Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(46)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

Caitriona turned, stiff-backed, toward the door.

 

“Wait,” Neve said, her voice firm. She held out a hand. “My wand, please.”

 

Caitriona tightened her fist around it. “You’ll have it back when I decide you can be trusted.”

 

“I don’t need a wand to work magic,” Neve said, her voice deceptively light. “And you can toss that shiny silver hair all you want, but I neither want nor need your trust, let alone your approval.”

 

Caitriona stormed out into the waiting dark. The door slammed shut behind her, rattling every bottle on the nearby shelves.

 

“She’s pleasant,” I noted, hugging my arms to my middle. With the flames fighting to stay alive after their dousing, the infirmary had chilled.

 

As she passed the hearth, Olwen raised a hand, whispering something like a chant beneath her breath, stoking the embers back into a blaze, damp wood and all. Neve drank the sight down as if she were dying of thirst.

 

“You must understand,” Olwen said, returning her attention to wrapping Emrys’s arm in a clean bandage. “Cait’s only aim is to protect the survivors. I’ll not hear a word against her.”

 

In truth, I didn’t care about Caitriona or any of them. We’d come here for a reason, and that was the only thing that could matter.

 

“Do you agree with Caitriona’s story of how the curse on the land came to be?” Emrys asked, easing some of the tension and changing the subject from how we’d gotten here.

 

“I believe it is a curse, yes, though I’m less sure of its source.” Olwen rested her cheek in her palm, thinking. “Avalon was once a place where there was no true sickness. No hunger. No suffering. But I’ve read about the pestilences of the mortal world and cannot help but see the similarities now in how the darkness has spread.”

 

Some sort of magical disease or virus? It was a terrifying idea, and not one I’d seen referenced in any book or Immortality.

 

“Does your magic work with all plants?” Neve asked Emrys. When he nodded, she had more questions for him: “What did you feel being out in the woods? Did the trees tell you anything?”

 

“Nothing,” Emrys said with a small shudder. “Absolutely nothing. It was terrible.”

 

“It began two years ago.” Olwen nodded, breathing in deeply. “The curse came for the others first. The smallest of the fae, no bigger than flowers, then those who tended the sacred grove, the animals, even the trees and their dryads. My naiad kin.”

 

She looked down at her hands again, collecting herself before continuing. “Any creatures who did not seek the shelter of the tower perished—which is to say, nearly all. The dark magic sickened and killed them, but it had a different effect on our dead. It caused them to . . . rise again. Transformed and corrupted of mind. Now they care only for their hunger.”

 

“Mother of all,” Neve whispered.

 

“We call them the Children of the Night, because they hunt in the dark hours,” Olwen said. “They are living, and yet I feel nothing of the Goddess in them anymore. They can’t seem to bear any light, and only fire can stop them. And fortunately for them, our skies have been overtaken by shadow. We have only a few sunlit hours each morning before the darkness returns.”

 

“That must make it nearly impossible to grow anything,” Emrys said.

 

“We have spells to mimic sun, but as the darkness spread, we lost our groves and fields to blight,” Olwen said. “As you might imagine, Avalon now knows something of hunger.”

 

“We are managing well enough, thanks to the Nine,” Bedivere said gently. “Our food stock will carry us through another few months yet.”

 

Olwen mustered a small smile at his praise.

 

“And you really have no idea what caused it?” Cabell pressed.

 

“Caitriona has her theory, as you’ve now heard vigorously told,” Olwen said. “Some of my sisters agree, while others think the land sickened because the Goddess turned her back on us after the bloodshed.”

 

“What about the druids?” I asked. “You said they worshiped Lord Death and used magic he gave to them—that they massacred children. Why aren’t they higher on the list of suspects?”

 

“They might well be the source of our woes,” Olwen said. “But we were raised with the belief that the sorceresses’ choice was the worse of the two betrayals, because it came from those our elders loved and trusted most.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed.

 

“Perhaps, but pain wears many faces—anger, suspicion, fear,” Olwen said quietly. “When my sisters and I were called by the Goddess, we had to leave our families and homes behind to come to the tower for our training. High Priestess Viviane became like a second mother to us all. She taught us everything we know about the Goddess, magic, and ritual. But her grief from the Forsaking was also part of that inheritance, and it is difficult to dismiss that when it feels like a dismissal of her as well.”

 

“Hang on,” Cabell said. “Viviane? Was there more than one High Priestess with that name?”

 

“Only the one,” Olwen confirmed with a sad smile. “And to answer what I suspect is your next question, yes, she was hundreds of years old at her death. Likely almost a thousand, if we were to measure her life by the more rapid passage of time in your world.”

 

“Even factoring in the different timelines,” I said, glad to at least have that confirmed, “not even sorceresses live that long. How did she manage it?”

 

“The magic of the vow she took to the Goddess—the one we all take as priestesses—kept her alive until nine new priestesses were finally born,” Olwen continued. “The Forsaking was a scar on Viviane’s heart, and she never forgave those who caused it. Some of my sisters have inherited her sentiments, though not nearly to the same degree.”

 

“And you?” Neve asked.

 

“I understand why the sorceresses did what they did, though I can’t condone it,” Olwen said. “I know Sir Bedivere feels the same.”

 

“Indeed.” The old knight leaned against the doorframe, looking contemplative. “Such was the greed of the druids that I believe they would wish ill upon Avalon if they themselves could not rule it.”

 

“Is there any proof either way?” Cabell asked. “Wouldn’t death magic feel different than the power we draw from?”

 

“I couldn’t say,” Olwen said. “We have but one other clue to the cause of the sickness.”