The Bone Weaver’s Gift She Asked the Dead. They Answered Forever. #4
“Gorgeous, I woke up dead, found myself bound to a mortuary girl with storm eyes and a temper, discovered Gideon Ash still hasn’t learned charm, and now an antlered corpse bride is serenading us through a locked door. I am terrified.”
“You don’t look terrified.”
Callum leaned closer. “That is because I am extremely pretty.”
Ronan stepped between them.
Callum glanced at his broad back. “And apparently supervised.”
Ronan ignored him. He positioned himself near the stairs, body angled toward Lark and the iron door at once. Every line of him said guard. Every breath sounded like restraint being dragged over teeth.
Silas moved differently.
While the others argued, postured, watched doors and each other, Silas crouched near the nearest warding circle. He ran his ink-stained fingers above the carved grooves without touching them. His face was still too calm.
That calm unsettled Lark more than Ronan’s growling.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Determining whether we have minutes or hours.”
“For what?”
Silas looked up.
The blue candlelight hollowed his cheekbones and turned his dark eyes almost black.
“For the dead thing upstairs to break through,” he said. “For our bodies to fail. For you to collapse. It depends which disaster proves most punctual.”
Lark swallowed.
Gideon turned on her. “What are you?”
The question hit like a slap.
“I am an apprentice mortician.”
“No.”
Her hands curled. “I prepare bodies. I stitch wounds. I wash hair. I comfort families. I ask the dead questions when the watch is too incompetent to solve murders themselves.”
“You raised four men.”
“I asked one question.”
Gideon stepped closer. The bond tightened as he did, a pull low behind her ribs. “You touched me, and we woke.”
“I know.”
“You marked us.”
“I found you marked.”
“You bound us.”
“I told you I don’t know how!”
Her shout cracked through the archive.
Every candle flame bent toward her.
Lark stopped breathing.
So did the room.
The skulls in the cabinets turned.
Not much. Just enough. Empty sockets shifting toward her as if she had called their attention.
Lark backed away.
Ronan was there before she hit the shelf. Not touching this time. Just behind her, his impossible heat warming her spine.
A dead man should not have body heat.
A dead man should not smell like rain, fur, blood, and smoke.
A dead man should not make her feel safer when everything about him looked built to tear safety apart.
Gideon saw it. His expression darkened.
“You don’t know what you are,” he said.
“No,” Lark said. “I know exactly what I am not.”
“And what is that?”
Her mouth tasted like metal.
“A bone weaver.”
Silas’s hand stilled over the circle.
Callum muttered, “Ah. Terrible phrase. Never a good sign.”
Gideon’s eyes went colder. “Who called you that?”
“My mother.”
The room changed around that answer.
Not visibly. The candles still burned blue. The skulls still watched. The rain still drummed far above them like fists on coffin lids.
But the four men went quiet.
Lark hated that quiet.
“My mother spoke to the dead,” she said, because silence was worse. “Not like me. Not one question. Not one breath. She could call them by name. She could make bones remember the shape of flesh. She told me there was a line between asking and commanding.”
Her throat tightened.
“She told me if I ever crossed it, something would come looking.”
Above them, faintly, the woman with antlers sang.
Lark looked at the ceiling.
“I think something came.”
Gideon’s expression remained severe, but something flickered beneath it. Not pity. She would have hated pity.
Recognition, perhaps.
“Your mother was Mara Voss,” he said.
Lark forced herself to meet his eyes. “You knew her.”
“We knew of her,” Silas said.
“That is not the same.”
“No,” Silas agreed. “It is not.”
Callum perched on the edge of a stone table, then winced and pressed a hand to his ribs. “Can we postpone the tragic family revelations until after we address the invisible chain squeezing my lungs?”
“You don’t have lungs,” Gideon said.
“I have feelings.”
“Debatable.”
Callum gave him a wounded look, then glanced at Lark. “See? This is why no one invited him to orgies or funerals.”
Lark blinked despite herself.
A laugh nearly escaped.
It came out as something broken.
The bond reacted.
All four men tensed as the fragile sound turned into panic halfway through. Lark pressed a hand to her mouth, but it was too late. Her fear moved through them, raw and bright.
Ronan made a low, anguished noise and stepped closer.
Gideon’s hands clenched.
Callum’s face softened before he could hide it.
Silas rose.
“We need to stabilize the bond,” he said.
Lark dropped her hand. “No.”
“You do not yet know what I am suggesting.”
“You used the word bond. The answer is no.”
Silas took one careful step toward her. “Lark.”
Her name in his mouth felt startlingly intimate. Not soft exactly, but deliberate. As if he understood names had weight.
She lifted her chin. “Miss Voss.”
