The king’s eyes were jaded as he stared at his polished fingernails, as if he hadn’t a care in the world about the hundreds of brides come to grovel at his feet. She supposed the ceremony had lost its luster, as he took a new bride each year.
Sonara reached the top, Jira’s throne drawing her attention. It was a morbid thing, even for her eyes, and somehow more menacing up close.
They weren’t beast bones.
They were Dohrsaran bones, people that Jira himself had slain. Some of the bones, like the femurs that made up the backrest and the jagged spines lacing around the arched back, were cracked. As if Jira had split them in two with the sheer force of his will.
But Sonara knew the true cause of those split bones. It was the golden sword that hung at his side, unsheathed.
Gutrender.
Hell, the sword was a beauty. Her eyes fell upon the pommel in the shape of the Hadru, the mighty monster that was the sigil of the Deadlands. The pommel was shaped like the Hadru’s barbed tail, ready to strike, the blade itself sticking out of the beast’s open maw. Jira kept one of the beasts—the largest ever beheld in the kingdom—in a pit at the northernmost point of the Deadlands, waiting for victims to swallow whole.
Ancient symbols swirled across Gutrender’s blade, markings that Sonara could not decipher but had seen carved across the Deadlands for centuries. Markings that whispered of times long ago, when the goddesses birthed Dohrsar from the abyss and swaddled it in a blanket of stars.
“Beautiful,” Sonara whispered, as she looked at Gutrender.
Her curse whispered, too.
Blood, it said, begging to come out of its cage. Hot blood and ripped metal and shredded bones.
She allowed her curse to creep out, focusing with her breath as she pushed it slowly past the sword’s aura until it landed upon the king.
His taste was powerful.
Prideful.
And utterly foul.
Jira looked her up and down as she stopped before him, her blue-and-brown braid hanging like a rope over one shoulder, seashells interwoven through the strands. Her body, covered in makeup to disguise all the scars.
“You have an appetite for dangerous things?” Jira asked. “That is… uncommon, for a Lady.”
His voice was deep and booming and all too close.
It made her want to vomit onto her slippers.
This man… he sought out the hidden people like Sonara, with blood the color of shadows.
Demons, some called them.
Ghosts, claimed others.
Devils, Sonara thought, for she was the Devil incarnate, standing before him. Whatever the case, those rare few like her were sentenced to another death; the kind they couldn’t come back from again.
“I beg your pardon, my king,” Sonara said, bowing her head. What would the delicate Lady Morgana say to gain his favor, to get him to reach out and touch her hand? She swallowed and gave a pathetic attempt at a flirtatious laugh. “My mother was a skilled weaponsmaiden from Soreia. And the sword…” She released a gentle breath. “Well, there are a great many tales about what it can do, when wielded by a man with true power.”
“Power,” Jira echoed. His eyes flicked up and down her body, testing her curves. “And a bride who appreciates it.”
Don’t snarl, Sonara told herself.
“A gift, my king,” she said. “From my providence in the southern kingdom. May I?” Jira nodded.
She glanced backwards at Jaxon, who produced a crimson silk pouch from his coat pocket. Inside, the ring that Markam had crafted for the job. She’d been reluctant to team up with the Trickster, as he always had an extra surprise up his sleeve… but this time he’d sworn to be honest. And the ring he’d fashioned was lovely, with a plump diamond the color of blackest night, its band made of thick gold to match Gutrender.
“From the finest craftsmen and women Soreia has to offer.” Sonara extended the ring, fighting back a tremor of excitement.
Her blood pulsed, hot with the promise of a true prize. The king’s dark eyes narrowed. But he uncurled his fingers from the skull armrest and held out his hand. “Very well.”
It dwarfed hers. Callouses from sword-fighting littered his palms. How many across Dohrsar had Jira killed? Not only enemies, but innocents? How many had been children? How many had held up their own hands in surrender while he brought down his blade?
Sonara smiled.
