Page 116 of Serpent and Shadow

Most of the discussions involved a lot of bragging about victories out in the field, and questioning what Malefic had done to make Bones’s magic so strong.

Alaric assumed this was because none of them had heard of caelum ignis, and hadn’t bothered to do the research into what could actually make a wizard capable of doing what Bones could do. Also, he admitted, it had taken me over a year to find it, and that was with access to the Bones Estate’s well-stocked libraries, not to mention prodding from Forsooth.

Most of the royals weren’t interested enough in the particulars to dive into historical archives that might explain Bones’s unique magic. In their minds, the important part was Bones had gone from being a blood-traitor to something more akin to a folk hero. They crowed about him, cheered his victories, speculated on where he might go next.

Alaric said in disgust they could’ve been cheering on a Skyhunt Team, not their favorite mass-murderer.

He’d heard some call Bones “Abaddon,” a kind of destroying angel. They’d also called him “The Undoer.” Both names pointed towards Malefic’s twisted ideology on how to fix the Magical world, by collapsing the dimensions and then stamping out the “infestation.”

Of course, Bones’s change to hero status in no way extended to me.

If anything, Alaric warned me, it made them more hostile to me, not less.

They all saw me as having “compromised” Bones, seducing him, tricking him into marriage, twisting his mind into feeling sympathy for the humans, filling his head with human nonsense. Their proof was the radical change in Caelum since Malefic “saved” him from me, and my filthy, corrupting, human influence.

I tried not to think about it, but it was hard.

I didn’t want to consider the fact that Bones might actually agree with them.

25

Visitors

“Please stop. Just for one minute.. please.”

“For one minute?” he scoffed.

I felt so much in those three words, anger swirling through bitterness, grief, a longing pain that both separated us and made it impossible to stand next to him and not want to touch him. I stood next to him on a hill, overlooking a town with warm lights in most of the windows. I tried to catch hold of his arm, but my hands and fingers went through him.

“Please. Just talk to me for a few seconds––”

“Get the fuck out of here, Leda.”

“I can’t.” I fought the tightening in my magic, my heart. “You know I can’t.”

“You have to. Don’t pretend you don’t understand.” He visibly gritted his teeth. “Why would you even want to be here? What is the matter with you?”

I could feel the instability there.

I knew that instability was likely the only reason I’d gotten through.

Bones’s magic rippled around his black-clad form, sparking erratically where it connected with the flaming black crystal over his head. Unlike me, he still had his lower primal. The bone dragon sat on his shoulder, clacking its jaw at me, but it didn’t look or feel angry at me, not like he did. It looked at me with worry in its eyes, and it clacked at me as if to warn me not to get too close, like it didn’t want me hurt.

“Is it your brother?” he asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

I felt the difficulty of him asking it. He forced out the words, as if each one had nails sticking out of it, and they cut his mouth.

“I’m trying,” he said. “I’m trying to protect him, Leda.”

“Let me get him out of there,” I thought back urgently.

He hesitated at that, then slowly shook his head.

He didn’t speak, though, didn’t explain, and I could only look at him, and try to understand through the shifting expressions on his face. His magic fought to stay away from mine, but even where it touched me, it didn’t tell me anything.

Nothing I could really understand.

“Why?” I asked finally. “Why can’t I at least try to take my brother and Varya out of there? If you won’t go, at least he’d have less leverage over you.”