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

by Jocelyn Fox

  “This is nice,” I said, Lila settling across both our laps, her tail sweeping across the pavement.

  “It is,” Liam agreed softly, stroking Lila’s head with his calloused fingers. There were scrapes across his knuckles that I didn’t remember. “I wish I was there, Tess. I wish I could figure out what happened to you.”

  A hot stone dropped into my stomach. “What?”

  He shook his head, rubbing Lila’s ears. I noticed, as though seeing it for the first time, a pinkish scar along his jaw, beneath the shadow of a three-day beard. And the tattoo wrapping around his bicep—I looked closer, and saw with clarity beyond dreaming, the script of a Latin phrase. Above the script, I could see the bottom of an image, just the edge of it, beneath his sleeve. Then I blinked. “What do you mean, you wish you could figure out what happened to me?” Was he talking about how I changed after Dad died, or going away to college?

  He sighed heavily and raked his fingers through his hair. Lila whined softly and pressed her head into his stomach. “I haven’t been able to say this out loud, but maybe it makes sense that I’d be able to say it to you.” He looked at me with pain in his green eyes. His eyes were our father’s, deep emerald green with golden flecks in them, framed by our mother’s long eyelashes. “I feel so guilty, Tess. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t able to do anything when he took you.”

  I sat up straighter, feeling a little sick. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”

  “You were kidnapped, Tess.”

  My heart stopped. “This is a dream.” I grasped frantically for the undercurrent of the dream, the fabric that I could manipulate. I didn’t need to manufacture worries about Liam. I needed to change the tapestry of the dream.

  Liam smiled lopsidedly. “Sure. But it’s the first time I’ve seen you since Mom called me and told me that you were missing.”

  I couldn’t get ahold of the fabric of the dream. It felt like silk in my mind, slipping away from my grasp. “What’s going on? I don’t understand. What do you mean since Mom told you I was missing?”

  “It’s been four months and ten days,” he said, staring down into the water. “I managed to get some emergency leave, just a couple of days, but our op-tempo is so high right now that I had to get back to the guys pretty quick.”

  I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “Let me see your tattoo, Liam.”

  “Which one?” He smiled, but the smile was still tinged with sadness.

  In reply I reached out and pulled up his sleeve. It was a Spartan helmet, done in black-and-white, with the reflection of an American flag skillfully portrayed on the metal dome of the helmet. Beneath the helmet were the Latin words: “Illos quos amo deserviam.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “For those I love, I will sacrifice,” he replied.

  My lips were numb. “When did you get it?” The words were almost a whisper.

  “Right before we rotated out again.” He shifted. “I wanted to let it heal a bit before I showed it to you…but…” His lips pressed together into a thin line.

  The realization hit me like a hammer. Liam’s unit had gotten a short-notice call to gear up for a mission, as they often did, a few weeks before I’d traveled to Texas with Molly. I’d managed to send a few care packages in advance so they’d hopefully be waiting at the forward operating base when Liam’s unit arrived. But I’d only been able to talk to him in a few short phone calls where he’d assured me that he was fine, and they’d arrived in-theater all right. He hadn’t mentioned his new tattoo. I’d never seen it.

  I’d never seen it in real life, and I’d never even known about it. There was no way my subconscious could have pulled that detail from my head.

  “Oh, God,” I said weakly. Shock rippled through me, followed by a surge of pure unadulterated joy.

  “Is it that bad?” Liam twisted his head to look at his tattoo. “I thought it was really well done.”

  “No,” I said, swallowing against the lump in my throat, “it’s beautiful, it really is, Liam. But…okay. This is going to sound crazy, but you need to listen to me.”

  He smiled. “I’ve missed that about you. Your bossiness.”

  I swatted his arm. “Shut up. Listen to me. It’s me, Liam. You’re not dreaming. We’re not dreaming.” Another wave of joy surged through me. “We’re Walking.”