A real smile, for the girl she’d once been long ago would have shaken as she stood before him. But now, she was not afraid.
“You must be delicate when you make the switch. Swift as a fowl in flight.” The memory of Markam’s voice whispered into her mind, instructions from the countless hours they’d spent practicing this particular sleight of hand.
Sonara had mastered it plenty of times before. It was how they’d bagged enough coin to survive the coldest nights on the run.
“I’d like to see you conquer more kingdoms,” Sonara said, tilting her body so that she could draw the king’s eyes back to hers. Mixed, muddied brown, with the slightest ring of outer blue. She fluttered her lashes. “If you would have me, my king.”
Sonara made the swap, placing the false ring on his finger while she deftly slid another ring off. It was almost like magic, so smoothly the swap went.
Almost.
For just as she was about to release the king’s hand, his grip tightened.
Pain lanced across her bones as he squeezed. “Perhaps I’m mistaken, my Lady. But I believe you’ve just taken something of mine.”
Sonara’s curse thrashed inside of her.
That was the taste of fury that rolled onto her tongue, like she’d swallowed a burning ember. She’d practiced that trick a hundred times, a thousand times, so how in the blasted gates of hell…
“Who are you?” the king demanded. So soft, so utterly calm, even as his eyes hardened, and she thought her hand might break beneath his crushing grasp.
He leaned forward, his face now so close to hers that she could sense every sinful aura soaring from him.
He tasted like blood.
He tasted like death.
Sonara tried to speak, but the mixture of his aura was too strong. Her tongue felt like it was burning to ashes. She took a step back, but Jira yanked her forward again, her useless slippers sliding on the dais.
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd, but Sonara could hear nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat, and her black blood roaring in her ears.
Before she could stop him, Jira dipped his hand into the hidden pocket on her skirts to produce his diamond ring. She stiffened, her mind wiped clean of any believable excuse.
“You’ll have a visit to Deadwood for this, my Lady.”
Deadwood.
The prison camp in the north, where blood froze alongside aching bones.
Jira rose, his grip like an iron manacle. He produced a small blade from his gold robes and pressed it to her throat.
“Guards!” he growled. “Seize this traitor to the crown.” His eyes flitted past Sonara, to where Jaxon stood, a guard who’d been forced to leave his weapons at the door. “And her guard, too. Take them both to the north.”
“No,” Sonara said. She winced as the tip of his blade nicked her skin.
Any normal girl would’ve cried out in pain. But Sonara had become one with pain in all her years of outlawing, relished it, even. It was fear that she must conquer now, the true traitor, as her blood was drawn.
As not liquid, but living shadow slid from beneath her skin.
It soared out of the wound like a ribbon of black smoke. It danced over their heads, twirling and twisting as it rose higher, fully alight in the rays of sunlight shining down from the diamond ceiling.
Jira’s grip went slack. His eyes widened as he whispered, “Shadowblood.”
A story thought to be untrue.
A curse deserving of death.
The word echoed outwards, circling around the throne room as everyone below registered the sight.
It was one that had not been seen for centuries. It was whispered about around roaring campfires and echoed on long, desert rides, a story dealt as a warning to tricky children before they were tucked away into their beds at night.
Careful, or you’ll be haunted by a Shadowblood.
“Seize them both!” Jira growled. “Alive.”
Sonara felt the seams of her outer skirt split.
A flicker of white shot past her gaze, so fast it was merely a blur. She heard the sickening squelch as Jaxon’s magic sent the sharpened bird bone soaring home.
Right into Jira’s eye.
Sonara didn’t waste a breath. Screams rang out across the throne room as she moved, lunging for the only weapon in sight as Jaxon’s curse continued to call upon the bones in her skirts, and Jira’s guards poured up the dais.
Blood, Sonara’s own curse sang.
The metallic aura in the air came from Jira’s eye as he roared and tried to pry the bird bone out. But it was also coming from the massive golden sword at his hip.
