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

by Lindsay Cummings

  “Don’t.” Karr shook his head. “Don’t turn this into something about them. It’s not fair.”

  The memory of his parents’ deaths, that hideous dream he’d awoken from earlier, drove into him like a knife. No matter how hard he tried to push it away, the sharp blade only sank deeper.

  Their parents had traveled to nearly a hundred planets in their lifetime, faced dangers the likes of which no Traveler would ever see. Everything they did was for the good of the galaxy. Everything they discovered was handed right back to science, in hope of discovering something to cure the Reaper’s Disease.

  All it took was one raider to sneak aboard their ship while it was docked and slit their throats.

  And then they were nothing.

  Names on a gravestone. Ashes on the wind.

  Karr wasn’t supposed to be in the ship that night. He wasn’t supposed to see their chests stop moving, their mouths agape, deep crimson pooling onto the metal floor. He wasn’t supposed to feel the warmth of their blood as it slid towards his bare toes.

  His chest ached. He rubbed at the old scar on it, just one of the many he’d received when he was a scrawny young boy in the system, picking fights with boys far larger than he was to fuel his anger.

  Cade’s expression turned worrisome. “Are you alright?”

  Karr folded his hands into his lap. “I’m fine.”

  “But you’re—”

  “I’m fine, Cade. And it’s not fair, how you’ve turned the tables. We don’t speak about them.”

  “I do.” Cade crossed his arms over his chest. “I always will. And this Antheon… this is something they would have gone after, Karr, something they would have been proud of.” He leaned in, blue eyes wide, as he held up the black rock. “In this form, Antheon is nothing more than a rock. It’s likely why the Dohrsarans don’t have any idea what they’re sitting on. But Geisinger has resources, and reach. Once we deliver it to him,” he said, tossing the rock back to Karr, “he’ll use it to make medical miracles. He could eradicate the Reaper for good.”

  “We don’t have the manpower to mine at the level you’re speaking of,” Karr said. “To get the amount this guy likely needs. We have twenty men. A single drill. It will take years.”

  “I have it all taken care of,” Cade said. “There are workers waiting for us on Dohrsar. And he’s supplied us with tools to get the job done.”

  Karr hadn’t seen those tools on board, but he supposed the storage bay, with its messy rows upon rows of gear, was likely hiding plenty Cade hadn’t shown him.

  “Look.” Cade reached out and gripped Karr’s shoulders, his fingertips cold in the recycled Starfall air. “I promise you, with everything that I am. This is the last job. We do this… we’ll be free. We’ll make a difference. Not just for us, but for so many in the galaxy.”

  It had always been the two of them against the world.

  He tapped the exit panel beside his door. It slid open, revealing the red-lit corridor beyond. “No more questions. Just follow my lead and believe in our future.”

  Karr stood, the chair squeaking again beneath him. “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Tomorrow.” Cade nodded. “Get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  As Karr walked away, he glanced over his shoulder, and found Cade frowning down at his desk, where his captain’s coat was ruffled, not in the space he’d last seen it.

  As if someone had moved it aside to stare at the drawing on the screen.

  Chapter 8

  Sonara

  Lazaris was in Sonara’s hand in an instant, held before her as Jaxon leapt to his feet and took his place at her side.

  The Crown Princess of the Deadlands?

  At any moment, guards would be pouring into the saloon. Markam, damn him, what had he gotten them into?

  But Markam didn’t move an inch. He sighed and plucked a bit of lint from his duster sleeve, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Save us the dramatic exit, Sunny. Azariah means you no harm. Perhaps myself, depending on how she sees the past, but…”

  “The past is of no worth to me any longer,” the princess said. Careful words, calmly spoken, but she glared at him with a sudden intensity that had Sonara seeing, for the first time, the darkness in her eyes that matched King Jira’s. “But the future of my kingdom is of great value to me. It is why I came calling.”

  The Princess of the Deadlands.

  Sonara would have pulled on her curse, tested the air for a taste of truth, sweet and succulent, or lie, bitter as crushed greens.

