Page 143 of Silver in the Bone

I hit the silt at the bottom of the lake, something sharp digging into my back. I pushed at the creature, turning my head. White bones in the mud. A halo of them around me.

This has happened before.

The mud melted away from her face, revealing a skull as silver as the bone of my arm. Her jaw unhinged like a snake’s. Jagged, broken teeth flashed in the gloom.

This has happened before.

The white rose. The monsters in the mist. The flaming sword.

The dream.

Gathering power whispered in the darkness. Wake up.

I felt along the ground until my fingers brushed freezing steel. Through the cloud of inky blood, through the black haze overtaking my vision, I gripped the hilt and swung.

The blade of the sword flared to life, its blue flames heating the water into a fury. The creature screamed as I sliced across her front. Mud and rancid skin broke away from her body, but she had no blood to bleed.

Starved for air, I kicked off the bottom of the lake, swimming with desperate strokes for the surface. The athame slashed through my boot to my ankle.

The blade—I needed that blade. For Cabell. For everyone.

I pushed through the pain, the heaviness of my body, and brought the sword down again. At the last moment, the creature reared back, and the burning sword passed through only water.

I lurched forward, trying one last time to get the athame, but the creature shrank back toward the bottom of the lake, wailing with rage, her weedy hair trailing after her like watersnakes.

I swam. The gray light at the surface appeared again, calling me toward it. With a hard kick, I burst through, coughing as I vomited up dank water.

But once I was there, my body had nothing left to give. Blood flowed out of my arm, draining those last embers of strength from beneath my skin. The water closed over my mouth, my eyes, and I slid under again. I no longer felt the blade’s steel grip in my numb fingers. Its fire dimmed.

In the cold thrall of death, a murmur of consciousness begged, Don’t let go.

The thick morass thrashed behind me, whipping up a torrent of loam. A painfully hot arm wrapped around my belly and yanked me up.

The cold air made me gasp until I choked, unable to get the water out of my lungs. I drove my head back, trying to slam it against the monster. My hand clenched reflexively around the sword’s hilt again and the blue fire returned, boiling the black sludge on the water’s surface. I didn’t realize the blood was roaring in my ears until I heard a muffled voice right beside my ear.

“Tamsin! Tamsin, stop!”

I twisted my neck back, my stomach clenching as the dark splotches cleared from my sight.

Emrys.

“Not here—” I choked out, coughing. You can’t be here.

His face was pale with fear. “Just hang on!”

His grip on me tightened as he swam us not to the island but to the far shore. The muscles in his body worked hard, his heart racing and racing. The heat of him was almost enough to drive out the ice that had crystallized around my bones.

The strap of my bag twisted around my neck as he dragged us both up onto the muddy bank. My arm screamed with pain as the bitter air met wounded flesh. The silver bone had a sinister gleam in the low light, a truth I couldn’t outrun.

He’ll see, I thought desperately, trying to tuck it beneath me. It was already too late. He swore viciously at the blood streaming from it, rivers in the mud. Frantically, he gripped the wound with one hand and brushed the soaking-wet hair off my face with the other.

“Tamsin?” he rasped. “Can you hear me? Tamsin!”

He hugged me close to his chest, rubbing and pounding on my back until I vomited up the rest of the water.

“What is this?” he asked, trying to pry my fingers from the hilt of the sword. Its heat whined and crackled as it fired the mud of the bank to hard clay.

But I only saw what was crawling out of the shadowed forest behind him.

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