“Not,” I add under my breath and heave a sigh. “The Devourer is starting to piss me off.”
“Starting to?” Dreven asks.
“Okay, I passed pissed off about a week ago. Skelly’s, get the zombies.”
That is a phrase I never thought I would say, but here we are.
The skeletons don’t need finesse. They surge like a rattling tide. Rotted arms come off at the elbows. Knees go sideways. Heads detach with polite pops. It’s disgusting and brutally efficient.
Dreven’s shadows snap, carving a vampire straggler into obedient shadow before it can reform. He’s a dark slice at my flank, steady and furious.
I draw the cold in. Not ice. Not silence. Authority. The Crown sits in my bones, smug and waiting. I let it bleed into my voice. “Down.”
The closest corpse stutters. It’s not enough. Zombies are noise stitched into meat. Command alone won’t untie them.
“Try a burial order,” Voren calls, smashing a skull with an impatient swing. “Be literal.”
Literal I can do. “Return to the ground.”
It lands like a verdict. The soil sighs. The muck at our feet flexes like a lung. One by one, the bodies hesitate, then… sink. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. My skeletons hold them while the earth reclaims what it’s owed. Fingers claw, then vanish. The last skull gurgles and slips under.
The cemetery settles. Wind in the oaks. Drizzle is trying to be mist. My bony guard stand ringed around me, waiting for the next decree, the picture of a patient apocalypse.
“Return to your graves,” I say. “Rest.”
“You sure about that?” Voren asks, looking around.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, trying to sense if there is anything else undead coming our way.
There isn’t.
Or I can’t tell.
Either way, I’m done for tonight. I need a fucking shower.
The hush that follows pricks my skin, and I open my eyes to see that the skeletons are back where they belong.
“Nice,” Dastian says brightly. “Ten out of ten for necromantic crowd control. Would watch again.”
“Please don’t,” I mutter, scanning the trees. The oaks stand there, judgemental as ever. “I can’t sense anything else. You?” I ask Voren.
Voren cocks his head, listening with that graveyard radar of his. “Quiet.”
Dreven shakes his head. “Not quiet,” he corrects. “Coiled.”
I nod. That is how it feels. But if we have downtime, I’m taking it. “Home, shower, more food, sleep.”
“Sex?” Dastian asks hopefully.
“Only in your dreams,” I reply and head towards my cottage. I’m wrung out and buzzing at the same time, which is a horriblecombination. The gods close in around me without discussion as we cut back through the wet grass. The oaks mutter. The village lights blink like they’re scared to look us in the eye.
By the time we hit my front door, my hands have stopped shaking. The Crown in my bones purrs, smug. Dreven goes in first, shadows spilling ahead of him like a welcome mat with opinions. Voren peels off to sweep the perimeter with a cold ripple. Dastian flicks the light switch, and I flinch from the brightness.
“Shower,” I repeat.
Dreven’s gaze skates over my throat, my wrists, my face. He doesn’t touch. He doesn’t need to. “Eight minutes,” he says, which is either a command or care wearing his voice. “I’ll make tea, and whatever food I can find.”
I nod on my way down the hall and strip on autopilot. The hot water hits, and I sag against it, eyes shut. For exactly three breaths, there’s just steam and the thud of my heart.
