Page 149 of Bone Year

I don’t have time to register the threading. I don’t have time to brace for the cold that pours through my bones the way it did the night Emil came for me in my father’s office. I don’t have time to do anything but feel my own heartbeat slamming against my ribs while the world drops out beneath me.

All I can think about are my friends.

All I can think about is Jace.

The world reassembles around me too fast, and my knees buckle. Draven’s arm tightens at my back before I’ve registered I’m falling.

The cold of threading is still moving through my bones in pulses when the noise hits.

Oh gods, the noise.

I blink rapidly, stepping away from Draven and Emil. We touched down in the entry hall of the patient wards. I have been in the wards a hundred times this year, and I’ve heard the soft shuffle of menders in corridors, the low murmur of healers conferring at desks, the occasional cry or scream of a patient that gets absorbed into the stone walls before it reaches the next floor.

The screaming reaches my ears first. Then the shouting of someone giving orders. There’s a metallic clatter of instruments being thrown into trays too fast, and the sound of something being mopped up. Someone is sobbing.

The smell hits me next. Blood.

There’s so much blood and antiseptic I almost gag.

“Rose—” Draven starts, but I can’t talk to him right now. We’re not out there anymore. We’re back in the real world, and I need to find out what’s happening.

The main level has been turned into triage for the injured. It looks like Emil brought back students and some non-students as well. I see three bodies on the ground with a drape pulled up over them, and I swallow the lump forming in my throat.

“Maelis.”

The voice is wrecked.

I spin around to see Lux across the hall, her pink hair pulled back in a knot at the nape of her neck. There’s blood on her sleeves and smeared across her forehead where she must have wiped it without thinking. She’s still wearing the midterm gear she was issued for her own assignment, but the sleeves are pushed up to her elbows like she’s been working.

Her face crumples the moment she sees me, and she crosses the room at a run.

“Maelis.”

She slams into me hard enough that I stumble back, her arms going around me, and she’s shaking. She has her face in my hair and her hands clutching the back of my coat.

Lux is crying.

“You’re alive. I didn’t know where you were assigned and⁠—”

“I’m alive. I’m here. Are you hurt?” I pull back and look her up and down.

“No, I’m alright, it’s bad. It’s so bad. My father has been helping thread people into the academy all day. Miles is dead, Maelis.”

I didn’t care for Miles, but fuck I didn’t want him to die.

I shake my head and pull her into me again.

“Sera, Tobin, and eight others are dead so far. The Shorelands had sixteen pairs⁠—”

I pull back and look at her.

“Jace?”

I’m scared to say his name, afraid of what the answer will be.

“My father brought him back. Ellavee too.”

Something inside me loosens.