Sonara had failed once already in losing her prize. And at this rate, death was imminent. Jaxon only had so many bird bones to go around. They’d left their real weapons beyond the city gates with Markam and their mounts.
But Gutrender… it was now, or it was never, for there were no prizes on the other side of death.
She would not become a prisoner today.
It felt like a dream as Sonara reached for the sword. Somehow, the king saw her coming, but a bird bone drove itself into the back of his hand, shooting a clean hole out the other side. Jira roared as Jaxon’s power commanded another bone to fire, and suddenly Sonara’s hand was around Gutrender’s cold pommel.
She gripped with all her might and pulled.
It sang sweetly as it tore from the king’s iron belt.
“Sonara, now!” Jaxon yelled.
She turned, the heavy weight of Gutrender so unlike her own weapon as she tested the balance, distorting her view of the ladies sprinting to safety or tripping over their own skirts as they cleared out of the throne room, abandoning their gifts to the king.
The sounds of chaos took over; a chorus of screams, shouts of guards commanding a calm that would not come; the stomping of boots and clinking of heavy golden armor as Jira’s guards thundered up the steps of the towering dais.
The first guard reached the top.
Sonara felt the satisfying snick as the blade cut through the unprotected flesh between helmet and chestplate. She felt it flay bone, sever head from neck as blood sprayed. Regular blood, the kind that wasn’t deemed unwanted or unworthy.
Sonara spat it from her lips, but the aura of it got to her all the same.
Bitter, like the hot venom of a desert snake.
All of Jira’s guards had the same vile taste, that same soul-deep aura that Sonara’s curse latched onto, even when she willed it not to be so.
The crack of the guard’s head hitting the stones resounded around the throne room, the screams of the ladies gone now as the room cleared, replaced by the shouts of guards.
Sonara’s curse tugged at her senses.
Left!
Fury, surging forth like a rogue wave.
She ducked as a spear thrust out from beside her. Before she came back to standing, she drove Gutrender upwards, out, and through. Innards spilled across the dais.
She swung again, taking out the next guard. Down, she marched, Jaxon at her side as they cut through their enemies.
Four guards dropped to two in a single swipe from Gutrender.
Two guards dropped to none as Jaxon’s bird bones landed home in eyes or hearts or sliced across jugulars, draining their lifeblood.
“I’m almost out!” Jaxon yelled. “We need to go.”
He was paces away, his hands raised as he called on his Shadowblood curse, the weight of Sonara’s skirts lightening as bone by bone was removed.
Sonara let her own curse guide her, ducking when it beckoned, dodging when it tasted the sharp anticipation of a swing.
Her bare feet reached the bottom of the dais, slippers discarded in the bloodshed. She cut through a guard’s spear, wood splintering with a sound like lightning. Another spear dove towards her gut. Sonara feinted backwards, but a bird bone spiraled past her ear to land in the man’s chest. Two more followed, little white missiles, and he dropped, lifeless on the stones.
“I’m out,” Jaxon said. He was breathless, hunched over as the exhaustion from using his curse weighed him down. “We have to leave.”
The king was nowhere to be seen. The dais was empty, save for the corpses strewn about.
“He ran,” Sonara said, wiping blood from her face. “Like a child.”
Silence, followed by the plink of fresh blood dripping onto the gold tiles.
“No ring,” Jaxon said.
“No ring,” Sonara echoed, and lifted Gutrender. “But this will do.”
Jaxon stared at the blood and the blade. “You frighten me, Lady Morgana.”
“Lady Morgana is dead. And you will be too, if you don’t drop the charade. You realize this changes things, don’t you?” She lifted the sword. “They’ll send more. Jira won’t rest until we’re placed among the other bodies in Deadwood.”
The prison camp was far worse than any fate she could imagine.
Jaxon only shrugged. “We’ve made it out of worse situations.”
A bold lie. But they turned towards the exit together anyway, ready to fight off their fate. The heavy doors groaned, ancient and tired as they heaved them open to let the Deadlands air rush in.
