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

by Lindsay Cummings

  During the descent, they should have seen the Dohrsarans running free, out of the dark tunnels and into the Deadlands day as the light-wall fell.

  A sickening sense of dread spread like a poison through Sonara’s guts, but she hadn’t the time to consider it. She looked for the others, panic rising in her. But the headache… oh goddesses, it was pounding.

  And now that she thought about it… her right arm was on fire with pain. It wasn’t quite cooperating, as Sonara tried to push herself onto her hands and knees.

  With a groan, she stood, walking on wobbly legs until she pressed her arm against Duran’s broad backside. Goddesses, it was going to hurt.

  “Still, beast,” she commanded.

  He simply huffed and swished his tail in her face.

  Then she gritted her teeth, and, with a muffled shout, popped the arm back into place.

  “Goddesses be damned, Sonara. You always do such… flattering things.”

  Sonara froze, the pain dulling at the sound of that voice.

  She turned slowly, and there he sat astride Razor, the afternoon sunlight bathing him in burnished gold.

  “Jax,” she whispered.

  Then she was running towards him as if her own heart had sprouted wings and had taken flight, desperately trying to carry her across the sand to him. He slid down from Razor’s back, his boots squeaking on the fresh sand as they collided.

  “You’re home,” she breathed.

  He wrapped his strong arms around her, and Sonara couldn’t help herself—didn’t even want to stop herself—as the tears fell.

  They pulled away from each other, hands on shoulders, eyes roaming one another’s face as if that shared glance could tell all the tales that had happened in their time apart.

  “You’re okay? You’re unharmed?” she asked, eyeing his wounded arm at the same time he practically shook her and blurted:

  “You faced a bloody Wanderer army to save me! I always knew you were a wild soul, Sonara, but…”

  She laughed, and then they were hugging again, and Sonara swore, swore to every single one of the goddesses that may have been watching, that if anything so horrific ever happened to Jaxon again, she’d tear them all down from the sky.

  She’d rip them apart slowly, limb from immortal limb, if it meant she could keep him from harm.

  “Ahem.”

  They broke apart, both wiping away tears.

  “Such a sweet family reunion,” Markam said. He knelt in the sand, shaking dust from his coat, a gash on his temple still oozing black blood. Somehow, his hat was still on his head. “I see you’ve returned my wyvern back to me safely, little brother. I’ll only charge you ten gold coins, for the rental.”

  Jaxon chuckled, and helped Markam to his feet, gripping him by the forearm. But then after a moment, he pulled his brother in for a hug.

  Markam wrapped his arm awkwardly over Jaxon’s shoulders, but accepted the embrace, before quickly backing away. He made sure to pull the brim of his hat low over his eyes, but Sonara caught the joy in them. “That’s enough of that, Jax,” Markam said, and cleared his throat.

  “There’s so much to tell you,” Sonara said. “So much to—”

  Several paces away, Duran snorted as he nudged a body in the sand.

  “Azariah!” Markam yelped.

  Markam stumbled, half-crawling across the sand until he fell at Azariah’s side. Sonara soon joined him, a sickness spreading through as she thought, Please, not now, not like this…

  A Deadlands warrior did not deserve to die falling from the sky in a Wanderer pod.

  Strange, lightning-shaped burns ran across Azariah’s body, stretching upwards towards her neck. Markam gently rolled her over and cradled her head in his lap, pressing his hands to either side of her face.

  “Wake up.” He shook her gently. “Wake up.”

  “She’s alive,” Jaxon said softly. He knelt and pressed his hand to Azariah’s wrist. “My power… it tells me her bones are not yet ready to call upon. There is still plenty of life in her.”

  Something like hope grew in Sonara as she looked at the woman. Azariah’s collar scar, once a hideous mark of King Jira’s claim over her life… it was transformed.

  Tendrils of lightning-shaped scars wound around her throat where that awful collar had once been, almost beautiful in its brutality. A work of art that was born of her own abilities. Her own choice to press herself to the brink of life in order to set countless others free.