  “No, Bug, we’re sitting.” He shook his head fondly. Lila panted happily as he renewed his rubbing of her ears.

  “Okay,” I said. “Stay with me here. I’m going to try to explain. Lila…I don’t know, I think that part is a dream. Or something. I don’t know all the ins and outs yet. But you and I—” I poked him in the arm—“we are talking to each other. The real you. The real me.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t know my subconscious was so stubborn.”

  “Liam. Listen to me.” I shifted Lila off me and stood, pacing by the pool in frustration. My feet left dark wet footprints on the warm cement. I faced Liam, hands on my hips. “How can I prove it to you? How can I prove it’s really me and not a dream?”

  He shook his head. “You know, Tess, I was really happy to just sit by the pool. To be able to see you. I’ve been so worried. Mom has too.”

  I made a noise of dismissal at that.

  “That was one of my mistakes, Tess. Letting you and Mom go on the way you did. I don’t think you remembered enough of what she was like before Dad died. She tried, she really did.”

  “She tried to push us away,” I said bitterly. “And then it got worse after you left.”

  His face fell.

  “Not that it was your fault,” I added quickly. “I would never have asked you to stay home or give up your dreams. Mom was proud of you, too, even if she didn’t approve of your service selection.”

  “Not my fault I’m competitive and an alpha male,” he replied with a smile. “This is more hands-on than being a pilot or anything else that I thought might have been cool.” He leaned back on his hands, not as agitated now. “It was the right choice.”

  Special Operations was dangerous, and I worried about Liam, but he was tough and resourceful and smart. “I know.” I resumed my pacing, and then stopped as an idea struck me. “I know. Ask me something. Ask me something you’ve wanted to know about me, or about something that happened, and I’ll tell you the answer. And then when you wake up you can verify it. It has to be something that you don’t know, that we’ve never talked about, and that you’ll be able to check when you wake up.” I thought for a moment, chewing absently at the inside of my lip.

  Liam chuckled again. “This is ridiculous, Tess. Just relax.”

  “Do I look the same to you?” I demanded. “Do I look the same as how you remember me?”

  He studied me. “No, but memories are never one hundred percent.”

  I was wearing the same long-sleeve white shirt that Finnead had helped me put on before I went to sleep. I shoved up the sleeve and thrust my right arm toward Liam. My war-markings shimmered softly in the sunlight, invisible in the shadows but gleaming where the sun touched my skin.

  “Whoa,” Liam said, sitting up straighter. “That’s some cool ink, Bug, but I wouldn’t have pegged you as a full-sleeve kind of girl.”

  “It’s not a tattoo,” I said.

  “Hm,” Liam said, taking my wrist and turning my arm back and forth to get a better view. “But that doesn’t prove anything. My subconscious can modify you, in a dream.” He grinned. “Hell, last night I dreamed about Angelina Jolie in a bikini. Or at least, she was in a bikini at the start of it. Like, Tomb Raider, Lara Croft Angie….”

  “Ugh. Gross.” I smacked him lightly. “I don’t need to hear about those kinds of dreams.” I lapsed into silence. “Okay. Here’s what you can do. You have email?”

  “Sometimes. At least once or twice a week.”

  “All right. I had a friend at school, her name’s Ingrid Samuelson. We volunteered at the pet shelter sometimes together on Saturdays. There was a puppy there, the last few time
s we went together, a black lab and German Shepherd mix named Oakley. I wanted to adopt her and even bought her a pink collar. Did you know that?”

  “No.” Liam had stopped petting Lila, and was watching me intently.

  “All right. Can you remember an email address?”

  Liam gave me a disparaging look. “Of course I can. Provided, of course, that I don’t forget this whole dream when I wake up.”

  I told him Ingrid’s email, and he repeated it back to me. “Email Ingrid. Ask her about the dog I wanted to adopt. That should be proof that this isn’t a dream, right?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I must have heard about Oakley sometime. You must have mentioned it to me.”