  But she was so shocked by the revelation, that the cage inside of her fell dark and silent.

  “There’s no Princess of the Deadlands,” Jaxon said, as if he were thinking the same exact thought. “Jira doesn’t keep the females.”

  The words were not meant to be unkind. For they were all anyone in the Deadlands had ever known. But Sonara saw the way Azariah’s shoulders stiffened. The way her fingers curled into fists. “Everything you’ve ever heard about him and his children… it all stands to be true.”

  The rumor was that when Jira took a bride each year, he sired an unwanted female. Furious, he’d dump the child into the Hadru’s pit. There were countless stories out there of brides he’d taken, who disappeared into his palace only to reappear nine months later, mere shells of themselves. As if he’d stolen something from them that could never be replaced.

  Some of his brides never reappeared at all. But every year, at the Choosing, he took another new one. And every year, he was given a daughter instead of a son.

  “My father wants a male heir,” Azariah said. “And yet the goddesses have never blessed him with one.”

  Now Thali turned her Canis gaze onto Sonara and Jaxon. “Months ago, I journeyed far to find the Lady, when I heard talk of her existence. The clerics have many eyes and ears across the continent. We speak of the hushed things. Whisper of the stories yet untold, beyond our hiding places of worship. I didn’t know if I believed it myself, when I heard tell of the princess that survived. But just because you have never seen something with your own eyes does not make it untrue.”

  “So it’s true, then,” Jaxon said softly. “The king feeds his children to the Hadru.”

  At this, Azariah chuckled softly. “Not quite,” she said. “The real truth is far darker. My father only sires females. And when he does, he takes us, not to the Hadru, as many whisper in the streets of Stonegrave. He takes us beneath his castle, to the depths of the kingdom itself. And there, he takes a blade and slits our throats.”

  The world seemed to have fallen silent.

  Even Suzie Quick and her girls were in between songs, their silence nearly unbearable.

  “Many have died,” Azariah said. “Countless before me, and countless after. But for some reason, I survived. I came back.”

  “Even if it were true…” Sonara started, swallowing hard as the story suddenly began to mix with her own past, in her mind. A girl from one kingdom, slain by her father. And a girl from another, forced over the edge of a cliff by her mother. “Why would he keep you hidden all these years?”

  Azariah looked to Thali, her gaze shifting from something like sadness to wonder.

  “Because the princess goes against everything the Three Kingdoms have ever stood for,” Thali whispered. “She is a Child of Shadow. She was brought back to live another life, and such is the reason the king slew her and her siblings in the first place. In hope that one would come back again, with powers that belong in the stories of old.”

  The King came from centuries’ worth of Shadowblood hunters and huntresses. They’d wiped them from the surface of Dohrsar, signed a long-ago decree that ensured none would ever rise to power again, after the ancient Shadowbloods rose up. And once the Shadowbloods disappeared, their tale was told as a warning. A way to scare children into hiding. A way to ensure that if a Shadowblood was ever to appear, years later, their bloodline somehow missed in the destruction… people would fear them.

  They would han
d them over or hunt them down. There were paintings and depictions of slain Shadowbloods all across Dohrsar. In the Soreian palace, they were hung up like portraits in the Hall of Dead. Sonara had seen it, only once, when Soahm snuck her inside. In the White Wastes, there was a Night of Reckoning, where families threw black coals into their hearths, the dark smoke rising into the sky to ward off the evil, to keep the curse of the Shadowbloods from ever entering their lands.

  Jira’s family had led it all. The backbone of the Shadowblood extinction.

  It wasn’t possible that he’d try to create one. Let alone, keep one alive, especially his own daughter.

  “He longs for power such as this,” Azariah explained. She held out her gloved hands, and Sonara remembered the lightning swimming across her palms. She found herself glancing suddenly upwards, at the girl’s scar. The mark of a collar upon her throat. Only a lifetime of bearing such a burden would cause a scar like that.

  She suddenly felt sick.

