“Take my day, take my night, take my sunrise, take my life.” She lifted the bit of bone, stained with her blood, and then took the knife again and sliced over her husband’s heart.
It didn’t bleed.
She pressed the bit of bone into his flesh and then covered the wound with her bloody hand. “Take my breath, take my blood. Iri nascre, murro sai enri. Iri prian, murro ken fa. Iri sangra sheeva lai. Ancre murro sai enzal. Iri, iri, nascre ray.”
The bit of bone dissolved with her words, melting into his flesh like sugar in water.
Outside, the wind hit the tower, and the windows shivered. The rag doll constructs crooned to one another in their senseless language. Kreya felt a shudder run through her body. It was hard to breathe, but she made herself hold still, her hand pressed to Jentt’s chest as the bone magic spread through him. Her muscles began to shake.
See, I was right, she thought. I should have waited. One night’s sleep wasn’t enough recovery time for this drain. The drain of a magic that she wasn’t supposed to use, that wasn’t even supposed to be possible . . .
But she locked her knees and didn’t sag.
Beneath her hand, his body began to change. It plumped as the flesh was restored. She felt his heart—a stutter and then a steady beat. Blood began to flow through his veins, and the gray faded from his skin.
She’d never been able to grant life to any of her constructs. That wasn’t how it worked. A bone maker’s magic only animated them. But this . . . this was different. She wasn’t giving him the power of the bone like she did with constructs. Here she was using the bone to give him what was inside her. That was the key, and the secret, of the resurrection spell.
For each day he lived again, she would live one day less.
Worth it, she thought. A thousand times worth it.
His face was his own again, with flesh thick and healthy over his bones. It wasn’t the illusion of life. It was life itself. Restored. She waited, barely breathing, for his eyes to open. At last, they did. He blinked them open, looked at her, and then looked beyond her.
“Fuck, those things are creepy,” Jentt said.
She twisted to look up at the rafters, where now five of her rag doll constructs peered down at them. “Useful, though. Especially when you’re indisposed.”
“Oh? Is that what we’re calling it now? ‘Indisposed’? Like I ate a bad fish?”
“You looked like a bad fish.”
“Nice.” He pushed himself, slowly, gingerly, up to sitting, and looked down at his chest, which was streaked with a thin smear of blood. He wrinkled his nose. “And I assume the smell of rotting fish is me, too. Sorry. Is there time for a bath?”
Kreya’s heart gave a little lurch. She knew what that question really meant: How long will I live this time? She wished she didn’t have to answer. Her mouth felt dry as she tried to formulate the words to tell him as gently as she could.
She didn’t have to tell him. He read it in her face. He guessed, “An hour?”
“A day. If we’re lucky.”
“A day,” he repeated, then he smiled at her and covered her hand with his. “I’ll take a day.” The look in his eyes made her feel more alive than she’d felt in months. She smiled back, and all the lonely hours and days fell away. He added, “And I’ll take a bath.”
She helped him stand. His balance wasn’t the best after he first woke, but the spell had returned all his muscles—he’d be able to walk on his own in minutes.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Nearly dawn.”
“Excellent. So we can watch the sunrise together. Unless it’s raining. Or snowing. What time of year is it?”
Again, he wasn’t asking the key question, which was, How long was I dead?
“It’s fall,” she said. “Same year.” He leaned on her as they hobbled across the room, and she hissed as his hand touched the bruise on her back.
He stopped. “You’re hurt.”
“I had some challenges.”
“Do I want to know?”
“You really don’t.” She hoped that would be the end of it. She didn’t want to spend his one day of life arguing about whether she took too many risks for him. “I used up most of the remaining talismans—”
“I told you their power diminishes with use—”
“Are you seriously saying ‘I told you so’? Because I did not wake you in order to listen to a sanctimonious lecture about how you were so much more careful than I am when you’re the one who got himself killed.”
He fake-staggered as if her words had wounded him. She sagged as his weight shifted and then shrugged him off. He was strong enough to stand on his own. Arms crossed, an exaggerated frown on her face, she waited while he righted himself. “You know it’s only that I worry about you,” he said. “Or I would worry, if I weren’t so busy decomposing.”
“Very funny.”
“You’re smiling.”
She was. She couldn’t help it. He was alive again! Following him down the stairs, she watched him pause when he reached the cleaning construct.
“Good work,” he told it.
It purred.
She smiled again. My Jentt.
Sidestepping the construct, he let himself into the bathroom. She washed her hands and bound her cut with clean cotton—she’d have another scar to add to her collection, a spiderweb-like array on her palm—while he filled the bath. The water came from a tank of rainwater collected at the top of the tower and traveled through pipes, warming as they passed the stove. If you wanted a hot bath, you could boil individual pots of water, but this worked well enough for a lukewarm soak. She’d stolen the idea from the guild headquarters in Cerre. They’d had far larger stoves, furnaces, that heated the water more effectively, but she was still proud of her contraption. Jentt had helped her install it a few years ago, when he’d lived for a full month.
He undressed and submerged himself in the bath. She watched him bathe, drinking in the sight of him, which, she thought, was probably as creepy as the rag doll constructs watching him come back to life. Stopping her ogling, Kreya crossed to the window and opened the bathroom shutters.
Outside, it was predawn gray. Lemon yellow teased at the ridges of the mountains.
“You know I’m naked, don’t you?” Jentt asked. “What will the neighbors think?”
“You know we have no neighbors.” She loved how easily she slipped back into saying “we.” She rolled the word around in her mind: We, we, we. Leaning out the window, she inhaled. It was perfect crisp fall air, smelling of pine.
“The birds might be scandalized.”
She heard water splash and knew he was climbing out of the tub. He padded across the floor, and she felt his arms wrap around her waist. “Should we scandalize them properly?” she asked.
He laughed softly and kissed her neck.
They made love on the bathroom floor. He didn’t say a word about the bruise on her back, but he was gentle. She loved him all the more for that.
Outside, the sun rose.
At sunset, they climbed to the top of the tower and leaned side by side against the water tank to watch the sun kiss the western mountains. Golden light spread over the slopes, while half the mountains were already in shadows.