Chapter Sixteen #2
He surprised her with a nonchalant shrug.
“Believe it or not, I get it. We’re all just out here trying to do the right thing.
I’ll be honest; I don’t think a damn one of us knows what that is.
All I know for sure is two things: one, eventually my time will come.
And two, I never felt more alive than when I played for that small audience in Everferd.
Having said that, I’m going to go play this lute for a group of traumatized swordsmen who are too terrified of Sikras’s wrath to heckle me. ”
Helspira smiled through her fatigue. “Sikras would be the least of their worries. If they don’t appreciate your music, they will know the wrath of a demon.”
“Abominations for life.” Ben rapped his knuckles on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re alive, Hels, and not just because it’d be hard finding a replacement to mind Sikras should anything happen to me.”
Her eyes widened. “You’d still trust me with such a thing?”
“Well, my pool of candidates is pretty slim, but”—he nodded—“I trust you with my life. I kind of have to, since you were willing to sacrifice yours for it.”
His exoneration eased the tension in her shoulders. “Anything for a friend.”
“Thanks, Hels. I appreciate it.” A strange inflection hid in his tone as he gripped the lute and started for the crowd.
Sikras returned to her side shortly after Ben had left it. He leaned down, one arm behind his back, as he proffered a mug of water. “Your beverage, milady.”
Helspira accepted it with one hand, using the other to pat the space beside her. “Sit with me? It sounds like Ben’s about to play some music. Might be a nice distraction from the daily onslaught of doom and gloom.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice.” Sikras sat but frowned upon testing the support of Helspira’s bedroll. “This is what they gave you to rest on? I’ve eaten stale loaves of bread softer than this.”
“In their defense, I don’t think they planned on me surviving the night.”
“Well, you did, and you deserve suitable accommodations.”
“About that ...” Helspira sipped on her water, then rested it on her leg. “Ben told me how you gave Death her scythe. Seems like I owe you some gratitude.”
Sikras grimaced and turned away. “That gabby little skeleton. He sure talks a lot for someone without vocal cords.”
Helspira slid a hand toward his but stopped short at touching his fingers. “Thank you.”
His gaze fell to their hands. “You owe me nothing. What you did for me, for Benjamin ...” He shook his head. “Siaphara needs your spirit more than Enos ever will.”
That softly spoken admission wrapped around her like heat from a fire on a cold night.
Urges pulsed in her heart, her veins, her core.
It took every ounce of composure not to surrender to them, to claim him with a passionate kiss, to sink her nails into his arms, pull him close, and yield to primal lust.
She couldn’t.
Surely, he was still very much in love with the ghost of Imri Nikabod.
Surely, she only imagined the desire she saw reflecting in his pale green eyes.
That tempered yearning in his every vocal inflection and subtle movement was nothing more than her mind manifesting things that weren’t there, right?
... Right?
Sikras
THE SOUNDS OF CONVERSING soldiers and crackling flames faded into obscurity as Sikras sat beside Helspira, locked in a tender stare.
Silence fell over them. An intimate one.
He could’ve sworn that just beyond the shimmering brilliance of Helspira’s red iris, an invitation waited.
His gaze slid from her eyes to her lips.
How easy it would be to surrender to the moment. To slowly lean forward and ...
No.
He pulled away, commanding his mind to clear, thumb picking at the golden band on his finger, as he tugged on the collar of his tunic.
Even without his structured bone-in vest that the cleric had insisted he remove to heal his various wounds, his tunic’s lightweight fabric suddenly felt oppressive.
Words poured from him in an unrehearsed rush, accompanied by a short, nervous laugh.
“Where’s Benjamin with that music, huh?”
His heart throbbed in his ears as he scoured the camp for his brother-in-law, his focal point, his anchor to reality.
He found Benjamin in the fire’s orange glow, the very fire illuminating the horrified faces of the Red Sentinels gathered around it.
They gawked, wide eyed, jaws parted, their pupils little pinpricks.
It was almost as if they had never seen a sentient skeleton strumming a lute before.
Across the distance, Benjamin’s voice flowed forth. He singled out one of the soldiers with a pointed finger. “This song goes out to you there, the man cowering in the back.”
The sentinel cringed under Benjamin’s gesture, forehead sweating. He looked skyward, at his boots, toward the horizon—anywhere but at the talking skeleton wielding the musical instrument.
