Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo

by Lindsay Cummings

  They’d take her alive, soon enough.

  Until then… Sonara gripped her sword, and prayed to the goddesses that her plan, however futile, would work.

  Chapter 3

  THREE DAYS LATER

  The Northern Road

  Sonara

  Three days had passed since Sonara was captured, knocked out and bound, and had awoken here, a prisoner among twelve others, her back cramped against the rough wood of a prison wagon as it rocked its way across the northern road.

  Three of the twelve were already corpses gone cold. Their eyes were open, staring past the iron bars on the windows as if they’d wanted to catch a glimpse of freedom as their spirits were called home.

  It felt like a dream, waking here in the stink of sweat and piss and broken dreams.

  Three days, and Jaxon was nowhere to be seen.

  The crack of the whip sounded out.

  Sonara bumped heads with the man next to her as the steeds hauling the caravan hastened their pace. Outside the barred window, she caught a distant glimpse of the armed guards that had been hired to escort the prisoners from Stonegrave to Deadwood. The wagons snaked along a curve in the makeshift desert road. The escorts, ten on each side of the caravan, rode beautiful beasts from Soreia, backs broad and necks strong, hooves kicking up sand that was picked up by the wind. Endless miles of it.

  Sand, and sand and sand, spreading into the ghostly forms of the Bloodhorn Mountains, far beyond.

  From here, the desert almost looked like the sea.

  When Sonara closed her eyes, she could imagine it; the memory of the waves tugging at her bare toes. The sound of the gulls cawing overhead, the kiss of the salt air upon her lips.

  The feeling of waking up from her own death on a distant shore, long ago, with a hazy memory of only spending a short time in the afterlife. She had her new curse as her companion.

  And Duran.

  Blessed, beautiful Duran.

  They’d died together on the rocks, their bodies crushed during the Leaping. But somehow, the steed had come back to life alongside Sonara, unharmed and unmarred. It was like a sweet dream, that moment of waking, of blinking back the sun and seeing Duran step towards her on the shore. As if the goddesses—or whoever was in charge of the realm that held the living—couldn’t bear to see his soul leave the world so soon.

  She had no idea why they’d both been brought back.

  How they’d been brought back.

  Only that they were here, now, and for the past ten years they’d stayed together, wild and free.

  Sonara’s memory was broken by the sound of a scream. The mournful kind that ripped apart the soul.

  “Goddesses be with them as they go,” a woman across from Sonara whispered.

  The scream heightened, turning to muted sobs from the wagon in front of theirs.

  Another prisoner had succumbed to death.

  “The goddesses can’t hear your prayers,” Sonara said. “And even if they could, I doubt they’d be listening.”

  The woman’s whispered prayers fell silent.

  Two days more, and they’d reach Deadwood, the prison camp at the edge of the Deadlands, where the rocky Bloodhorn Mountains turned to solid ice. The frozen land dropped straight off into what seemed an endless abyss. There, the prisoners would live the rest of their days carving out a frozen bridge that would span across the miles-long gap that separated the Deadlands and the northern kingdom of the White Wastes.

  Sonara would rather die.

  She was not fond of the cold.

  The whip cracked again. The wagon lurched over a bump in the sand, and a man to Sonara’s left leaned over and spilled his guts onto the wooden floorboards.

  The smell of waste, of fear, hung heavy in the air.

  Her manacles clinked as she shifted, her wrists red and raw. Each one of the links, shimmering beautifully, was made of diamond, and worth one hell of a prize.

  It was also unbreakable.

  Unless you had a wyvern that breathed emerald fire hot enough to melt the diamond.

  Unfortunate, Sonara thought. For she did have access to such a beast, but Razor’s shadow had yet to darken the skies beyond the wagon.

  She looked back at the manacles around her wrists and sighed. “I don’t suppose anyone has a key?”

  “Enough,” said the man across from her. His eyes were sunken, his lips cracked and dry.

  “It’s a pity, you know,” Sonara said, “if I ever get out of this blasted wagon, I’ll never be able to look at diamonds again.”

