Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(73)
Author: Alexandra Bracken
I took a step back, my gaze drifting up over the pale stone.
The body of the statue was massive, broad-shouldered and thick with corded muscle. A horned crown of real antler, moss, and holly leaves was somehow preserved on its head, radiating a seething malevolence that made me not want to touch it. Worse, the statue’s face had been smashed, and what remained was monstrous. A cloak, carved to resemble animal skins, draped over its shoulders and dipped across its chest, where there was a hollow. A candleholder like the Goddess statue’s, I realized.
But my eyes kept returning to its ruined face, where all the answers to unspoken questions had been crushed into obscurity. This kind of damage was an act of rage.
“Tamsin?” Emrys said. “What’s wrong?”
“Who is this?” I asked. “It looks like—”
Nash’s voice echoed through my memory, his face lit by our campfire. He rides on a fiery steed as the Wild Hunt scours the Otherlands, searching for the wandering dead, but he loves no world so much as our own . . .
I couldn’t bring myself to finish, but Emrys had figured it out for himself. “Lord Death. This was probably meant to be a pair with the statue of the Goddess in the great hall. Or, more likely, to replace it.”
I forced myself closer, trying to imagine the two of them side by side. One of the statue’s arms was outstretched, palm up, as if to cup the Goddess’s from below.
“Lord Death. Rarely mentioned in Immortalities, let alone legends, as if his name itself was a curse.” Emrys circled it, humming. “Sometimes called the Holly King, the—”
“—manifestation of darkness and winter on the Wheel of the Year,” I finished. “Forced to fight the Oak King of light and summer for the hand of the maiden they both desired. For each year, for all eternity, a cycle of the seasons.”
“Show-off,” Emrys said, laughing. “Still, must have been quite the lady.”
“That legend’s just a metaphor for the changing seasons,” I said, shaking my head. “None of it explains why they didn’t destroy the statue altogether after the Forsaking.”
“Superstition, probably,” he said. “Would you want to risk destroying an icon of a powerful deity? They may not worship him, but they still believe he exists.”
I ducked beneath the statue’s hand, noticing something carved on the back of it. It looked like a fragment of some kind of sigil. Or a crescent moon? No—I tilted my head. It looked like part of a knot design.
“Do you recognize this mark?” I asked, wondering why my memory was failing.
Emrys ducked under it. “Maybe? Could just be a crack, though?”
I shook my head. “No . . . there’s something about it . . .”
What was wrong with me? It couldn’t just be the stress or exhaustion of the last few days. It was like each time I reached for it, the memory that would have filled out the rest of the symbol evanesced into mist.
“I can’t believe these words are about to pass through my very own lips,” Emrys said. “But it does make you feel a bit sympathetic to the sorceresses. They were the ones willing to fight for what they believed in—even against a child of the old gods who ruled the damned.”
A chill crawled up the back of my neck. I shook myself, trying to escape the sensation. “They must have been afraid worshiping Lord Death would cause their souls to go to Annwn. The Goddess is the one who initiates the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.”
“Right,” Emrys said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Annwn. The Otherland no living mortal can reach, and wouldn’t dare try, save a brave few—I’ll bet you a truth or dare that you can’t name who.”
“Arthur and some of his knights,” I said in a bored tone, “either to rescue a prisoner or to steal the cauldron of the ruler of Annwn, as described in the Book of Taliesin.”
And by Nash, who had loved every version of the legend that saw the great King Arthur travel to the land of the dead and live to return to his own.
“Wow,” Emrys said after a moment. “Walked right into that one. Cabell always said you had a perfect memory . . . You were going to let me keep making stupid bets with you forever, weren’t you?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Just wanted to see how much I could get out of you.”
He shook his head. “You really broke the mold, Bird.”
“Can we . . . ?” I began, still staring up at the statue’s crushed face. “Let’s cover him. I don’t want to look at him anymore.”
“Not that you’ll be able to forget it,” Emrys said, almost apologetically. We threw the tapestry back over it, and as surely as if Emrys had cursed me, the image of it was seared into my mind like a photo negative.
“I choose truth,” I said, playing with the frayed edges of the fabric, unraveling a row of crimson thread.
“What?”
“You said I can choose a truth or dare,” I said. “I choose truth.”
Emrys stilled beside me. “Right now?”
“Right now,” I said. “Why did you take this job?”
He shook his head.
“You’re the one who wanted to make the bet,” I reminded him.
After a moment, he let out a small noise of frustration.
“Because . . . I don’t know,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Because my whole life, I’ve never done anything for myself without help. I’ve never worked without my father. I’ve never accomplished anything that lives up to the legacy of the great Endymion Dye or the ancestors all lined up on the walls.”
“Do you want to accomplish something like that?” I asked. “Or do you feel like you have to?”
His brow furrowed. I wondered if anyone had bothered to ask him that question before.
“As far as I can tell,” I continued, “a legacy is just a tool parents use to control their kids.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Emrys said, leaning against the armoire.
“No, I wouldn’t,” I agreed. “I surpass Nash’s existence just by not regularly drinking myself into a coma.”
I heard the bitterness in the words, tasting that bile again. Seven years, I’d lived without the man. I’d accepted that he was never coming back. And now that he’d gone and died . . . he’d upended everything all over again, and here I was, giving him control. Letting him reopen that raw part of me I’d seared shut.