Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(124)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“We have to leave,” I told the others. “Neve, can you open a Vein? It doesn’t matter where. We need to get our things and leave—right now.”

 

“What’s happened?” Caitriona asked. “What is this place?”

 

Neve looked like she might be sick from shock as she hugged her wand to her chest. A cut on her cheekbone wept blood, and it mingled now with her tears.

 

“The ritual didn’t restore the isle by purifying it,” I said, the words aching down to my soul. “It restored Avalon to the human world.”

 

 

 

 

 

I brought them to the only place I could. Home.

 

I hadn’t actually thought about how it would feel to return to the apartment. I hadn’t even thought about how much time had passed since I’d last been there, until I saw the Christmas decorations that merrily adorned our quiet street and felt the cold promise of coming snow.

 

We’d only had a moment to retrieve our things—including Griflet, who had napped through the collision of worlds—before searchlights had swept over the tower’s smoldering courtyard. No time for thinking at all.

 

Now there was too much time.

 

Olwen and Caitriona had taken in their first glimpses of our world with outright horror. The cars, the architecture, the people milling around and gawking at the dire state of us—all of it was too much, too loud, too bright after the harsh gray world of Avalon, even for me.

 

“Are you sure about this?” Neve whispered as I jimmied the lock on our small kitchen window. The herbs in the planter gave me a wilted hello—one far warmer than the shocked look of one of our neighbors as she spied on us from the nearby sidewalk. Bloodstained and filthy, I waved and gave her my best sheepish smile.

 

“Lost my key!” I called to her as the window lock finally released.

 

I pulled myself up and squeezed through the tight opening, wriggling over the counter and the kitchen sink. Once inside, I froze, the familiar scent of lemon and dried herbs bringing a fresh sting of tears. The kitchen appliances and furniture looked strange to my eyes—too sharp, too perfect. A light layer of dust coated the dining table and countertops, but the space was otherwise clean and tidy. There was no dark mud to scrub from stones, no linens to wash. There were no stories to overhear, or secrets hidden in its shadows. No monsters, either.

 

I stared and stared, trying to accept the unnaturally bright colors of the books on the bookshelf, the zigzagging pattern of our rug. Though it was full of things I’d picked out myself, the space seemed almost . . . achingly hollow.

 

It had never been a home. It had only ever been a dream of one.

 

Stepping down off the counter, I knocked a few stray pieces of mail and the potted plants onto the linoleum floor, but didn’t bother picking any of it up. Instead, I looked across the length of what had been our home. The place we’d carved for ourselves in a world that had done its best to be rid of us.

 

A sharp ache cut through my chest. That wasn’t right, not really. This was the place I had wanted for us—in the city I’d kept us in for my own selfish reasons. I’d convinced Cabell we needed to stay in Boston, just like I’d convinced him we had to find a way to break his curse, rather than help him learn to live with it.

 

It made me feel like I had to be afraid of myself, too.

 

I unlocked the front door and barely registered the others entering and taking a tentative look around. Caitriona and Olwen sat at the small kitchen table’s two chairs—two, because that was all we had ever needed. Both stared blankly into the air, as if waiting for instructions. I poured everyone water, but no one drank it.

 

Neve sat on the couch, shifting so I could sit beside her. We leaned our heads against each other as we watched Griflet explore the space.

 

A neighbor’s TV came through the thin wall that connected our houses “—reports are only just emerging out of Glastonbury, where, overnight, officials claim a massive seismic event has unearthed previously unknown ruins of an earlier settlement and forest. We’re getting a live shot now—”

 

“God’s teeth,” I choked out. “Are they going to be able to see everything in the tower? The books? The springs?”

 

“Anything still possessing magic will be hidden to those without the One Vision,” Olwen said. “Anything made by hand will not.”

 

She clutched the basket containing Viviane’s vessel on her lap, her legs jumping with unspent adrenaline. The vessel inside had shattered with the blast of magic from the ritual, but she’d brought it anyway.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Neve said, agonized. Something broke open in her then, and her words spilled out with her tears. “If I hadn’t pushed you to perform the ritual, this—this never would have happened. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry—”

 

“No,” I said. “None of this is your fault. I’m the one who went to get the athame.”

 

“I’m the one who fought for the ritual,” Olwen said, her face crumpling. “I never questioned Bedivere’s identity, nor noticed he still possessed the hand he claimed to have lost—what sort of healer am I?”

 

“Why would we have questioned it?” Caitriona asked. “Only the High Priestess had ever laid eyes on the living Arthur and true Bedivere, and Lord Death ensured she was dead before coming to the tower.”

 

She stood and began to pace, catching each of our eyes in turn. “Listen to me. We will not play this game. We will not bear the burden of blame for what that monster has done. We will only make right what he has wronged.”

 

My brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

 

“We have unleashed Lord Death unto this world, along with the Children,” she said. “Whatever he has planned for the sorceresses, for all of this realm, we will stop it. And we will bring Cabell back.”

 

I closed my eyes, releasing a shaky breath. “I don’t know if we can.”

 

The brother I knew wouldn’t have stood by and let the last survivors of Avalon be slaughtered.

 

“He could be under Lord Death’s sway,” Neve said, wiping her eyes against her torn sleeve. “The way the Children are.”

 

I wanted to believe that, but . . . that look on his face. You made me feel like I was a monster.

 

“The body at King Arthur’s tomb,” Neve said quietly. “It must have been the real Bedivere.”

 

“I think you’re right,” I said. “And the full story is probably etched into the missing piece of that vessel—the one Flea found.”