  “She shut down the light-wall,” Sonara said to Jaxon, as she knelt by the princess and pressed her hand to Azariah’s forehead. “She did it, for all of them. All of us. She’s the one who deserves the credit.”

  “Ah, but you all had a part in the chaos,” Jaxon said.

  Now that he was kneeling on her level, Sonara could see the awful gouge marks where the mite had dug into his neck. Like whatever terrible Wanderer science it was had drilled four even holes into his skin and latched on tight, bruises and dried blood still plainly visible on his neck.

  “It was a collar of its own,” Jaxon said, glancing at the princess. “A pain that could make any man beg for death.”

  “Then it’s good we destroyed them,” Sonara said. “Good that we could set you all free.”

  Jaxon paused, his gaze darkening.

  “Sonara…”

  His words trailed off as Azariah groaned. Then she shifted and began to blink back the sunlight.

  Sonara’s body calmed with relief. She grinned, the kind of smile she hadn’t felt graze her lips in a long time. It felt a little like waking. A little like stretching after a long, curled-up slumber in the lonely dark.

  What Azariah had done in that ship, facing that atlas orb, and what Sonara had done, to rid the princess of her last ounces of doubt, of fear, would forever bind them.

  The Princess had asked Sonara to take up a place in her court someday. It was not a decision to be made lightly. And not one Sonara was yet ready to make, but nevertheless, she felt she owed Azariah a life debt for destroying the Wanderer’s power source.

  “Karr is alive,” Markam said suddenly, lifting his chin to Sonara as he found his waterskin and poured some onto Azariah’s dried, cracked lips.

  Karr sat twenty paces away, facing the Bloodhorns. They’d crash-landed on the opposite side, not far from the mouth of Miner’s Hope: the entrance to the network of tunnels that eventually led back to their hideaway.

  Sonara felt for Soahm’s necklace, alarm rising in her for a moment as she remembered. But the weight of it was still there upon her chest, reassuring as she pressed a hand to Jaxon’s wrist, then went alone to greet Karr.

  For a moment, she sensed nothing in his aura. He stared ahead, glaring into the sunlight, unblinking. Not moving as he said, “I saw it.”

  “Saw what?” Sonara asked.

  He turned, and there was an open gash on his forehead. The wind spiraled past at the same time, gentle. Timid. But it still carried with it a new aura on his black blood.

  There was Karr, like grease and wet ink, and then there was a second aura.

  One that was exactly like Soahm’s. Sand dunes and Soreian air and the glorious sea.

  Sonara wasn’t entirely surprised any longer. For it had happened before, whenever Karr bled. And the more she began to piece the mystery together, the more she no longer wanted to solve it.

  “I saw my parents take him,” Karr said. “Your brother. You were there, too. I went to the half-place, and the Child of Starlight showed it to me, like a dream.”

  “You… saw it?” Sonara asked.

  Karr turned to look at her, his expression grim. “Every detail.”

  “Then you saw that I left him behind,” Sonara said.

  She carried that truth with her like a dead weight upon her back. A moment in time, where fear had grasped her and she’d given into it fully.

  If they’d run all the way into hiding together—if she’d waited and helped Soahm reach the cave—perhaps he would not have been
taken. They knew the caves like they knew their own homes, Soahm’s twisting halls in the Soreian palace, and Sonara’s claimed space in the steed barns.

  Karr nodded, but did not speak of what Sonara knew he’d seen.

  I’m so sorry, she thought, as she reached up and closed her fist over Soahm’s necklace. I’m so sorry I left you behind.

  “It was like the Child of Starlight, whoever she is, needed me to see it,” Karr said. His aura was full of fresh sorrow. “My parents were Travelers. Freelancers who went from planet to planet, usually the hardest ones to reach, and brought back goods for traders. Not the illegal kind, like me and Cade. They were good people. They never would have stood for this.”

  Sonara felt empty inside, even as she breathed in that double aura of his and knew it was impossible, for he was not Soahm, and Soahm was not him. So why did the two share an aura that mingled like the moons and stars?