  When, Sonara told herself. When Jaxon comes to free you.

  Her blood brother, her comrade, would never leave her to rot. Markam, perhaps, for he was a different story. But three days? Her troupe had never taken so long before. Perhaps her plan, her last shred of hope as she took a stand on that mesa, had failed her.

  Sweat trickled down her skin, pooling at the small of her back. Each breath felt heavier, more labored than the next. But come nightfall, her teeth would set to chattering. Her very bones would quiver inside of her skin.

  She sighed and looked back to the prisoner across from her. “Tell us, friend. What did you do to get a one-way ticket to the north?”

  As she spoke, a tendril of deep blue-and-brown hair slipped from her braid and tickled her nose.

  The man looked her over as if he were searching for a secret.

  He would find nothing but scars, for Sonara shared no secrets, and gave no tells. That was how one survived in the Deadlands. And you couldn’t simply see a Shadowblood. There was a reason they were told only as tall tales around campfires.

  Sonara had tried to find others.

  She’d never discovered any but the ones in her troupe.

  “I killed a girl for asking too many questions,” the man said. His smile was dark and toothless. “She was small like you.”

  Sonara raised a brow. “I have nothing to fear from a man in chains.”

  He barked out a dry, humorless laugh. “I like you, Blue.”

  A veiled threat, and one she’d have to watch out for, should the wagon make it to Deadwood with her aboard. Many of the people here were criminals. Killers. The worst the Deadlands had to offer. They didn’t feel fear, for they themselves bred it and carried it like a torch.

  Deep inside, Sonara’s curse wriggled, begging to come out. Only a tiny taste, it whispered.

  Every emotion and feeling had one, something that Sonara could breathe in and savor as plainly as if it were placed right on her tongue. She hated to use her curse; her sense, this strange trait that marked her second life. She hated the way it overcame her, caused her pain each time she used it, as if it were a tiny beastie that burrowed deeper into her body the more she lengthened its leash. Long ago, she’d learned how to control her curse, to press it deep inside a mental cage.

  But that didn’t stop it from reaching its little shadow-claws through the bars to swipe at her when it hungered most. It eased out towards the man, wanting to savor his aura.

  A sharp, iron tang, like blood, as if his soul was soaked with it.

  A murderer’s aura.

  “I work alone,” Sonara said, holding his gaze without backing down.

  “We’ll see about that, Blue.” He smiled a cold, unfeeling smile. “Go on, then. Share your tale. What brings a little lady like you to the north?”

  He was goading her now. Perhaps she would let him have the truth.

  “I stole Jira’s golden sword,” Sonara said with a yawn.

  The man chuckled, light reaching his eyes. “You tell an interesting tale, Blue.”

  Sonara felt the eyes of the others sliding to her. As if they were coming back to life for the first time in days.

  She’d last seen Gutrender on Jaxon’s side, before she’d been taken.

  She hoped, hell, even she was almost ready to pray, that nothing had gone wrong. And if something had happened to her steed along the way, she’d turn Jaxon and Markam inside out.

  Soon.
<
br />   They would come soon.

  “She lies,” the woman on the far side of the wagon scoffed. “The Devil wouldn’t be caught alive, and forced into a prison wagon.”

  “The Devil?” another asked.

  The woman nodded. “Heard tell of it just before they picked me up in Rothollow. The Devil stole the king’s sword!” A few nods of approval followed. The woman coughed and glanced at Sonara with hollow eyes. “But this girl is just a stray sea urchin from the south. Nothing more.”

  Sonara barked out a laugh at the insult. If she wasn’t chained, she would show the woman exactly what a sea urchin’s sting felt like. But she was weaponless. She may as well have been naked without her sword.

  The Devil of the Deadlands, Sonara thought. Doomed to die.

  If her troupe really had forgotten her, she’d haunt them from the afterlife.

  She wasn’t truly afraid. And yet, she couldn’t help the image that slid into her mind at the thought of a final death. A quest unfinished.

  A face that materialized, long removed from her life, but never forgotten.

