Chapter 45
Lyra
We took the switchback ledges slower than before. More horses and more people joined us on the return.
Gammal insisted on traveling with us to the summit, determined that more time was needed with her elskan.
Despite the word of the Lawspeaker and Thane’s refusal to agree to aid in his mysterious trade trouble without knowing more, two dozen Unfettered Folk joined us up the peaks. Keela, the woman who’d led us over the ledges from Dravenmoor, was the first to offer her blades.
Every Unfettered man or woman brought with them dark, polished spears and a few blades made of bronze and offered to take a stand in whatever battles awaited.
“Perhaps we are shielded by the cliffs,” Keela said, dragging her fingers, painted in dark kohl, down her face.
“Perhaps your battles would never find us. But Fadey is Unfettered by blood, and I cannot sit by when one of our own disgraces the gods and seeks to place chains on others. Not when our clans take vows to never overrule the voices of many.”
“Then how do you stomach men like Brokk?”
Keela frowned. “Our laws are made through debts and repaying them. They are meant to be compassionate and fair to those who seek aid or commit crimes.”
“All crimes?”
Keela smirked. “We do not go around embracing rapists or killers, if that is what you’re thinking.
But our vows of peace make such brutal crimes rare in our lands.
Should they happen, they are dealt with painfully and harshly.
I did not agree with the bondage of Jordis and Sindri, but there was nothing we could do.
Those were the conditions to which she agreed to keep her son protected behind Brokk’s blood spells.
It is how he earned many of his servants.
Women who’d fled cruel husbands; men who’d made gambles with the wrong folk.
He is a cruel ass, but Brokk merely took advantage of our laws for his own gains. ”
“He took advantage of their desperation.”
“Yes.” Keela swiped her fingers with more fervor, like the thought burned through her. “And many of us hate Brokk for it. We believe the gods rule over us, and we are to live harmoniously in their honor. But, like the gods of battle and war, we should not fear spilling blood either.”
“Sounds like we all pick and choose what we think the gods want but in truth just do what we desire.”
Keela laughed. “If that is the case”—the woman lifted one of the sleek spears—“then I will do it fighting for a way of life of my choosing.”
On the second night we reached the summit, and Kael could hardly walk from the pain of fighting against the draw of the soul bones.
Together Roark, Brynn, and I arranged him in a makeshift shelter inside a narrow cavern on the side of the cliff.
Kael’s hair stuck to his feverish brow. He demanded the tethers be added to his wrists halfway up the ledge, and he practically snarled at Roark when he opened my brother’s arms to keep him from thrashing.
“You’re a coward, Ashwood,” Kael gritted out. “Never willing…to bond to the bones…gods.” He clenched his eyes shut and breathed through his nose sharply.
Roark tugged the bands on Kael’s wrists tight and came to my side. Ready?
I nodded. “The one on his other hip, there. The stitching has it embedded in his true bone, but I think I can get it free without damaging his gait. Brynn, the herbs.”
Brynn smiled softly at Kael. “Like we said. It’ll help you sleep through it.”
Kael’s eyes shadowed, and he glared at her, but his voice was gentle. “You won’t go?”
“Gods, you’re rather needy, Ser Darkwin.”
I thought he almost smiled.
“Many women enjoy my pestering.”
“Ah, I see.” Brynn began adding herb pastes over Kael’s chest. He would inhale the fumes, and they would bring fatigue. “Well, you have a choice—keep your many women, or ask me to stay.”
I bit down on the inside of my cheek. Perhaps Kael Darkwin had met his match.
Kael let his head fall back. “Stay. Gods, you say I am aggravating. Dravens are the demanding ones.”
His words slurred, and soon enough his eyes rolled back and he fell into a fitful rest. I followed the burning threads into the shadows.
In the mirrored cave, the air was heavy with brine and smoke. Walls were scorched, like a flame had dragged across the stones. Kael’s form burned beneath my fingertips. Soul bones flashed in different shades, desperate to live on.
His body flinched and jerked beneath my palms. The webs of fibrous craft were melded harshly.
There was nothing gentle or methodical about Fadey’s work.
He intended the bones to embed in the body in horrid ways.
Kael’s back arched when I unthreaded a ribbon of craft and it caught on the bright glow of his true bones.
“Melder.” Skul Drek paced at my back, teeth clacking. “It grows to be too much.”
His fears were not for Kael. I’d stumbled to the side, fatigue digging into my bones until I could not keep upright.
“I’m almost done.”
“Melder.” His voice was a low, snapping growl.
I ignored him. Kael jolted again when I found the final thread keeping the jagged shard melded to the curve of his hip. The shadow of Brynn’s form was close. Her hand touched him, curling her glowing fingers around his.
