Page 84 of Silver in the Bone

Caitriona’s armor rattled as she ran past me toward the back wall and pulled aside a tapestry, revealing a row of arched windows. We gathered behind her, searching the darkness beyond the tower’s walls.

Caitriona gripped the crumbling sill, her breathing turning ragged.

Below us, the parched moat was an inferno of fire. The flames cast a sinister light on the hundreds—thousands—of Children of the Night who had gathered at its edge.

Some threw themselves at the flames, testing whether they could pass. One flung itself from a nearby tree, clawed hands somehow catching the fortress’s wall, only to skid down and be devoured by the shimmering heat. A second made it farther up but was picked off by an archer before it could scale the curtain wall.

There was a clattering of footsteps on the stairs. Betrys burst through the door a moment later, her brown skin glowing with sweat.

“What’s happened?” Caitriona asked, going to her side.

“They’re—” Betrys sucked in a deep breath. “They came all at once. They’ve surrounded us completely. I lit the moat—but they’re not fleeing from it, the way they have before. How did they get through the protection wards in the forest?”

A whisper of fear crossed Caitriona’s face before she steadied it into its usual mask of calm control. “Their magic has finally failed. It’ll only be a matter of time before those on the tower’s walls do as well. You were right to light the moat.”

“What do you mean, their magic has failed?” I demanded. “How is that possible?”

“Dark magic is corrupting,” Caitriona said. “The presence of the Children weakens the isle’s oldest and strongest spellwork.”

I caught Emrys’s eye.

“Should we light the secondary fires on the upper walls?” Betrys asked.

Caitriona shook her head, taking her sister by the arm. “Wake the rest of the tower guard. We’ll need to search the lower levels and springs to ensure none have gotten inside—” Their voices disappeared as they passed through the door.

An image of the ravenous Children lingered in my mind long after Caitriona and Betrys had departed. “How much brush and wood do you have to keep the fires burning?”

“It’s burning with magic,” Olwen explained. Her words were meant to be reassuring, but the way her lips trembled with her smile didn’t instill much confidence. “The Nine will take turns feeding it until first light, when the Children retreat.”

“And if the Children never leave?” I asked.

Olwen didn’t dare answer, but I already knew.

We’d be trapped here with them.

And when the last protective magic burned itself out, and claws met the cold stones, we’d die with them.

Without any sort of agreement, let alone acknowledgment, the others followed me to the room Emrys and Cabell shared. The heavy oak door was already ajar, as if my brother had been expecting us, or at least wondered about the bells still clanging.

He sat on his bed, his knees curled up against his chest, his arms wrapped around them. His shoulder-length black hair had fallen forward as he stared at the opposite wall. Cabell didn’t look over as we came in and Emrys shut the door behind us.

“You told them?” Cabell asked gruffly.

“I had to,” I said.

He lifted a shoulder. “You could have at least waited for me to be there.”

“I know.” And because it was all I really could say: “I’m sorry.”

He nodded, then rose to sit at the table in front of the hearth. The fire of the salamander stones flickered with the shifting air. At the edge of my vision, both Neve and Emrys took an unconscious step back at his approach.

The widening chasm of numbness inside me immediately filled with white-hot anger.

“I don’t bite,” Cabell said, and my heart broke just that little bit more as he forced his tone to stay light, joking. His white teeth flashed in the firelight. “At least not as a human.”

“Tough luck with the curse, Lark,” Emrys said, sounding like his usual arrogant self again. “I suppose that explains why your old man was after the ring in the first place.”

He claimed the seat across from Cabell at the table—a round table not so different from Arthur’s, where we all had equal status, and equal ability to eye one another suspiciously. My mouth twisted into a humorless smile.

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