  The face looked like hers, but it was older. Male, and handsome, with a square jaw and perfect Soreian blue eyes and hair to match.

  If she died in the north, she’d lose all chance of finding her brother again. Though sometimes, she wondered if Soahm was already dead.

  “What if she’s not lying?” the other prisoner asked. Sonara blinked, and Soahm’s face faded from existence, replaced by the man before her that continued smiling in the shadows. “You say you are the Devil?”

  Sonara nodded. “I very well could be.”

  “Alright then, Blue. Prove it.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her.

  For outside the wagon, something had changed.

  Sonara cocked her head to listen. Beyond the wind, beyond the breathing of her companions… the powerful beat of widespread wings cutting through the sky. A sharp screech echoed from afar.

  The steeds hauling the caravan whinnied, and everything shifted. Indeed, beyond the barred window, the escorts turned in their saddles, then began to shout as they saw something in the sky.

  The word echoed across the caravan, from one escort’s mouth to another’s, until it reached the front driver.

  “Wyvern!”

  The whip sounded. The wagons began to speed up. Sonara’s head smacked against the person next to her, so hard she sucked in a painful breath. And as she did, her curse snapped loose.

  Come back, she begged, but she already knew it would refuse.

  Out the wagon window it went, spiraling into the desert as it preyed on everything in sight. She sensed the steeds hauling the whole caravan, their fear sticky and dark as tar on the tongue as the screech in the sky grew louder.

  She sensed the corpses in the other wagons, bloated and decaying in the heat.

  She sensed the salty tears on someone’s face. The sweat on tightly pressed together bodies, on ruined wrists beneath thick diamond manacles.

  Her head throbbed like someone had taken a hammer to it. Her throat burned like she’d contracted a sudden illness.

  Still, the steeds tore across the sand, desperately trying to outrun the source of the wingbeats. Dust rose from the wheels, clouding the barred windows, the view of the escorts and their mounts.

  “What’s out there?” a prisoner asked. “Why are we speeding up?”

  “You want me to prove I’m the Devil?” Sonara asked the others. “First, I suggest you all duck your heads.”

  They only had time to scream as a massive set of razor-sharp claws pierced through the roof of the wagon, just over their heads. A mighty roar followed, and the roof of the wagon was ripped away.

  Fear.

  It was all around her, so thick Sonara couldn’t force the aura back.

  But her troupe had come. They’d come for her, just as she’d hoped they would.

  The twin suns were like daggers in her eyes, the sudden absence of shadows utterly jarring. Sonara blinked, a triumphant cry building in her.

  For there overhead, soaring across the endless desert sky, was Razor, Markam’s mighty wyvern as black as the night. The roof of the wagon still clutched in her jagged talons. She released it, sent it tumbling down from the skies.

  The escorts, galloping across the sand, had drawn their swords and shields. But they would be useless against Razor.

  Sonara had never been so happy to see the hideous beast. For there on her back was Jaxon and Markam, alive and well. Together, the brothers and the beast were a force of fire and flight, working in synchronized glory as they fought to free the prisoners below.

  Sonara could sense the wyvern’s fire before she released it: a spark, building to a flame, the thickness of smoke spilling from mighty lungs before Razor opened her massive jaws and sent a pillar of green flame down towards the wagon at the front of the caravan.

  The wagon exploded. The steeds’ harness melted at its touch, and they tore off across the desert, free at last, the very ground shaking under their feet.

  Sonara cheered, her heart racing in her chest, blood roaring in her ears as the rest of the caravan finally came to a rolling stop. The chains around her wrists bit at her skin as she tried in vain to free herself. She wanted out. She wanted to fight.

  Razor banked again, screeching so loud Sonara felt it in her bones. The wyvern stretched out her talons, tucked her wings in tight, and dove straight for the escorts, who hefted their swords and readied for a fight they could not win.

  One lifted a crossbow and shot.

  The arrow spiraled towards Razor, who dipped sideways with ease, then continued her chase.

