Page 119 of Bone Year

An old woman comes out of the third house before we get there, a broom in one hand and a look on her face that suggests the broom is not for sweeping. She’s wrapped in enough wool to make two of herself.

Her eyes move across us and catch on the Ashwell crest stitched into my cloak. “You the ones they sent.”

“We are,” Draven says.

“You’re late.”

“We walked.”

She makes a scoffing sound. “Seamkeeper’s at the end of the path. He’ll see you in. Don’t eat what he offers you. He’s been rationing amiss again. And don’t go near the lake after dark.”

“What happens after dark?” I ask.

She doesn’t elaborate. “Keep the human one indoors at night,” she adds, eyes on me but speaking to Draven. “Your kind thins out fastest.”

I open my mouth to say something, then Draven’s hand finds the small of my back, steering me forward a half step. How does she automatically know I’m human, and who told her we were coming?

“Thank you,” he says, and we keep walking.

“Witness well,” she calls after us.

I glance at Draven. “What does that mean?”

“It’s what they say here.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know.”

The chapel is at the end of the path exactly where she said it would be.

It’s older than anything else in the village by centuries. The stone is a different color, lighter and rougher with signs of age. A squat rectangular building with a bell tower leaning slightly off. Then a second structure is attached to the side of it. Both buildings are tired and lean into each other.

There are no symbols on the chapel. No sun, no star, no angel wings cut into the lintel. The only ornament is the stone itself, and when I look closer, I see what I thought was weathering isn’t weathering at all.

Seams.

Long vertical lines carved into the face of the chapel, from the foundation up past the roofline. Some of them are filled in with a pale-silver metal, shining dully in the overcast light. Others are left open, dark grooves in the stone, narrower than my finger. The pattern isn’t decorative. It’s a record of something.

“Rose.”

Draven is already at the door. I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking.

“Alucard,” I huff, rolling my eyes.

He waits for me to catch up before he knocks. The door opens before his knuckles land.

The man on the other side is thin in the way winter makes people thin, not starved exactly but wrung out. His robes are the color of old blood, belted at the waist with a plain rope, and the sleeves are pushed up past his elbows like he’s been working, and I can see a single thin line across his wrist, a scar.

“You walked from Ashwell Academy,” he says by way of greeting.

“We did,” Draven says.

“You must be tired.”

“We are.”

“Good. Tired people listen better.” He steps aside. “Come in before the cold does.”