Chapter 8

The second floor of the pub was an empty apartment with a few broken antique chairs, begging the question of where the Bonecutter actually lived.

The bathroom, at least, had running water, allowing us to wash both ourselves and our clothes before changing into the spare sets we'd brought. After Olwen took a long soak in the claw-foot tub, her cheeks regained some of their color and she seemed more like herself.

I emerged from a quick shower to find that someone had lit a fire and gone down to get food. Caitriona and Neve sat in front of the hearth, a basket of assorted pub snacks between them. There were dinner rolls, the remains of the day's fish and chips, and cakes, along with pitchers of water on the table. At my questioning look, Neve popped a cake into her mouth and jutted her chin toward the window.

Emrys lay on the floor beneath it, his back to us. He was wrapped in his blanket, his head resting on the crook of his arm. His face was reflected in the window's glass, strange and ghostly. He could have been feigning sleep, the way he seemed determined to fake everything else, but his eyes were shut and his breathing slow and even.

I was tempted to shake him awake and send him to sleep downstairs, or preferably outside in the bitter cold, but there was some truth to that old saying about keeping your enemies close. At least here, we'd have an eye on him .

Eventually, my hunger overcame my pride and I helped myself to one of the rolls.

"Does he seem …," I began, my voice low, "different to you?"

"Different how?" Neve asked. "He seems his usual backstabby, annoying self." Her gaze slid sideways to me. "We are still mad at him, right?"

"Right," I said quickly. "I don't know what I meant." I really didn't. My head was a mess. "Just … forget it."

"Can and will," Neve said, brushing the crumbs from her lap as she rose. "I'm going to see where Olwen got off to."

Caitriona tracked Neve's movement down the stairs, her silvery hair glowing in the firelight. Griflet idly toyed with the small bit of string that had pulled from the hem of her shirt. She said nothing, but I could tell by the crease between her brows that some thought was haunting her.

We hadn't really spoken about the argument in the apartment; it had been shoved aside by the sorceresses taking us, Emrys's appearance, and our journey here to find the Bonecutter. But now that we'd found a moment of calm, it didn't feel fully settled among the four of us.

What would happen if the vessel couldn't be repaired and we were faced with that same question of what to do next? The sorceresses might not want our help, but Neve wouldn't give up on trying to work with them—all of us knew that. Olwen would try to keep the peace, I wouldn't give up on saving Cabell, and Caitriona would never retreat from her promise to kill Lord Death. A seed of discord had been planted between us, and if we didn't uproot it now, its poisonous vines might push us apart.

Growing up, I'd only ever fought and made up with one person; I knew how to do this with my brother, but the thought of saying something wrong, of messing up my friendship with any of them, left me terrified.

Caitriona rubbed absently at the hollow where her neck met her shoulder, massaging the muscle there. Guilt burned in me all over again; she'd been bitten by Cabell's hound form while trying to protect me, leaving a grievous injury that it had taken the best of Olwen's magic and knowledge to heal. Sometimes, she pushed her physical pain down so deep inside herself, it was hard to see how badly she was truly suffering.

"Does it still hurt you?" I asked. "The wound?"

She shook her head. "No, it's only sore now and then. The skin's knitted back together so well that there's barely a scar."

I nodded, processing that.

"I'm not particularly great at this," I began again quietly. "But are we … all right?"

Caitriona turned to me, her face softening with surprise. "Of course. Why would you think otherwise?"

"It's just, things got a little heated … when we were talking about what to do?" Why did I feel like such a kid right now? Trying to get the words out felt like the game I used to play with Cabell, where we tried not to step on any cracks on the street.

She braced her hands behind her, leaning back. "I apologize for the harshness of my words in the moment. My focus may be on hunting Lord Death, but I don't want you to think I don't care about helping you find your brother. That I won't do everything in my power to pull him away from Lord Death's influence."

"Oh," I said, releasing a shaky laugh. "Because I feel the same way—I want to help you in whatever way I can. It was only that—and I know this is stupid—I just worried that you might want to leave. Do your own thing, I mean."

"Tamsin," she said, waiting until I looked at her before continuing, "no quarrel will ever be so bad that I'll turn my back on you. None of us would. If we didn't fight, it would mean we didn't care."

I smoothed my hands over my jeans, letting the crackle and snap of the fire speak for me.

"Are you all right?" she asked .

"Of course. Why?"

"Your guardian," she said carefully. "What he told us about the curse. Anyone would be anxious to learn such a thing."

Up came the memory, and down I shoved it again, with vehemence.

"I'm fine," I told her. "Nash has always been a liar, and I have no reason to believe he wasn't trying to manipulate me yet again. Even if there's the faintest glimmer of truth in what he said, even if I am cursed … talking about it won't fix anything. It'll just be a distraction from what really matters."

"You and I are a lot alike, then," she said, rising onto her knees as Olwen and Neve came up the stairs, their heads bent together over something. "Not everyone will understand."

Whatever they were talking about, it seemed a hell of a lot more pleasant than our current topic of conversation. Still, a small measure of relief filled me at knowing that there was at least one person who would never ask me to bare my feelings.