  The steeds below skittered sideways, bleating in fear. Two of the guards were thrown overboard, their steeds abandoning them to tear off into the desert.

  Razor roared again, jaws wide and smoke pluming from her nostrils. She landed effortlessly upon the sand and spread her wings high above her, barbed tail spraying the grains like droplets of a crashing wave.

  There atop her sat Jaxon, with his wide-brimmed leather hat pulled low over his eyes. Markam was just behind him, a shade taller, both wearing brown leather dusters that settled behind them like capes. They dismounted, boots softly scraping up the sand as they approached the guards.

  Razor growled, but Markam held up a gloved hand. She fell silent, smoke pluming from her nostrils. If she released too much of her fire too soon, she’d burn out like a candle, and be useless when they needed her most.

  The guards dismounted and formed a circle around the brothers as they stopped fifty paces away.

  Back to back, they stood. Two sentries ready to strike fear in the hearts of those who dared cross them.

  “Stand down!”

  The largest guard, a man with a red braid hanging down his back, hefted a sword that was made of black Deadlands iron. Supple material, though not as strong as Soreian steel.

  It was so quiet, Sonara had forgotten she sat in a wagon full of other prisoners, who watched with breaths held; a wagon full of murderers and thieves and madmen, too fearful to utter a single noise as they watched.

  “Stand down?” Jaxon’s chuckle danced across the desert sand, carried towards Sonara on a gust of dry wind. She breathed in his aura, the fearlessness, strong as a freshly brewed cup of hauva in the morning. “You have something of ours. And we never leave without getting what we want.”

  “These prisoners are the property of the King of the Deadlands,” the guard growled.

  Markam smiled, a cruel thing that had Sonara’s insides twisting. “Brainless beasts, the king’s guards,” he said in his casual drawl. “This fight is dull, Jaxon. Show him the way the bones call to your blood.”

  Jaxon lifted his hands, then. And all around him, the desert began to quake.

  The sands shifted softly as his curse called upon the bones of the dead, begging them to uncover themselves; to shake off the dust, and answer the silent cry.

  The bones of an ancient
, long-dead fowl appeared, hobbling towards him as it emerged from the sand, wings bent and broken. A desert rat crawled forth from its unmarked grave. The body of a snake, no longer held together by muscle or skin, shaped together and slithered towards him, alive beneath the power coursing in Jaxon’s blood.

  “By… by the order of King Jira of the Deadlands,” the head guard stuttered, fear lancing his words now. “Stand… down.”

  Jaxon tilted his head sideways. The bones stopped at his feet in shapeless piles. “Free the Devil of the Deadlands, and you’ll walk away from this fight unharmed.”

  His eyes flitted past the guards, towards the caravan, where Sonara herself sat waiting, still held by her insufferable diamond chains. The other prisoners watched her with widened eyes, as if they could scarcely believe what they were seeing was true.

  “Sonara?” Jaxon cried out. “Now would be a good time to let me know you’re alive in there!”

  A smile spread across Sonara’s dry lips. “Alive!” she called back. “And growing impatient!”

  With a smile, Jaxon removed his hat and placed it beside him on the sand. It was that act alone, more than the risen bones, that confirmed no one would leave this place alive today.

  Jaxon didn’t like to get blood on the old leather. And blood was most certainly about to be spilled.

  “Free the Devil,” Jaxon said softly, his scarred face clearly visible now.

  The guards did not lower their swords. “Stand down,” the leader said. “In the name of His Majesty King Jira.”

  “You had a chance,” Markam told them, with a shrug.

  The guard growled and lunged, swinging his blade.

  A ripple of the air… and Markam disappeared.

  One moment there, gone the next. The guards gasped, the one lunging towards him stumbling as his blade hit only air where Markam had just been.

  “Shadowblood,” he growled as he turned his attention on Jaxon instead. “Kill them both!”

  Jaxon only lifted his hands.

  Like little white missiles, the bones shot forward across the sky, propelled by his power. They sank into the guard’s body like a hundred tiny swords; small femurs and knuckle bones and kneecaps that turned on their sides, the better to slice.