We were taken from the courtyard. Only Roark and a few highly ranked Stav followed.
“With attacks on the rise and Dravens always seeming to know when my melder works,” the king said once we were behind a black velvet curtain in a chamber filled with ferns and potted plants, “I will have our ranks advanced in private.”
Four Stav Guards stood in front of a platform with thin twisted trees in stone pots. Fine black tunics, crimson threads around the wolf head on their chests. Beside each guard was another officer, holding a silver raven pin and a slender knife.
Damir opened one arm, summoning a skittish-looking servant with a wooden tray in hand. When the linen cloth was pulled back, four pale shards of bone were displayed in a straight line. Some looked like they might’ve been taken from a thigh, or shoulder, and one appeared to be a piece of a finger.
A wizened bone crafter woman entered the chamber from a side door. Her hair was the color of frost and the crimson robes drowned her knobby body. Under the watchful eye of the king, the crafter etched runes into the shards—protection, wisdom, strength, joy. Where her fingers traced across the surface of the bone, a thread of gold followed.
I looked about, but no one seemed stunned by the light, no one made a whisper of awe at the beauty. No one could see it, the remnant of a soul still living within the bones left behind.
Gentle applause from the small crowd followed when the servant showed the finished shards, marked in their manipulation as soul bones.
“Lyra.” King Damir gestured for me to step forward. “Once the officers have been cut in their chosen locations, meld the bones so they might reach their new ranks and power.”
There was a somber kind of hush that fell over the chamber. Anticipation, maybe a bit of trepidation, lived in each suffocating gaze. They’d witnessed Fadey do this, no doubt, and it was obvious many had missed the spectacle.
Some of the Stav awaiting their bone looked practically ravenous.
I looked over my shoulder. The only eyes I found reeled me inlike a line in the sea. Roark’s features were steady and unmoved. He did not look away.
Strange as it was, I took a bit of strength from the scrutiny of the Sentry. He was a shadow I did not always want, he was the cause of my being here in many ways, but Roark was also becoming the constant on which I could rely.
A firm bit of ground that was dependable and sure.
My fingers trembled when the first bone was placed in my palms. The Stav who’d receive the shard was tall and lean; his hair, the color of red sand, hung long down his back.
He said nothing and removed his tunic. A protrusion on one side of his ribs seemed misplaced, along with a bulge over one hip. Other soul bones? He was advancing to a captain of three units—more than fifty Stav would be his to command—and each bulge might be the addition of impenetrable bones under his flesh.
The officer with the knife cut a deep wound into the side of his ribs without the bulge. Blood fountained down his waist, but he didn’t wince in the slightest.
My fingers trembled. Sick burned the back of my throat when I needed to dig at the torn skin to nudge one edge of the bone inside, like a bloody pouch.
“Remember your purpose, Lyra,” King Damir said.
I held the king’s stare until the bursts of golden threads flashing over the new bone pulled my attention. Lovely guides and whispers to the magic in my blood on what it could do, what it should do. Stitch in the bone, meld it, move on.
I would fall to the darkness, face the shadow, if only to prove I could stand before my fear. With my back to the king, I touched the bone and a veil of cold mists coated the world.
26
Lyra
Darkness bled into itself, drawingme deeper than before, consuming me whole. The chamber transformed into inky shadows that slithered from corners like spreading rot. Gentle flakes of wispy snow kissed my cheeks now, and the only light came from the golden bones in every direction.
Beneath my hands the soul bone burned like it was wrapped in flames. Slender threads tugged it deeper against the Stav’s rib cage. My fingers moved without thought, like Kael promised. The more I accepted the power in my blood, the more instinctual it became.
Each movement became a trance.
With one bone placed, I gathered the next, the pale heat of cold alight in my palms, then drifted to the form of the next Stav Guard.
Those present for the melding drifted like they did outside the mirrored land. Bones shifted when folk leaned in to whisper, to gossip. Some people lifted horns and goblets to parted jaws for more wine, and others returned to seats near the front.
Again and again, I stitched the bone to the Stav, forgetting the unease of this place, of the magic here.
Until the cold came—sharp and jagged. I quickened my fingers, securing the bone against the third Stav’s upper thigh.
I’d only pulled my hand away when the darkness coiled around my shoulders. I closed my eyes. There was the urge to flee, to fall out of my own power, but I was here to find more. King Damir required it of me.
