Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(112)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“Fine,” I said, glancing at Emrys and Neve to make sure the three of us were in agreement. “Then we’ll try to lead the revenant away from the tomb. If we can’t, we’ll have to remove the magic she’s feeding on, even if it means letting Arthur go. Can you at least agree to that?”

 

“Cait?” Olwen looked to her, waiting.

 

When Caitriona faced us again, she was as pale as the snow outside.

 

“We’re losing the light,” I reminded her.

 

“Then . . . ,” Caitriona said. “We had best hurry north and see the plan through.”

 

“You’re certain?” Olwen asked.

 

“The past cannot hold more worth than the future,” Caitriona said, her voice thick. “Nor can one man be prized above the whole of the isle.”

 

Olwen visibly relaxed as she pushed up off the floor. “I’ll gather our things.”

 

Caitriona nodded, retrieving her sword from where it lay across the table. She said nothing more, but I knew how much it would cost her to destroy a piece of something she had sworn to protect and serve.

 

And if she could escape the grip of all that she’d ever believed, perhaps there was hope for me, too.

 

 

 

The trudge north was an uphill battle through bone-chilling icy snow for the better part of an hour. The dead trees we’d used for cover dwindled in number the higher we went, until only craggy boulders were left to judge our slow progress.

 

My boots were soaked through, my toes, fingers, and face numb, when we reached what seemed to be the crest of the rise. Caitriona slowed, dropping onto her belly to crawl the rest of the way. We slithered up beside her, forming a line along the rocky edge.

 

The other side of the hill dipped a few feet before leveling out into flat earth. With a jolt, I realized we were at the northernmost point of the isle, and there was simply . . . nothing beyond it. Here, the edge of this Otherland ended abruptly, with a sheer drop down into the misty black void.

 

Between that darkness and us stood a handsome gray stone structure that looked to my eye like an open-air cathedral.

 

“Are you kidding me?” I whispered. “Every High Priestess gets buried in the same hunk of dirt and this guy gets a whole damn temple?”

 

Neve shushed me with a sharp jab of the elbow.

 

“Do you see anything?” Olwen asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper.

 

On cue, Emrys reached into his bag to pull out a pair of binoculars.

 

“The rocks,” Caitriona breathed.

 

I shifted my gaze west of the tomb, where spears of dark stones jutted up from bare soil and formed a natural barrier to the cliff. A humble cottage sat among them, its thatched roof buckling into its single room—it must have belonged to Bedivere before he took shelter in the tower.

 

But that wasn’t what Caitriona had spotted.

 

They were sprawled over the ground, clustered in the shadows of stones and trees. The coloring of the Children had made them nearly indistinguishable from the rocks and dead grass until they roused at the sound of a shrill, wordless call. I recognized it instantly.

 

The revenant.

 

The Children turned their faces toward the tomb in anticipation, barking and howling, foamy saliva dripping from their maws. They shivered and hissed as they crept out into what remained of the daylight.

 

It was all the proof I needed that the revenant was controlling them—instinct alone would have kept them in the shadows. Only their master could compel them to do the thing they most hated.

 

“Both plan A and plan B just got significantly harder,” Emrys whispered.

 

He passed me the binoculars. I counted a dozen or so Children, all speckled with mud and crusted with leaf litter. I followed their line of sight over the uneven ground, over the ring of green grass that surrounded the tomb, clearly marking the edge of the protective magic. One by one, they prowled forward to that living line, pacing along its length, until, finally, she came.

 

The revenant emerged not from the rocks but from the tomb, her body formed from dirt and dead leaves. Olwen’s sharp inhale faded beneath the eager howls of the Children as they saw what she was dragging forth by the ankle.

 

“Is that . . . ?” Emrys whispered.

 

Neve pressed her hands to her mouth to smother her horror.

 

And there was nothing we could do but watch as she threw the sleeping body of Arthur Pendragon to the Children as if he were a mere slab of half-rotten meat.

 

 

 

 

 

Before any of us could move or speak through the strangling horror, the Children had devoured everything but the bones, scattering the final remains of Arthur Pendragon on the snow in bloodied ribbons of flesh.

 

Emrys gripped my wrist, trying to draw my attention to something, but I would never know what. Time wound itself as if on a spindle, tighter and tighter, until at last the thread snapped and it unraveled in a frantic spin.

 

“Guess we’re going with plan B,” I choked out. There was no point in trying to lure the revenant away now. The protective magic had to be removed.

 

Caitriona rose with a cry of pure rage, struggling to unsheathe her sword with her wounded shoulder. The harsh song that poured from her turned the eddies of mist below into streams of fire. She charged down the hill, her sword at the ready, leaving us, and the tatters of our plan, behind.

 

The rest of us had one heartbeat to decide what to do.

 

“Blessed Mother,” Olwen groaned, pushing up from the snow and darting right to make a wide circle around the tomb.

 

Neve turned to Emrys and me, her voice low and urgent. “Please be careful. I’m not sure I can call the light more than once . . .”

 

“We will,” Emrys swore. “Good luck.”

 

I nodded, an invisible fist closing around my throat as Neve rose, the image of grace and power, and followed Olwen. Her long wand was clutched in her fist—ready to protect the priestess in every way she could. But neither would make it if we didn’t draw the attention of the revenant and her Children away from them.

 

Emrys squeezed my wrist one last time and picked up the sword to follow Caitriona down the hill. My hand closed around the cold handle of Emrys’s small axe.

 

“Go,” I told myself, shoving off the ground. “Go!”

 

Terror made me feel strangely weightless as I ran forward, half sliding down the hill’s icy slant. The scene spread like a nightmarish painting by one of the old masters. The vividness of the fire, the blood, Caitriona’s silver hair, Emrys’s jacket as he raised his sword—every color was intensified against the blank canvas of the snow.