The Crown of Bones (The Fae War Chronicles Book 2)

by Jocelyn Fox

  Vell raised one eyebrow. “So you don’t want to talk about it.”

  I sighed and scrubbed at my face with one hand. “Do I really need to? I think you can probably figure it out.”

  Securing the end of her braid, Vell wrapped it about her head and pinned it in place. After she finished, she motioned to me. “Turn around.”

  I obediently faced the opposite direction, hugging my knees to my chest as she unfastened my hair and freed it from its messy braid with surprisingly gentle fingers. She picked up a bone-white comb that looked carved out of ivory and worked on the tangles. I closed my eyes at the familiar, not-quite-painful tug of the comb. The sun warmed my face and I felt the tension melting away from my shoulders. “My mom used to braid my hair, when I was really young,” I murmured. “Before Dad died.”

  The comb’s tugs paused, then resumed, a bit more slowly. After a few moments, Vell said in a voice so quiet that I barely heard her, “I had a sister once. I used to braid her hair.”

  I moved to turn and look at Vell, but she said briskly, “Chin up.”

  I tilted my chin up as she laid the comb aside, her long fingers working quickly as she parted my hair. I said softly, “She stopped braiding my hair after Dad died.” A touch of a smile hovered on my lips. “I liked to wear braided pigtails for my Little League games. I was so upset the next spring that Liam learned how to French braid so he could do it for me.”

  “Little League?” The words were foreign on Vell’s tongue.

  “A game. Baseball. Or…I don’t know how to explain it. Picture a lot of little kids running around after a ball.” I smiled crookedly. “I wasn’t very good. My coach always put me in the outfield and more often than not I ended up picking dandelions or making up a dance routine instead of paying attention to the game.” I let myself linger on the memory of Liam, a knobby-kneed ten-year-old with an angelic face that promised trouble in the future, studying a library book he’d found on how to braid hair. And then he’d practiced for hours, unruffled by my wails when his first attempt turned out lumpy and misshapen, making me look like an alien. He’d patiently combed out my wheat-blonde hair again, coaxing me to sit still with Cheerios and a Disney movie. By the end of the movie, the pigtails he’d braided into my hair passed my dubious inspection.

  “Liam sounds like a very good brother,” Vell said quietly. She made a considering noise. “Your hair isn’t long enough to pin like I do it.”

  “I think you’ll figure out a suitable alternative,” I replied, stretching my legs idly.

  Vell worked in silence for a few more minutes. I felt her deftly twisting my braided hair into some sort of bun. She pinned it in place and sat back. I moved my head experimentally. The braid stayed tight and the bun—a sort of woven figure eight, I found as I explored it with my fingers—remained secure. “You should do my hair every morning,” I said, only half-joking.

  “That braid should look fine for a few days,” Vell said, packing away her comb. “You can unpin it at night if it bothers you to sleep on it, and I can just put it up again in the morning. If you have a scarf, you could sleep in that too.”

  “I’ll try it out.” It suddenly struck me how ordinary, how normal our conversation was: two young women discussing their hair, trading tips on sleeping in braids and looking presentable in the morning. I brushed at the wrinkles in my shirt.

  “Her name was Sia,” said Vell, her words dropping into the silence like pebbles into a smooth pond. She kept her eyes fixed on her empty hands. “My little sister. Her name was Sia.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” I said, because those were the only words that came to my grasping mind.

  “She was beautiful. She hadn’t been chosen by a wolf yet, and her eyes were the blue of the ice-flowers in the hillsides.” She flexed her long fingers, watching their movement studiously. “I always thought that it would be hard to watch her gain her wolf-eyes, because she was so beautiful…” Vell’s voice trailed into silence, a shadow passing across her downcast eyes. My throat ached at the grief on her face, cutting through her stoicism like a broken bone tearing through skin. Then she clenched her hands into fists, her knuckles whitening alarmingly. A shudder passed through her and then her face smoothed, the grief swept back into the small cell within her. I knew the feeling. I knew how to pretend as though I wasn’t drowning in sadness, how to clean the grief from my face like it was grime, marshaling it into an iron holding-box in the deepest reach of my chest. Locking it there and hoping it wouldn’t come out again.

