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

by Lindsay Cummings

  Rohtt laughed out loud. “Fool boy. I should shoot you.”

  “You will stand down, Rohtt,” Cade commanded. He glanced back over his shoulder, where his army was still clearing the rubble.

  The drill itself had died out, smoking and smelling of turned oil. They’d have to dig by hand to widen the entrance, and if they dared stop… Cade would tap the control panel on his S2, commanding them to feel nothing but pain.

  “This is the end,” Karr said, drawing Cade’s gaze back. “Stop it now.”

  The Devil stood at the bottom of the pit beside him, staring at Cade with a hunger—a hatred—that he had never seen reflected in the eyes of the living. There was the outlaw Jaxon, who Cade had traded and set free. And there was the beautiful young woman, Azariah, who had snuck inside the ship with the Devil. Finally, the illusionist Markam, who’d changed Thali’s appearance—but he was unconscious, lying beside them.

  Cade stepped closer, the dark space calling to him.

  “Come to my side,” Cade begged one last time. What had happened, in so little time, to change him? To make him choose strangers instead of his own flesh and blood? Cade had given everything, everything, to protect him. Was it the poisonous air? Perhaps it morphed the brain, changed the way someone thought. “Come back, and we’ll talk about this. I’ll tell you the truth, Karr. All of it.”

  “The truth doesn’t matter anymore,” Karr said now. “It won’t change a thing.”

  The small group drew closer to Karr and the Devil, hands flexing as if they were preparing for a fight.

  “Enough is enough, Karr!” Cade shouted. Fury sparked to life inside of him. “You’re acting like a selfish child. I’ve brought you a gift. I’ve promised you a forever with it. Leave the heart. Come to my side, where you belong.”

  “I don’t belong there,” Karr said. He smiled sadly. “I belong right here. I always have.”

  Cade laughed harshly, the sound reverberating off the walls. It sounded a bit like the laugh Thali had given him inside the ship’s brig. He silenced himself, checking his temper. He turned his gaze away from Karr, onto the Devil instead. “What did you do to him?”

  “The question,” she said softly as she drew herself to a standing position, her sword in her fist, “is not what I did to him. But what you did. What your parents did, the secret you kept. He’s not your brother. Not fully.”

  Cade tilted his head.

  Something squirmed inside of him. A feeling of sickness, of unease. How could she know the truth? It wasn’t possible. Beside him, Thali seemed to perk up, listening closely for the first time since they’d entered the cave.

  “What are you talking about?” Cade didn’t have time for this. “Karr! To my side. Now.”

  The Devil drew her sword, a pathetic attempt at a threat from the bottom of the amphitheater, when Cade stood above with real weapons. But she snarled up at him, and said, “Do not speak to him as if he’s your beast, forced to sit at your feet and lick the blood from your wounds. He’s not yours to command. He never was. Not since the day your people replaced his heart with Soahm’s. Not since the day you swore to keep that secret to yourself.”

  That squirming thing broke free inside of Cade.

  It was terror. Terror, because how could this girl know the truth? For if she did… that meant…

  “I know everything,” Karr said next. He looked back at the Antheon, his fists clenching as he stepped away from it. When his gaze swung back to Cade, it was full of so many things. Sadness. Horror. Disgust.

  “All these years, you knew, Cade,” Karr said. “You knew that the only reason I am alive is because of a boy our parents abducted from this very planet. And now you dare to come back here, to the place I owe my life, and destroy it by ripping the very heart from it.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Cade whispered.

  “I know exactly what I’m saying,” Karr said. “I saw all of it. I see all of it, and I keep seeing it, even when my eyes aren’t open. It’s the very worst when I look at you.”

  “I didn’t choose,” Cade started. “I didn’t choose any of it, Karr! They did! They started this!”

  Karr held up a hand. “Stop,” he growled.

  And as he did… the ground trembled.

  Cade thought he imagined it. An aftershock, perhaps, from the drill breaking through the mountain.

  “You are my brother, Cade,” Karr said. “We share a lifetime of pain. A lifetime of things we did not deserve, but our parents brought it all onto us. And then you decided to continue it, when you made a deal with Jeb.”