Apparently undeterred, Benjamin plucked a few strings. “Join in if you know the words, ladies and gents. This one’s a Nyllmas classic.”
An old folksong accompanied the snaps and cracks of the fire’s popping wood.
The minor chord would have been terribly melancholy if the song’s hopeful lyrics didn’t balance out the melody.
Benjamin’s voice, a haunting baritone that at times crossed into the poignant range of a tenor, soothed some concern from the sentinel’s faces.
Some. But not all.
After all, the only thing more unsettling than an undead skeleton was a singing, undead skeleton strumming a somber tune around a weak fire in the middle of a dark, desolate forest.
Helspira soldiered through a visible wave of discomfort, sitting straighter to get a better view. “You know,” she murmured, “I knew he was good with an instrument in Everferd, but he’s also an excellent singer. Is that his real voice? From when he was alive, I mean?”
“Yes.” A rare flicker of sadness shattered the foundation of Sikras’s charisma. “Best as I remember it, anyway. The spell that grants him speech is tied to my memories of how he sounds. How he used to sound.”
Helspira leaned forward. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—Are you okay?”
“Did Benjamin ever tell you the best part about being an undead musician?” he whispered.
Helspira nodded. “No calluses.”
A slow spreading realization oozed through Sikras’s chest. Blood and bone, was that the only good part about being an undead musician?
Freedom from calluses? What kind of a life was that?
The song’s increasing volume severed rising doubts, and Sikras buried his reservations under the sweet symphony and another layer of comfortable, absolving denial.
“I love this song,” came Helspira’s enraptured voice. “It was one of the first pieces of music that my parents and I heard when we fled Chthonia and entered Nyllmas.”
“Oh?” Sikras arched a brow. “No music in Pio Chamila?”
“Some, but not much. Not like this, anyway. A busker played this very song in an open market as we searched for work. Mum and Da didn’t speak a word of Siapharian; they could’ve been dancing to a song about carnal sin and savagery for all they knew, but Da still took Mum by the hand, and, for the first time, they danced without the looming threat of death weighing their movements.
Those notes will always hold a special place in my heart. ”
Sikras studied her features as she fixated on Benjamin, from the spark in her functioning eye to the way her smile stretched from pointed ear to pointed ear.
Her chest swelled with an anticipated crescendo, and her delicate fingers curled around her blanket at the start of the chorus, but it was her enamored stare that drew his attention, like a siren’s song.
“Where are my manners? Our bard may be undead, but chivalry need not suffer the same fate. Would you like to dance?”
Helspira freed a quick laugh, but a sudden wince as she gripped her stomach severed the sound. “I don’t know how fluid my moves will be.”
“We don’t have to move at all. We could just stand there, and ... and wait until we both fall in love with dancing again.”
Her cheeks flushed a pink hue that rivaled her hair color, and one corner of her lips tugged into a smile. “I think I may have already fallen back in love with dancing when we were in Everferd.”
“Yeah.” He knew he shouldn’t. With every fresh stab of dishonor, he should’ve stopped talking. And yet he rose, proffering her a hand. “Me too.”
She said nothing, only accepted his hand, her blanket falling to the ground when she stood.
Observing her flash of vulnerability, Sikras retrieved the blanket in an instant and wrapped it around her shoulders like a cloak. “Fashion and function. Mark me, soon this’ll be all the rage back in Vinepool.”
He could almost feel her gaze rake over his bony frame, and she reached to rub the thin fabric of his tunic between her fingers.
She stepped into him, holding the blanket in place, arms resting against his chest. “I’m happy to share if you’re feeling a little exposed without the rest of your ensemble. ”
What an unfortunate time to be a man who worshipped no gods. To whom did he pray that Helspira wouldn’t feel his wild heart hastened by the pressure of her body against his chest?
She leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes, swaying in slow, sedated movements to the sound of Benjamin’s music.
Against his better judgment, his fingers spread across the small of her back, her skin warm against his cold palm. Blood and bone, if she remained this close, he would break. “Care to twirl?” he murmured into her ear, half hoping she would say no.
Without a word, she bunched the blanket into one hand to free up the other and stepped away, a silent invitation for him to guide her.
As soon as his arm lifted for her to spin beneath it, he winced. He had nearly forgotten the cleric only barely managed to heal the fracture before his body gave out.