  “Liam, stop being so thickheaded!” I glared at him in frustration, desperately needing him to understand. “I need you to believe me. I need you to understand that we’re not…we’re not exactly normal, you and I.”

  He grinned. “That’s an understatement.”

  I stamped my bare foot ineffectually. “No. I’m talking like…we could be characters from a Tolkien book not-exactly-normal.”

  “What do you mean?” he frowned.

  “Have you ever done something…or seen something…or known something…that you really can’t explain? Something you could have brushed off as really good instincts or a sixth sense or whatever, but…you still don’t understand?”

  He blew out a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “I liked it better when this was a dream, Tess.”

  “So you believe me?” I asked hopefully.

  He ruffled Lila’s ears. “I mean, besides Lila being here, and us being at our old house…everything else seems so real. And it’s the first time I’ve talked to you since you’ve been gone.”

  “About that,” I said quickly. “I’m fine. I’m not…I wasn’t kidnapped, Liam. Molly was, sort of, and I went with her to protect her.”

  “Knight in shining armor,” he commented with a little half-grin.

  “Listen. I’m not…I’ll explain more if—when we see each other here again. But I’m fine. I’m more than fine, actually.” As I said it, I realized it was true. “For the first time in a long time, I’m more than fine. I’m somewhere I belong, and they need me.”

  Liam looked at me suspiciously. “You didn’t join a cult, did you?”

  I laughed. “No. But I’m pretty far away from home. I’ll explain more later. Just believe me when I say that I wasn’t kidnapped or murdered or any of the crazy things that I’m sure they’re saying.” For a moment my happiness at seeing my brother deflated. “God, Liam, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that you were worried. I would have tried to do this sooner if I’d realized that time was still rolling back in the mortal…back at home.” I sat down again by the edge of the pool, sliding my feet into the water. Lila scrambled up from Liam’s lap, almost throwing herself in the pool in the process, and flopped across my legs, begging for a belly rub.

  Liam rubbed the back of his neck. “This is a lot to take in. I’ll still email Ingrid, when I get the chance. But…what you said makes sense. The part about being able to do things I shouldn’t, see things I can’t explain.” He shook his head. “You know they call me Lucky, right?” When I shook my head, he smiled. “Of course you didn’t. Not really a flattering nickname, sometimes, but it my case they mean that I really am lucky. Unexplainably so. It’s like I can sense things that the other guys can’t. Things that should be impossible to sense. Most of them, I can play off like I just saw a detail that everyone else missed, or I had a hunch. But…” He took a deep breath. “I haven’t told anyone this before, Bug.”

  “It’s okay. You know you can trust me.”

  “Sometimes…and I can’t really control when it happens, but I think it’s triggered by an increase in my heart rate or adrenaline or something…sometimes, I see the future.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “That’s pretty hefty.”

  “It’s not…it’s not like I have a crystal ball or anything.” He struggled to find the words to explain. “And the future…it isn’t a set thing, Tess. It’s more like this intricate braid, with all these strands, all these possibilities. When it happens, I can see a few of the strands at a time. I can see what’ll happen for a specific choice. Like a domino effect. So I can choose the right one. The one that’ll keep my guys safe and hopefully put one on the board for the home team.”

  “So it’s like…watching a film reel, with all the different scenes? Or like one of those Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, except you get to flip ahead and see what happens with each of your choices.”

  He nudged me with his shoulder. “You’re the one who always did that, Bug.”

  I smiled. “True.” I rubbed Lila’s belly. She hung her head back and let her tongue loll out, wriggling in pleasure. “So you can’t control when it happens?”

  “No.”

  With my sleeve still rolled up to my elbow, my war-markings shimmered fluidly in the sunlight as I petted Lila. Liam’s eyes shifted to my arm again, considering. Thinking.

  “Not exactly normal,” he repeated softly.

  “Like characters in a Tolkein book not-exactly-normal,” I repeated again in agreement with a small smile.