  “He despises Shadowbloods. But not because he fears us. He longs for what we have, deep down. He has everything any man could ever want. Servants and riches and power and brides, countless lovers beyond that… but he does not have this.” Azariah held up her gloved hands, her dark eyes wide. She looked at Sonara next. “I saw you in that throne room. I was there when you stole the sword, in a secret chamber beneath his dais, when you so fearsomely slew a room full of my father’s men. It was my job, held in chains, to always be on lookout. To protect my father with my dark power, should there ever be a threat that his men would not be able to handle. But I stood idly by in the shadows when you attacked. I let you live. And in that moment… I wanted to be with you, walking out those doors. So that night I escaped the palace with Thali’s help, and sought out an old companion of mine.”

  Markam raised his glass, already empty of its contents.

  Azariah nodded at Sonara. “I then joined with Markam and Jaxon to come find you.”

  “But why?” Sonara asked. “Why me?”

  “My dear Devil.” Azariah’s dark eyes narrowed as she took a sip of her own drink and patted her lips with a silk handkerchief, the picture of a princess. “I am here to ask for your help. To hire you for a job that will work against my father’s might, for he is about to write the pages of a story that will damn Dohrsar, and all of its kingdoms, for eternity.” She paused, eyeing the rest of the room as she leaned closer. “But before I give the details, I must have your oath of silence. I have journeyed far to pass along this message, for I believe you three may be some of the only few in the Deadlands up for the job. And I can pay you handsomely. Thali?”

  Her guardian lifted a second silk pouch, carefully spilling its contents onto the wooden table.

  Diamonds tumbled out like delicate raindrops. They caught the sunlight from the holes in the curtains, sent it sparkling in fractals as if the diamonds themselves were miniature stars. They were perfect, each one of their facets. And massive, some of the largest Sonara had ever seen. They rivaled the very ones that sat upon Jira’s ringed fingers. With them, she’d be rich.

  Not just rich.

  Wealthy.

  Among them, a fat golden ring that Sonara would recognize anywhere, for that very ring, days ago, had been pressed tight against her skin as the king gripped her wrist like a vice, and demanded she be sent to Deadwood to die.

  It was his seal.

  “I stole it myself,” Azariah said. “As proof of my lineage, should you question me.”

  Sonara’s eyes narrowed as she leaned forward to investigate further.

  “Some of the finest craftsmanship I have ever seen,” Markam said, turning to glance at Sonara and Jaxon. “If you won’t trust my word, at least believe that the ring is real. And she is who she says she is.”

  “I can offer this as an advance payment,” Azariah said, holding out a hand to the diamonds, “if you agree to take the job. And I can offer ten times this amount once the job is completed. Diamonds enough to fill an entire barrel.”

  Sonara’s face remained impassive, but her blood hummed at the thought of so many diamonds. But working for the king’s daughter, for anyone with his blood made her feel sick. As if the oil she’d drunk was getting to her, too fast, too soon.

  Azariah’s smile fell. She chewed on her bottom lip, the first sign of nerves since she’d begun speaking.

  “Markam?” Sonara asked. She quickly nodded at Jaxon to stay put. “A word?”

  Markam yelped as she grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him with her out the double doors of the saloon. She stormed outside, where she promptly shoved him up against the wall. Dust rained down from the ceiling above.

  The steeds tied up at the railing barely lifted their heads, as if they were used to drunken patrons stumbling out of the saloon at a moment’s notice.

  “What the hell are you up to?” Sonara growled softly. She pressed him harder against the wall. “Why would you ever want to ally yourself with the Princess of the Deadlands?”

  His breath tickled her lips as he leaned forward. “Need you even ask? She’s the wealthiest mark we’ll ever find.”

  “You’re lying.”

  His aura reeked of it.

  She recoiled, yanking him with her before shoving him against the wall again. He only chuckled.

  “Come on, Sunny. It’s a game.”

  “It’s always been a game with you.” She narrowed her eyes. “You want me to pay off the debt? We’ll sell the damned sword. Split our profit three ways, just as you wanted, and then Jax and I can go free. Never see or speak to you again.”

