisterous Stav who’d earned respect for his skill in the battle of the wall.
When some of the young Stav Guard surrounded us, I wanted to sink into his side, but he’d been pulled away by his fellow guards, leaving me alone, cut off from the crowd.
A young officer, not much older than me, eyed me over a wooden goblet. “Súlka Bien.”
He approached, his broader body like a shield against the revel. All at once, I felt cornered, intentionally trapped.
I dipped my head in response, one arm across my middle, and looked away, praying he wouldn’t want to converse much.
The guard stepped closer, scents of leather and wine on his skin. “May I ask a question?” He didn’t give me a chance to respond before his finger tapped the center of my chest. “What does the king make you do to earn his trust? Melders do not give their bones of fealty, some say they can’t. Doesn’t meld properly, I hear. Fadey got on his knees for the king’s delight, I wonder if you do the same.”
I stepped back, eyes narrowed. “Wonder all you like.”
“Hmm. I can’t help but think of the things this mouth might do. It’s been so long since the melder was a woman.” He gripped my jaw, hard enough my teeth cut into my cheeks.
The way we were positioned, no one could see. I tried to slip his hold, tried to bend and reach the knife I’d stashed in my boot, but he squeezed until tears slipped over my cheeks.
Until, all at once, the guard’s hand was torn off my face. He stumbled backward.
Roark had one palm gripping the side of the Stav’s neck, his other hand cutting the drunken man with words—silent and fierce.
“Sentry,” the guard spluttered. “My apologies.”
By now, Kael returned to my side and nudged me behind him.
I looked nowhere but Ashwood. His eyes were like bright fire, consuming the pale fear on the guard’s face.
Touch her again, and I will stand by as she melds your jaw shut and you take your food through your nose .
“Is there trouble, Sentry Ashwood?” King Damir stood on the dais.
Roark tilted his head, fury locked on the Stav. Is there?
The guard shook his head. “No. No trouble.”
Then beg forgiveness .
“No—” I tried to interject, but Roark had already shoved the guard in front of me, forcing him to kneel. Like I was some sort of goddess.
The Sentry gripped the guard’s hair and wrenched his head back. The man swallowed thickly. “Apologies, Melder Bien. Forgive me.”
“Fine.” I waved a hand, wishing the damn soil would swallow me up. “Forgiven.”
At long last, Roark released the guard, watching him scramble away. When he looked back to me, there was a sort of smugness to his grin, that faded the moment he took in my glare.
“Was that necessary to do right here?” I gritted out through my teeth.
“Ly,” Kael snapped. “You’re not to be disrespected.”
I ignored him. “I wish you wouldn’t have done that.”
Roark’s eyes shadowed. He crowded me with his broad body, unbothered that Kael stood so close. Is this your gratitude? It needs work .
His hand was in front of my face. I pushed it aside, lowering my voice. “I am grateful, but I do not like attention drawn to me. When you spend your life hiding, to have endless eyes watching can be too much at times.”
Too many people, too many gazes pointed my way, felt like the air, walls, wherever I might be, were crushing in on me. My chest tightened, blood heated, fog gathered in my head, until I wanted to flee.
Where I thought Roark might mock me, maybe gesture one of his snide comments, instead he simply dipped his chin in a nod.
“If there are no more delays, Sentry Ashwood”—King Damir’s sharp tone sliced through the tension between us—“then I would like to get on with the ceremony.”
We were taken from the courtyard. Only Roark and a few highly ranked Stav followed.
“With attacks on the rise and Dravens always seeming to know when my melder works,” the king said once we were behind a black velvet curtain in a chamber filled with ferns and potted plants, “I will have our ranks advanced in private.”
Four Stav Guards stood in front of a platform with thin twisted trees in stone pots. Fine black tunics, crimson threads around the wolf head on their chests. Beside each guard was another officer, holding a silver raven pin and a slender knife.
Damir opened one arm, summoning a skittish-looking servant with a wooden tray in hand. When the linen cloth was pulled back, four pale shards of bone were displayed in a straight line. Some looked like they might’ve been taken from a thigh, or shoulder, and one appeared to be a piece of a finger.
A wizened bone crafter woman entered the chamber from a side door. Her hair was the color of frost and the crimson robes drowned her knobby body. Under the watchful eye of the king, the crafter etched runes into the shards—protection, wisdom, strength, joy. Where her fingers traced across the surface of the bone, a thread of gold followed.
I looked about, but no one seemed stunned by the light, no one made a whisper of awe at the beauty. No one could see it, the remnant of a soul still living within the bones left behind.
Gentle applause from the small crowd followed when the servant showed the finished shards, marked in their manipulation as soul bones.
“Lyra.” King Damir gestured for me to step forward. “Once the officers have been cut in their chosen locations, meld the bones so they might reach their new ranks and power.”
There was a somber kind of hush that fell over the chamber. Anticipation, maybe a bit of trepidation, lived in each suffocating gaze. They’d witnessed Fadey do this, no doubt, and it was obvious many had missed the spectacle.
Some of the Stav awaiting their bone looked practically ravenous.
I looked over my shoulder. The only eyes I found reeled me in like a line in the sea. Roark’s features were steady and unmoved. He did not look away.
Strange as it was, I took a bit of strength from the scrutiny of the Sentry. He was a shadow I did not always want, he was the cause of my being here in many ways, but Roark was also becoming the constant on which I could rely.
A firm bit of ground that was dependable and sure.
My fingers trembled when the first bone was placed in my palms. The Stav who’d receive the shard was tall and lean; his hair, the color of red sand, hung long down his back.
He said nothing and removed his tunic. A protrusion on one side of his ribs seemed misplaced, along with a bulge over one hip. Other soul bones? He was advancing to a captain of three units—more than fifty Stav would be his to command—and each bulge might be the addition of impenetrable bones under his flesh.
The officer with the knife cut a deep wound into the side of his ribs without the bulge. Blood fountained down his waist, but he didn’t wince in the slightest.
My fingers trembled. Sick burned the back of my throat when I needed to dig at the torn skin to nudge one edge of the bone inside, like a bloody pouch.
“Remember your purpose, Lyra,” King Damir said.
I held the king’s stare until the bursts of golden threads flashing over the new bone pulled my attention. Lovely guides and whispers to the magic in my blood on what it could do, what it should do. Stitch in the bone, meld it, move on.
I would fall to the darkness, face the shadow, if only to prove I could stand before my fear. With my back to the king, I touched the bone and a veil of cold mists coated the world.