  How did he know? How could he know?

  Cade realized, suddenly, as his body felt dipped in ice… this was not Karr standing before him. This was a monster wearing Karr’s skin. Perhaps his real brother died that day on the sand, when the Devil turned her sword on him and drove it into his chest.

  The Antheon had brought Karr back. Geisinger said it had the power to do such things.

  But what if it hadn’t? What if it brought back a monster instead, some twisted version of Karr, that saw all and knew all, and…

  “Enough of this,” Thali said. “I’ve waited long enough.”

  She stepped away from Cade, walking forward into the unclaimed space between the two groups.

  “Thali,” the beautiful one called up. “It’s okay. We’re going to protect it from them.”

  “Silence, Princess,” Thali hissed. “For so long, I have had to put up with your voice.”

  The woman below gasped, and took a step back, shock spreading across her face.

  “All these years,” Thali said. “All these years, I have sought to find a way to enter this sacred space. The heart lives. The heart breathes. It is so, so beautiful. I never thought… never thought I would finally find it.”

  “You shouldn’t be on their side, cleric,” the Devil said, her voice turning to a warning tone. “Care to explain what you’re doing with them?”

  “Hello, Eona,” Thali said. Her wolf mask swung right, her eyes just barely visible in its shadows as she glared down into the pit to stare at the Devil. “How long have you been hiding in there?”

  Cade watched, unsure what to do. Unsure when to command his people to move.

  Karr’s posture was rigid instead of lazy. His smile was wiped clean from his lips, and his eyes… they looked up at Cade with a burning intensity that they had never held within.

  It was almost like hatred.

  Cade couldn’t look away from Karr, couldn’t stop feeling like the brother he’d always known and loved and protected, that he’d given all of himself for… was dead.

  Chapter 40

  Sonara

  Hello, Eona. How long have you been hiding inside of there for?

  “You know?” Sonara asked Thali, as that greeting, more like a threat, entered her brain.

  Her curse was going wild. It screamed at her, pounding at its cage from within. She let it out. She obliterated the cage door, let it fall to dust and rubble, for she no longer wanted to control it. Everything she’d ever hoped for, everything she thought she knew was true about herself, and Soahm… it was all a lie.

  She didn’t care.

  She wanted to burn down the world.

  She wanted to destroy everything in the wake of her rage, because Soahm was gone. Not just stolen, but gone, forever. It was some kind of sick, twisted punishment for her sins that Karr carried her brother’s heart, her brother’s aura, right back to Dohrsar.

  Karr lived because Soahm was dead.

  Karr carried half of Eona’s soul because Soahm’s heart was cut right out of his chest and given to him as a secret gift.

  Thali suddenly knelt at the top of the amphitheater, drawing Sonara’s gaze back to her. Giving her a place to focus her rage. And as she knelt, an aura filtered out from her.

  That dusty, ancient scent, carried on the planet’s breath.

  Sonara breathed past it, trying to decipher Thali’s next move. For the woman had
apparently betrayed them, had secrets that went far deeper than anything Sonara expected. Secrets that tangled up in all the horrific truths Eona had shared with them.

  “Thali?” Azariah called out to her once more.

  Sonara swung her arm out, sword stopping the princess before she could move forward.

  The Princess, somehow, was her half-sister. Another sickening twist of fate, that she’d had someone like her all along. A piece of her family, her blood, that she’d never been given the chance to get to know. She would not let harm come to Azariah today.

  “Don’t,” Sonara growled. “She’s not who she says she is.”

  Azariah paused, eyes wide, and for a moment, Sonara feared she would not listen. But the princess stopped. “Thali? Is this true?”

  The cleric only laughed; a strange sound that had not come from her before. “You’re a foolish thing, so desperate for love. All along, I thought… I suspected it was you. Three years I wasted, trying to train you. Trying to help you grow your power, so that you could lead me to the heart. And all along, it was the Devil I truly needed.”