  “The sword hardly counts as payment,” Markam said.

  “And why is that?” Sonara asked.

  “Ask him.” Markam glanced sideways, where Jaxon stood just outside the saloon doors. His eyes narrowed, when he saw Sonara pressed against Markam on the porch.

  Sonara stepped away. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  Markam chuckled and smoothed out his shirt. “Isn’t it, though?”

  “No,” Sonara said. “It most definitely is not. Jaxon, fetch the sword from where you’ve stashed it. We’re to sell it immediately and give Markam his cut. Pay off our debt and walk free of this mess. I want no part in this deal with the princess.”

  Markam clicked his teeth as if scolding a child. “Oh, Sunny. How precious little your comrade has shared with you after all.”

  Jaxon’s body went rigid. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I… I was going to tell you, Sonara, but…”

  She turned to him, slowly, as the truth began to dawn on her. “You said the sword was safe. Stashed here in Sandbank.”

  Jaxon held up his hands in pre-apology. “It’s… safe… yes. That much is true. But I don’t precisely know where.”

  “And why, exactly,” Sonara asked softly, “is that?”

  “Because…” Jaxon took a step back, his shoulders scraping against the saloon doors. “I gave it to Markam as an up-front payment for helping me free you.”

  Goddesses be damned.

  Sonara placed her hand on the pommel of Lazaris, suddenly wondering what it would feel like to skewer both brothers at once. Why, after all the years she’d known them both, was she always getting caught up between the two? It was like being passed between two dance partners who couldn’t tell their left foot from their right.

  “I was desperate, Sonara,” Jaxon explained.

  She could sense that desperation on his aura now, as her curse peeked its head out of the cage. Like spun sugar on a stick. His voice even tremored as he turned to face her, eye to eye.

  Her anger tried to win over. But Jaxon was so damn loveable with his honesty. She saw him, for a moment, as she once had, ten years ago, standing before her with all the care in the world as he lifted her head from the sand and pressed a waterskin to her cracked lips.

  I’ve got you, Jaxon had said then. It’s alright.

  Once he chose to let a person into his life, he let them in for good. Even
if they were as rotten to the core as Markam. He sighed now, as if trying to explain his actions once and for all. “You were almost to Deadwood by the time I got to you. If I’d ridden Duran, I wouldn’t have made it on time. And Markam wouldn’t agree to help without payment. You know I had to, right?”

  Sonara glanced to Markam, who was clearly flexing his arms while checking out the curve of his muscles beneath his jacket.

  “What’s she paying you?” Sonara asked. “Why are you so intent on getting us to join you and her? She’s our enemy, by birthright and by blood.”

  “Because,” he said, his voice missing that mocking tone for the first time, “someday, as long as she survives, she’s to take her father’s place. She’s to become queen. And in a Deadlands ruled by her, Sonara, we’ll be free. Better than free, we’ll be on her court for doing this. We only need to help her do one little thing…”

  Sonara laughed in his face. “You want us to become some sort of pieced together, ragtag court? Help her waltz into Stonegrave and steal her father’s throne out from under him? By the looks of her she’s been his prisoner for years. She can’t become queen.”

  “She can,” Markam said. “It’s her birthright. Shadowblood or not, prisoner to him or not, she’s entitled to his crown. This is our chance to align with her. And we’ll be richer than rich, if we do this job. I know her, Sonara. Perhaps better than anyone does.” His eyes took on the sheen of a man thinking of the past. “We can trust her.”

  “Why?” Sonara asked. “Tell me why you think you can trust her.”

  He glanced away, his jaw rigid. “Because we were lovers.”

  “Oh, Markam,” Sonara said. “Don’t tell me… her?”

  Because suddenly she pieced it all together. This was the other woman. The one who’d stolen Markam’s heart… and broke it. A few years ago, he’d disappeared for six months, fully out of touch, only to return one night, tears in his eyes as he came to Sonara.