The woman was tall, clearly understood how to work, but still delicate in a way. Innocent. Not the sort I expected when we sailed here. Fadey had been a powerfully built man, as had the melders before him.
But she was stronger.
One touch and the bone shifted into place beneath Darkwin’s ribs, melding the power of the soul bone into his broken wounds.
Fadey had worked slowly, with more blood and gore. When she started melding, the woman’s hands worked as though she had used her craft from her earliest memories.
She was the melder who spurred deadly raids. So many lives were lost.
For her.
Becauseof her.
My jaw worked through the spark of disdain rising again. I shook out my hands, turned from her, and dragged three fingers over my chest, arching them out until I clapped them into my opposite palm. A gesture for the Stav to gather, for them to move to the boats.
Stav Guard chanted and pounded fists over their chests. Baldur stepped beside me. The damn grin on his face lifted the hair on my neck.
He reveled in the pain that he brought into this house.
With a sneer, the captain looked at the woman. “Prepare to sail. Bring the crafters. We take the new melder to our king.”
Baldur wrenched her off the ground, too rough, and an odd resentment tightened my chest.
Something about her dug into my sympathies, and it was aggravating.
Moments after Lyra was on her feet, Darkwin drew in a new, deep breath.
A sob broke from her chest and tears filled her dark eyes, dripping rich blue drops onto her cheeks. I scoffed. Clever woman. When she peered at me again, the dyes had stained her skin and a thin, silver scar dug through the black centers of her eyes. Dyes, that was how she’d kept herself hidden for so damn long.
The honor given to a melder’s household was enough even a mother would deliver her child to the gates of the royal keep upon the first glimpse of silver.
Except the fallen House Bien.
They kept their girl hidden until they paid with blood.
I’d barely met my twelfth summer when word filtered into Dravenmoor that the house of a new melder had been found. Distant memories of my folk strapping their longbows and seax blades to their shoulders still haunted my nights.
That raid was when I made a deadly misstep and lives were lost. Not long after, for my mistake, my folk left me for dead outside the walls of Stonegate, and the unexpected mercy of a young prince kept me breathing.
This woman—Lyra—had no sense of how soon her craft would be exploited.
“Sentry.” A young Stav clicked his heels, drawing to stiff attention at my side. “Do we take them all with their households?”
The great hall fell into chaos and cries of folk pleading for the bone crafters to be left in peace. Darkwin was breathing, but bloody and still. Lyra called his name, each time her voice cracking a little more. On the opposite side of her, the two spare crafters reached for their families.
Perhaps they were innocent and knew nothing, but the laws of Stonegate gave Damir the power to take from traitors as hepleased, and the king always demanded every drop of magical blood be claimed.
I made a swift gesture.Leave them. Only crafters.
The Stav swallowed, then dipped his head and aided his fellow guards in tearing the man and woman away from their families.
“No!” The melder tugged against the guards, but her eyes found me.
A muscle flexed in my jaw, but I ignored her pleas and pushed my way through the chaos.
All at once, Darkwin thrashed in his own blood on the floorboards. Blood from the wound had stopped flowing, but his body kept convulsing.
“Help him!” Lyra twisted in Baldur’s hold. “Remember, Sentry Ashwood, if he dies, then you have nothing. I swear it.”
