Page 81 of Silver in the Bone

Panic trilled in my body. They couldn’t separate us. Anything could happen to him. “Come with me, Tamsin,” Caitriona said.

Emrys’s hand closed gently over my arm, urging me back up the stairs.

“It’ll be all right, lass,” Bedivere told me. “This once, give his care to another.”

No. That wasn’t right. Cabell was mine to protect. He had been for as long as I could remember.

“Now, Tamsin,” Caitriona ordered.

“I’ll be okay,” Cabell whispered. “It’s all right, Tams.”

“Please don’t hurt him,” I begged. Cabell stopped outside his door, his hand resting on the latch. He didn’t turn around. “He can’t control it.”

“Why would I hurt him?” Bedivere asked, his blue-gray eyes soft. “He’s a good lad.”

“Come on,” Emrys urged, his fingers lightly squeezing my elbow. “He’ll be all right.”

Cabell opened the door to the chamber he shared with Emrys and disappeared into it. Finally, I relented, shaking off Emrys’s grip and climbing the last section of stairs.

Caitriona led us to the uppermost floor of the castle. The smell of old parchment, ink, and leather greeted us on the top step as if to say You’re here, you’ve found me, you’re safe at last.

The library.

The space was awash in warm, gentle candlelight. Each flame was cleverly amplified by a glass orb around it, providing illumination to the tables that radiated out from the center of the room. Ornate tapestries were draped over each of the walls.

But most breathtaking of all were the rows of bookshelves, carved to resemble a grove of trees. Their branches were made of silver, and their leaves of mirrors, to carry the light and spread it evenly around us.

Neve sat at one of the tables beside the fire, a large text open in front of her. Olwen wandered the shelves behind her, seeming to search for something. Both looked over at our unceremonious entrance.

“What happened?” Neve rose from her chair, a hand pressed to her chest. I hated the soft, pitying look on her face, but hated my traitorous heart more for squeezing at the acknowledgment.

Olwen pulled out two seats for Emrys and me. Emrys went willingly to his, collapsing heavily into it and letting his legs sprawl out in front of him. I had too much adrenaline still whispering beneath my skin to sit down.

I paced beside the bookshelves, glancing now and then at their gilt spines and the titles there—Remedies for All Ailments, Beasts of Other Realms, Lord Death—before moving to touch the brittle edges of stacked scrolls.

As I turned the corner to the next row, an elfin—the sister Olwen had told us about—appeared in my path, startling like a fawn.

Like Aled and Dilwyn, she was slight, with greenish skin like an unripe fruit, but her long, dark hair was shot through with a thick streak of white. Compared to the others, she seemed ... not fragile, exactly. It wasn’t her size, either. It was more that, looking at her, I had the strangest sense that she was there with us in her body, but not her mind.

The elfin turned to Caitriona. “You took them to see the Stranger? Was it the man they’re searching for?”

“Yes, Mari, it was,” Caitriona said.

“Tricked us into thinking he was still alive, only to introduce us to a corpse, is probably a more accurate description,” Emrys said coldly.

Neve looked at Caitriona, outraged. “How could you do something like that?”

“This is not about my deception,” Caitriona said, “but your own.”

“Cait,” Olwen chided.

The other girl sighed, bowing her head. “I apologize for deceiving you, but I cannot, and will not, apologize for doing whatever I must to protect this isle.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I’m not going to apologize for doing whatever I must to help my brother.”

She gazed down at me, imperious and unyielding. But I saw a flicker of something in her expression—a murmur of understanding in a vow of no surrender.

“Why didn’t you warn them he was dead?” Olwen asked, aghast. “I’ve never known you to be dishonest.”

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