Chapter 10
Lyra
Brynn was on her knees, cursing the gods and inspecting her brother’s wound. The arrow narrowly missed my throat and rammed into the meat of Auki’s upper thigh.
He gritted his teeth, back against the wall, but still reached for the blade at his waist.
Gunter rushed to my side and pushed one palm on my head and another on Emi’s, forcing us to hunch over. “Stay down.”
The words had barely crossed his lips before a second arrow cut through the shattered window. Gunter fell over the top of us, the point narrowly missing him.
“Damn the gods,” Auki said in a low growl. He cried out when he snapped the end of the arrow, point still stuck in his leg, and eased away from the wall,
“It would appear our folk are too impatient to see if we’ve sent the melder to Salur,” Gunter said with a touch of bitterness.
Fear thickened in my throat, but not for me. Drawn to the forefront of my mind was the fear that if Dravens were attacking me, what had they done to Roark?
Brynn crouched next to the window, her head tilted to peer through the edge of the broken glass without stepping into the open. “Best guess, a single archer in the oak. They’ll send more assailants before the queen intervenes.”
I had few doubts the queen was the one who sent them.
The familiar roar from craft echoed in my skull and sparked in my fingertips. By my side, Gunter crouched on one knee, but a flicker of gold filament gathered around the dagger sheathed at his waist. Threads of light billowed as though underwater.
“Gunter,” I whispered in a low hiss. “Is your blade made of bone?”
He glanced down at the dagger, then swiftly nodded. “Bear.”
“May I use it?”
His brow furrowed. “Seeing how the only ones who stand a chance at getting stabbed by the melder are us, I think not.”
“I have no plans to stab any of you.” I kept steady and held out my palm.
Gunter hesitated but slowly tugged the blade free of its strap. “That accurate of a knife thrower?”
I didn’t respond, merely palmed the hilt of the dagger. The edge curved slightly, and the pale blade was etched with runes and onyx stones. A fine dagger, but the intricacies of the design were soon swallowed by the glow of melding threads.
“Lyra,” Emi warned and tried to reach for me when I rose and went toward the window.
“Don’t be a fool, Melder,” Brynn snapped.
I didn’t stop. Unseen by them, fibers of craft curled and tangled around my fingers and the dagger, then stretched for nearby bones—Brynn, Emi, Auki—as I strode past them on my way to the window.
Halfway across the courtyard, a glimmering shape broke through the shroud of branches and thick satin leaves. The archer was perched there. Every motion he made broke through the shadows, a gilded mirror only I could make out.
Threads unraveled at the edges of his form, beckoning the craft from the blade to stitch into his bones.
In the corner of the courtyard, another shape shifted. Better concealed, and more difficult to make out his gleaming figure.
“There are two archers.” My voice was flat, almost empty. “For now.”
One long breath through my nose and my fear quieted. I reeled back my arm, and the brush of crafted threads flailed off the bone of the dagger, almost frenzied to meld to the man in the trees.
Once I’d fired bone-tipped arrows into a horde of ravagers at Stonegate. This was the same. My craft’s desire to thread and stitch bone to bone could do more than build the monstrous Berserkirs; it was deadly in other ways.
“Melder.” Brynn shifted to reach me and pull me out of the line of fire.
She didn’t get the chance. I threw the blade. Palm open, I guided one of the golden threads toward the glow of bones from the unsuspecting archer in the tree.
When the filaments from the man’s body securely stitched to the tendrils on the blade, craft yanked the strings and rammed the point into his chest.
I didn’t move, didn’t blink, and merely watched the archer curl forward and topple from the branch. Dead.
“I need another bone blade.” I dropped to a crouch, out of sight. “Does anyone have one?”
Brynn blinked, then unsheathed a small knife from a strap on the inside of her arm in a frenzy. “How…how did you do that?”
“Melded bone to bone.” I stood again, craft circling the hilt of the new weapon.
Before I could raise my hand, an arrow shot past me, nicking my side. I cried out at the burn of split skin and took cover against the wall, holding the knife to my breast until my pulse slowed. One more archer. I only needed to meld a blade to one more archer.
But for how long? How many more Dravens would think it better for the whole of the realms if I was dead?
