Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(18)
Author: Alexandra Bracken
Librarian had no idea how true his words were. Emrys had taken the sorceress’s memories about the Ring of Dispel for himself and ensured the rest of us would never see them.
But that only proved to me that the Servant’s Prize and the Ring of Dispel were one and the same. There was something else to this. A suspicion that buzzed in my skull like a hornet.
I sat down at my table again. My skin was icy as the windows behind me as I pulled out Nash’s journal and flipped to the last entry.
The coded message was surrounded by dozens of the words Cabell and I had tried to unlock its secrets. Taking a piece of scrap paper, I added another to that list. Lancelot. And another. Dispel. And another. Ring.
I drew in a deep breath and tried one last word. Myfanwy.
The name of an obscure sorceress we’d never had business with, who had done almost nothing remarkable with her magic, who had been destined to become little more than a footnote in someone else’s story.
Using Myfanwy as the key, I rearranged the letters of the alphabet and started substituting them for the ones he had written. A word emerged. Then a sentence. Until, finally, the answer to the shadowy question that had haunted us for nearly seven years took sudden shape. A ghost of the past materialized in front of my eyes.
It wasn’t a message, or a memory, but a note to himself.
Must go alone and remove weapons before approaching—sorceress wants proof it’s Arthur’s dagger before trade—how? Tintagel, quarter till midnight. Use phrase I have your gift to identify self.
A strange calm washed over me.
Tintagel.
The place where we’d camped after weeks of searching for Arthur’s dagger Carnwennan.
The place where Cabell and I had gone to sleep inside our tent, only to wake to find our guardian gone.
The place where Nash had met a sorceress under the dark cloak of night to trade the dagger for the Ring of Dispel.
After bandaging his wounds the best I could, I had left Cabell to rest in his bedroom before heading to the library. As I came barreling out of the linen closet, riding high on my discovery, I was brought up short by the sight of his open bedroom door and empty bed.
“Cab?” I called. He’d cleaned up the wreckage of our fight. The sharp, lemony scent of stain remover rose around me, the chemicals hard at work soaking up blood from the rugs.
“Here” was the quiet response.
I moved down the short hall into the dark living room, then turned toward the kitchenette, only to realize the shadow on the couch was my brother. I switched on the overhead lights, my lungs tightening as I wondered how long he’d been sitting there alone.
Cabell winced against the sudden flood of brightness. An open bottle of beer sat in front of him on the coffee table, still full. He looked down at his crossed arms, eyes unfocused on the curse sigils tattooed there. Aside from some cuts and bruises, he looked whole. Just not completely himself.
I sat down on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. Without thinking, I pushed the sleeves of my shirt up as I leaned against it.
“Did I do that?”
Cabell still wasn’t looking at me. The words were as hoarse as if he’d had to scrape them out of his throat.
I didn’t like lying to my brother, so, instead, I asked, “What do you remember?”
There was no light in his eyes—there was nothing at all. His shoulders slouched. “Enough.”
“Can I get some elaboration on that?” I asked, keeping the words light.
“All of it. Every last second. Is that what you want to hear?” His nails were darker and longer than they usually were, and there was still a thick patch of hair on the back of his hand. I stared, blood surging in my ears.
Impossible, I thought. The lingering effects of the curse had never held on to him this long.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “I’m angry at myself, not you.”
Something dark was brewing in his expression, like storm clouds gathering. The air seemed to shift around us, churning with the force of his thoughts. I was afraid to move, to breathe, and unleash that first lash of rain.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “You have to know that.”
“Why couldn’t I stop it this time?” he asked. “What happens if there’s a next time, and I can’t shift back at all? What if next time—” The words caught in his throat. “What if next time, I kill you? Do you think I could live with myself after that?”
“There doesn’t have to be a next time,” I told him. “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
Cabell made a noise at the back of his throat but said nothing.
“There may be a way to find the Ring of Dispel after all,” I whispered.
“So?”
For a moment, I couldn’t even speak.
“So?” I repeated. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Sure did,” he said coolly.
“It’s not just that,” I said. “Madrigal hired Trust Fund to find it, and I found out tonight that other sorceresses are looking for it, too. And so are Septimus Yarrow and his goons. I finally cracked the last journal entry, Cab. Nash was trading Arthur’s dagger for it the night he disappeared. That’s why he brought us to Tintagel.”
A cold drip moved down my spine at his unwavering expression. The lack of surprise. The lack of anything at all. A darkness so bleak, no light could escape it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
The apartment receded around me. The din from the street outside was swallowed by the thunderous beat in my chest, the pulse pounding inside my skull.
Then, all at once, the moment crashed down over me in a wave of pressure and horror that was as suffocating as it was painful.
“You knew?” I demanded. “All this time?”
“He told me that night after you fell asleep,” Cabell said.
My lips parted, but no sound emerged.
“He made me promise not to tell you,” Cabell continued, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.
I knew Nash had been telling Cabell things—teaching him, in a way he’d never teach mortal me—but that had been Nash, not Cabell. We’d been left twice: by our birth families and then by Nash. We’d only ever had each other, and to survive on our own, there couldn’t be secrets between us. I’d understood that, and I thought Cabell had, too.