Threads from his chest, his middle, spilled around the murky shadows and flickered to where they connected with Brynn.
Much the same as my own, the threads grew thicker the more time passed, the more interactions they had between them. Should they choose to foster the bond, no doubt, soon enough their bodies would be set aglow with a delicate web of a soul bond.
At long last, the final thread snapped.
The soul bone flickered, like a new spark in a flame, but Skul Drek covered the piece with darkness in another breath.
Painful cries rolled through the mirror world. He devoured the fragment, dimming the flashing glow from the soul bone until it was a deadened gray. My phantom lifted the bone and muttered for it to rest now before dropping the piece.
“Too long, Melder.” He reached for me, ready to force me from the trance, but when I held out my hand, something stronger yanked me back.
My eyes flashed in panic. The cruel study of Skul Drek flashed bloodred. “Melder!”
His roar of violent rage was the last thing I heard before I was yanked out of the rotting cavern into a deeper, colder darkness.
—
I landed on my back. The force was harsh enough that my thoughts spun. All around the mirror was open, no longer shrouded by the cavern walls. Here, trees curved as though they’d been beaten by furious gusts of wind since they were saplings. Leaves dripped in decay and darkness.
“Lyra.”
I jolted, the gilded edges of my form flashed to hot white. “Fadey.”
Between us the wretched, narrow thread burned like rust over iron. Dreadful and unwanted.
The dark melder sat atop a murky boulder. “I missed you.”
My jaw pulsed. All that I knew, all that he’d done, seared through my soul like a molten blade.
Fadey cocked his head and laughed. “You know something? Found something? What is it you’ve learned?” His fingers plucked the thread between us.
A father’s bond to a blood daughter.
No sooner had the thought rushed through my mind than Fadey’s eyes narrowed. “What was that thought?”
Shit!
The bastard glanced at the tether between us, his mouth tight. “No. She would’ve said…a kinship bond?”
“Has your lovely blood crafter been keeping secrets from you?”
His glare lifted to me, his shoulders rising in heavy breaths.
“Will you still murder me, Fadey? Knowing I am your blood?” I knew the answer, but the bitter words slipped over my tongue all the same.
Still, for a breath, he hesitated. “This is my fate, Lyra. This…was always my fate!” His voice bellowed through the darkness. “I can’t—won’t—stop what I was destined to do. You must understand.”
“I understand blood does not make a bond.” I yanked on the tendril between us. Agony flooded over me, pain like the strike of a stone to my skull.
I was not the only one.
Fadey doubled over, cursing me. “You cannot break free of me. Give it up, girl.”
“You’ve ruined so many lives. You deserve to fall as fiercely as they deserve to be avenged.”
Fadey righted again. “You found what was hidden from me, didn’t you? Tell me, did the prince save his own blood? Did he find the bone and bury it away?”
“What little you know,” I taunted, flinging words Fadey had once used against me back at him.
“So you will not see reason.” Fadey let out a long sigh. “Then you leave me no other decision. Remember, you chose this, Lyra. It did not have to be so painful for him.”
I did not know what he meant, until my heart sank.
“Melder.” Skul Drek seemed to bleed from the shadows. Furious, dangerous. He encircled me with the desperation of being lost in a storm only to find the blaze of a hearth.
Then, he noticed we were not alone.
Skul Drek did not speak; he did not stand in front of me. To him, there was no need. Someone had taken his melder from him; someone had frightened me; someone had tried to harm me. To my phantom, there was no mercy for such an act.
He clacked his teeth and lunged for Fadey before I could plead with him to stop.
Fadey did not flee. He only laughed and laughed. As though he anticipated this. Skul Drek struck, lashed at the dark melder’s soul, but at the first touch, my phantom husband recoiled.
“No!” I rushed for him.
All at once, barbed coils of white threads burst from the center of Skul Drek’s chest. The shadows of his shoulders, his cowl, the darkness that made his shape chipped away, tangled in ropes of burning, sharp light.
I reached for him, his cold skin overheated beneath my touch. He was fading.
“What’s happening?” I clawed at the tendrils of darkness the more the white thorns spread, encircling him, breaking him. “Stop. Please.”
“Melder?” For the first time since I met the assassin in the darkness, fear was in his voice.
“No.” I clung to his fading shape. “No. Don’t you dare leave me. Roark. Gods.”
Skul Drek faded, there, then gone. Nothing more than the mists of the mirror.
All I heard was Fadey’s cruel laughter as the shadows retreated from the shelter of the cave.
Until Fadey’s laughter morphed into Brynn’s screams.