They’d live and they’d die together this time. Barring accident. Barring murder. Barring disaster.And barring my getting any of the words wrong.However many years were left of her natural life span, they now each had half that. But they’d have it together.
Sagging against Zera, Kreya felt faint. A giggle bubbled out of her lips.
“Okay, that was way too much blood to lose with not enough food,” Zera said, wrapping a strip of linen around Kreya’s hand, tight to cut off the loss of any more blood. “You need juice and—whoa, that was fast.” Her eyes wide, she gawked over Kreya’s shoulder. “Hey, Jentt.”
Calm and warm, Jentt’s voice filled the cave. “Hey, Zera.”
She lifted her head to see her husband, sitting up in a pool of sunlight in the moments before the light slipped beyond the slit in the ceiling. He looked as if he were glowing in gold, orperhaps that was just her vision blurring from blood loss. She didn’t care which it was. He was awake and alive, and he’d stay that way. “I did it. Wheee.” She lacked the strength for a proper cheer. Her head felt as if it were swimming through murk.
“Blood loss?” Jentt asked.
“Yes, she failed to warn me about that,” Zera said. “Any minute now she’s going to faint dramatically so we’ll make a fuss and worry over her.” She was still pressing steadily on Kreya’s palm, stanching the blood. Kreya was fairly certain it had stopped flowing a while ago. She hadn’t cut an artery, after all. She’d been careful. Just the right amount of blood for the right amount of bones. It was only that she’d used a lot of bones, to buy the necessary years. “How doyoufeel, dead boy?” Zera asked Jentt. “Any dramatic side effects for you that Kreya conveniently forgot to tell me?”
“Right as rain,” he said.
He tilted his head back to feel the last of the sun as it slipped beyond the slit in the stone ceiling and the cave fell into shadows. She saw him breathe deeply, then hoist himself off the slab of granite. She opened her mouth to tell him to recover more first, but somehow the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. Her tongue felt thick.
Suddenly, Jentt was beside her, lifting her onto the granite slab. “She needs sugar, to replace what she lost.”
“We’re lacking access to the larder right now,” Zera said. “Hang on, though. I might have...”
Kreya didn’t hear the rest of what Zera said or Jentt’s response. She felt as if she were floating in an ocean, with the night sky overhead.I’ve never seen an ocean,she thought.I’d like to, someday.She felt liquid drops touch her lips. She licked and then swallowed.
A few minutes later, her eyes fluttered open. She thought it was minutes. It could have been hours, weeks, years, but no, Jentt was here, with Zera. Her rag dolls and the bird construct were pressed all around her. She petted them, reassuring them, as she sat up.
“She’s awake!” Zera said. “Good to see you back in the land of the living, love.” Then she snorted at her own joke.
Jentt caressed her cheek and then checked her pulse in her neck. “You scared us.”
Kreya smiled at him. “Promise I won’t do it again.” Still feeling weak, she didn’t try to stand yet, but sitting was fine. She couldn’t stop staring and smiling goofily at him.We did it. It worked!“I’m retired now. No more bone work. I think we should travel. See beyond the mountains. Swim in the ocean.”
“Or,” Zera said, “you could come live with me in Cerre.”
She liked that Zera had offered—that was a very good sign that Zera had forgiven her for involving her in all this. But it wasn’t practical. “Too many questions to answer.”
Jentt agreed. “I don’t relish three thousand iterations of the ‘why aren’t you dead’ conversation. A quiet life in Kreya’s tower is fine for me. And we can travel, when you’re strong enough.”
“You didn’t tell him why we’re in the caves?” Kreya asked Zera.
“Kind of busy here with you fainting and almost dying and all.”
Jentt looked from one to the other of them. “You didn’t choose this location for its ambiance? What happened?”
“Someone—multiple someones, most likely—burned the tower down.” It hurt more to say than she’d expected. She’d felt such relief when she saw the rag dolls had saved Jentt. But still, that tower had been her home for twenty-five years. Shethought of the books in her library, so many of them irreplaceable, collected over a lifetime of study. Her notes, taken painstakingly. Maps of Vos. Histories. Poetry. Journals of past bone makers. She had meant it, about destroying Eklor’s book after she’d brought Jentt back, even though it held other knowledge, such as theories on how to adapt the resurrection spell to heal illnesses and purge poison. But the rest? It was painful.
It also reminded her of something urgent.
“But there is a more serious problem: Eklor’s soldiers.”
“What about them? They’re dead, right? Twenty-five years dead?”
“So were you, Jentt,” Zera said.
He looked at her, then Kreya, who explained, “Remnants from Eklor’s army are still functioning in the forbidden zone.” Succinctly, she told Jentt where they’d gone, what they’d done, and what they’d seen on the plains.
Predictably, he freaked out. “You wentwhereand didwhat?”
She ignored him and said to Zera, “We have to tell Grand Master Lorn. What he chooses to do about them is beyond our control, but he needs to be told so he can make an informed decision based on all the facts.”
