Chapter 60
Ispun so fast my boots slipped in the mud as I strained to see past the thick brush crowding the shoreline. I scarcely dared to breathe, could barely hear past the wild thumping in my chest.
Nothing moved.
Darkness lay so thick between the trunks that I couldn't see more than a few feet into the wilderness.
I could feel an awareness pressing against my skin.
We were being watched.
At my feet lay the Brinnekin's crumpled body, her enormous eyes still open and glazed in death. The gills at her neck no longer stirred.
"Fae or human?"
The call came so suddenly and from so close I nearly jumped out of my boots. Low and husky. Undeniably female.
I couldn't tell where the voice had come from.
The groan of wood bending carried through the trees.
A bow.
Every muscle in my body locked.
I glanced down at Rìan, waiting for him to tell me what to do, how to navigate this precarious situation. But to my astonishment, the corner of his mouth quirked.
Had he gone mad?
"I said..." the voice came again, sharper now, edged with open hostility. "Fae—or human?"
Rìan answered before I could.
"Neither." His voice was infuriatingly calm. "But surely you wouldn't shoot your lost Prince—Saskia?"
Silence settled, so complete I could almost feel the shock rippling through it.
Then came the snap of twigs and the crunch of leaves as figures emerged from the shadows, peeling away from the trees as though they’d been part of the forest all along.
Skeletons.
Dozens of them moved between the trunks, skull after skull materializing from the darkness, glittering eyes fixed on us as they approached.
They drew nearer and nearer, nimble as foxes through the underbrush—and that's when I realized.
Those weren't skeletons. There were people beneath those bones.
Ribcages had been lashed over torsos like grotesque cuirasses.
Half-skulls crowned their heads as helmets.
Splinters of polished bone pierced noses and lips, vertebrae were threaded into collars and wrist cuffs, and long bones had been strapped along forearms and shins, concealing much of the flesh beneath.
Mud caked every inch of exposed skin, filthy tatters clinging to slight, lean frames.
Bows were held at full draw, spears braced, knives bared. Every weapon was trained on us.
They advanced until they stood a stone's throw away, forming a silent half-circle.
Only then did I realize—they were all women.
One of them broke from the line.
She lifted the half-skull from her head, revealing dark blond hair dulled by dirt and grime.
Her skin was bronzed by the sun, a scattering of freckles dusting the bridge of her nose, which was pierced clean through the septum with a polished bone spike.
She wasn't beautiful by any means, yet there was something deeply arresting about her all the same, a wildness in her features that made her striking, terrifying, and impossible to look away from.
Despite standing a full head shorter than me, she possessed a presence that made me feel suddenly, absurdly small.
Her brows drew together as she studied me, the bowstring taut, its arrow unwavering where it pointed at the hollow of my throat.
Then her gaze dropped to Rìan.
The tension bled from the bow at once. Her eyes widened with recognition. Then disbelief.
“So it’s true, then,” she breathed. “The Veil fell... but we never knew whether to believe the whisperings. Whether you’d come back…”
“I need your help, Saskia—” Rìan barely finished the sentence before his body seized with a fresh wave of pain. I dropped to my knees beside him at once, reaching for his arm.
Saskia shouldered her bow and knelt opposite me, paying me no mind whatsoever. She peeled Rìan's hand away from the wound, her frown deepening as she examined it.
“You're injured.”
“A bolt with an iron coating,” Rìan panted.
“You need a lodestone.”
“I do.”
She leaned closer, studying the wound before snapping her teeth. “Who did this?”
“It happened in Pelaga.”
“Pelaga?” She looked sharply back at him. “That's hours away.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrowed as they flicked from the wound to his face. “You should be dead.”
“I had some assistance.” He nodded toward me. “The last Eidra.”
Saskia's gaze lifted to mine, her gray eyes widening beneath thick lashes. Despite her youthful face, her stare carried an ancient stillness that made my skin prickle.
Her attention drifted to my wrist, then to the knife still clutched in my hand. A faint smile touched her mouth as she caught sight of the carved bone hilt.
Before I could react, she reached for my free hand.
Her grip was strong, her hands rough and callused, her nails packed with dirt.
Still kneeling, she guided my palm to the center of her forehead.
Around us, the other women followed suit, lowering their heads and pressing their own palms to their foreheads beneath the skulls they wore.