  “Vell,” I said, my voice husky with my own remembered grief, “if you ever want to talk…”

  “You should see to Luca’s hand,” she said brusquely, picking up her healing-kit. “I’m going to go check on Rialla.”

  “Right.” I found the small bag bequeathed to me by Eamon, filled with all the tools of his trade.

  “I’ll come over to help once I’m done with her,” Vell said as she stood.

  “May we assist you?” Forin asked from overhead. The Glasidhe twins’ auras shone brightly even in the sunlight filtering through the green leaves.

  “I would be glad of any help,” Vell told them. I blinked at her uncharacteristic graciousness. It wasn’t that she was rude, exactly, but she was always so taciturn. Rough around the edges. She walked across the clearing with the twins shadowing her from above. I shrugged and made my way through the long grass to Luca.

  The ulfdrengr was still sleeping, his right arm held out from his body as though he felt the dagger sewn to his hand even in sleep. In the light, I noticed that though he was Northern, he didn’t share Vell’s dark hair and pale complexion. The sunlight painted him in tones of gold, and though he was bedraggled and thin, smudges of dirt strewn haphazardly across his face, he was still handsome. He was the kind of handsome that wouldn’t ever be called beautiful, the kind of handsome that reminded me of rugged mountains and campfire smoke. The shadow of a beard covered his chin and jaw beneath the grime. I wondered what he would look like when he was washed and had a few meals to take the edge off his razor-sharp cheekbones and fill out his shoulders again.

  Then he stirred in his sleep, and the dagger glinted in the sunlight. I set my bag down and knelt on his left side, keeping a wary eye on the dagger. “Luca, it’s Tess,” I said in my best attempt at a soothing voice. “I’d like to take care of your hand now.” He didn’t stir. I reached out and touched his shoulder tentatively. “Luca—”

  The ulfdrengr’s eyes flew open. He moved in a blur of speed and before I could react, I was flat on my back, the dagger so close to my face that I clearly saw the weird glyphs and bones etched into its hilt. Luca snarled something in the Northern tongue, his eyes unseeing, caught in some terrible memory. I threw my arm across my face and neck as the dagger began to descend. My war-markings blazed emerald through my shirt and I reached out with my taebramh as a searing pain shot across my forearm.

  Then, suddenly, Luca’s weight was gone. I sat up quickly, ignoring the sting in my arm. Finnead threw Luca to the ground, his lithe body tense with rage. The ulfdrengr struggled to regain his feet. Finnead seized him by the front of the shirt and hit him, his fist moving so fast that I barely saw it. I lunged to my feet as Finnead drew back his hand for another blow.

  “He didn’t know what he was doing!” I said, my voice rising as Finnead’s second punch opened a cut on Luca’s brow. “He was confused, it’s not his fault!” But the cold rage in Finnead’s eyes didn’t abate. He hit Luca again. Blood ran from the ulfdrengr’s nose and only Finnead’s grip on his shirt kept him upright. “Kavoryk!” I yelled, knowing that I was no match for either man’s strength. “Stop it!” I shouted at Finnead. I saw his hand reaching for his dagger and I knew I couldn’t wait for Kavoryk. I leapt toward Finnead caught his right arm with both my hands as he raised his dagger, my grip so tight that I was sure I would leave bruises. “No,” I said with as much authority as I could put into my voice…as if Finnead would listen to my authority, a small part of my min
d reminded me. “You don’t want to do this. Put it down.”

  Luca had wrapped his free hand around Finnead’s other wrist. His right arm hung limply by his side, though he could have easily brought the dagger up to defend himself.

  “Put the dagger down,” I said slowly and clearly.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Finnead’s gaze slid to my face. The white rage written across his features smoothed into anger, and then his eyes lingered on my hands, gripping his arm. “You’re bleeding,” he said, still holding the dagger.

  I saw that the ulfdrengr’s dagger had indeed opened a long gash along my forearm. It was only a little worse than a scratch, barely able to be called a cut. “It’s shallow. I’ll be fine.”

  “He would have killed you,” he said, his eyes hardening again, the muscles in his arm coiling.

