The king carried a demeanor of gentility, but there was a cruelness behind his eyes. A man not above threats and brutality to get what he desired.
I could face the haunt of the shadows. This was fashioned through my power, and I did not need to fear it.
I released the breath in my lungs and spun around.
Sunken copper eyes filled the dark cowl over the shadow’s head. Ribbons of darkness radiated from the places where shoulders and arms ought to be. In the dim light, the rope keeping the phantom tethered had frayed, like something started to unravel his chains.
Fear. He was nothing but a nightmare built from the uses of my craft. There were always consequences from craft, after all.
“To harm the living,” I whispered, stepping back from the phantom and focusing on the glow of the Stav Guard in front of me. I had to meld. I had to break free of this place. “Craft mirrors the pain.”
A low rumble, some sort of dark laughter, came from the haunt at my back. No doubt, he mocked me for my fear.
Still, I repeated the ramifications of each craft, as though it might prove to my fearful mind the creature standing watch at my back was not real. Until I reached the consequences of melding. “To bind dead and living…” I lifted my hands off the fourth guard in line, a man who’d chosen to be melded between the blades of his shoulders. “Craft corrupts the heart.”
“Am I your heart, Melder?”
I peered over my shoulder, summoning whatever thread of courage still burned in my veins. “Leave me be.”
Refuse to fear, and he would leave.
I heard the glide of steel. A dark misty blade lifted, ready to strike at me again. Another clack of teeth, another growl, and the blade lowered to strike.
This time I didn’t bend. I didn’t try to run. I held up a hand and shouted, “Stop!”
A rush of air rippled from my palm. The shadow blade halted against the gust. Some of the mist peeled back to reveal a true steel.
I kept my hand out, for protection or to feel powerful when I feared I was helpless.
“Stop,” I said again. “I do not fear you.”
For a moment the burning eyes tilted, as though the billows of darkness truly had a head. As though it was lost in a touch of stun itself.
Then the low, cruel laughter followed. “Liar.”
Its voice was low and raspy, like it was a strain to speak. It was a voice I felt thread through my veins, stitching deep inside me, as though it were part of me.
“What do you want?” I took a step closer. More satin-black skeins of mist pulled away from the phantom, shaping a defined figure with a hood and thick, sturdy boots over true feet. “Tell me and be gone, so I might finish this.”
“I warned you, Melder. Take the souls, and I take the same to replace them.”
“Yes, you keep saying it, but I’ve yet to understand what you mean.” I squared my shoulders. This specter had to be a manifestation of my own hesitations toward soul bones.
Speckled throughout the darkness were faint, flickering gleams of gold. Bones of the fallen were there in the distant hills, and the strength of the power they once had beckoned to me, a moth to the flame.
A ghostly shape of the palace surrounded me, but it was as though I could see it from all sides, nearly omniscient. With the slightest lean to one side, all at once, lawns, courtyards, and palace towers flowed into view.
Near the queen’s wing was a mist of shadows, darker than the rest.
“I do not want to do this, but I must. It keeps those I love alive and safe. It protects our people.”
The phantom let out a rough laugh like broken glass. “The lies you tell your heart. Melders craft monsters.”
I frowned. “I am no monster. I never wanted to be here, but if it keeps my family alive, I will meld every damn bone the king places at my feet.”
“Hmm.” The shadowed spectral took a step closer. More like a man now. Legs wrapped in darkness, arms, the cowl over his face. “Your soul smells familiar.” With a long draw of breath through a nose I could not see beneath the cowl, the phantom breathed me in. His hellish eyes snapped open. “Why do the gods let you come here to me?”
I followed his steps, twisting the more he prowled. “I don’t know. I’ve been ordered to find more soul bones. Perhaps they are allowing me to search. You can’t argue with the gods, can you?”