  I motioned with my chin toward his face. “Where’d you get the scar?”

  He shook his head with a grin. “You don’t want to know.”

  My lips stretched into an answering smile. I traced my own scar on my left cheek with one finger. “We almost match.”

  His eyes sharpened with concern and he leaned forward, catching my chin in his hand before I could pull away. “That would’ve been a hell of a cut. What have you gotten yourself into, Tess?” An undercurrent of anger hardened his words.

  I cleared my throat and gently disengaged my chin from his grasp. “When I said ‘knight in shining armor,’ I kind of meant it literally.”

  “You did join a cult.” Liam narrowed his eyes. “A cult that performs at Renaissance fairs.”

  My surprised laugh rang out over the water of the pool. A quick look at Liam told me that he was joking. He’d always been great with deadpan humor. “If I was performing at a Renaissance fair, I must be a pretty bad performer to jack myself up this badly.”

  “Or you might have seriously pissed off one of the jesters. Or tavern wenches. They have tavern wenches at those, right?”

  I laughed again. “You are seriously deprived, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Hey, spending your days with a bunch of sweaty dudes…I mean, we’re all, y’know, good looking…mostly…but they’re still dudes.”

  “I see.” I smiled at him. “Yeah, they have tavern wenches, but I haven’t been performing at Renaissance fairs, Liam. When I say I’m far away from home…it’s not like I can just catch a plane back.”

  He rubbed Lila’s velvet-soft ear between two fingers speculatively. And then he looked up at me and said, “You’re in another world, aren’t you?”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise, opened my mouth, closed it, and then said, “Yes.” I smiled a little. “That was pretty quick. You went from thinking this was a dream to accepting that it’s me to putting together most of the pieces on your own.”

  My brother looked into the distance, his eyes pensive. “You don’t have to use a portal or whatever you used to get to another world. I know a thing or two about that.”

  “You’ve been to a lot of places. You’ve seen a lot of things. I understand.”

  “No. That’s the polite way of putting it. I don’t think you understand. But thank you for saying that.” It was a carefully rehearsed reply, masking the sudden pain that surfaced in Liam’s eyes.

  I touched his arm with two fingers. “I do understand.” He turned to look at me. I held his gaze. “I’ve changed. A lot. I’ve seen things and done things that I never thought I would…or at least didn’t think I would have to even consider for a few more years.”

  His gaze lingered on my scar for another moment. And then he nodded. “Maybe you do
understand. And if you do…I wish you didn’t. You’re my little sister, Bug. I wish I was there to protect you.”

  “You are. Don’t worry. I remember everything you taught me. You’re the one who helped make me as tough as I am.” I tilted my head and smiled.

  “My lady Bearer?”

  I stiffened at the hoarse voice. Instantly Liam was on his feet, Lila bowled over onto the concrete. The dog shook herself and then looked at Liam and braced herself in her version of a guard-dog posture. I looked over my shoulder and saw, standing in the long green grass in the yard outside the pool fence, Murtagh.

  Water slid down my ankles as I slipped my feet from the pool and stood. A prickle of alarm traveled down my neck. “Of course I couldn’t spend some quality time with my brother,” I said under my breath.

  “You know him?” Liam asked tersely.

  As I stood next to my brother, I marveled for a quick second at Liam’s warrior physique: tall, broad shoulders, heavily muscled. He stood with his hands curled slightly by his sides, displaying a watchful stillness that marked him as always ready for a fight. Always be ready for a fight. And once that fight starts, you finish it. You finish it quickly and decisively with overwhelming violence of action. Liam had told me that my junior year of high school, after he’d come home for a few days during a break in training. By the end of that visit, my hook and power punch were ten times better…or at least, that’s what he told me. He fed me snippets of wisdom from beyond the veil of secrecy surrounding his training and operations.

  I shook myself free of the memory. “Yes. I know him.”

  “He doesn’t look good,” Liam said, only relaxing slightly.