Page 308 of Blade of the Nightking

I could feel Rìan watching me, but I refused to look at him. Whether he was taking some cruel satisfaction in my discomfort or offering sympathy I neither wanted nor believed, it made no difference. Every step carried me closer to the well, closer to the end of this bond, closer to freedom.

Eventually the stench became so overpowering that my gift was rendered useless. It smothered every other scent until I could no longer tell whether an Infected lurked a few yards ahead or a mile away. Thankfully, the Bone Women had other ways of finding out.

More than once, scouts slipped silently back from wherever they'd ranged ahead, moving silently through the trees like wraiths. A brief exchange of hand signs with Saskia was all it took before she altered our course without a word, leading us in a wide arc around whatever horror waited unseen.

Still, nothing prepared me for the sight of my old village when we finally reached the edge of the forest. Crouched in the shadows of the underbrush, I stared with wide eyes at the scene I'd been dreading to find.

Midland had indeed been breached—and violently so. A section of the wall had collapsed entirely, leaving a gaping wound in the settlement's defenses, while the great gate bowed inward on its broken hinges. The sagging timber doors were gouged with deep claw marks and streaked with black blood that climbed higher and higher across the wood, as though the horde had been so large and so frenzied in its hunger to get inside, that the Infected had climbed over one another in heaps until they’d spilled over the walls themselves.

The Infected were everywhere.

They shuffled aimlessly outside the walls, while through the breaches I could see others roaming the streets within. They moved like sleepwalkers. Some shuffled without purpose while others stood perfectly still, their bodies giving the occasional hard jerk, as though Tharnyx was tugging invisible strings from somewhere far away. They wandered among the dead scattered across the new grass beyond Midland's walls. Corpses lay where they'd fallen, many half-devoured, left to rot beneath the open sky. The humans who’d escaped the Bone-Wrought had escaped only through death.

Time and decay had stolen their faces, leaving most of them unrecognizable. Even so, I searched them one by one, then forced myself to study those of the Infected as they moved past.

Laurie wasn't among them.

“How do we get in?” Rìan’s deep rumble brought me back to the moment.

Saskia’s gaze remained fixed on the Infected. She studied them for a long moment before answering. “We must draw them away.”

“Draw them away?” Rìan rubbed his jaw. “How?”

A grim smile tugged at Saskia's mouth. She beckoned to the Bone Women, who gathered without a word, squatting in a half-circle around her. Reaching into a pouch at her belt, she withdrew a bundle of sticks. Turning her back to them, she snapped one cleanly in half before slipping the shortened piece back among the others and closing her fist around their bases so only the identical tops remained visible.

“No, Saskia,” Rìan hissed.

“I told you, Prince,” she said with quiet resolve. “We will accompany you to the end.”

Horror seized me. My hand flew to my mouth.

“This is madness!” Rìan snapped. “This was not part of the deal!”

She gave a small shrug, as though brushing aside a trivial disagreement. “It's our choice, not yours. This is the only way.”

“But—”

“Do you need to get in there or not?”

His jaw flexed, but no answer came.

“It’s the only way,” Saskia repeated.

She lowered the bundle, offering it out. One by one, the Bone Women reached forward and drew a stick.

The first woman smiled faintly and stepped back. Then the second. Then the third.

One after another, each revealed a long stick before retreating in silence until only Saskia remained, the last one clutched in her hand.

She drew a slow breath before opening her fist.

Rìan swore under his breath and strode away a few paces, scrubbing a hand down his face.

The shortest stick rested against her palm.

Saskia cast it aside. She rocked back on her heels and closed her eyes for a long moment, pinching the bridge of her nose.

The Bone Women rose as one. They turned first to Rìan and me, each pressing a palm to their foreheads in silent reverence, before facing Saskia. One by one they clasped her shoulder in farewell before melting away into the underbrush.