Chapter 24
Lyra
Golden heat coated my flesh, coiling with cold mists. Wood peeled off the rafters. Murky black dripped overhead like cobwebs. The inglenook was deadened and coated in ash.
In front of my face, I held out my palms. Faint threads floated in the darkness. Meld. I was to slowly meld. Not a true soul bone, more like the bones of small creatures I’d used to hunt, for our own answers.
Craft heated over my glowing palms. Familiar warmth radiated from the shard. A presence I’d felt before. Memories from a dream, arms that held me tightly, carrying me away from smoke, blood, and screams.
A bone of the fallen Draven prince. The thrill of truly speaking to a fallen soul hurried my fingers over the surface, snatching wispy threads and weaving them to the outer edge of the opposite shard.
Until a low rumble came from behind.
Skul Drek, cowled and cloaked, curled his haunting arms around my waist, drawing in a breath. Like the scent of my soul kept him locked in with a need for more.
“We ought not be here, Melder,” he said in a low, rough rasp. “The dark one hunts your soul.”
A shudder ran down my spine. I looked away from the bone and scanned the mists and haunting smoke of the mirror. We were not near Stonegate, but I could not shake the unease of knowing that somehow Fadey might be able to find us here, even behind the walls of an enemy clan.
“Then find the connections we seek and we can leave,” I told him and flicked a strand of the delicate gold threads, glittering like fine chains between us.
Gunter’s soul weave was no longer thick and gaudy. Now, where Skul Drek shifted, shimmers like spider silk webbed between us. From head to foot, we were joined.
As fragile as it appeared, the strength of it had only burrowed deeper into my bones, my blood.
A smile crept over my lips when I faced the bone again.
“What am I to seek?” Skul Drek dipped his head low, drawing in a rough breath. “All I want is to devour you, Melder.”
I did not know if it was the mirror or the heady passion between our souls, but for a moment I considered letting him.
The queen stood stalwart. Elisabet burned like molten amber, the gleam fierce as a sunrise. A tether, weaker than those binding me to my husband, dragged on the murky ground, chained around Elisabet’s ankle. The strand wove across the shadows and disappeared somewhere within the cloak of Skul Drek.
Proof of a vow she’d made, soul to soul.
But there were more, darker threads that bound her to Roark, to unseen souls in the distance.
Connections. Kin. Lovers. Friendships. As though a veil had been removed from over my eyes, the more I learned of the bonds and of craft to the blood, the bones, the souls of folk, the more I could see them for myself.
The queen was draped in tangles of small bonds. Some weaker than others. Some brighter and shorter.
When he realized we were not alone, Skul Drek hissed at the queen. “Leave us.” Robes of cold wrapped around my shoulders, drawing me against him. He dragged his nose against my throat. “I want to taste you again.”
By the gods. He was the phantom, the scourge of the kingdoms as Skul Drek, but this was still his damn mother.
I pressed a hand against his chest. “Don’t you remember?”
One finger traced the edge of my jaw. “I recall you always, Melder.”
I frowned and the pulse of his copper eyes flickered to deep crimson. A sign he was studying me, trying to crack open my skull and uncover my thoughts. “We came here for a purpose.”
I held up the bone shard. Elisabet believed my craft could awaken connections to these bones, but Skul Drek would be the one to summon the fallen prince. True enough, one of the unwoven threads reached for the shadows of my phantom husband.
Skul Drek tilted his hooded head. One long, darkened finger touched the end of the filament.
Together we jolted in surprise when the strand burst in its vibrancy and slithered through the mists and rot of the mirror, fading into oblivion.
I was met with a vicious sort of grin when he looked at me again. “There. Now, let me taste you.”
I patted his misty chest. “We are not alone and have no answers yet.”
“It is a challenge with a rent soul,” Elisabet said, a subtle laugh to her tone. “Focus will latch onto one subject. At first, it was to kill for his duty. With your bond, he will only see you. For in our darkest halves is where our obsession lies.”
“You speak as though you’ve had experience,” I said. Had she been drawn into the darkness of her king when his soul was torn apart much the same?
Elisabet merely hummed but did not explain deeper.
Teeth bared, shadows deepened around Skul Drek. “Leave us, queenie.”
His voice was rough, like grit lined the back of his throat. Darkness, viciousness, cruelty—all of it flared at the slightest word. It seemed should he perceive offense to me, it would flash more swiftly than anything.
I stroked his shadowed face. “Remember, we are here to find your brother?”
