Zera waved off her apology. “That’s the deal, right?”
“That’s the deal.”
Zera nodded and started loading bones into her pack.
Moving methodically through the grasses, Kreya selectedthe best bones and added them to her pack, cushioning them as best she could. It took only a few minutes for both of them to fill their packs with more than enough to ensure the resurrection spell would work. Far less time than Kreya had imagined. She’d been picturing this moment on the journey here, how she’d feel, desecrating the bodies of those who had sacrificed themselves—men and women whom she couldn’t bring back, whom she hadn’t come here to try to revive.
It hit her, then, that the magic—and bones—could do exactly that.
I can’t, though,she thought.I don’t have the life to spare.
Because even if their bodies had been whole, she had to save every bit of herself for Jentt.
Maybe it was selfish. Others lost loved ones every day. Why should she have a second chance when others didn’t?Because I sacrificed for it,she thought.I suffered. I worked and studied and did what had to be done, forbidden or not.Still... “I wish I could save them all.”
“I wish they’d never needed saving,” Zera said. “Shame Eklor isn’t here, and we can’t skewer him again for what he did. The worst part is that he’d enjoy his status as most hated man in history. He wanted fame as much as he wanted revenge.”
Surrounded by grasses that hid the dead, Kreya said quietly, “That’s not the worst part.”
Zera sighed. “I know.”
The two of them looked at the broken tower, lost in memory, guilt, and regret.
They were still standing, wrapped in their own thoughts, when the abomination attacked.
Man-shaped but cloaked in a lizard skin, it sprang out of the grasses where it had been lurking and charged at them. Itshead was a skull, with eyeless sockets, and it wielded a soldier’s rusted sword. Its jaws opened as if it were screaming, but it made no sound.
“Watch out!” Zera cried.
Kreya drew a knife as the abomination swung the sword. Kneeling, she blocked it with her blade. The force of the stroke reverberated through her arms. Zera charged toward them, her knife drawn, and the inhuman soldier pivoted to knock her knife back.
It struck at Zera, with a slice aimed at her neck.
She ducked and swung up, as Kreya pressed her attack with slashes at his sword arm. He blocked her with a rusted shield. Brown-red flakes sprayed into the air, and the clash of metal on metal rang across the plains. But that was the only sound—the inhuman soldier was silent. It could not call out. It had no throat. Just bare vertebrae.
She heard the heavy huff of Zera’s breath as she pounded at the soldier, and she felt her own heart hammering in her chest. The soldier fought back, its strokes practiced, fast, and hard.
Kreya signaled to Zera.
A nod back.
Quickly, Kreya lunged in, aiming for its shield arm. She sliced through the joint of metal and decayed flesh. It faced her, parrying her next stroke to its head—
Zera plunged her knife between the soldier’s shoulder blades.
The abomination toppled forward.
And Kreya remembered the true horror of the Bone War: Eklor’s soldiers were near impossible to kill, because they weren’t truly alive. They just kept coming.
As if to remind her, the soldier rose again. Sword ready.
Grabbing Zera’s arm, Kreya activated the speed talisman.She didn’t dare run toward the wall, not while they were being chased. The guards on the wall would spot them. So instead she ran north, sprinting through the grasses.
They slowed as soon as they’d put enough distance between them and it. The inhuman soldier lacked any talismans—it couldn’t catch them. Still, it lumbered after them, a tiny figure in the distance. Her heart was pounding hard. That had been much too close.
“Where,” Zera panted, “did that come from?”
“It shouldn’t exist,” Kreya said.
