Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(72)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

“Do what?”

 

“You always seem to assume the worst,” he said, “and you expect everyone else to do the same. But all you’re really doing is punching at phantoms the rest of us can’t see.”

 

“Can’t imagine why I would do that,” I said, the words tumbling out of me before I could stop them. “It couldn’t possibly be based on years of experience driving that point home again and again.”

 

“Is it that,” he said, “or is it just another excuse to push people away?”

 

The darkness caressed his face as he watched me. A whisper in my mind finally put a name to the uncomfortable heat swimming beneath my skin.

 

Shame.

 

“You don’t know a damn thing,” I told him, hating the way the heat was building in me again, the uncontrollable burning at the back of my eyes. “About me or my life.”

 

Get a grip, I told myself. Calm down.

 

He let out a faint, almost rueful laugh as he opened a tarnished silver box with nothing inside. “Sometimes I wish that were true, Bird.”

 

He knows the color of your eyes, that same voice whispered.

 

“I realize your life hasn’t been easy,” he continued, “especially after Nash disappeared, but at least—”

 

“Please tell me you’re not about to find the bright side of child abandonment and neglect,” I snapped. “Because I assure you, it does not exist.”

 

Nash was dead. I didn’t want to talk about this. About him. About anything. But it was like I was unspooling, and each turn only spun me faster.

 

“I would never say that,” Emrys said, moving on to another metal chest. Inside were books bloated and unreadable from water damage. “But at least you can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. You think my life is so easy, but you have no idea. You just . . .”

 

He trailed off.

 

“Poor little rich boy,” I sneered. “It’s so hard having everything handed to you, isn’t it?”

 

It felt good to unleash the words on him, to get the festering heat, that anger and resentment that burned like the worst bile, out of me.

 

“At least you don’t have to worry about legacy.” He spat the word out like a bitter taste in his mouth. “There are no rules, or boundaries, or expectations you could never live up to. And there’s sure as hell no—”

 

“No what?” I asked. “Don’t stop there. You were just about to tell me how much harder you have it within the walls of your mansion.”

 

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” he said. “You’re the only person I know who ever notices or cares about money.”

 

For a moment, I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. “The mere fact that you don’t have to care is a privilege not afforded to the rest of us.”

 

I tracked every cent coming and going. Every night, as I tried to force myself to fall asleep, I was swarmed by thoughts of how I would find more, and what would happen if I didn’t.

 

“You have everything,” I told him, hearing the hoarseness in my voice. He didn’t have a dead guardian, or a cursed brother. He had stability, a mother who doted on him like a prince, houses scattered across the world, friends, cars, new clothes, the very best Hollower tools and supplies.

 

I wasn’t going to feel sorry for him just because the trade-off was living up to his last name, or having a life laid out for him from birth.

 

That was called security. He had a future.

 

And a past, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. Some of us didn’t even have that. I would have killed to know anything about my parents. Even just their names.

 

“Listen,” Emrys said after a while, looking up from where he was thumbing through a waterlogged tome. “We’ve had a textbook case of a rough start, and, frankly, it’s beneath us. If nothing else, can we at least agree to be professionals? The ring is gone, Avalon is a festering hell, and we’re surrounded by strangers. Can we call a truce?”

 

“Fine,” I said. I could admit that our best chance to survive and get back to our world was working together. I could even admit that some of what Emrys had said was true. Day by day, I could decide what I wanted to do, and I had no one other than Cabell to answer to.

 

We worked in silence, careful to put everything back exactly where we’d found it. There were vases that looked as if they had come from other ancient lands, a helmet crowned with stars, and a shield shaped like a dragon. I picked up the tarnished helmet, studying the strange constellations etched into it.

 

“Maybe we should bring those up with us,” he said quietly, “and leave them outside the forge. They have no mining here, and they don’t have enough raw ore left to keep making new weapons and armor.”

 

“And how do you know that?”

 

“I asked,” he said, shrugging. “They’re just melting down what metal they have on hand and repurposing it.”

 

“You and Neve just made yourselves right at home, didn’t you?” I said.

 

“If that’s what you want to call asking questions as you think of them, then sure, I’m right at home.” Emrys blew the dust off something in his palm. “I’d recommend trying it, but, fair warning, it might actually lead people to believe you care.”

 

I set the helmet back down. “Yeah. Wouldn’t want that.”

 

“Is this . . .” Emrys held the small piece of coppery metal up toward Ignatius’s light. His eyes shot over to a large armoire, where several wooden staffs, their tops curled into different knots and spirals, leaned. “I think this is a druid spoon—is that possible?”

 

He passed it to me, then wove through the maze of broken statues and chests to take up one of the staffs.

 

“It looks like part of a spoon,” I said. “Nash had drawings of them in one of his journals. Usually there’s two halves . . .”

 

The shell of the spoon was like a leaf, with a short flat tab at the end to hold. Four quadrants had been etched into the patinaed metal. The other half, a mirror image of this one, would have a small hole for blowing in blood, or bone dust, or whatever they used for divination. The divine messages depended on where those bits landed in the quadrants—not completely unlike reading tea leaves.

 

“Oh, what’s this?” I heard Emrys say.

 

I’d noticed the towering object shrouded in a drooping tapestry when we’d come in—the size of it, even next to the large armoire leaning crookedly to the left, made it impossible to miss. Emrys gripped the tattered and faded fabric, and down it came with a sharp tug.