Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(2)
Author: Alexandra Bracken
“And I don’t need attitude from a sprite of a girl, yet here we are,” Nash said, rummaging through my bag for a bundle of purple silk. He unwrapped it, holding the Hand of Glory out to me.
I didn’t have the One Vision—something Cabell and Nash reminded me of every infernal chance they got. Unlike them, I had no magic of my own. A Hand of Glory could unlock any door, even one protected by a skeleton knob, but its most important purpose, at least to me, was to illuminate magic hidden to the human eye.
I hated it. I hated being different—a problem that Nash had to solve.
“Whew, he’s getting a bit crusty, isn’t he?” Nash asked, lighting the dark wick of each finger in turn.
“It’s your turn to give him the bath,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was spend another evening massaging a fresh coat of human lard into the severed left hand of a prolific eighteenth-century murderer who’d been hanged for his crime of annihilating four families.
“Wake up, Ignatius,” I ordered. Nash had attached him to an iron candlestick base, but that didn’t make holding him any nicer.
I turned the Hand of Glory so the palm faced me. The bright blue eye nestled into its waxy skin blinked open—then narrowed in disappointment.
“Yup,” I told it. “I’m still alive.”
The eye rolled.
“The feeling’s mutual, you impertinent piece of pickled flesh,” I muttered, adjusting the stiff, curled fingers until they cracked back into place.
“Good afternoon, handsome,” Nash crooned. “You know, Tamsy, a little sugar makes everything nice.”
I glowered at him.
“You wanted to come,” he said. “Think about the cost next time, eh?”
The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. I switched Ignatius into my left hand, and my view of the world flickered as his light spread along the surface of the ice, bathing it in an unearthly glow. I sucked in a sharp breath.
The curse sigils were everywhere—on the ground, on the walls, on the ceiling—all swirling in and out of one another.
Cabell knelt at the entrance to the path. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he worked to redirect the curses into the crystals he slowly set out in front of him.
“Cab needs a break,” I told Nash.
“He can handle it,” Nash said.
Cabell nodded, setting his shoulders back. “I’m fine. I can keep going.”
A drip of burning lard scalded my thumb. I hissed at Ignatius, meeting his narrow, spiteful gaze with one of my own.
“No,” I told him firmly. I wasn’t going to set him down beside Cabell like I knew he wanted. First, because I didn’t have to obey the commands of a severed hand—actually, I didn’t need another reason beyond that.
Just to torment the impertinent hand, I held Ignatius out toward the wall at my right, pushing the exposed eye closer and closer to its frozen surface. I wasn’t a good enough person to feel guilty about the quiver that moved through his stiff joints.
The heat of his flames cut through the heavy coat of frost on the wall, and as each drip of water snaked down it, it revealed a dark shape on the other side.
A gasp tore out of me. The heel of my sneaker caught the ice as I stumbled back, and before I could even register what was happening, I was falling.
Nash shot forward with a startled grunt, catching my arm in an iron grip. The chill of the nearby wall kissed my scalp.
My heart was still hammering, my lungs throbbing to catch their next breath, as Nash eased me upright. Cabell rushed to my side, grabbing my shoulders, checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I knew the moment he saw what I’d glimpsed through the ice. His already white face turned bloodless. His fingers tightened with terror.
There was a man in the ice, made monstrous by death. The pressure of the ice looked to have broken his jaw, which gaped open unnaturally wide in one last silent scream. A shock of white hair framed his ice-burned cheeks. His spine was bent at tortured angles.
“Ah, Woodrow. I was wondering what he’d gotten up to,” Nash said, taking a step forward to study the body. “Poor bastard.”
Cabell gripped my wrist, turning Ignatius’s light back toward the tunnel ahead. Dark shadows stained the gleaming ice like bruises. A grim gallery of bodies.
I lost count at thirteen.
My brother was trembling, shaking hard enough that his teeth chattered. His dark eyes met my blue ones. “There are . . . there are so many of them . . .”
I wrapped my arms around him. “It’s okay . . . it’s okay . . .”
But fear had him in its grip; it had ignited his curse. Dark bristles broke out along his neck and spine, and the bones of his face were shifting with sickening cracks, taking on the shape of a terrifying hound.
“Cabell,” came Nash’s voice, calm and low. “Where was King Arthur’s dagger forged?”
“It . . .” Cabell’s voice sounded strange rasping through elongating teeth. “It was . . .”
“Where, Cabell?” Nash pressed.
“What are you—?” I began, only for Nash to quiet me with a look. The ice moaned around us. I tightened my grip on Cabell, feeling his spine curl.
“It was forged . . .” Cabell’s eyes narrowed with focus as they landed on Nash. “In . . . Avalon.”
“That’s right. Along with Excalibur.” Nash knelt in front of us, and Cabell’s body went still. The hair that had burst through his skin receded, leaving rashlike marks. “Do you remember the other name Avalonians use for their isle?”
Cabell’s face started to shift back, and he grimaced in pain. But his eyes never left Nash’s face. “Ynys . . . Ynys Afallach.”
“Got it on the first try, of course,” Nash said, rising. He put a hand on each of our shoulders. “You’ve cleared the bulk of the curses already, my boy. You can wait here with Tamsin until I return.”
“No,” Cabell said, swiping at his eyes with his sleeves. “I want to come.”
And I wasn’t going to let him go without me.
Nash nodded and started down the hallway, passing the lantern back to Cabell and aiming his head lamp down the stretch of bodies. “This reminds me of a tale . . .”
“What doesn’t?” I muttered. Couldn’t he see that Cabell was still rattled? He was only pretending to be brave, but pretending had always been enough for Nash.