  Azariah’s aura deflated at those words. Realization and betrayal filtered out with each breath as she stood with Karr and Sonara and flexed her hands.

  The hair on Sonara’s neck began to stand on end.

  “Not yet, Princess,” Sonara whispered. “Hold it back. Save your strength.”

  For what would she have left, at this point? Azariah nodded, and the electricity in the space fizzled.

  “I did not suspect Eona had two pieces of her soul that survived,” Thali said. Her voice echoed through the cavern. “I know now that one of those pieces resides with him.” She pointed her gauntleted finger at Karr. “A Wanderer from afar. Eona’s spirit is always meddling, working with the planet, the two thinking they’re some sort of preposterous team. Was it Eona’s spirit that compelled you to kill Karr, so she could bring him back a Shadowblood? So she would make it harder for me to win in the end?”

  “Who are you?” Sonara demanded, feeling like a beast whose hackles were standing on end. As if the piece of Eona’s soul that she carried inside was growling. Warning her without words. “Who are you truly?”

  “A lifetime of worship and sacrifice,” Thali spat. She trembled as she removed her bone gauntlets, letting them fall to the floor with a hollow clatter. Sonara realized, as she watched, that she’d never seen the cleric’s arms or hands without them. The scent of decay poured from her, that strange, dusty aura that Sonara had sensed on the woman the very first time she’d met her face to face, in the saloon. And now she realized why.

  Thali’s skin was decayed beneath those gauntlets. Portions of her skin had been eaten away to hollow, holes of green, dying flesh. As if her body had been devoured, little by little, by some sort of poison.

  “A lifetime of seeking for a way to uncover the heart,” Thali said, as she ran her fingertips across her ruined hands and wrists. Sonara fought back a gag from the aura as pieces of Thali’s skin flaked away. “I knew it was here, close by, in these mountains… buried deep. But I could never get to its exact hiding place.” She laughed again, but there was no joy in the sound. “But then Karr arrived, and he uncovered the damned door right to it. Of course, the door wouldn’t let me inside. Wouldn’t let me enter, because it knew. It knew that I carried its enemy beneath this shield of Canis bones.”

  Her ruined hands moved upwards, towards her Canis mask. She unclasped it from the back, three pops that sounded in time with the beating of the planet’s heart.

  Danger, Sonara’s magic hissed. Danger and darkness and the end of the end.

  “At long last,” Thali said, sliding her ruined hands to the front of the bone mask. “I can bring Eder home.”

  She removed the mask. And Sonara nearly screamed at the sight of the girl’s face beneath. Azariah gasped, stepping close to Sonara as she pressed a hand to her mouth.

  Thali’s skin was held together only in patches upon her skull, as if moths had eaten away at her face. Her ears were mere shreds, her nose down to the bone, her eyeballs hanging loose in the sockets, her eyelids eaten away.

  An aura of decay rushed from her again, and Sonara now understood why.

  She’d always thought the aura came from the poor remains of the Canis that had died, giving their bones to make Thali’s mask and gauntlets. But it came from the destroyed skin beneath. Or perhaps from whatever lurked inside of Thali.

  A darkness Sonara had yet to meet.

  “I am weary,” Thali whispered. She closed her eyes and cracked her neck on both sides, stretching in the freedom of no longer wearing a mask. “Hundreds of years, my ancestors have carried Eder’s soul, searching for the heart so they could deliver him back to it again. They failed, but Eder’s soul carried on, the same way Eona’s did. Searching, always searching. Eventually he came to reside in me. I was determined to be the one to bring him home. He kept me alive, using his dwindling power so that I could remain a host. A host who loved him. Desired him. Worshiped him and gave everything so I could set him free.”

  She turned, lifting her hand to Cade.

  “The sword, as part of our deal.”

  Cade stumbled backwards, as if he were horrified and disgusted at Thali.

  But she moved, so fast it should have been impossible, and in a blink, Gutrender was in her hands.

  Cade froze in shock, even Rohtt pausing beside him as they watched Thali admire her newly won prize.

  She sighed longingly, then removed it from its sheath. Its golden color sparkled in the dark heart’s glowing light, in the flaming torches littered all around.

