Seeping gashes were slashed over the prince’s body. Bruises were swollen and black over his skin. But his chest rose and fell in steady breaths. Clean linen bandages encircled his bare chest where Lyra had placed the soul bone.
Thane wouldn’t be pleased. He didn’t protest soul bones like I did; his resistance to them was more aesthetic. The way they bulged in bodies like a nodule or growth went against his vanity. Lyra’s work was hardly noticeable.
I cared more for the nature of the soul inside him.
In my frenzy to save him, I struggled to pause long enough to sense the power of each bone. Corrupt and cruel bones could be felt if given the time to listen to their craft.
Thane was a man of honor. I had to hope his soul was strong enough to blot out any corruption of the fallen.
I leaned over my knees, forcing a smile as I gestured to the silence of the room.Wake up and I will point out the small lump often, you bastard.
“He’ll wake.”
I spun in the chair. Lyra held a tray with a tin cup and a plate of sliced pomes. Dark rims of fatigue shadowed her eyes, and for the first time she looked almost frail. Her dark hair was free around her shoulders, and the simple shift she wore was two sizes too big.
She placed the tray on a table beside the bed, studying Thane’s sleeping face. “He’ll wake, Roark.”
I slouched in the chair. Each arm felt as though it were made of stone. I didn’t respond.
Lyra pulled another wooden chair from against the wall and placed it beside me. “You should eat something, maybe go rest. I’ll watch over him.”
I shook my head.
“There is nothing more you can do.”
Against my leg, I used one hand to reply.He did not leave me.
Lyra blinked, her gaze scanning the scar across my throat. “How old were you?”
Twelve. Thane was fourteen.
“He didn’t know you, but stayed as you healed?”
I nodded. Three days and three nights, Thane stood by like a silent defender, seeing to it his father kept his word that healers could tend to the dying Draven boy they dragged in from the gates.
“You know, scars are considered attractive to Jorvan girls.”
A weak grin tried to spread over my mouth at the memory of the first words he spoke when I opened my eyes after I’d been found at the gates.
Lyra handed me the tin cup, refusing to pull it back, even when I refused twice. With an eye roll, I took the mug, steam from the herbal tea soothing a bit of the noxious fear. I wouldn’t let on lest she return one of those arrogant smiles.
The smile still came when I took my first drink.
Lyra fiddled with a snag in her shift when silence thickened. “May I ask how you were injured?”
I tapped the side of the mug for a long pause.My people.
“You said that, but how?” Lyra’s face wasn’t one of pity, more of anger. “How could they do such a thing to a child?”
Nightmares, strange memories, more and more of the night my standing in my own clan shifted was returning. I did not recall much, and wasn’t certain I wanted to know every dark truth of the raids, but I remembered enough to know Dravenmoor paid for those raids in blood.
I replied slowly.I made a fatal mistake.
Her eyes narrowed.
I shouldn’t speak on it. There was no need to give up bits of a past so few knew. I kept going anyway.Cursed marks are carved whena clansman dies by another Draven’s hand, or a betrayal is committed. I was accused of both.
“You were a boy, surely nothing was intentional.”