  “But he didn’t,” I said desperately, straining to keep my hold on him. If Finnead wanted to kill Luca, if he brought down his arm and plunged his dagger into the ulfdrengr, I wouldn’t be able to stop him, I realized grimly.

  And then Kavoryk was there, his huge hand on Finnead’s shoulder. Finnead clenched his jaw and released Luca. I let go of his arm as he stalked away, dagger still in his hand.

  “Easy now,” said Kavoryk, keeping Luca on his feet.

  “Sit him down,” I said, moving to Luca’s other side. “We need to get this dagger off his hand so that can’t happen again.”

  Kavoryk lowered Luca to the ground silently, his black eyes gleaming above his beard.

  “It wasn’t his fault,” I said defensively.

  “I never said it was,” Kavoryk said gently, laying a huge hand on my shoulder. “But I’ll stand by just the same.”

  “Thank you,” I said, unable to keep the gratitude from my voice. I opened my bag and found a square of cloth and a small glass vial. Uncorking the vial, I wet the cloth with the green-tinted liquid. It smelled strongly of herbs, something between mint and fresh-cut grass. “Hold still,” I told Luca. He blinked and his hazy gaze focused sharply on me. Kavoryk tightened his grip on Luca’s shoulder slightly.

  “Tess,” the ulfdrengr said, his voice rising slightly as though making my name a question. He winced and touched his left hand to his nose, examining the blood on his fingers.

  “Do you remember what just happened?” I asked softly.

  “I…I don’t know…no.” A look of deep confusion clouded his face. He looked down at the dagger and saw the smear of red blood painted along the edge. “Red blood.” Horror dawned in his eyes. “Mortal blood.” He lunged up and stumbled away from me, Kavoryk keeping him on his feet rather than his own strength. Turning to the giant Northman, he said something in the Northern tongue, almost in a pleading tone. Kavoryk’s reply was calm and firm. He gripped the ulfdrengr’s right arm and spoke to him in a low voice. After a few moments, Kavoryk turned to me and gave slight nod. I approached warily.

  “Luca, I need to clean the cuts on your face,” I said, showing him the cloth in my hand, “and then I’ll get that dagger off you.”

  Luca stared at my outstretched arm. I belatedly realized that my sleeve was torn where he had cut me, the edges of the cloth stained pink with blood. “I did that,” he said softly.

  I rolled up my sleeve and showed him the shallow gash. “It’s not bad at all, see? Only a scratch.”

  “The knight was right,” he continued. “I could have killed you.”

  “You didn’t know what you were doing,” I said firmly.

  “Does that mean it’s still inside me?” He held the dagger sewn to his hand as far away from him as he could, regarding it with loathing.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I think I got it all yesterday. I think the Sword killed it.” I stepped closer. “Vell is taking care of Rialla. If you sit down, I’ll take care of you.”

  After a long moment, Luca shakily sat down. I settled myself cross-legged by his left side. Kavoryk stayed on Luca’s right side, still holding his arm.

  “This might sting a little,” I cautioned Luca, but he didn’t flinch as I dabbed the cut on his brow and cleaned the blood from his nose. “You might have a black eye or two tomorrow,” I said conversationally.

  “I could have killed you,” he said, his words heavy with self-loathing.

  “But you didn’t,” I said firmly.

  “The knight would have been within his rights to put that dagger through my heart.”

  “No one is putting daggers through anyone’s heart,” I replied fiercely, “not if I have anything to do with it.” I paused, the blood-stained cloth in my hand, until Luca looked at me. I held his gaze. “What happened to you wasn’t your fault, Luca. You have to believe that.”

  “I should have been able to stop it,” he said shakily, “somehow. I should have killed myself rather than let it do the things it made me do.” His voice cracked.

  “You were being controlled by something evil,” I told him. I wished I could show him the seed of darkness in his chest, the writhing black worms creeping through his veins and wrapping around his limbs. “I burned it out of you. And I’ll do it again if there’s any left.”

  His left hand drifted to his chest, brushing against his shirt. I knew that underneath the cloth was the burn that I’d given him when I’d drawn out the parasitic curse.

  “Luca, if the Sword thought you were evil, it would have killed you instead of removing the curse. It would have killed you this morning if it thought you meant real harm to me.” I raised one eyebrow. “Trust me, you’d be a pile of smoking ash if the Sword deemed you a real threat.”

