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“You are not ready to believe what I say, but…” She hesitated and stepped close to me. “I hope you know your father loved you. Giving his life so you could live was never questioned, save by me.”

Lyra blinked rapidly at my side, her fingers digging into my arm.

After the tension of silence settled long enough that it was felt to the bones, Elisabet cleared her throat and stepped back. “This is the only way I know how to help.”

“You think Roark can truly summon a soul in the mirror?” Lyra asked.

“I do.”

For a drawn breath, the three of us merely stared at one another.

In truth, I did not know how to summon souls, but I could not deny there was a power radiating from the bone in Lyra’s hands, something familiar.

I looked at the queen and tilted my head. Who am I meant to find when we are there?

When Lyra replied with my query, the queen’s grin widened. “Your brother.”

24

Lyra

Golden heat coated my flesh, coiling with cold mists. Wood peeled off the rafters. Murky black dripped overhead like cobwebs. The inglenook was deadened and coated in ash.

In front of my face, I held out my palms. Faint threads floated in the darkness. Meld. I was to slowly meld. Not a true soul bone, more like the bones of small creatures I’d used to hunt, for our own answers.

Craft heated over my glowing palms. Familiar warmth radiated from the shard. A presence I’d felt before. Memories from a dream, arms that held me tightly, carrying me away from smoke, blood, and screams.

A bone of the fallen Draven prince. The thrill of truly speaking to a fallen soul hurried my fingers over the surface, snatching wispy threads and weaving them to the outer edge of the opposite shard.

Until a low rumble came from behind.

Skul Drek, cowled and cloaked, curled his haunting arms around my waist, drawing in a breath. Like the scent of my soul kept him locked in with a need for more.

“We ought not be here, Melder,” he said in a low, rough rasp. “The dark one hunts your soul.”

A shudder ran down my spine. I looked away from the bone and scanned the mists and haunting smoke of the mirror. We were not near Stonegate, but I could not shake the unease of knowing that somehow Fadey might be able to find us here, even behind the walls of an enemy clan.

“Then find the connections we seek and we can leave,” I told him and flicked a strand of the delicate gold threads, glittering like fine chains between us.

Gunter’s soul weave was no longer thick and gaudy. Now, where Skul Drek shifted, shimmers like spider silk webbed between us. From head to foot, we were joined.

As fragile as it appeared, the strength of it had only burrowed deeper into my bones, my blood.

A smile crept over my lips when I faced the bone again.

“What am I to seek?” Skul Drek dipped his head low, drawing in a rough breath. “All I want is to devour you, Melder.”

I did not know if it was the mirror or the heady passion between our souls, but for a moment I considered letting him.

The queen stood stalwart. Elisabet burned like molten amber, the gleam fierce as a sunrise. A tether, weaker than those binding me to my husband, dragged on the murky ground, chained around Elisabet’s ankle. The strand wove across the shadows and disappeared somewhere within the cloak of Skul Drek.

Proof of a vow she’d made, soul to soul.

But there were more, darker threads that bound her to Roark, to unseen souls in the distance. Connections. Kin. Lovers. Friendships. As though a veil had been removed from over my eyes, the more I learned of the bonds and of craft to the blood, the bones, the souls of folk, the more I could see them for myself.

The queen was draped in tangles of small bonds. Some weaker than others. Some brighter and shorter.

When he realized we were not alone, Skul Drek hissed at the queen. “Leave us.” Robes of cold wrapped around my shoulders, drawing me against him. He dragged his nose against my throat. “I want to taste you again.”