My chest tightened as the light from the approaching dawn faded. Inky skeins of darkness peeled back the smooth wood rafters, leaving porous logs with rotted bark and swampy mists around every bloom in the courtyard.
Gilded figures surrounded me in the chamber. Emi crouched beside Gunter’s larger form. Brynn was three paces away, still signaling me to move. Auki was swiftly pulling one of the arrows from the wall, and the wound in his leg glowed more red than gold.
Once, the cold wastes of the mirror frightened me.
Now it set my heart on fire.
With caution, I peered around the edge of the darkened window. A thick, taut rope of light split across my middle, every strand like roots of a tree overtaking me. I followed the strands to where they stopped.
One corner of my mouth tilted.
There, standing beside the fading glow of the archer I’d killed, was Skul Drek.
Roark.
“You’re here.” In the mirror, even my cry sounded hushed, almost dark.
The sharp copper eyes of Skul Drek glared up at me from beneath his misty cowl. His vicious teeth flashed in the shadows.
Movement was strange in the mirror world. One moment I would be still, and the next I would be tossed to a new location. I let out a gasp of stun when, all at once, my phantom was pressed against me.
The cold darkness of his body caged me to the wall.
One long slate fingertip traced the edge of my jaw.
Never had he touched me in such a way. Part of me still feared Skul Drek, but knowing his heart lived in Roark Ashwood, knowing his viciousness belonged to me, I tilted my head, leaning into his touch. Solid. Frigid. Gentle.
“Liars live within the clan of the Soul Render queen.” Skul Drek dragged his finger across the curve of my bottom lip. “They’re not to darken your soul.”
“I don’t want them to. Where are you?” I pressed a palm to the center of his misty chest, hoping he understood.
His dark lips curled. “We hunt you.”
Roark was coming.
Skul Drek’s icy palm held the side of my face, urging me to meet his vicious eyes. “Blood spills for those who would darken you. Their souls will rot.”
I swallowed and held out the bone blade, pointing at the unmoving gleam of the dead archer. “I killed one already, but the other is hidden better and is harder to see with the threads of craft. I’m not certain—”
My words faded when Skul Drek promptly stepped away from me. “Where?”
I hesitated. “The far corner, near the pond. He’s in the tree, but well concealed.”
My head spun when the mirror shifted once more and Skul Drek was gone. For a fleeting moment, I caught sight of the gilded strands of the second archer’s bones, but soon darkness enveloped the light.
Behind the man in the tree, Skul Drek’s glare broke through the shadows.
Darkness thrashed and split into black ropes. My stomach flipped when the Draven archer cried out in agony. His body shuddered, but I could not make out what was happening. Another breath, another moment, and Skul Drek appeared to step through the man. In his grasp was a spool of icy white light.
With his gaze on me in the window, I watched as he coated the beam in his shadows until nothing remained but the pitch of night.
“I will end them before they touch you.” The scrape of his venomous voice filled my thoughts, my heart.
By the gods, he’d…he’d claimed the archer’s soul.
Somewhere beyond the mirror a warm grip curled around my wrist. Little by little, the rotted wood and walls became healthy and polished once more. Floorboards were not chipped and splintered, but smooth and level.
I blinked, knees weak, and leaned into strong arms when they encircled my waist.
My cheek pressed to a tunic that smelled of smoke and blood and the oakmoss on his skin. Chin tilted, I found a bit of steadiness in his golden eyes.
Around Roark’s shoulders were wisps of shadows. Gold flickered with inky black, and the final pieces of the cold mirror realm disappeared.
Still coated in gore from Fillip, Roark looked like a beautiful villain—feral, wild, and maddeningly possessive. His jaw was set, and he touched me with the gentle ferocity I’d come to adore in Stonegate.
Like he wanted to mark me, claim me.
My body sank into him like I might want to let him.
To fall into the trance of Skul Drek always left my limbs weak as straw and my thoughts in a fog. Somewhere through the haze, I lifted a palm to the rough stubble on Roark’s jaw.
“You came.” In every way, Roark had been here for me. Protector. Hunter. Mine.
A muscle ticced in his cheek. His fingers brushed along my face. Always.