Chapter 7

It occurred to me as I stood at the window and watched Hemlock's shadowed form hurry down the path that Emrys still hadn't come upstairs.

As the minutes passed and we couldn't hear a word of whatever they were speaking about, I became even more suspicious. He could be getting answers to questions we didn't yet know to ask. He could be bartering for information, and we wouldn't know until it was too late.

Leaving Neve, Caitriona, and Olwen to find wherever Griflet was hiding and debate about where we'd stay that night, I took the opportunity to bring Hemlock's payment back down into the workshop.

I kept my footsteps light, the way Nash had once taught us, hoping to catch snippets of their conversation, but the last step announced my arrival with a squeal. The Bonecutter didn't look up from her work at the table, but Emrys did, his gaze skimming over me. He stirred the contents of the small cauldron beside her, careful to alternate clockwise and counterclockwise strokes.

In addition to the lamp, the Bonecutter had placed a large magnifying glass on a stand hovering over the remaining skull fragments. Using forceps and a remarkably steady hand, she picked up a needle-thin piece of bone and carefully placed it in one of the remaining holes of her puzzle. The jaw and the curve of the skull were starting to take shape.

When she finally looked at me, it was through the purple lenses of her glasses. I held out the bundle of herbs by the twine holding them together. "How come she gets to pay you in weeds?"

"Perhaps I like her better than you," the Bonecutter said. "All right, Dye, I've finished with you. Take the others upstairs to the flat—if you must sleep here, I'll not have you mucking about in my pub. And tell them if they want food, they'd best leave the money for it on the counter."

Emrys released the shard of bone he'd been holding, lowering the instrument onto the table slowly, as if waiting to make sure the piece would stay in place.

I stepped forward at the exact wrong moment as he passed by, and a flutter of warmth moved down my arm as it brushed his.

He stopped, drawing in a deep breath. "Agrimony, comfrey, and … violet."

"Show-off," I grumbled.

He left with a ghost of a smile.

"You can set the herbs down over there." The Bonecutter gestured behind her, and it took me more than a few moments to spot the table beneath a massive pile of rolled carpets, drapes, and tapestries.

I circled the workshop toward her, eyeing the way she dipped the edges of a bone shard into a black pot of something. She paid me no mind as I leaned over her shoulder to investigate it. The ground seemed to vault up beneath my feet. I drew back.

Silver.

The liquid was a glistening, molten silver. Exactly like the cauldron I'd found in the tower of Avalon.

"That's …," I began, my mouth dry. "That's death magic."

"Of course," the Bonecutter said, looking at me like I was the child. "Vessels are created using it, and they must be repaired with it. What did you think I would use?"

It felt like there was a hive of bees in my chest. Like my tongue had swollen and turned to stone. The Bonecutter set her delicate instruments down, and her stool creaked as she turned toward me .

I saw my frightened face in the lenses of her glasses. My stomach knotted.

"Are you quite all right?" the Bonecutter asked. "Please sit before you crack your skull open and spill your brains onto the floor. I've only the patience to fix this one."

I shook my head, trying to catch my breath. "You work with him—you worship Lord Death—"

"And you, " she answered, with an edge of irritation, "are being quite ridiculous."

She pulled a small, sweet-smelling sachet out of a drawer under the worktable and shoved it into my hand. "Take a deep breath, will you? Have a few, even."

I hesitated, but even without bringing it close to my face, the earthy scent was dulling the jagged edges of my fear and slowing the dizzying march of my thoughts. When I was sure I wasn't being poisoned, I inhaled deeply, letting its scent cool the fires that burned in my lungs.

"Better?" she asked.

I felt humiliated that she'd seen me react this way. I was still shaking like a damn mouse beneath a cat's paw.

"Listen to me closely, little Lark," the Bonecutter began. "I do not worship Lord Death. I am a servant to no king or god. Despite what he'd have you believe, he does not control access to all death magic everywhere, only Annwn's supply of it."

