Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(102)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

I lurched forward, trying one last time to get the athame, but the creature shrank back toward the bottom of the lake, wailing with rage, her weedy hair trailing after her like watersnakes.

 

I swam. The gray light at the surface appeared again, calling me toward it. With a hard kick, I burst through, coughing as I vomited up dank water.

 

But once I was there, my body had nothing left to give. Blood flowed out of my arm, draining those last embers of strength from beneath my skin. The water closed over my mouth, my eyes, and I slid under again. I no longer felt the blade’s steel grip in my numb fingers. Its fire dimmed.

 

In the cold thrall of death, a murmur of consciousness begged, Don’t let go.

 

The thick morass thrashed behind me, whipping up a torrent of loam. A painfully hot arm wrapped around my belly and yanked me up.

 

The cold air made me gasp until I choked, unable to get the water out of my lungs. I drove my head back, trying to slam it against the monster. My hand clenched reflexively around the sword’s hilt again and the blue fire returned, boiling the black sludge on the water’s surface. I didn’t realize the blood was roaring in my ears until I heard a muffled voice right beside my ear.

 

“Tamsin! Tamsin, stop!”

 

I twisted my neck back, my stomach clenching as the dark splotches cleared from my sight.

 

Emrys.

 

“Not here—” I choked out, coughing. You can’t be here.

 

His face was pale with fear. “Just hang on!”

 

His grip on me tightened as he swam us not to the island but to the far shore. The muscles in his body worked hard, his heart racing and racing. The heat of him was almost enough to drive out the ice that had crystallized around my bones.

 

The strap of my bag twisted around my neck as he dragged us both up onto the muddy bank. My arm screamed with pain as the bitter air met wounded flesh. The silver bone had a sinister gleam in the low light, a truth I couldn’t outrun.

 

He’ll see, I thought desperately, trying to tuck it beneath me. It was already too late. He swore viciously at the blood streaming from it, rivers in the mud. Frantically, he gripped the wound with one hand and brushed the soaking-wet hair off my face with the other.

 

“Tamsin?” he rasped. “Can you hear me? Tamsin!”

 

He hugged me close to his chest, rubbing and pounding on my back until I vomited up the rest of the water.

 

“What is this?” he asked, trying to pry my fingers from the hilt of the sword. Its heat whined and crackled as it fired the mud of the bank to hard clay.

 

But I only saw what was crawling out of the shadowed forest behind him.

 

The Children crept over the boulders and through the trees, staying in the heavy shadows of the forest, just outside their hated light. Dead moss and lichen rained silently to the forest floor as they scaled the branches with terrifying grace. Others perched on knobby roots that clawed into the ground. They chittered with excitement, huffing and sniffing.

 

No, I thought. It couldn’t be . . . Olwen had said . . .

 

Olwen had only said they weren’t as active during the day. That they hated the light. Not that they all slept. Not that none would try to attack us.

 

Emrys turned slowly, slowly toward the stench of vile death. The Children’s panting breath became the mist, and the mist their breath.

 

He released me gently back to the ground with a heart-shredding look and rose onto his haunches.

 

The sword slipped from my hand to Emrys’s and I moaned as the flames flickered out to hissing smoke. He looked down at it, bemused, as he stood to face the Children alone.

 

One crawled out in front of the others, spittle flying as it growled. One of its long, bony limbs reached out through the mist, slick with sour sweat and scaled.

 

It tilted its gray hairless head at an unnatural angle. Its eyes were lidless and wide, and the thin, pallid skin around them was puckered. But past the exaggerated and sunken features, there was something disturbingly familiar about the way its lips curled into a smirk.

 

I knew that face. Those eyes with their wolfish gleam.

 

It was Septimus.

 

Or what remained of Septimus.

 

My nails tore at the dead grass and cattails. I tried to push myself up. To stand.

 

Emrys swung the sword in wild arcs to hold the Children back, but without the threat of fire, they were undaunted, clambering over one another with cracking bones and snarls to be the first to get to him.

 

A screech echoed across the lake. The monster—the revenant—rose from the water and drifted to shore. Mud, twigs, and dead grass floated to her outstretched arms and the exposed half of her rib cage. Sickly mist amassed around her feet as the creature was restored to her full form.

 

Pressure built in my ears. My chest. More Children appeared in the darkness of the spiky bramble around her.

 

“What the hell is that?” Emrys gasped. “Is that—is that the High Priestess?”

 

Her head swung around at those words, and when she screamed, the sound rent the air. I clutched at my ears. Emrys staggered down to one knee.

 

The revenant called again, scaling the rocky hill of the opposite bank, vanishing into the woodland at such speed it stripped the bark from the black craggy trees. The Children around us moved back, deeper into the forest’s darkness. They barked and growled as they circled the wide body of the lake at a gallop. Chasing her.

 

Or summoned to her side.

 

Summoned to her side.

 

She’s controlling them. The words drifted through my mind, trying to take root. High Priestess Viviane is controlling them.

 

Emrys dropped the sword and fell into a crouch. “I don’t know what the hell just happened, but we’re losing the light. Can you—?”

 

He gripped my shoulder, his voice faded beneath the slow drumming of my heart. My whole body throbbed with each beat.

 

He’ll see. I drew my wounded arm beneath me, hiding it. He’ll know.

 

Blackness overtook my vision, and there was no fighting it. As my body released into numb exhaustion, one last ghost of a thought was left to follow me into the dark.

 

He’ll know I’m one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

There was something about the watery light that made it impossible to tell if I was awake or dreaming. It was shifting, swelling against mossy stone walls. Caught, for a moment, like smoke in a bottle.