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At the staircase base, I freeze in my tracks while Franzy shrieks and buries her head in my shoulder.
“It’s all right...” I soothe her and myself in a way.
Chills like winter tears travel my flesh at the sight of the ruined corpses dangling from bone trees?an ominous warning as to what happens to humans who consume spirit-matter, who practice bone magic.
My Nether-mark lashes heat at my spine: a reminder of why I could suck the refter venom from Fathyr’s flesh. I am immune.
I have to credit the Bone Games masters on their ironic yet cunning location marked by the damned dead.
“Come on,” I assure her, tugging her toward the bridge.
“Isla...” Franzy whispers, leaning closer, gripping my arm. “The flowers are following you again.”
What? “Ugh,” I groan, tipping my head because it’s the last thing I need. The corpus roses, aptly named from their inner petals forming the image of a skull, shoot through the bridge cracks. Their crimson blooms are drawn to my Nether-mark. I should have prepared for this with the essence of Aryahn Kryach wafting all over the catacombs.
“Away with you, my adorable beasts,” I order, waving to the flowers who lower their heads, pouting. I smirk.
As a child whenever the Nether-mark would call me, tempting me to enter the dark death valley of the Void. Bound to my emotions, the roses would grow, offer me hope, an anchor.
Distracted by the blossoms, I don’t register the danger until my Nether-mark pierces my spine with an icy needle-like burst. I recognize the warning, grip my scyan. The familiar white shape staggers out of the darkness, growling?crazed and animalistic. It thrashes its withered head, sharpened teeth snapping to bite Franzy. She screams.
My muscles quiver. I raise my lethal blade and hurl it at the refter’s heart. The creature freezes, its teeth an inch from Franzy’s throat. With a screech, it drops, skull fracturing before a sprig of corpus roses grows through its eyes, its black blood drowning rose thorns. I sigh in relief.
Franzy rushes to me and crashes against my body, burying her face in my shoulder.“Warrior’s spirit.” She sniffs and peers at me, tears glistening in her eyes. “Remember when we were nine and the refters came while we played near your mother’s garden?” I smile at the memory, shake my head. “You grabbed your father’s pitchfork. You didn’t care how much blood you got on your skirts. I thought you were ready to step into the Nether-Void itself and invade the realm of the gods!”
I roll my eyes with a breathy laugh. “Yes. I’ll come with fire and blood and a host of flowers to intimidate them.” I gesture to the roses, narrowing my eyes, curious. Never have so many grown, save for the time I ended up in my given-parents’ garden.
Franzy leans over, plucks a few blooms around the fallen refter, and embeds them in my hair, fixing them to the combs holding my silver strands. “There, you’ll win the Bone Games with your beauty alone. You’re practically glowing.”
I beam at her, wishing we had more time, but I remember my purpose in descending into the Underworld and grasp Franzy’s hand so we may embark along the arched passageway to the old, ruined manor in the Hollows?a perfect location.
Once we push the heavy blackwood door with its spectral-like glow to come face to face with two overseers pinning a middle-aged man to the ground while another carves his hand bones from his flesh, I have no doubt neither my beauty nor my roses will help me.
Only my Nether-mark.
Whimpering, Franzy hides behind my body, avoiding the violence. I swallow a knot in my throat and drag her away from the screaming man.
Stacked in a great circle are several tables with the champion’s in the center. Countless players stoop their heads low over the boards. The outer tables hold the meagerest of winnings?ones no better than the cock bones swarming the fields of my home. A thousand would never pay off our debt.
“This is no place for little unmarked girls,” barks an overseer lingering near an outer table, words hurling at us.
Ignoring the intimidating sparrow skull necklace dangling around the overseer’s bulky throat, I forsake Franzy and march to him to proclaim, “Ganyx sent me. I’m here to enter.”
“Coin or bone,” he demands the entry payment with a sneer.
The fee is a fraction of our debt and the reason I allowed Franzy to come: her coin. I slam the fee into his open palm, steel my spine, and narrow my determined eyes. All I need is to get to the champion’s table, to best the victor, and claim the rarest bones pillaged from a warrior or monarch. I don’t care as long as they prevent me from becoming a Feyal-bride.
However, the elites love to cheat.Try and cheat my Nether-mark, you bone-spiked bastards!
After the overseer accepts my payment and snorts, he juts a thick finger to the first table with mere chicken bones as the prize. Once I reach the center, I will achieve human bones.
Hoping the roses don’t rear their corpus heads, I slide into the seat across a wizened old man, bordering on emaciated. With his rotted teeth and sunken-in cheeks, he reminds me of a refter. Broken knuckles and stumps for fingers. A bone powder addict.
Remorse twinges inside me as I move my first piece on the board because once I win, the overseers will beat him. It takes all of a few moves, and the man licks his withered lips, swallowing tight, eyes watering.
When the overseer yanks him by his gnarled hair, I proclaim, “Stop!” Before either may protest, I sigh, remove a comb from my hair, and thrust it toward the overseer. “The payment is small. This should suffice.”
The old man whimpers. The overseer pauses and inserts my heirloom comb laden with dragon-scale gems in his mouth to bite and determine its authenticity. He grunts acceptance. Deeper remorse engulfs my chest because I’ve granted the addict at least ten more games, feeding his gambling. But I couldn’t be responsible for his beating.