"So he really is a god?" I asked, my voice tight.

"No, but something like it," the Bonecutter said. "He's one of the Firstborn, the earliest race created by the Goddess. Immortal, and bloody difficult to kill, but not entirely impervious to death."

"I've never heard of the Firstborn before," I said, feeling calmer as my mind finally focused.

"You have, though likely by a different name," the Bonecutter said. Her voice, so melodic, was oddly suited to telling stories. "Some call them the Tuatha dé Danann, the Aes Sídhe, or, in this part of the isles, the Tylwyth Teg. I've even heard them called the Gentry by the especially superstitious."

"Aren't those all different kinds of fairies?" I asked.

"You can call them fairies, I suppose. They once ruled over all of the Fair Folk," the Bonecutter said. "They were given a special piece of the Goddess's magic to aid them. Yet they left our world to create their own—the Summerland—long before the tides of beliefs changed and hostility toward magic grew."

"Right." I knew of that Otherland, at least, and I already knew why Lord Death hadn't joined them there. "Lord Death was forced to rule Annwn as punishment for something—do you know what that was?"

"I haven't the slightest clue," the Bonecutter said, though that seemed impossible to me. "But if you're intent on understanding death magic, you must first understand that there is magic in all our souls. That is our spark of life. If nothing interferes with it, that spark will continue from one lifetime to the next, persisting. But the souls brought to Annwn are different—twisted, cruel, corrupted by darkness long before they arrive."

"And bringing them to Annwn takes them out of a cycle of reincarnation in our world," I finished.

"Yes, but they're brought there to serve another purpose as well," the Bonecutter continued. "When you call on death magic, you sap that power from the wicked dead—their souls. As long as those malevolent souls exist in a world, as they do in ours, anyone can call on death magic, provided they know the rituals involved."

"And you know them," I said.

"I do," the Bonecutter said. "And the knowledge will die with me. While no magic is inherently evil, death magic has a corrupting effect with too much use."

"So Lord Death wasn't always like this?" I asked in disbelief.

"The Goddess saw fit to give him her power to manipulate shadows, as if recognizing the way they called to him," the Bonecutter said. " But that inclination toward evil has only grown now that he commands the full might of Annwn's power."

A cold kiss of ice touched my skin as realization set in.

"That's the real purpose of the Wild Hunt," I said quietly. "He needs to collect the wicked dead to add to his power."

Tales of the hunting party of ravenous spirits and other supernatural beings roaming the world in search of souls to spirit away existed across many cultures, with good reason.

"Yes, his Winter Host," the Bonecutter said. "The whispers say its horn echoes again through the night. That the wrath of winter has returned to this world once more."

I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, staggered. The night before, in Boston, we'd heard it, hadn't we? That strange, unearthly bellow that had dug its claws into my awareness, that had sent the man claiming to be Nash running with a warning for us to do the same.

The night the Sorceress Stellamaris and four others had died by Lord Death's hand.

"Have you heard it?" the Bonecutter asked quietly. "The herald of death? It has been centuries since he assembled the last ride, leaving countless wicked spirits to roam free."

Likely owing to Lord Death's imprisonment in Avalon during that time.

"Yes," I said. "But the Wild Hunt isn't collecting the dead. It's hunting sorceresses."

"Then what was prophesized has finally come to pass," the Bonecutter said, stirring the small pot of molten silver with a glass spoon.

I nodded toward the pot in front of her. "In Avalon I saw that same silver inside a cauldron. What is it?"

She motioned me closer. "What you see is death magic distilled into physical form."

When I looked up from it, I caught her studying me, her expression pensive.

"Why can I see it, but others can't?" I asked .

"That question," the Bonecutter said, "you'll need to ask your guardian."

I blew out a hard breath, trying to avoid thinking about Nash and what he'd told me back in Boston. "I'd have better luck interrogating the wind."

She arched a brow. "Where is he, anyway? I heard he was knocking about again, and I would have thought he'd keep you close."

