Page 132 of Bone Year

“I know.”

He takes one step toward me. That’s when the second spineback drops out of the snowy sky.

It dives at Tomas’s father.

I see it a half second before it’s on us, and I lunge across the body in the snow, my arms going up over Tomas’s father’s head, my own face turning into the curve of my arm, and as I push forward, my boot catches on something hard buried under the powder.

My ankle rolls.

A bolt of pain shoots up my leg, and I scream and fall over Tomas’s father. The spineback’s claws come down where I just was, and the wind of its wings hits me. I cover my head with both arms and brace.

The strike doesn’t come.

I hear Draven move. The spineback shrieks above me, close, and then Draven is there, his blade driving into the creature’s chest. I feel the impact through the ground. The spineback flails. Draven shoves the blade in deeper.

Behind him, a third spineback drops out of the sky.

I see it through the gap of my arms. It’s coming at his back.

“Draven!”

He’s already pivoting but can’t turn fast enough.

The spineback’s claws rake across his wing in one long downward pass, the bone spines catching, and Draven makes a guttural sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest.

He twists the blade out of the second spineback, lets it fall, and drives the same blade up through the chest of the third spineback as it tries to climb back into the air. The point of the blade comes out the spineback’s back. Both of them are dead.

The bodies hit the snow.

Draven is breathing hard, his wings trembling, his shoulders heaving. Then he turns to look over his own shoulder at his wing.

He can’t see it from that angle.

I push off Tomas’s father and try to stand.

My ankle gives.

I yelp and go back down on my hip in the snow, gripping my leg, biting down on the pain. Draven strides toward me.

He drops into a crouch and yanks the pack open.

“Rose.”

He pulls a scalpel out of the pack and pushes it into my hand. His fingers wrap around mine and the blade, and he holds on for a beat longer than he needs to.

“You have to cut the corruption out.” His eyes meet mine. “If you don’t get all the rot, my wing won’t heal. Do you hear me?”

I hear him.

Fuck, I hear him, and I look at the scalpel in my hand and feel my fingers start to shake.

I haven’t been able to cut since my father died, and now Draven is on his knees in front of me with corruption spreading up his wing, asking me to do the one thing my hands have refused to do for over a year.

“Draven,” I say, already feeling defeated.

Nella’s wing.

Black veins under the membrane. Her eyes. The bone saw I couldn’t lift. The way her face went still when the spreading reached her chest.