Page 27 of The Mirror of Beasts

“I only ask favors of those who possess nothing much of value,” the Bonecutter said.

My face heated with embarrassment. We’d been poor, not completely destitute. “We could have paid.”

Her brows shot up above her glasses. “Not the price I would have asked.”

I used the nearby shelves as an excuse to look away, fighting the flare of heat in my face.

“Is this all stuff you’ve found or traded for?” Neve asked, joining Olwen in front of one of the lit cases. They seemed entranced by a collection of necklaces, some ornate and sparkling with fat gemstones. Others were simple: A thin silver strand. A gold chain with an ivory locket. Gold rings and even a few earrings, one shaped like entwined serpents, were displayed beside them. But there were also gardening shears, books, and even a violin.

The Bonecutter looked up from where she had begun to lay out the shards of Viviane’s vessel on the table. “Both. Do you see that puzzle box, the one no bigger than your palm?”

I joined them at the case, studying the warm-toned wood. On its lid, several tiles with painted sigils sat in various grooves.

“Does it look familiar, Dye?” she asked.

“Yes,” he muttered, leaning against a shelf of stacked scrolls, just outside the glow of the table’s light. He shifted, toeing the holes singed into the rug. The Bonecutter seemed to enjoy his discomfort.

“What does it do?” Olwen asked.

“It can trap a soul if you assemble the sigils correctly, but might just as soon trap yours,” the Bonecutter said. Her gaze narrowed, slicing back toward Emrys. Assessing. “I’ll sell it back to you, if you’re interested. Seems you could have use for it.”

He only lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

Olwen let out a soft gasp as she studied another section of the case. Her expression turned distraught, and my heart all but leapt out of my chest.

“What?” I asked.

The Bonecutter’s smirk was that of a snake circling another animal’s nest of eggs. “You’ve spotted my apple, I see.”

At the word, Caitriona was by Olwen’s side in an instant, searching past her horrified reflection in the glass until her dark eyes landed on the small apple and its pedestal. The fruit looked sickly but hadn’t lost its golden sheen.

“You cannot have this,” Caitriona said, raising her fist as if to smash through the glass. “You cannot. This is … this is not yours.”

“And it concerns you how, exactly?” the Bonecutter asked, fixing her with a gimlet eye.

“We took a vow to protect Avalon,” Olwen began.

“And what a wonderful job you’ve done,” the Bonecutter said. “Can you be a priestess of a place that no longer exists?”

“That’s enough,” I said sharply.

But Olwen didn’t need protecting. She tilted her chin up and said, “Of course we can. We still serve the Goddess.”

The Bonecutter turned her gaze toward Caitriona, a knowing smirk tucked into the corner of her lips. It was all the more unsettling on a child’s face. “And do you agree, Lady Caitriona?”

Caitriona’s jaw set dangerously. She barely seemed to be breathing.

Emrys’s voice broke through the seething tension. “Did the apple come from one of the exiled sorceresses?”

The room’s focus shifted to where he stood behind us, picking an invisible piece of lint off his jacket. Unbothered, as usual, by anyone’s feelings outside of his own.

Still, that small redirect was enough to steer the conversation back to safer shores.

“Yes.” The Bonecutter returned to the task in front of her, holding up the largest piece of the skull again. She lifted the amethyst lenses of her glasses to reveal red, then silver lenses beneath them. “I must admit, of all the things I thought you might bring me from Avalon, I didn’t expect a druid vessel. I would have thought they’d be destroyed after the sorceresses stopped the druids from taking control of the isle.”

“Do you know how to fix it?” I asked again. “I just thought, you know, you work with sorceress bones to create keys—”

“What?” Neve asked, horrified.

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