  He gave a wry smile. “Good.”

  “I take that to mean that you believe me,” I said dryly.

  “I believe you,” he said, and some of the tension melted away from his body. He closed his eyes as I finished cleaning his face. He looked much younger without all the dirt and blood staining his skin.

  “There,” I said, satisfied, as I put down the cloth. “I’ll check on that cut later, but it doesn’t look as though it needs stitches.” I stood and picked up my bag, moving to his other side. “And now that the easy part is over, let’s take a look at that hand.” I folded my legs beneath me and settled my bag beside me.

  The same revulsion at the cruelty of whoever had made Luca a slave in his own body rose up in me again as I examined his hand. It was the worst wound I’d seen during my time in Faeortalam. Most of the injuries I had seen had been dealt in battle, by swords or clubs or maces. They weren’t clean by any stretch of the imagination—I thought briefly of Merrick’s chest wound, the iron slowly poisoning his body; the same shard fused to Finnead’s palm, inky blood welling up as I cut into his skin to remove it; and the near-fatal blow that had almost taken Emery’s life but for Molly’s intervention and my taebramh. But, I reflected as I gently examined Luca’s hand, those wounds were different. Luca’s hand had been mutilated with cold and calculated precision, the cords driven through his palm and tied in ugly knots, fusing the dagger to his hand. I noticed an angry red scar just above his wrist. “What’s this?” I asked, tracing it with two fingers.

  Luca’s jaw tightened. “I tried to take it off, before they bound the curse into it.”

  “You tried to cut off your hand?” I stared at him.

  “Yes.” He nodded slightly. “But then they brought Kianyk in front of me…” His voice trailed into a whisper. I touched his shoulder.

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to talk about it yet.”

  “Silence doesn’t change what happened,” he replied.

  I went back to my examination of his hand. After another long moment I shook my head. “I don’t have the experience to deal with something like this. I’ll get Vell to take a look at it.”

  “Already a step ahead of you,” said Vell, circling around my shoulder. She sank down on her haunches, adjusting the strap of her healing-kit on her shoulder. I held Luca’s hand still while she examined it. “Can you move your fingers at all?”
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  With some effort, he managed to move his thumb and his first two fingers. Vell chewed her lip in thought and then seemed to reach a decision. She unrolled a cloth that had a dozen small pouches sewn into it and selected a long, slim blade. Holding it up to the light, she examined it, nodded and cleaned it with a sharp-smelling liquid, all with the clinical precision of a surgeon. Luca watched her every move.

  “See the scar?” I offered him the side of my face, motioning to the thin white scar that ran from just below my left eye almost to my jawline.

  “It’s hard to see,” he said after a moment.

  “That’s because Vell stitched me up.” I offered him a slight smile.

  “I’m not worried about any scars,” he said after a moment. “I just want this—this thing off me.” But then he turned back to me. “What gave you that scar?”

  “A tree branch,” I replied. “A cadengriff decided to rip through the tree I’d climbed trying to get to me. In the process of climbing down, a piece of the tree caught me.”

  “Climbing down or falling down?” Luca asked. Vell turned her chuckle into a cough when I looked at her sharply. But then I grinned.

  “Well, the last part was more falling than climbing,” I admitted. “But that was because the choice was jump, or see whether the cadengriff just wanted to adopt me as a nestling.”

  “Somehow I don’t think that cadengriffs have very strong parental instincts,” Vell said dryly, “especially if their nestling was as troublesome as you.”

  “Troublesome?” I said, widening my eyes theatrically. “Who, me?”

  Vell chuckled and then tucked a phantom strand of stray hair behind her ear. She laid a thick dark cloth across her lap and arranged Luca’s hand on it, careful of the blade. “All right. Hold still,” she said, lowering her slim blade.

  Luca paled as she began working, but he didn’t move and made no sound. He actually watched her working, his ice-blue eyes unreadable as Vell delicately nipped at the gore-encrusted black cords in his flesh with her blade. He caught his breath as the first cord parted. Vell worked quickly, so focused on her task that she didn’t notice when Kavoryk gave me a nod and walked away, moving in the direction of his shaggy mount.