His gaze warmed by a degree. “Miss Voss. The magic that woke us is unstable. We are not resurrected. We are not fully corporeal by natural law. We are anchored to your living pulse, but the anchor is unfinished.”
Callum looked down at himself. “That explains the rib-crushing.”
“It explains the decay,” Silas said.
The word dropped hard.
Lark’s eyes moved to Gideon first.
At his collarbone, beneath the black veins, his skin had begun to grey.
Ronan’s left hand flickered at the edges, not transparent, but blurred, as though the world could not decide whether to keep him.
Callum’s smile faded when he noticed the dark crumble at his fingertips.
Silas showed his own wrist.
A fine dust fell from his skin onto the stone floor.
Lark’s stomach turned. “No.”
“Yes,” Silas said quietly. “We are awake, but not held. If we are not tethered properly before dawn, the magic will correct itself.”
“Meaning?”
Gideon answered. “We die again.”
Callum sighed. “I hated it the first time.”
Ronan said nothing.
He was watching Lark.
Not accusing.
That was worse.
She backed away from them. The bond punished the movement instantly.
Gideon grunted and grabbed his ribs. Callum slid off the table with a curse. Ronan’s knees bent as if struck. Silas pressed a hand to the warding circle, jaw tightening.
Lark froze.
The pain eased.
Her horror did not.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Distance hurts you.”
“It appears so,” Silas said.
She took a half step forward without meaning to.
All four men breathed easier.
Lark wrapped her arms around herself. “This is monstrous.”
Gideon looked at her. “Yes.”
Ronan’s head snapped toward him.
“Do not,” he warned.
Gideon ignored him. “If she can wake four dead hunters and bind them to her heartbeat by accident, what happens when she learns intention?”
Lark went cold.
Callum’s voice lost all playfulness. “Careful.”
Gideon faced her fully. “You may be too dangerous to live.”
Ronan moved so fast the candles guttered.
He slammed Gideon back against the skull cabinets, one forearm across his throat, teeth bared. Bone tags swung wildly behind them. A skull dropped from its shelf and cracked against the floor.
Gideon did not fight back immediately.
His eyes stayed on Lark.
“That,” he rasped, “is exactly what I mean.”
“Say it again,” Ronan growled, “and I remove your tongue.”
Callum appeared beside them, smiling again, but now the smile was all blade. “As much as I enjoy male bonding, perhaps we do not murder the girl who accidentally made us handsome corpses with benefits.”
Lark stared at him. “With what?”
“I’m workshopping the language.”
Silas’s voice cut through them. “Enough.”
The warding circle beneath his hand flared black.
Everyone went still.
Silas looked at Ronan. “Release him.”
Ronan did not move.
Lark did.
She crossed the room and touched his arm.
It was a mistake. She knew it as soon as her fingers met his skin.
Heat surged through the bond.
Ronan’s breath caught. His gold eyes closed for half a second, as if her touch were either agony or mercy. Maybe both.
“Ronan,” she said.
He released Gideon.
Gideon straightened his collar with cold dignity, though his throat bore the red mark of Ronan’s arm.
Lark stepped between them before she could think better of it. “No one decides whether I live but me.”
Gideon looked down at her.
He was too close. Too broad. Too severe. Candlelight carved shadows beneath his cheekbones. His eyes flicked to her wrist, to the marks his grip had left.
Something like regret moved across his face and vanished.
“If you become a threat to this city—”
“I have been a threat to this city since the first time the dead answered me,” Lark said. “The difference is, until tonight, everyone found that useful.”
Callum murmured, “There she is again.”
She ignored him.
Silas came forward carrying a ledger, a spool of black thread, a dish of ash, and a silver lancet. He set them inside the freshest warding circle.
“What are those for?” Lark asked.
“A tethering rite.”
“No.”
“Without it, we decay.”
“No.”
“Miss Voss—”
“I said no.” Her voice shook. “You think I don’t understand what this is? Blood. Thread. Touch. Breath. That is binding magic.”
“It is already binding magic,” Silas said. “This would make it survivable.”
“For you.”
“For all of us.”
Lark looked at the four men. “You don’t understand. My mother warned me about this. She said bone weavers did not simply raise the dead. They made weapons. Servants. Things that loved the hand holding the leash because the leash told them to.”
Callum’s expression gentled into something dangerously close to tenderness. “I have loved unwisely before, darling. I promise I can tell the difference between enchantment and poor judgment.”
“This is not funny.”
“No,” he said. “It is terrifying. I am simply very committed to remaining beautiful in the face of doom.”
Ronan stepped closer, then stopped before the bond could decide for him. His voice was rough. “I don’t feel ordered.”
Lark looked at him.
His gaze held hers with unsettling directness.
“I feel you,” he said. “Fear. Heart. Heat. But not command.”
Heat moved up her throat.