  “But in that vision…” Karr swallowed. “Sonara, you were so young. So afraid. You did what anyone would have done.”

  “Don’t,” she shook her head.

  “You watched as my parents abducted him. That beam of blue light, his scream, the wind blasting from the engines…” His eyes narrowed. “He had on that necklace. The day he was taken.”

  The chain felt sharp against her palm suddenly. But still, she held onto it, and for a moment, she was thrust back into that night. So many times she’d relived it over the years. She didn’t want to again. But she must. For there were answers here. Secrets unburying themselves, shaking sand from their backs like beasts awakening.

  “This child,” Sonara said. “What purpose would she have in showing my memories to you?”

  She could have been a goddess. She could have been some emissary from the planet itself, for now all of Thali’s and Azariah’s beliefs seemed to ring true.

  “That’s the thing, Sonara,” Karr said. “It didn’t feel like your memory at all.” He swallowed. “It felt like…” He closed his eyes, pressing his hand to the gash on his head, like he was trying to think past the pain of it. “I keep trying to hold onto it, to understand the truth, but whenever it comes close I feel like it falls through my fingertips. And there’s another thing. The Child of Starlight kept talking about the darkness, about the ship. She said that the darkness has returned. And this time, it will be the very last time to stop it.”

  “But we did,” Sonara said. “We shut down the system. The prisoners should have been freed from it.”

  “They weren’t,” Jaxon said.

  Sonara turned to find him standing there, his hands clasped in front of him as he lifted his stubbled chin and glanced at the Bloodhorns. The valley in their center, where he’d lost his freedom.

  “What do you mean?” Sonara asked.

  Jaxon sighed and ran a shaky hand across the back of his neck, wincing as he did so. “After you freed me, I landed Razor on the mountainside and waited, hoping you’d come back out of that ship again… hell, I even prayed. The light-wall fell, your pod crashed, and I came to you as quick as I could, once I discovered they weren’t going to come find you in the wreckage. And… well, the prisoners aren’t caged anymore, Sonara. But they’re not running free.”

  “Why?” Sonara asked, but she could already sense the tension in Jaxon’s aura.

  The shift in him, as his hand grazed those awful marks on his neck.

  “The mites are still controlling them,” he said. “And now they’re so far inside the mountain, I’m afraid if they keep going… it might already be too late.”

  Karr cursed, and spat in the sand. He pressed at his forehead, squeezing the spot between his eyes like he was trying to see through a heavy haze. “Somehow, Cade must have anticipated it. Planned for it to happen. Or maybe Geisinger did.”

  “A second plan,” Markam said, coming up from behind them, his hat in his hands, duster waving behind him as he helped Azariah keep her balance. She smiled at Sonara, who nodded her chin in greeting. “Every good Trickster prepares for it.”

  “Room for error,” Sonara said, thinking of all the times their missions had gone south, and they’d had backup routes ready in order to still complete them. “Perhaps he has a second power source somewhere?”

  Karr shook his head. “No, he wouldn’t have. There’s no other place for it on the ship… power that deep would fry the engines, screw with the cooling systems… it had to have been the atlas orb.”

  “So what, then?” Sonara asked. “Where is it?” Karr closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  Sonara felt it, then.

  A little tremble from her curse, like a warning message of a weapon readying itself to inflict a wound.

  She spun around, searching for the source, but saw nothing at all. “Sonara?” Jaxon asked.

  And then her curse took flight, sprouting those little shadow wings and soaring away like a bird. Sonara yelped as it carried her vision with it, like a message was calling. Like her curse was going to be the thing that answered it.

  Across the desert her curse soared, sucking in the scent of the bones and beasts buried beneath the sand, their clever, clever minds and pinchers sharp as double-edged knives. It spiraled through the beamed entrance to Miner’s Hope, delving into the darkness of the Bloodhorns tunnels.

  Hunger, Sonara sensed, coming from a beast chomping on the entrails of an unlucky victim. Exhaustion, from another as it hissed and curled up in a cold, empty skull for a long sleep.

