The Bone Weaver’s Gift She Asked the Dead. They Answered Forever. #2
She was eight years old again, standing barefoot in a wash of moonlight while Master Hollis tried to cover her mother’s body before she saw too much.
But she had seen. She had seen her mother’s black hair spilled over the white sheet.
Seen her lips parted around the last word she never finished. Seen the symbol carved into her chest.
The bone-flower.
The mark Lark had drawn in secret a thousand times and burned every page afterward.
Captain Merrow said her name.
Lark did not hear it.
Her hand had gone to her own chest, fingers pressing hard against the place where the mark lived in memory. Not on her skin. Not yet. But sometimes, in dreams, she felt it blooming there.
“Leave,” she said.
Merrow blinked. “What?”
“Leave the bodies. Leave the room. Leave the building.”
“We need a report.”
“You will get one when I have one.”
“Miss Voss—”
She turned on him so fast he stepped back.
“Captain. Leave.”
Something in her voice did what her hands could not. It moved the living.
The watchmen retreated first. Merrow lingered, gaze flicking from the bodies to Lark’s face. He was not a stupid man. That was inconvenient.
“You know that mark,” he said.
Lark’s face became a mortuary mask. Smooth. Pale. Prepared.
“I know many marks.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
For a moment, the storm filled the space between them.
Then Merrow nodded once. “Bolt the door.”
“I always do.”
“Bolt the lower one too.”
Lark’s hand tightened around the stair rail. “Why?”
The captain looked older than he had when he arrived.
“Because something followed us from the crypts.”
He left before she could ask what.
The front doors closed. The bolt slid home. The horses screamed once outside, then the death wagon rattled away into the storm.
Lark stood alone with four dead men and the mark that had murdered her childhood.
She should have waited for Master Hollis.
She should have written to the watch magistrate.
She should have wrapped each body in salted linen, locked them in the cold room, and spent the night pretending the past had not climbed onto her slabs with rainwater in its hair.
Instead, she went downstairs.
The embalming room seemed smaller with the four of them in it. Too crowded. Too warm, though the windows rattled with cold. Lark lit the black candles one by one. Blue flames trembled over the slabs.
Gideon’s face looked harder in candlelight. Callum’s prettier. Ronan’s more dangerous. Silas’s more impossible to read.
Lark stood between them and flexed her fingers.
“One question,” she whispered.
The mortuary hummed.
“No longer than a breath.”
The bone drawers along the wall remained shut.
“You answer, and you return.”
Rain hammered the stained glass. Water ran down Saint Orra’s painted face like tears.
Lark moved to Gideon Ash first.
She did not know why.
Perhaps because he looked like the sort of man who would refuse death out of spite. Perhaps because even motionless, he seemed to command the room. Perhaps because the bone-flower over his sternum had been carved deepest, the lines dark against his cold skin.
She stripped off one glove.
Her bare fingers hovered over his chest.
A sane woman would have stopped.
Lark had not been sane about her mother since the night she watched men lower an empty coffin into consecrated ground because there had not been enough of Mara Voss left to bury.
She placed her palm over the bone-flower.
Cold flesh met her skin.
Then warmed.
Lark gasped.
Black veins lit beneath Gideon’s chest, spreading from her hand like ink dropped into water. They branched over his ribs, up his throat, down his arms. The candle flames guttered sideways. The silver instruments began to tremble in their tray.
“No,” Lark whispered.
Gideon’s back arched.
Across the room, Callum Rook inhaled.
Ronan Vale’s fingers curled hard enough to scrape metal.
Silas Wren’s eyes opened.
All four candles went black.
Lark tried to pull away, but Gideon’s dead hand closed around her wrist.
His eyes snapped open.
They were not corpse-clouded. They were not empty. They were grey as storm steel, furious and alive with a light that should not have been there.
Lark’s breath caught.
Gideon moved.
One instant he was on the slab. The next, Lark’s back struck cold metal hard enough to knock the air from her lungs. Gideon pinned her beneath him, one hand at her throat, the other braced beside her head. His body was heavy, freezing in places, burning in others. His breath hit her face.
It smelled faintly of smoke and grave dust.
“Witch,” he rasped.
Lark shoved at his chest. It was like shoving a wall.
“Corpse,” she snapped back, because terror had always made her rude.
His grip tightened.
From the second slab came a bright, ragged laugh.
“Oh,” Callum Rook said hoarsely. “That cannot be good.”
He sat up too quickly, winced, then looked down at his own chest with theatrical offense. Rainwater dripped from his curls onto his bare skin, then onto the floor. “I distinctly remember dying. I was very graceful about it.”
Ronan came off his slab with a snarl.