The same gesture Rìan had offered the Brinnekin. The same one Nadja had sought from him.
Saskia’s forehead was damp with sweat.
“The gods have returned,” she murmured. She sat back on her heels. “Welcome to the Barrows, Eidra. We've waited centuries for this day.”
As Saskia straightened, I caught sight of the curve of her ear beneath the tangled hair.
It wasn't pointed. It was rounded.
Human.
How? He'd been imprisoned beyond the Veil for three centuries. No human lived that long. How could Rìan possibly know her?
“It's... Elowen,” I said weakly, unable to tear my eyes from her. “My name is Elowen.”
“Elowen, then,” she smiled, showing crowded teeth.
Rising in one fluid movement, she gestured to the others.
Four moved to lift Rìan. One woman planted her bare foot on the Brinnekin's chest and tore the arrow from her forehead before the others hoisted her up, several moving immediately to support the enormous tail, nearly the length of Rìan himself.
I didn't know why they were taking the Brinnekin with them, but I didn't ask.
Saskia extended an arm, silently inviting me to walk beside her.
I fell into step, following the strange procession deeper into the forest.
Iwas going to be sick.
The Brinnekin lay on its back in the center of the village, a dozen women gathered around it.
One drove her knife beneath its jaw and slit the hide cleanly to the belly.
Others gripped the loosened edges and flayed the thick skin from the flesh beneath in long, smooth motions.
The hide came away with a slow, wet tearing sound that made my stomach heave.
Another reached into the opened cavity, drawing out fistfuls of slick entrails and setting them carefully aside.
Heart. Liver. Lungs. Kidneys. Only the occasional unusable scrap was tossed into the fire.
A heavy axe rose and fell, and the Brinnekin's head came free with a dull crack of vertebrae. One of the women pulled it into her lap without hesitation and began stripping the flesh from the skull, removing the tongue and eyes before splitting it open to scoop out the brain.
Around the carcass, the others sat shoulder to shoulder, carving thick strips from the ribs and limbs, passing the meat into woven baskets while others scraped every last shred from the bones with short, wickedly sharp knives.
Blue blood coated their forearms to the elbow, dripping steadily onto the earth.
When the skeleton had been picked almost clean, mallets appeared.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
The sharp sounds echoed through the village as they split the long bones open one after another. White marrow glistened within. Without hesitation, they lifted each one to their lips and sucked the marrow free before sorting the emptied bones into neat piles according to size and shape.
I looked away, unable to stomach any more, fixing on the village instead.
Low huts of timber, woven reeds, and packed earth nestled between enormous grassy mounds, their roofs thick with thatch and moss as though they'd grown from the forest itself.
Smoke drifted lazily from stone chimneys, kilns, and more cooking fires than I could count, carrying the rich scent of roasting meat.
I nearly gagged.
The Brinnekin.
My gaze drifted to the edge of the settlement, to the macabre barrier surrounding it.
Bones. Thousands of them.
The village had built its walls from the dead. A warning, perhaps—a promise of what awaited anyone foolish enough to venture too close.
Long bones jutted skyward like stakes. Skulls stared outward from weathered posts. Strings of vertebrae looped between the trees in deliberate patterns, clacking softly together in the wind. Some of those bones looked suspiciously human.
Someone lowered themselves beside me.
Saskia.
She plopped a basket onto her lap with a stack of split Brinnekin bones.
“Those bones are all Fae,” she said, following my line of sight. Her gaze flicked knowingly to the knife sheathed at my hip. “They possess magical properties human bones do not. Arrange them in the right patterns, and they become something like wards. The Fae won't cross them.”
A hoarse scream ripped through the village.
My back snapped rigid. Rìan.
When we'd arrived, they'd carried him into one of the huts. After a brief exchange with Saskia, an older white-haired woman she called the Bone Mother reached into a pocket and withdrew a charcoal-black stone, its surface dull and pitted, before disappearing inside after them.
A lodestone. Rare, Saskia had said. Forged where lightning kissed magnetite, each one carried a pull so powerful it could coax iron from living flesh. A life-saving process, but an agonizing one nonetheless.
Another scream split the air, raw enough that several women paused in their work to glance curiously toward the hut.
I pressed my hands between my knees to stop them from shaking.
"Don’t worry,” she observed. “He’ll be fine.”
“I know,” I said but my voice sounded small.