  Her curse moved, flipping and twisting, bounding off the walls where it chomped on history after history, all the people who’d bled and died and cut into the rock as they fought for the gold and glory the Bloodhorns held within. It soared until it reached their outlaw cave, where Sonara sensed the red door. She saw it, like she was seeing through her curse’s eyes, the tether stretching further than it had ever stretched before.

  Sonara’s curse inched closer, slowing to peer at the symbols etched on the stone.

  It sidled up against them.

  Felt the pulse. Sensed the surge of power.

  A beating drum, an ever-present rhythm from the other side of the red door. The salty aura of fear, flighty and breathless, came with each pulse. As if something alive were hiding within.

  Save me, Sonara heard.

  That same whisper, the one that had followed her all of her Shadowblood days, was speaking, and whether it was inside of her mind, or coming form the other side of the door…

  Sonara did not know.

  “We have to go to it,” she whispered.

  “Go to what?” Markam asked, as Sonara’s curse snapped back towards her in an instant, until she was staring back at her crew, wide-eyed.

  “The door,” Karr answered.

  As if in response to his words, the ground beneath them trembled.

  Chapter 36

  Sonara

  They journeyed back into the mines, a breathless pursuit upon Duran and Razor.

  With every beat of Duran’s hooves, every grain of sand that shifted beneath his heavy weight, Sonara felt the pull of that red door inside the Bloodhorns; and with it, the gentle whisper that continued to utter its need for a savior.

  She left Duran at the entrance to the mines, pressing a hurried kiss to his nose, swearing she’d be back to journey with him once more into the wind.

  Then they’d gone, the five of them, into the dim.

  No beasts appeared to stand in their way; they took no wrong turns, and their torches never once faltered as they finally found their way back to their outlaw cave.

  All along, the ground trembled.

  Little tremors; delicate shakes that had the dust kicking up, stray bits of rock tumbling down from the rounded walls.

  The Wanderers, wherever they were on the other side of the mountain, had to be close to the heart, their mad dash for their prize intensifying as time ran out.

  “A door,” Jaxon said, breathless as they stood before it. “Where does it lead?”

  There it was, ancient as ever, s
tanding in the rocky alcove Karr had created as if it had been there forever. It did not have a handle, or a keyhole, or any gaps that allowed them to peer inside.

  “The heart of the planet,” Azariah said. “An ancient temple, long covered up by time and power.”

  Jaxon, to his credit, did not raise a brow or utter a laugh at the pure absurdity of the statement. He simple shrugged, and said, “So how do we get inside?”

  Sonara pressed her hands to the door.

  When she closed her eyes, she swore she felt the pulse on the other side.

  “I uncovered it,” Karr said.

  “With Sonara’s help,” Markam added.

  “And her blade,” Azariah said with a warning tone.

  Jaxon looked to Sonara. “What exactly did I miss while I was gone?”

  She shook her head, still trying to understand why the door called to her. Why she knew, without a hint of doubt, that the voice calling to her was no longer in her mind. And though she knew she was the only one who could hear it… it was coming from behind the door. From the other side.

  “It was both of us,” Karr said. “Both of us together, that made something react that first time. Could I…?”

  He held out a hand.

  Timidly, Sonara took it, and they pressed their palms to the door together.

  Sonara winced, waiting for a great explosion, a shifting of the very ground beneath their feet. But nothing at all happened.

  Instead…

  The voice on the other side of the door sighed.

  An impatient little sigh, like it was tired of waiting.

  An aura followed. A burst of exasperation, sharp like the tang of bitters dumped into a cocktail of aged oil, and Sonara’s curse took flight.

  The tether pulled, soaring out of her until her curse slammed against the door.

  Like a fist knocking.

  Beside her, Karr gripped her hand tight, and Sonara began to feel the ground shake again. Not from the Wanderers drilling into the mountain somewhere nearby, but from Karr. He was gritting his teeth, trying to call upon the power that lived in his veins.