I shook my head. "All I know is that he's doing what he always does: taking care of himself and leaving me to take care of everything else."

"Ah. Including your brother," the Bonecutter said, taking up the next bone shard.

I looked over sharply.

"The Dye boy told me."

Of course he did.

"Now, now, none of that," she said. "He owed me a favor and it was that or disposing of a gentleman who is past due on payment."

I perched on the edge of the worktable, knowing it was pointless to ask her to elaborate, but also scared that she might. The floorboards overhead creaked and squealed as the others moved around.

Her words from earlier drifted back to me like the dust raining from the ceiling. Cursed child.

I crossed my arms over my chest, looking to the floor until I finally managed to dislodge the aching lump from my throat. "Do you know anything about my curse?"

The Bonecutter set her tools down and turned the vessel on its wooden pedestal, inspecting her work. The hairline cracks of silver gleamed in the candlelight. "Not much, I'm afraid. Just the implications of it."

I watched, almost mesmerized, as she dipped the edge of a bone shard into the molten silver and placed it, using a whisker-thin paintbrush to smooth and spread the magic. Using the other end of it, she etched in several small sigils and flowing patterns that had been covered by the silver or damaged as the sculpture broke. She was making quick work of it, but there were still hundreds of pieces in front of her.

"How long do you think this will take?" I asked.

"The reassembly will take the rest of the night," the Bonecutter said. "But it'll need another few hours to set, and for the magic to take hold."

I bit my lip. She was working faster than I could ever have hoped, but the thought of spending another day here made me want to slide down to the floor and cry like a child. With every hour that passed, Cabell moved further and further out of my reach.

"You and the others may stay here and keep watch on the pub while I run errands," the Bonecutter said. "It'll be closed tomorrow."

"What? Where are you going?" I asked.

"I've a delivery to fetch," she said simply.

"You're just going to leave us?"

"I didn't realize you required constant supervision," the Bonecutter said.

"When will you be back?" I pressed.

"No later than suppertime tomorrow," she said. "The workshop will seal itself once I leave so you're not tempted to test the vessel before it's ready and ruin my work."

"I wouldn't."

"You would," she said. "You're as impatient as an asp."

All right, yes, I would. "And if the vessel doesn't work?"

"Then no repair will ever fix it," the Bonecutter said. "And you'll have to find a new way forward."

"Great," I said drolly, sliding off the table. If there was no helping the amount of time it would take, I'd claim what few hours of sleep I could. The fact that I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten more than an hour of rest was reason enough.

"Little Lark." Her voice interrupted my thoughts. "Do you know why this pub is called the Dead Man's Rest? "

"I didn't realize I was supposed to wonder about it."

She hummed again, this time with a warning edge.

"There's a legend in this village that goes back hundreds of years and is still used to frighten children," she said. "On nights when the sky is free of clouds and the moon is high and bright, they say that the dead who perished at sea can find their way to shore again. They can seek a favorite drink they cannot taste, wander the streets with unfamiliar names, and visit the homes that now belong to someone else."

For a moment, just one, I could have sworn I saw a shadow of her true age cross her face. "It's a tale of caution—the very caution I would give you now. We can visit the past, but nothing good can ever come of lingering there."

"I know that," I said sharply.

"Do you?" the Bonecutter asked. "Sometimes we are asked to leave behind not just others, but our dreams of the self we thought we might be, and the life we thought we might have."

"Was that your riddle-me-this way of saying that I should abandon my brother?" I demanded. "That we shouldn't go after Lord Death? I can't do that. Not after everything."

"No," she said. "I mean the life you thought you might have. When you find yourself in the darkness, you cannot stop or turn back, not without losing sense of which direction was once ahead. You must never stop moving forward."

I bit my lip, saying nothing.

"Grieve it, little Lark," the Bonecutter said. "Grieve what's been lost and keep your gaze fixed on what might yet be. But in the meantime, I must kindly ask that you get the hell out of my workshop."