Page 63 of Silver in the Bone

The sweet scent of apples and cinnamon curled around us as Olwen busied herself with ladling the hot liquid into a cup for Neve.

Neve blew on the steaming drink for a moment before taking a tentative sip. Her expression transformed in an instant, softening with wonder as she glanced down into the cup. Already, her color looked better and her expression more alert.

“Your dead ... ,” Neve began. “You mean, the curse transformed them?”

“Yes,” Caitriona said sharply. “Again, I ask, how did you call the mist and bend it to your will? How did you pass through the wards that should have repelled you, Sorceress?”

“My name is Neve, not Sorceress,” she said, pressing a hand against that small lump hidden beneath her shirt. “And I’ll answer only to the High Priestess of Avalon.”

“How unfortunate for you, then, that she’s been dead for over a year,” Caitriona said, a muscle in her jaw feathering. “The Nine is eight.”

The young girl, Flea, turned scarlet, gulping down a huge breath. It was enough to make my own stomach clench in sympathy. I knew what it was like to have those big feelings and not be able to let them out—not ever.

Flea shoved past Caitriona and Bedivere, running into the night.

Olwen rose from tending the cauldron, and her hands went to her hips. “Well, now you’ve done it.”

Caitriona’s head fell back with a groan. Just before she stepped out into the courtyard, she turned back one last time, drawing in a breath.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Cait,” Bedivere said before she could speak. “I’ll stay with Olwen and see that they’re brought to their chambers with no trouble.”

Caitriona turned, stiff-backed, toward the door.

“Wait,” Neve said, her voice firm. She held out a hand. “My wand, please.”

Caitriona tightened her fist around it. “You’ll have it back when I decide you can be trusted.”

“I don’t need a wand to work magic,” Neve said, her voice deceptively light. “And you can toss that shiny silver hair all you want, but I neither want nor need your trust, let alone your approval.”

Caitriona stormed out into the waiting dark. The door slammed shut behind her, rattling every bottle on the nearby shelves.

“She’s pleasant,” I noted, hugging my arms to my middle. With the flames fighting to stay alive after their dousing, the infirmary had chilled.

As she passed the hearth, Olwen raised a hand, whispering something like a chant beneath her breath, stoking the embers back into a blaze, damp wood and all. Neve drank the sight down as if she were dying of thirst.

“You must understand,” Olwen said, returning her attention to wrapping Emrys’s arm in a clean bandage. “Cait’s only aim is to protect the survivors. I’ll not hear a word against her.”

In truth, I didn’t care about Caitriona or any of them. We’d come here for a reason, and that was the only thing that could matter.

“Do you agree with Caitriona’s story of how the curse on the land came to be?” Emrys asked, easing some of the tension and changing the subject from how we’d gotten here.

“I believe it is a curse, yes, though I’m less sure of its source.” Olwen rested her cheek in her palm, thinking. “Avalon was once a place where there was no true sickness. No hunger. No suffering. But I’ve read about the pestilences of the mortal world and cannot help but see the similarities now in how the darkness has spread.”

Some sort of magical disease or virus? It was a terrifying idea, and not one I’d seen referenced in any book or Immortality.

“Does your magic work with all plants?” Neve asked Emrys. When he nodded, she had more questions for him: “What did you feel being out in the woods? Did the trees tell you anything?”

“Nothing,” Emrys said with a small shudder. “Absolutely nothing. It was terrible.”

“It began two years ago.” Olwen nodded, breathing in deeply. “The curse came for the others first. The smallest of the fae, no bigger than flowers, then those who tended the sacred grove, the animals, even the trees and their dryads. My naiad kin.”

She looked down at her hands again, collecting herself before continuing. “Any creatures who did not seek the shelter of the tower perished—which is to say, nearly all. The dark magic sickened and killed them, but it had a different effect on our dead. It caused them to ... rise again. Transformed and corrupted of mind. Now they care only for their hunger.”

“Mother of all,” Neve whispered.

“We call them the Children of the Night, because they hunt in the dark hours,” Olwen said. “They are living, and yet I feel nothing of the Goddess in them anymore. They can’t seem to bear any light, and only fire can stop them. And fortunately for them, our skies have been overtaken by shadow. We have only a few sunlit hours each morning before the darkness returns.”

“That must make it nearly impossible to grow anything,” Emrys said.

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