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“Yes, and my bountiful thighs.” I roll my eyes but stroke Franzy’s tawny gold arm. “I look like an angyl goddess, don’t I?”
“Isla!” she squeals, quick to shush me. It’s blasphemy to speak of the ancient angyls. Her words lower to a seductive murmur to tickle the hairs on the back of my neck and rouse my Nether-mark’s heat when she leans in to add, “It brings out the hellfire in your hair.”
Since the day we met, Franzy has claimed the sunset red streaks in my pearlescent hair are Void-born. And I must have inherited the silver from the angyls of Eyleanan. After all, Mathyr and Fathyr named me after the gods’ celestial Isle realms...after they found me curled in their garden with corpus roses growing all around me and refter bites sprinkled across my flesh. The bites healed...but not the Nether-mark.
“You’re the one who plays with fire, Franzy,” I taunt her, reminding her of the time she nearly incinerated my kitchen.
Franzy scrunches her nose, bristling. “One time, Isla.” Suffice to say, I’ll do all the cooking when we’re married.
As we approach the platform to await the next bone cargo train, I coil my arm around my friend’s and assure her, “After the Bone Games, I promise we will amorously dance the night away. As long as we don’t catch the eye of the Corpse King.” I stick out my tongue.
Franzy clutches the back of my neck, whispering the eerie nursery rhyme of our childhood.
“Corpse King, Corpse King, he’s coming for his bride
Corpse King, Corpse King, all you virgin nighyans hide
He’ll steal your bones to make his brew
And your heart will taste so sweet in his stew
Corpse King, Corpse King, to him we give him laud
Corpse King, Corpse King, he who quells the gods
He’ll carry you off to his cold and lonely bed
He’ll eat your soul until you’re all but dead!”
“Yes, unless I’m the Mallyach-Ender!” I dare to whisper.
Franzy covers my mouth with her hands, spinning her head, eyes wide and frightened as a creature caught in a hunter’s gaze. As if waiting for the gods to annihilate me for breathing the possibility of a curse-ender!
Fire and ice from my Nether-mark cloy my spine. A heavy pang in my chest at the thought of all the King’s dead brides. How he bears the gods’ Curse...
I’ll be damned if Franzy and I ever become a bride. She is an obvious choice: full of youthful innocence, of passion with her near-gold eyes and vivacious curls. I would be a scarred consolation prize with my calloused farm hands and firm, muscled limbs and too-plump thighs. And the Nether-mark. I shiver. If an elder discovers the sacrilegious brand, it will guarantee a death sentence by burning.
But as long as it doesn’t betray me tonight, the mark will help me win the Bone Games and save my family.
On the train, Franzy fidgets, staring at a famed locale: the tombs of our former kings and queens. Elevated to a lofty status due to the God of Death’s Curse, their tombs are architectural feats encased and guarded by fallen dragyn rib cages. Ripples of awe overwhelm the slowing train. All fawn over the City of Tombs.
The train descends, stopping at different points along the route to the Citadel. Franzy marvels at the shrine of the gods where elders perform bone rituals. I wrinkle my nose. Yes, I’m grateful for the King who carries the Curse. Otherwise, the gods would play with the races and vomit hundreds of refters from the Void onto our lands as they did in ancient times. But I don’t care for the elders who trade their magic to needy humans...like my family.
Once the herald announces the Hall of Heroes, Franzy and I make our way off the train.
“This is exciting!” she squeals, gesturing to the catacombs housing the greatest Ith warriors who felled the refter outbreaks in past wars. Or defended Talahn-Feyal against the Sythe, shifters, and Shee. Impressed, I grin but glimpse at the crude map sketch on the blackwood bark from Ganyx detailing the Hollows?old ruins from an ancient city where the Bone Games are held.
“Later, we’ll visit Queen Scathyk’s tomb,” promises Franzy, hinting at my favorite famed warrioress: the Scarlet Scathyk who trained all her warriors in the art of battle. And sexual pleasure.
I sigh. “What I wouldn’t give to be a born-Ith. I’d steal one of her bones, grind it, and ingest it and have as much power as her.”
“Oh, you already have a warrior spirit, Isla,” Franzy denies.
“Maybe if I was an Ith,” I point out. Despite how the Ith turn humans over time thanks to their venom, transformed humans don’t gain the same strength or power as the born Ithydeir race.
Franzy clings to my arm as we proceed through convoluted halls and passages. We arrive at the great arch marking the end of the Hall of Heroes. Restricted territory. From the twinkling light of the scintillating stalactites far above our heads, I squint and survey a steep staircase descending to a bridge leading to the Hollows. First, I retrieve my scyan, persuade Franzy, “Last chance to go back.”
She shakes her head, though fear creases the skin around her eyes. Better not to argue, I heave a sigh and hope this sketch is accurate. The last thing we want is to find ourselves lost underneath the mountains. Slow and quiet, we descend. The lower we go, the more smoke drifts from torches beyond the bridge, indicating we are going in the correct direction.