  “What are you doing?” Sonara called up the steps. “Thali, drop the blade.”

  “Eder’s time was running low. Too much longer, and he would have vanished, gone forever. He held on as long as he could. So when I was in Stonegrave—when the poor little princess was sleeping, unaware that she was my pawn—I spoke privately to Jira. I told him about the heart’s power. I convinced him to take the deal with Geisinger. To bring the Wanderers here, to dig it right out of Dohrsar. Because I knew that the planet would respond to the threat. That it would send forth a wave of terror and fear and draw the soul of Eona out of hiding. Make her soul act out and reveal itself, in desperation to save Dohrsar when the greatest threat it had ever known came calling.”

  She smiled with rotting black teeth.

  “It worked. Eona’s soul did reveal itself, but not as I suspected. I thought… I thought it was Karr alone. That Karr was the one holding her soul. I thought perhaps Eona’s soul called to you, Sonara, and made you kill him, so that she could set things in motion. I wasn’t certain how her soul had ended up in a Wanderer, but… Eder felt the whisper of Eona within him. And when Karr revealed that door with his power… we knew.” Her hollow eyes fell to Sonara again. “It was you, Devil, that ruined things.” She cackled, then hacked on a cough that had her spitting blood. “The Devil of the Deadlands, so unbelieving and undeserving of the planet’s power. I should have known, but I never sensed it in you. Perhaps because you were too stubborn. Too afraid of your magic.”

  “How long have you known?” Sonara asked.

  “Not long enough,” Thali said. “You ruined my plans. I was going to join the Wanderers from the beginning, but then you initiated the attack, and I knew that Eona had made a move. I decided to stay with you, to see if you would do something else, led by Eona. But when it was taking too long… I offered myself up. You took me right to the Wanderers, thinking I was giving myself over as a worthy sacrifice to the cause. There, I was able to get Cade to see reason, to let me lead him here, the pulse of the planet’s heart so powerful in its fear. So bright.” Her eyes looked past Sonara, at the heart. She gripped Gutrender tighter, her fingertips oozing as the skin melted away. “This is far more poetic. Powerful. The way Eder would have wanted, for he once brought his own army back here, and fought Eona before the heart. Now he’ll get to do it again. And this time… he will win.” She
turned to look at Sonara, her eyes protruding from her skeletal face. “Eder, my love. My soul. The time is now, for you to be set free.”

  Before anyone could cry out, before they could move to action, Thali lifted Gutrender.

  And drove it deep into her own chest.

  Chapter 41

  Sonara

  Thali did not fall.

  Her body twitched, and she leaned forward on the golden blade, soaking it with her blood.

  Then she moved. She lifted her head, cracking her neck side to side before looking down at the blade protruding from her chest.

  “A hideous thing, this sword,” she said. “I always wondered what my father saw in it.”

  But it was not her voice any longer.

  It was a male’s voice. Deep and horrific and rumbling like an undead spirit, risen again.

  Her hands fell upon the hilt, where the miniature Hadru looked to be devouring the blade itself. “But so powerful. Not for its craft… for alone, it is just an ordinary king’s sword. The First King’s sword, ancient and hiding a secret.”

  Thali’s fingers gripped the hilt.

  “It is the stone inside of it that gives this sword its true power.” She smiled, then pulled the sword from her chest. With a sickening crunch, the bloody metal slid out past cracked bones and rotting skin. “The small piece of the planet’s heart that my father first removed, long ago, when he discovered the heart. I used it to destroy Eona, before. And I’ll use it now to destroy her again.”

  Not Thali, then.

  But…

  “Eder,” Sonara whispered.

  Eder smiled from inside of Thali’s body. His eyes had turned from Thali’s cold, pupilless white to a solid shadow black, as he looked from Karr to Sonara and back again. “Hello again, Eona. Or should I say, the two halves of Eona, come together once more.”

  Behind Eder, the cave wall crumbled, the hole large enough now to let two people through at once. The first set of Cade’s Wanderer soldiers appeared, hefting their rifles.