"No," I agreed. "They won't."

Griflet abandoned the string for his two favorite people, nestling between them as they sat down in front of us, forming a circle.

"You may hate this," Olwen began, her voice hushed.

"Tamsin absolutely will," Neve added.

"Wow, already selling it," I said.

Olwen turned her fist over and opened her palm to reveal four bracelets. Four different fabrics had been braided together in a thin band of color—I recognized the blue from the blanket we'd wrapped Viviane's vessel in, and the faded green from the dress Olwen had been wearing when the worlds merged; the white might have been a bandage, but the red …

"I traded a piece of information about Avalon for a red scarf the Bonecutter had," Olwen explained. "I wanted the colors of the elements woven in, the way they are when we perform high magic. Braided together, it's stronger than a single strand. "

Caitriona's lips flattened.

"I just thought … I know that you all have different things you're hoping to achieve, but I think it's important to make a promise to each other that we'll see it through together," Olwen said. "To remind us that no death, no man, no darkness can break us."

Neve held out her wrist, letting Olwen knot the bracelet tightly. She held it up to the light, admiring it, and Olwen beamed.

I went next, watching as Neve carefully tied mine. A warmth spread in my chest at the foreign feeling of it. After a moment, I took the last bracelet from Olwen's hand and tied it around Caitriona's waiting wrist, doing the knot the way Nash had taught me, for extra security.

"Together to the end," Neve said softly.

"Beyond that," Olwen answered.

The lingering worry in my mind eased. We were fine, all of us. And we would see this through as one.

"I'll take first watch," Caitriona said. "The rest of you should try to sleep now."

"Are you sure?" Neve asked.

Caitriona rubbed at her mouth, saying gruffly, "I slept some earlier."

"Well … all right," Neve said. "Wake me up in a few hours and I'll take over."

Then we settled in for the night, and our agonizing wait.

The hours ambled slowly by, keeping time with the slow, hibernating pulse of the village. The floor was hard, but there was a fire in the hearth and a roof over our heads, and after years of being made to sleep outdoors with Nash, I would always be grateful for that.

At one point, well after the fire had turned to embers, the pub's door unlocked, scraped open, and locked again as the Bonecutter set off on her "errand."

There would be an assortment of protective wards hidden around the building—maybe even scattered through the entire village. We were safer here than almost anywhere else in the world.

I lay on my back, staring up at the wooden rafters. Neve had been out within seconds, snoring softly—one of those lucky people who could sleep anywhere, under nearly any condition. After a while, I gave in to the urge to look across the room, where Emrys still had his back to us, truly asleep.

And, somewhere between breaths, a dream slipped past my lowered guard and stole through the murky edges of sleep.

The forest tore itself free from the dark mist ahead of me, the thin bodies of the trees edged with moonlight. My bare feet padded forward on the damp earth and I relished the feel of my weight sinking into it, grounding me. Mud and flecks of leaves spattered against my skin and the white satin gown that swirled around my feet.

The world breathed around me, alive. Unseen life watched from the trees. I felt tiny heartbeats as surely as the cold brush of mist against my cheek. The darkness that lay just beyond the edge of sight stalked forward through the ferns and roots like spilled ink.

My steps hurried forward.

The path opened into a clearing and revealed the creature waiting for me. It was as white as the starlight, as the mist. The unicorn's eyes were dark pools as it watched me approach, its horn pearlescent against the night air.

I reached out a hand to stroke its shimmering mane, but it turned away, inviting me to follow.

I knew where we were going then, even before the lake came into view.

The small island at the center of it was partly hidden by the shifting whorls of mist, but I could still make out the barrow. The burial mound of the High Priestesses covered in a blanket of pristine white flowers.

A disorienting calmness overtook me at the sight of it, as if nothing had ever happened here to warrant the flicker of dread in my heart.

The unicorn stopped at the edge of the lake; the water glittered with the reflection of the sky, as though it had stolen the stars and trapped them just below its dark glass surface .

I knelt in the muddy shallows, letting cold water wash up around my knees, turning my dress translucent.

I leaned forward over the water slowly, no longer in control of my body.

My face stared back at me, my eyes wide with terror. I reached up, touching my face in confusion, and my reflection began to scream, to shout something I couldn't hear, couldn't read upon my own lips.

In the distance, through the trees furiously shedding their leaves, a blue-white light billowed up toward the sky.

Protect her, the wind begged in my ears, protect her, protect her—

The water roiled, bubbling furiously as if something was surfacing. A hot, sharp pain ripped down my forearm.

Blood covered my gown, dripping into the water and the dirt. My skin fell away in strips, revealing the pure silver bone beneath it.

I gasped, but no sound passed my lips. A bloodcurdling scream split the night. I scrambled back from the water, colliding with something hot and reeking—the unicorn.

Its body was splayed out over the ground, its belly ripped open, viscera spilling out onto the earth. It rotted away before my eyes, the skin crumbling to dust, the muscle withering, its eyes hollowing. And from beneath it, brown vines rose, winding through the exposed bones and braiding back together until something began to take shape there.

A face.

It opened its mouth of thorn teeth and howled.