The sound vibrated through the room, through the table beneath Lark, through Gideon’s hand at her throat. It was not human enough. His eyes had gone gold around the edges, and his teeth looked sharper than they should.
He lunged.
Not for Lark.
For Gideon.
Gideon turned, dragging Lark halfway with him as if she were a shield or a possession or the only solid thing in the room. Ronan stopped a foot away, shaking with restraint, his lips pulled back from his teeth.
“Off,” Ronan growled.
Gideon stared at him. “You are dead.”
“So are you.”
“That does not explain why you are standing.”
“No,” Callum said, swinging his legs off the slab. “But it does make this a much more interesting evening.”
Silas Wren had not moved except to press two fingers against his own throat. His brows drew together. He shifted his hand to his wrist. Then to his chest.
“No pulse,” he said.
The room went silent except for rain.
Callum’s smile thinned.
Ronan’s growl faded into harsh breathing.
Gideon looked down at Lark.
She could feel his hand at her throat. Not squeezing now. Just there. His thumb rested over her pulse, and the moment he noticed it, something changed in his face.
Hunger.
Not for flesh. Not exactly.
Recognition.
His pupils widened. The black veins beneath his skin pulsed once in time with Lark’s heart.
Gideon jerked back as if burned.
Lark rolled off the slab and hit the floor hard on one knee. Ronan moved before she could catch herself. His hand closed around her elbow, steadying her with shocking care.
His skin was warm.
Too warm.
She stared at his hand.
Ronan stared too, as if equally surprised by it.
Then Gideon reached for a weapon that was no longer at his hip. Callum did the same, checking sleeve, boot, belt, and coat with increasing indignation.
“Where are my knives?” Callum asked.
“In a locked drawer,” Lark said, rising.
“That feels personal.”
“You came in dead.”
“I often do my best work under difficult circumstances.”
Gideon took one step toward her. Ronan immediately stepped between them.
The gesture should have frightened her. It did frighten her. But beneath the fear was something worse: a strange tug behind her ribs, as if an invisible thread ran from her heart to each man in the room.
Four threads.
Four dead men.
One pulse.
Silas looked at her then, and Lark knew he felt it too.
“What did you do?” he asked softly.
The question hit harder because he did not sound angry.
He sounded afraid.
Lark lifted her chin. “I asked a question.”
Callum looked around. “Must have been a very rude one.”
Her hands shook, so she curled them into fists. “You were supposed to wake long enough to answer. One breath. No more.”
Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “Answer what?”
Lark swallowed.
The question still burned on her tongue, unanswered and alive.
Who killed you?
Before she could speak, Silas stepped down from his slab. He swayed once but caught himself on the table. His ink-stained fingers pressed against the bone-flower carved into his chest.
“This is not resurrection,” he said.
Callum’s smile disappeared completely.
Gideon went still.
Ronan turned his head slightly, listening.
Silas looked from one man to the next, then to Lark. His gaze was calm, precise, and devastating.
“This is binding.”
The word moved through the room like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath.
Lark felt the threads tighten.
Gideon hissed and grabbed his ribs.
Callum staggered, one hand flying to his chest. “Oh, I dislike that.”
Ronan bent forward with a rough sound, then fixed his gold-edged eyes on Lark as though she were the only star in a ruined sky.
Silas closed his eyes. “We are anchored to her.”
“No,” Lark said.
Her voice sounded small.
She hated that.
“No,” she said again, louder. “I do not anchor things. I do not bind people. I ask questions. That is all.”
Gideon’s expression hardened into something brutal and controlled. “You expect us to believe this was an accident?”
“I do not care what you believe.”
“You dragged us out of death.”
“I did not mean to.”
“You marked us.”
Her anger flared hot enough to steady her. She stepped toward him, ignoring the way Ronan’s hand twitched as if to pull her back.
“I found you marked. I found you dead. I found the same symbol carved into your bodies that was carved into my mother’s.”
The room shifted.
Even Callum said nothing.
Thunder rolled over the mortuary, long and low.
Silas opened his eyes. “Mara Voss.”
Lark’s blood went cold. “Do not say her name.”
“She was your mother?”
Lark’s mouth tightened. “You knew her?”
Gideon and Silas exchanged a look.
Callum looked away.
Ronan’s jaw clenched.
The threads behind Lark’s ribs pulled again, and this time she felt more than pain. She felt flashes.
Smoke. Teeth. Saltwater. A woman screaming beneath stone. Gideon’s hand covered in blood. Callum running through darkness. Ronan howling at something with too many eyes. Silas whispering a spell while bones rained from the ceiling.
Then nothing.
Lark stumbled.
All four men moved.