Liar. Kael wanted to serve the Stav to see the kingdoms, to traipse over the knolls and valleys of Jorvandal, then he’d always dreamed how he’d settle down with the most beautiful wife and take up the life of a fisherman like Thorian.
Until his death, Kael would be locked into the life of a warrior, of bloodshed, and battle if it arose. There were tales of Stav who lived such lives. They were never the same—built strangely, like battle fashioned their bodies in new ways.
They seemed empty.
Still, how could I refuse when it meant the world would be without Kael Darkwin and his good heart, his rakish way with women, his gentle soul?
“If it is what you want,” I responded, a thickness to my voice.
“Stav Nightlark,” Damir said, flicking his fingers to signal Emi. “Retrieve the bone.”
Emi approached Kael. She gave him a soft smile. “Again, I must manipulate your bones. I assure you it won’t be like the last time.”
Kael snorted. “I think you take pleasure in my pain.”
Emi shook her head and turned Kael’s palm upright, so it faced the ceiling. With a small paring knife, she cut a slit in the top of one of his fingertips. After she dabbed away some of the blood, Emi took the tip of his finger between her own, like she was pinching the nailbed.
Kael grimaced and blew out a few ragged breaths through hisnose, but no screams, no horrid agony was written on his face. More discomfort and irritation.
When Emi slid her fingers off his, a shaving of something pale and blood-soaked followed. Kael clutched his hand to his chest until the second Stav Guard handed over a linen cloth to stop the blood.
Pinched between Emi’s fingers was a piece of bone so thin it was nearly diaphanous.
With care, Emi handed the sliver to King Damir. Prince Thane approached his father, saying nothing, but made a small gash behind the lobe of the king’s ear with his own knife.
The king didn’t flinch, simply chuckled at my widened eyes. “You can understand why I only trust my own flesh and blood to draw a knife so close to my throat.” Damir held out Kael’s bone in his palm. “What you did in the jarl’s house, do again. It will not be so overwhelming, for this is no soul bone.”
“You will sense Kael through his bone?”
“At times.”
“Is it not maddening? To feel so many others, I mean?”
“It takes a great deal of focus to sense another soul through the binding, but it is not impossible.”
“Even though you are not a crafter?”
Damir smirked. “Yes. Something about the melding power connects me to these slight pieces of my Stav, creating a sort of bridge between us. I can choose to access it if necessary, or burn it should they betray me.”
Skalfirth was small, secluded, but I thought we understood more than all this. Never had I heard of such a thing being done before. Jorvandal’s Stav Guard was the envy of the kingdoms. Strong, formidable, and some of the most fiercely loyal warriors across the lands.
Because they’d given pieces of themselves.
I laced my fingers together to hide the tremble. “How do I bind the bone, sire?”
The king slid half the shard into the gash in his neck. “Touch it, and your craft should lead you from there.”
The weight of every eye fell over my shoulders. My fingers were unsteady, but with care I reached out to the sliver of bone.
A bite of something sharp, almost like a thorn, pricked my skin. The roar of a furious tide filled my ears and soft light wrapped around the shard.
The same as with the soul bone I melded to Kael, filaments like gold threads webbed around the bone and into the open wound on Damir’s neck, a sort of pattern I could use to stitch the new bone into the king.
I touched one strand, dragging the tips of my fingers downward. The gilded threads fastened along the edge of the shard and I made quick work of nestling the piece half inside the gash on the king’s neck.
It was bloody work, a little sickening to mold and maneuver flesh aside to make way for additional bone fragments.
My jaw tightened against a swell of sick in my belly the deeper I shoved the piece. Each new tug against the glow of craft threads squished and slipped into blood and tissues. I was no healer and the whole of it reminded me of gutting days-old fish.
