Page 161 of A War of Crowns

Lord Bennett sniffed and rubbed his mouth, which now oozed blood all down his chin. “My father,” he explained from his place still down there, huddled on the forest floor, “wished for me to remind you that I…”

And there Lord Bennett smiled, his own blood shining between his teeth when he carefully reiterated, “…have a sister.”

Chapter forty-three

The Bonesinger

His breath misted in front of him like smoke while he gazed across the smoldering remains of what had once been a quiet little Kunishi hamlet.

It was far from quiet now.

Horrified screams echoed throughout the early morning air, punctuated by the choked, wet gurgles of another bloody death somewhere nearby.

He had always held a special fondness for that particular sound.

“Please,” a woman’s voice suddenly whimpered, and her plea jerked his attention away from observing every iota of the chaos unfurling all around.

He sliced a look toward that voice and frowned when he found a Kunishi woman crawling through the blood-churned mud on her hands and knees toward him. “Please…Bonesinger…”

Bonesinger.

That was what they called him these days, the Kunishi. He had been known by many names throughout the various ages of this world.Bonesingerwas simply one more moniker to add to his already fathomless list.

“Speak,” he commanded, that word snapping from his throat with all the ferocity of a crack of lightning. “What do you want from the Bonesinger, child?”

The woman at his feet flinched away from his tone. Her head ducked low. She let loose another pitiful, “Please…”

“Pleasewhat?”

“Let me die…” Her voice broke on a sob, and she slumped before him—beaten and broken. “…I just want to die…”

Very well.

He had many gifts he might bestow. But death was the only one he would ever gift to such a pathetic creature as the woman at his feet.

He breathed in deep, filling his lungs with the sweet air of the Overworld. It felt good to be corporeal again after so long spent within the gloom.

When next he exhaled, dark wisps of shadow unfurled past his lips—tendrils of pure power that stretched toward the Kunishi woman, questing like hungry tongues of black flame.

But the woman flinched away from his shadowy touch before it ever reached her, another choked sob on her lips.

“Poor little girl,” the Bonesinger sneered at the taste of her fear on his tongue. “How she begs for death and then flees from its embrace when it’s offered to her.”

With a flick of his fingers, the Bonesinger pulled his shadows back into himself before turning to stalk away. His bare feet squelched into the mud with each step. “Let us find her a more palatable executioner.”

He found the corpse he needed lying not too far away. The foolish man had been one of the first to die. A brave fool.

When the woman behind him finally seemed to realize his destination, she let loose with a blood-curdling scream. “No! Please! Please, no!”

The horror housed within her voice was particularly delicious.

But the Bonesinger was more than happy to ignore her now, his attention all for the dead Kunishi in front of him. He could have simply used his shadows. He could have pulled the corpse in closer.

But there was a particular pleasure in using the muscles he now possessed to lean down and pluck up the dead Kunishi by the collar of his shirt, as if the corpse was nothing more than a doll.

A broken doll. His new toy seemed to be missing an arm.

But the corpse didn’t need both.

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