Page 27

He glanced down at the dagger, then swiftly nodded. “Bear.”

“May I use it?”

His brow furrowed. “Seeing how the only ones who stand a chance at getting stabbed by the melder are us, I think not.”

“I have no plans to stab any of you.” I kept steady and held out my palm.

Gunter hesitated but slowly tugged the blade free of its strap. “That accurate of a knife thrower?”

I didn’t respond, merely palmed the hilt of the dagger. The edge curved slightly, and the pale blade was etched with runes and onyx stones. A fine dagger, but the intricacies of the design were soon swallowed by the glow of melding threads.

“Lyra,” Emi warned and tried to reach for me when I rose and went toward the window.

“Don’t be a fool, Melder,” Brynn snapped.

I didn’t stop. Unseen by them, fibers of craft curled and tangled around my fingers and the dagger, then stretched for nearby bones—Brynn, Emi, Auki—as I strode past them on my way to the window.

Halfway across the courtyard, a glimmering shape broke through the shroud of branches and thick satin leaves. The archer was perched there. Every motion he made broke through the shadows, a gilded mirror only I could make out.

Threads unraveled at the edges of his form, beckoning the craft from the blade to stitch into his bones.

In the corner of the courtyard, another shape shifted. Better concealed, and more difficult to make out his gleaming figure.

“There are two archers.” My voice was flat, almost empty. “For now.”

One long breath through my nose and my fear quieted. I reeled back my arm, and the brush of crafted threads flailed off the bone of the dagger, almost frenzied to meld to the man in the trees.

Once I’d fired bone-tipped arrows into a horde of ravagers at Stonegate. This was the same. My craft’s desire to thread and stitch bone to bone could do more than build the monstrous Berserkirs; it was deadly in other ways.

“Melder.” Brynn shifted to reach me and pull me out of the line of fire.

She didn’t get the chance. I threw the blade. Palm open, I guided one of the golden threads toward the glow of bones from the unsuspecting archer in the tree.

When the filaments from the man’s body securely stitched to the tendrils on the blade, craft yanked the strings and rammed the point into his chest.

I didn’t move, didn’t blink, and merely watched the archer curl forward and topple from the branch. Dead.

“I need another bone blade.” I dropped to a crouch, out of sight. “Does anyone have one?”

Brynn blinked, then unsheathed a small knife from a strap on the inside of her arm in a frenzy. “How…how did you do that?”

“Melded bone to bone.” I stood again, craft circling the hilt of the new weapon.

Before I could raise my hand, an arrow shot past me, nicking my side. I cried out at the burn of split skin and took cover against the wall, holding the knife to my breast until my pulse slowed. One more archer. I only needed to meld a blade to one more archer.

But for how long? How many more Dravens would think it better for the whole of the realms if I was dead?

My chest tightened as the light from the approaching dawn faded. Inky skeins of darkness peeled back the smooth wood rafters, leaving porous logs with rotted bark and swampy mists around every bloom in the courtyard.

Gilded figures surrounded me in the chamber. Emi crouched beside Gunter’s larger form. Brynn was three paces away, still signaling me to move. Auki was swiftly pulling one of the arrows from the wall, and the wound in his leg glowed more red than gold.

Once, the cold wastes of the mirror frightened me.

Now it set my heart on fire.

With caution, I peered around the edge of the darkened window. A thick, taut rope of light split across my middle, every strand like roots of a tree overtaking me. I followed the strands to where they stopped.

One corner of my mouth tilted.