Jira’s castle sat perched atop a single flattened mesa that dropped hundreds of feet straight down to desert sands. At the front entrance, only a single stone road led down to the capital city of Stonegrave.
Sonara stared down that road now, the dry wind shifting from sweltering daytime heat to the sudden chill of a desert night.
Far below, she could see the red and brown rooftops of tightly crammed together homes, the sharp, knife-like Scholar’s Keep cutting above the tallest buildings. Not far from it, the rounded bell tower of Stonegrave stood proudly, flocks of colorful fowl dipping and twisting in the sky as they soared past.
Beyond it all—the endless expanse of desert that made up most of the Deadlands, as far as the eye could see.
It was eerily quiet; no carriages waiting, no steeds lined up at the gates. The ladies and their guards had abandoned the castle, likely hidden deep within the city streets by now, far away from the two Shadowbloods that had poisoned the throne room with their presence.
“Strange,” Jaxon said.
Sonara felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. “There should be more guards,” she said. “There are always more.”
Just as she said it, the bell tower began to ring.
A solid resounding clang, it echoed across the city. A warning to all.
Danger has come to Stonegrave.
Sonara saw, then, the snaking line of guards pouring up the single road. She heard the thunderous symphony of hoofbeats hitting stone, as guards came atop their steeds, weapons glinting in the dying sunlight.
One road out of the castle; straight towards the guards.
“Jax,” Sonara said softly. “There’s a hundred of them, and two of us.”
“Not great odds,” he admitted. “We should have let Markam come.”
“No,” Sonara hissed. “We’d be twice damned if he was with us.”
“Sonara, I can’t use my curse anymore,” Jaxon groaned. There was a darkness beneath his eyes; the heavy exhaustion of having used his power to free them from the guards in the throne room.
Sonara looked at him, the weary smile on his handsome scarred face. He’d fight as long as she did, and in the end they would both end up in chains, sent to Deadwood to die.
She checked the horizon. Trickster or not… Markam was hiding beyond the city walls, waiting for them with their mounts. He would hear the bells and come—of course he would come, when he as
sumed they’d gotten their hands on the prize. But the sky was still empty. How long until Markam noticed the commotion and soared for them on his mount? How quickly could his wyvern fly?
Not fast enough, Sonara’s conscience whispered.
In her mind, she saw a pair of cool, sea-blue eyes paired with a prince’s smile.
Soahm.
She’d lost him, then.
She wouldn’t lose another brother now, even if Jaxon wasn’t her blood.
“Five days,” Sonara said as she lifted Gutrender and admired the perfect blade.
Jaxon raised a brow. Confusion flickered from his aura on a gust of wind. Sonara’s head pulsed with pain at the sudden use of her curse. “What?”
She swallowed and faced him head on. “When they take me, Jax… I’ll have only five days before the prison wagon reaches the north. Don’t trust Markam too much. And… don’t make me wait that long.”
Before he could protest, she rammed the pommel of Gutrender atop his head.
He dropped like a stone.
Sonara dragged him, grunting from his unconscious weight, to the thick thorny bushes surrounding the castle and shoved him behind them. She placed Gutrender on his chest; a prize she could not afford to lose. Then she dragged two dead guards atop him, so if found, Jaxon would only be mistaken as carrion for the birds.
Sonara stepped back and admired her quick work. Darkness would fall soon, and he’d be well hidden until he woke. By then, Markam would have come and plucked him from harm.
Sure enough, she could see the ghostly outline of a black speck in the distance, taking to the skies. For once, he was reliable.
Sonara faced the guards, taking up one of the fallen blades.
The sound of hoofbeats heightened as the guards in the front of the cavalry thundered into the courtyard, surprise on their faces as they beheld her, alone.
A blue-haired beauty practically dripping blood-red.
The first guard was easy to take out. He fell from his steed in a burst of blood, and in a blink, she swung upwards into the saddle and yanked the reins to the right, swiftly kicking the beast into a lope and riding right back towards the rest of the guards.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 5