Upon mention of the prince, the missing thread flickered against the mists again. A connection from the bone, to the chest of Skul Drek, to the distant nothing.
The craft of Skul Drek could touch souls, steal them, devour them. I never considered he might be able to speak to them.
Craft was ever-expanding. A puzzling piece of lore and unknowns. Powers were unique with soul craft, more so than bone and blood. If it was possible for Skul Drek to summon certain souls—gods, the things we might learn from those who died before us.
Skul Drek closed his eyes, then let out the wicked laugh that once frightened me. Now my hair lifted with anticipation, as though my heart stirred from his villainy.
“Yes,” he said. “Princely brothers were lost.”
Elisabet shifted on her feet. “You will need to learn how to use your craft if you are ever going to free your wife from those who wish to darken her soul.”
“Then give your lessons, queenie. I’ve souls to take.”
“You must remember him.” She pointed to the faint thread attached to the bone. “Use the bond your wife has awakened, a bond of brothers, and call to him.”
“Hmm. Princely brothers of he and we.” He touched the bone shard, closed his eyes again, then the next word came out in a snarl. “Nothing.”
“Try harder.” A smile lightened Elisabet’s features. “Do you recall snapping your wrist as a boy?”
Almost on instinct, Skul Drek jolted away, like he’d been shocked with pain. He bared his teeth. “Rooftops and rain.”
“Yes.” Elisabet nodded. “You tried to prove you could patch the rooftop of the stables all on your own after Nivek denied you the chance to help with the outer walls.”
The more Elisabet spoke, the brighter the thread shone.
“Your brother said you were too young, and you took great offense.”
I bit down on my bottom lip. Gods, I could see it. Knowing Roark, his fierceness and damn stubbornness, it was not hard to imagine him insisting he could be like his elder brother. A man I never met, but one Roark had clearly admired.
A small, garbled chuckle slid out. Skul Drek spun on me, eyes narrow, head tilted.
“Mockery.” Slowly, he peeled away from me and returned to studying the queen. “Princely brothers taunted he and we. Had to be shown how wrong were the words he spoke.”
“What else?” Elisabet pressed.
Another breath, another heartbeat, and the dark, shadowed features of Skul Drek appeared almost…wistful. “A fever’s rage and stolen cakes.”
“As a boy, Roark loved saffron cakes.” Elisabet’s chin quivered when she looked to me.
“The frost of his eighth season he took ill, deathly so. Nivek snuck him a saffron cake every evening. When he recovered, Roark believed the cakes were what healed him and insisted we eat one at every evening meal for at least a full season more.”
My heart squeezed. Once, my husband’s life had been…peaceful. A time when he was not the Death Bringer, when he did not need to bend the knee to greedy kings. When he was merely Roark Ashwood.
An odd warmth flowed on a gust of breeze. The cracking walls seemed a little brighter. The new thread curled inward, as though something on a different end drew closer.
“Never could stomach the damn cakes after that season.”
Skul Drek’s eyes burned a cruel shade of red when his unyielding regard held tightly to a place in the shadows no more than ten paces away.
A man was there, draped in fading mists. Dozens of shimmering fibers and ribbons of connections rolled off him like the shadows rolled off Skul Drek.
His iridescent flesh was lined with the same gold of the souls in the mirror. Handsome features, bright, and a little sly. A sharp nose and jaw, with thin lips, but those eyes—gold and fierce like Roark’s.
His hands were clasped behind his back when he took a step forward. “I do hope it’s all been worth it, brother.” For a breath, he paused and looked down at me. “Seems it has.”
Nivek. The man who saved my life. He was here…or his soul was, at least.
My lips parted and closed, words dry as ash on my tongue. What could I say to adequately express anything to the one who’d sacrificed it all for a girl he did not know, a girl his younger brother insisted held his heart?
“Princely brothers,” Skul Drek said in a sort of hiss.
Nivek grinned. “As monstrous as ever. You always were a little terror. I wondered if you’d ever have the damn stones to summon me. I’ve missed our talks where you idolize every word I say.”
Skul Drek snapped his teeth in response.
This was…strange. Nivek seemed so alive yet hardly there. His voice was low and strong, yet all the while it echoed, as though we were hearing him in a dream.
“Mother.” Nivek beamed at Elisabet.
The queen had said nothing, but my chest cracked at the sight of her. Stalwart, formidable, but her brilliant cheeks were stained with a golden flush to hint that tears were spilling beyond the mirror.
Nivek reached out a palm and placed it against her cheek. Elisabet covered it with her own.
“I would do it again,” he said, voice low.