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“You wish me to unmeld them, Kael?”

He turned his head, as though leaning nearer to Brynn, and nodded. “As many…as you can.”

I knelt beside my brother. He recoiled at first at my touch. Brynn let her hand fall to his shoulder. “It is not simple, but I’ll try to take as much as possible. As long as it takes. The pain will leave soon.”

Kael closed his eyes. “Do it, pest.”

Emotion thickened in my throat. “I’m getting to it, fool.”

Roark lowered to one knee at my side, still coiled to strike. My fingertips ran over Kael’s chest. So many lumps and divots embedded around his heart.

Damn Fadey had done it with intent; he’d wanted Kael to suffer swiftly.

A nodule on his ribs burned beneath my palms. A soul bone, but not beneath the curve of the ribs, on the outer edge. Smaller, easily gripped. When I touched the spot again, a web of gilded stitching gleamed under the surface of Kael’s skin.

Patterns where the threads began and ended. Their origins and tension against his bones.

Craft rushed through me like a rogue wave on the sea. The roar and brine and smoke coated my tongue. The burn bit at the tips of my fingers.

I held out a palm to Roark. “May I have your knife?”

He handed me a small blade from one of the sheaths on his forearm and settled lower on his knee, readying to greet me in the shadows.

Upon the first cut, the mists pulled me away.

—

Kael slept beneath a fur quilt, his wrists still bound, a new bandage wrapped around his middle. Fever burned through his flesh. Once, I was told that soul bones yearned to live again. They would fight to keep their existence, leeching on to a new soul.

Bones scattered across Kael flared in poisonous red, black, and green threads when I unstitched the smaller piece from his side. Then another near his hip. I only managed to get a third nearer to his chest before his body shook too violently to continue.

The bones shadowed the brightest pieces of his soul, shadowed the tethers of bonds and connections he’d built through his life.

I thought I’d noticed a strange tether, but more of the darkness from the corrupted bones blotted out the shine before I could be certain.

Doubtless, the rest of his melded pieces would fight to keep him.

I leaned against Roark’s shins from where he sat on a bench in the hut. It would take careful planning, careful selection, before I removed the remaining bones.

In truth, I wasn’t certain I could take all of them without killing him. Fadey had placed one bone directly over his heart.

Brynn bustled around Kael, gathering the bloody linens and seeing to it that the fur remained over his body. She’d even summoned Òlmr to sleep beside Kael.

By now, I knew Brynn Oakbriar was a genuine soul, a warrior. But she’d been strange since the pass, almost like she was battling her own fever.

“Brynn,” I whispered in a soft voice. “Why don’t you go rest?”

“Oh.” She smiled, but it was more like a wince than anything. “I’m all right. I can watch over him if you both need to rest. I’m certain that to unmeld is taxing. Looked difficult, at least.”

Roark leaned forward, his hands falling over my shoulders. What is wrong with you, Oakbriar?

She scowled. “Nothing is wrong with me. Why don’t you go sleep, my prince? You look like you’re ready to murder half the Unfettered Folk.”

I canted my head, studying her fidgety hands. She would reach for Kael, then pull back and tidy up a space that had no need to be tidied. Brynn would wheel around with every moan of pain Kael freed in his sleep.

She was not herself.

“Brynn.” I played with the ends of my hair. “You know when I use my craft that I fall into a sort of trance within the realm of souls. Which is why Skul Drek is there too.”