Kreya couldn’t refuse her, but she hated herself for having this plan. She switched her knife from one hand to another. “Hold him down,” she ordered.
“He won’t twitch,” Zera said. “He’s dead.”
She knew that. Of course. But...Stop delaying,she told herself. This had to be done. Her thoughts flew again to Jentt, Stran, Marso, and Amurra. To the people of Cerre. Of Vos.
Bearing down on Eklor’s torso, she sliced along his sternum. It was a precise incision, and her hand didn’t shake. She knew where the extra bone had entered his body. He hadn’t completed enough of the spell to absorb it, she hoped.
Separating the skin, she plunged her hand in. Her fingers wrapped around the loose bone, and she drew it out. Blood coated her hand.
Efficiently, Zera began to sew him up. “Not sure he’d survive this kind of wound if he weren’t already dead.”
“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Kreya said as she cleaned the extracted bone in the buckets of rainwater left to extinguish any pyres. “I’m not giving him more than a few minutes of your life.” She hoped. She ran over the words in her head, determined to get every syllable right. This was not a time for mistakes.
Finishing, Zera rolled up the sleeve of her coat.
Again, Kreya hesitated. “You’re certain?”
Her friend didn’t even bother to reply. Just held her arm out, wrist up, veins exposed. Kreya drew the blade over her skin deep enough that the blood welled in its wake. She wiped her blood over the used bone and hoped she’d cleaned it well enough. She couldn’t do anything about the blood from others that had already dispersed into his system—the bone workers he’d alreadykilled. But he shouldn’t be able to kill any more. She just had to hope that Zera’s fresh blood, combined with her spell, would enable her to control and limit the life transfer.
Pressing the bone against the freshly sewn wound, Kreya whisper-chanted in Eklor’s ear: “Take her breath, take her blood. Sixty breaths, she gives you. Sixty breaths, you’ll take.Iri nascre, murro bey enlay. Iri prian, esa esi roe. Iri sangra. Iri, iri, nascre enlay.” She finished the incantation and then stepped back.
Eklor sucked in a breath.
Her hand shook. She wanted to pull that breath out of him.
Struggling to sit, Eklor was bound too tightly to move. “Iri nascre—” Shit, if he worked the spell with Zera’s blood—
Zera laid a knife, blade flat, hard against his throat.
He stopped.
Kreya leaned over him, opposite Zera. “You have three minutes to live. You will die at the end of those minutes. That’s inevitable. But we have granted you three minutes so that you can stop your army. Command them now.”
Eklor croaked a laugh, beneath the press of the blade. “Why would I?”
“Because if you do, I will grant you what you want.”
Zera eased the pressure on the blade minutely so he could speak. “I want my family back. You can’t grant me that.” Bloody spit pooled in the corner of his mouth as he rasped out the words. His body shuddered with each stolen breath. They didn’t have much time.
“I can tell the world you were the hero, though,” Kreya said. “You saw how we spread the tales of the Bone War in just a few days—that’s the reason the people of Cerre were primed to rise up against your army. We will spread the tale of how your family truly died, how the bone guild wronged you andthen lied to cover up our evil, and how the council and grand master lied, even to us bone workers. We will tell them you were a martyr and would have been their savior.”
Zera leaned against her. “Kreya...”
Kreya did not look at her. She kept her eyes on Eklor’s as he drank in her words. “We will tell them how we were wrong, and you were right.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Stop the army,” Kreya said. “And I will correct your legacy. You’ll have the immortality you wanted. Not in flesh. But in memory.”
“You will truly do this?” her enemy asked. And for a moment, she felt pity. She, perhaps more than anyone who had ever lived, understood him. She knew what had made him cross unforgivable lines. She knew why he felt what he felt and believed what he believed. She understood why he saw himself as the martyred hero, because she was not so different.
“I will,” she lied.
Zera dug into her pockets for a talisman that would carry his words across the city. She activated it as Eklor called the command to stop: “Vron!”
Beyond the roof, she heard silence spread as every construct halted—their gears ceased, their cries and roars and screams fell quiet. But she did not go to the edge to look. She kept her eyes on Eklor as he drew another breath and, in a whisper, began the spell to steal Zera’s life: “Iri—”
Kreya slammed her hand down on Zera’s wrist, the one that held the knife hovering over Eklor’s throat. The force of her hand plunged the blade down. Together, with Kreya’s hand over Zera’s, they silenced him for the final time.
