Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(116)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“Those aren’t banners, Neve,” I managed to choke out. “That’s blood.”

 

 

 

 

 

The silence of the dead had its own power, great and terrible. Like a dark pane of glass, it swallowed everything, and nothing, not even the light, reemerged.

 

The courtyard had become a battlefield, the arena for one final, desperate stand. A place that only swarming flies and foul wind dared to enter now.

 

The lower half of the Mother tree was charred black, its remaining leaves trampled into the bloodied snow. Deri was a pile of kindling beside it, still gripping the massive trunk. The bodies of sprites ringed it like a halo of death.

 

Every part of me strained, desperate to turn and run. I forced myself to stand there at the edge of the slaughter. I forced myself to see.

 

To see it all.

 

Betrys, fallen just before the gate, the first line of defense between the monsters and the innocents inside. Her sword gripped tight even in death. Arianwen lay near her, her body draped over Lowri’s. Seren and Rhona lay across the white steps of the tower, their hands reaching for one another amid the carnage around them. Rivers of blood had flowed over these stones and dried into rust-colored streams.

 

It was that stench, of death, of decay—that was the only thing that felt real. Olwen was moving, stumbling, among the bodies, screaming and sobbing as she desperately checked them for life.

 

Caitriona ran for the tower, climbing through the remains of everything she had known and loved. The once-mighty doors to the great hall were splintered and torn from their hinges. And when her anguished shouts echoed across the courtyard, I knew no one inside had survived.

 

Neve said something behind me, her voice ragged and breaking, but I was selfish. I could only think of one thing. One name.

 

Cabell.

 

My brother . . . he . . . It wasn’t possible.

 

None of this was possible. It wasn’t real.

 

I took off at a run, searching the bodies, turning them over to reveal the agony of their deaths, ravaged faces, torn and devoured. I knew I was screaming when it became impossible to draw a breath, calling his name, pleading with whatever gods might actually exist.

 

The dead were inescapable, the echoes of their sheer terror in those final moments hovering around us in the mist. The animals lay slaughtered in the stable. The men and women were draped over the walls, bodies broken and skin gaping. Aled and Dilwyn were in Olwen’s garden. Angharad and countless others were in the courtyard field, where a few sprouts had emerged from the dirt to be baptized in gore.

 

Where was Cabell? Where?

 

I ran to the dungeons, to the springs, to the path beneath the armory, until, finally, I saw that the door to the kitchen had been torn off, and a memory of Bedivere’s voice broke through the searing panic in my mind. The last hope of Avalon.

 

I clambered over the bodies of Children and Avalonians alike to get inside. The cabinet had separated from the wall, blocked by a man’s body, and I ripped it open the rest of the way, sliding down the blood-slicked ladder.

 

And after everything I had seen, what lay below in the fairy path was what brought the bile burning up my throat.

 

Gore rose above the top of my boots, black and thick in the darkness. I pulled my flashlight out of my bag, my hands trembling so badly I nearly dropped it as I surveyed the bodies around me. What was left of them.

 

Anyone who had dared to come down here had been trapped. The door leading up into the grove was shut. Locked. And with no hope of escape, they’d been torn to shreds.

 

My flashlight beam swept over the massacre, and I held my breath so I wouldn’t have to take in the overpowering stench of death. Pieces of Bedivere’s familiar armor were scattered among the bodies. The cold snaked around me as the light ran across a piece of worn brown leather.

 

I saw my hand reach down to the blood-drenched ground, my fingers dipping into the dark, grisly pool to retrieve it. The piece of leather was the size of my palm, still recognizable as a jacket collar. I saw myself turn it over, saw a child’s careful stitching, once yellow, now crimson, and the letters LAR. Beneath it, like a hidden curse sigil, was a tattooed patch of pale skin.

 

I leaned over and vomited up everything in my stomach. Gasping, retching, until I lost all feeling in my hands and dropped the cloth and the flashlight.

 

The darkness swallowed me, and I didn’t know where to turn, didn’t know which way was out. A pain like nothing I’d ever felt before split me in two, and all I could do was hold on to the wall behind me to try to keep from drowning in what was left of the dead.

 

Of Cabell.

 

I cried, the sound echoing on the stone walls, my whole body heaving. Everything . . . everything for this. For the person I loved most in the world to have suffered this—the pain and fear in this dark, that moment of knowing he wouldn’t get out, of being reduced to nothing more than memory and this . . . this . . .

 

I couldn’t find my way out, and I had no place to go. So I stayed, the tears pouring out of me, hoping and praying I would just die of the pain, until Neve at last came and led me out.

 

 

 

 

 

I stood alone on the curtain wall, gazing out into the dark forest. Time was playing games with my mind, and here, in a place of almost endless night, it seemed to matter even less. A part of me hoped that if I just stood here, letting the cold wind do what it would to me, I’d become stone too. I wouldn’t have to untangle the bonfire of thoughts in my mind, or ease the throbbing in my chest.

 

My eyes watered from the cold, but tears wouldn’t come. The well deep inside me had emptied in an almost frightening way. When it filled again, it was with a familiar poison. One I deserved every burning drip of.

 

You did this.

 

You brought him here because you thought you knew best.

 

It was all for nothing.

 

You got what you deserved.

 

And he died hating you.

 

My brother—the sensitive, brilliant, talented, charming one. The best not just of the Larks but of any world. Avalon had brought him nothing but pain and death. I never should have asked him to come with me.

 

I never should have gone looking for Nash.

 

The weight of the loss hit again, knocking the breath from my body. Cabell had been so close to the end of his nightmare. So close to breaking free of the darkness that had tried to smother every last trace of hope he’d had. To devour him.

 

I couldn’t close my eyes without imagining it. How quickly and savagely death had come for all of them—within hours of the isle’s salvation.