Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(107)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“Hey,” Emrys said softly.

 

“Hey yourself.”

 

As I looked back, he caught my face with his hand and leaned forward, pressing his lips to mine. I lingered there, relaxing a bit, simply feeling the new texture of his stubble. As he pulled back, a grin on his stupid handsome face, I realized why he still had yet to move, why he was holding on to his jacket for dear life in his lap, and I burst out laughing.

 

“Ah,” he said, half groaning, half laughing. “I’m but a man, and you have an effect.”

 

“Come on,” I said, shaking my head. “We need to get going.”

 

“Let me look at your arm first,” he said, “then we’ll fly, Bird.”

 

His touch was skillful as he removed the dried leaves from my arm and reapplied the ointment, but there was a new intimacy to it now. His fingers stroked and smoothed as he examined the neat line of stitches he’d put in the skin. The wound itself looked furious, but no longer throbbed unless I touched it.

 

Ever so lightly, his fingers skimmed up to my shoulder and across my collarbone, then pulled down the neckline of my shirt to reveal the edge of the hideous death mark over my heart. His brow creased as he looked at it, and I forced myself to remain still. To not flinch and pull away as he traced its starlike shape.

 

“What happened?” he whispered.

 

I couldn’t. Not that.

 

I drew my injured arm between us. Emrys returned his attention to it immediately.

 

“How do you get the bandaging leaves to stay so green?” I asked, studying the way his dark lashes curled. “How did you figure any of this out?”

 

“I’ll meet your deflection with one of my own.” He gave me a sly smile, stealing one last quick kiss.

 

Carefully, he eased us both off the hard floor. The world spun, just for a moment, but he held us steady and pulled his sweater over my head.

 

“You need it,” I protested.

 

“You need it more,” he answered, and helped me with my jacket. We reassembled our meager belongings but paused in the doorway before removing the wards. Icy wind kissed my cheeks as I gazed out into the desolate forest.

 

“How do you want to do this?” he asked.

 

Heat climbed up my throat again, washing over my face. “Could . . . could we not tell the others yet, before we figure whatever this is out? People complicate things, and I . . .”

 

I trailed off, noticing the way his smile bloomed into a full-out grin.

 

“I was talking about the High Priestess,” he said, leaning closer. “But good to know I seem to have an effect on you, too.”

 

Now it was my turn to groan. I pushed him away, embarrassment lighting a fuse in me.

 

“We have to see if there’s any sort of trail,” I said. “She seemed to be heading north, but who knows where she is now.” As I remembered the strange grace with which the creature—the revenant—had floated over the water and land, a new thought occurred to me. “We might have better luck trying to find the tracks of the Children. She called them to her, didn’t she?”

 

“It sure seemed that way,” Emrys said. “Do you think she’s the one who created them? She did know something about the druids’ death magic.”

 

All it took to create a revenant was unfinished business and the presence of magic in the body. Unlike the creatures, her form could shift and remake itself. Killing her would be difficult.

 

But not impossible.

 

“Maybe.” But Neve’s words drifted back to me. I’m still not seeing any motivation on her part. “Didn’t Merlin say there were two others like him on the island—couldn’t she be the third, the one . . . waiting, right?”

 

“He also said that a she tried to master death but became its servant in the end,” Emrys said. “Could mean she got in over her head and caused the curse by mistake.”

 

“Or,” I said, “she came around to wanting to serve Lord Death and give the isle to him.”

 

Emrys’s expression turned pained. “Have we decided to believe the unstable, prattling druid trapped in the tree?”

 

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Clutching the strap of my workbag, I took a step out of the watchtower, letting my boots crunch in the snow. The sight of the landscape mottled with decay drew the memory of Nash’s bones to the front of my mind. “I guess the more important question is how the High Priestess—the revenant—got the Ring of Dispel. Was she the one who killed Nash?”

 

“Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ll be able to figure that one out,” Emrys said. “But . . . maybe Nash brought it to her? Or she found it after becoming a revenant, drawn to its magic. She clearly had a number of secrets—here, don’t forget this.” He held out the sword from the lake. “Its party trick seems to only work for you.”

 

My breath grew ragged as I stared at it. The hilt was inlaid with ivory that not even the mire of the lake water could stain. And the way its blade had burst into flame . . .

 

“You hold on to it,” I said, unknotting our protective wards.

 

Emrys knew how to wield a blade. It was right that he carried it. Used it. That thing had been in my dream, and I didn’t want to look at it if I didn’t have to. Didn’t want to think about what any of it meant.

 

We went opposite ways around the watchtower, gathering the sigil-carved clay tablets in neat stacks. When we met in the middle at the back of the tower, he took both garlands and stowed them in his bag. Not for the first time, I wished they had the power to protect bodies as well as places.

 

“Hey, Tamsin,” he said, linking his fingers with mine. “I’m okay with this just being ours for now, too.”

 

I nodded, and, together, we headed north.

 

 

 

The powdery snow was as much a help as a hindrance, silencing our steps but slowing them in turn. The isle couldn’t have been more than a few miles long and wide, but it had never felt bigger as we trudged forward.

 

Somehow, impossibly, the forest had taken on a more sinister appearance. Half buried in snow, the fallen trees were indistinguishable from the creatures burrowing below. Icicles, black with sooty moss and decay, hung from the skeletal tangle of branches like barbed fangs.

 

Now and then, clumps of snow crashed down, startling us as they crusted in our hair or slipped beneath the collars of our jackets. My toes and fingers were stiff with the cold after only an hour of walking, and I was so focused on the ground directly in front of me, I almost missed the tracks at the edge of the barren riverbed that ran alongside our northerly path.