Page 125 of Silver in the Bone

“Thank you for saving my life,” Neve told her. “You were so brave.”

What was visible of Caitriona’s pale skin flushed. All of us pretended not to see.

Caitriona squeezed Rhona’s hand to get her attention.

“Her ... wand ... ,” she said, the words failing as her mind drifted back toward unconsciousness. “Get it ... for her ...”

“Really?” Neve asked, looking between the two of them. “Are you sure? What’s changed?”

Caitriona’s eyes closed as she breathed out a single word. “Everything.”

I don’t know why I didn’t tell anyone what had happened in the tunnel.

There were plenty of opportunities throughout the rest of the night and into the gray morning.

When I helped Mari scrub the blood off the tables and floors of the great hall.

When I passed Emrys, Deri, and the others trying to replant the section of the courtyard that had been ravaged by claws during the fight.

When I sat beside a near-catatonic Cabell and tried to get him to eat.

During the funerary rites for the dead, watching their bodies turn to ash and their souls release with the rising sparks.

Part of me insisted it was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and stress; another feared it was something worse. But until I could explain it to myself, I couldn’t explain it to anyone.

That next morning, I found myself outside the bedchamber Emrys and Cabell shared, leaving the small carved bird balanced on the door’s latch. Hours later, after the pulse of the tower had slowed with sleep, I made my way down to the great hall. Emrys was already there, perched on one of the long tables. For a moment, I just watched his strong hands work as he whittled.

He caught me staring and bit back a smile. I hoped the darkness covered my flush.

“Got your message,” he said, putting his knife and the small piece of wood away. “What’s going on?”

After shadowing Mari and helping her with her tasks, I’d gone to the library to help Neve research the curses. I should have relished the fact that I was getting to read texts that no one in the mortal realm had even heard of, but instead, I’d come to resent their uselessness.

“We have to get out of here,” I begged him. “We have to find a way out of the tower and back to the portal.”

“I know,” he said, rubbing at his face. He looked haunted by his exhaustion.

“There’s barely ten days of food left,” I told him. “And the Children can attack again at any time!”

“I know,” he said. “Tamsin, I know.”

I sat beside him on the table, staring at the statue of the Goddess with a growing bitterness. It wasn’t just that the situation was out of control—so was I. My emotions were spiraling again, and it was becoming harder to get a grip on them.

Emrys ran a hand through his chestnut hair. It was wilder than I’d ever seen it, unkempt and curling at the edges.

I liked it.

Reaching up, I plucked a small green leaf from the coarse strands, holding it up into the light of his head lamp.

“Sage,” he said reflexively. “For colds and coughs, but also tasty in a stew.”

I laughed despite myself.

He cocked his head, the corner of his lips quirking. “Am I growing on you, Bird?”

“Like one of your beloved weeds,” I said.

But I hadn’t pulled away, and neither had he, and both of us seemed to want to do anything other than acknowledge it. The serene darkness of the room, so sheltered from the outside world, made it all too easy to forget why we had come in the first place.

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