The guard staggered sideways, eyes wide, jaw hanging open in shock as he registered what Jaxon had just done.
Then he fell: a lifeless lump, face first in the sand, useless sword still clutched in his fist.
“Well done, brother!”
Markam reappeared on the edge of the crowd, behind the guards.
They spun, stumbling backwards in fear as his cloak settled around his ankles, like he was a ghost stepping out of an invisible realm.
“KILL THE DEMONS!” a guard shouted.
Sand sprayed as they dove into the fight, half towards Markam, the other half towards Jaxon.
Sonara watched as Jaxon dropped to one knee and spun in a circle, hands held before him as he called upon the bones of the dead. They shot from the sand, arced and twisted through the sky as he himself spun, sending them in a full whirlwind of death.
They sliced through arms and jammed into kneecaps and weakened muscles as the guards fell, practically bleating with fear.
Behind him, Markam fought on; standing in the sand, his arms crossed as he hefted his trademark red dagger and spun it in his hand, jamming it into the thigh of a guard before disappearing in a blink.
Two heartbeats later, he zapped back into existence behind another guard, sliding that crimson dagger across the man’s throat. Blood sprayed, and Markam was gone again. Only the mark of his footsteps shifting the sand revealed his presence as he sprinted across the desert, unseen, to fully form again at Jaxon’s side.
One by one, the brothers of Wildeweb took the guards down until there were only four left.
Two for each brother; the desert around them, littered with bodies that were once proud to be called King’s Men.
But Jaxon was beginning to stagger. Too long, too much of his power used, and he would lose his strength. Sonara saw it in the way his steps began to lose fluidity. The way the sweat was clearly beading on his scarred brow.
He earned a slice to his collarbone.
Sonara cried out as she saw his black blood soar to the sky.
“Come on, Jax!” she growled. “Focus.”
Markam was too busy, preoccupied with taking out the other two, who hefted their broadswords against Markam’s single dagger. He was quick, but he wasn’t as large as them, wasn’t as strong.
“Come on!” Sonara shouted, wishing she could tear herself from her diamond chains, wishing she could run from the wagon and lift her sword and…
She screamed as a guard struck Jaxon in the back.
He stumbled, his face warped in pain even as he sent a bird’s beak flying home into the man’s jugular.
Jaxon fell to a knee, gasping, face twisted in agony. He was burning out. The other guard took the moment to close in on him, had nearly leveled his sword over Jaxon’s neck as the bones around him began to fall from the sky. Markam shouted and tried in vain to get to him, but…
A blast.
A crackle that shook the very sky.
The hair at the end of Sonara’s braid stood on end as a massive burst of blue light, of sparkling electricity, soared across the sand and blasted a hole in the ground. The guards before the brothers soared backwards like falling stars, smoking and charred and utterly, utterly dead.
Sonara gasped as silence spread across the desert.
She turned, slowly, to look towards the left.
As the smoke cleared, two steeds emerged, like specters stepping into the sunlight.
The first was a pale steed, ridden by a woman who looked to be wearing a mask made of a wolf’s skull.
The second was Duran, Sonara’s loyal steed, who’d died with her and came back to life again, ten years ago. On his back sat a woman adorned in a deep red cloak, black hair hanging to her waist, her palms held open before her.
Sonara had to blink a few times to confirm what she was seeing was true.
For the woman’s skin was smoking and charred. Tendrils of still-glowing blue lightning snaked up her wrists—as if she held the power of a storm within her veins.
It didn’t take long for the desert to clear of prisoners.
One by one, Jaxon, wounded but well, went to the wagons and freed them, Razor’s fire melting the massive lock that bound each wagon’s set of chains.
Sonara waited, eyes closed as she leaned her head back and ignored the watching eyes of her fellow prisoners. Finally, finally, there was the clink of chains, a muted curse, and her wagon door fell to the ground.
Sonara coughed as the dust settled, and the prisoner across from her screamed.
Razor’s massive, dripping maw was just inches away. The wyvern released a heavy breath, the smell of death enough to make plants wilt.
But Sonara only smiled. “You do know how to make an entrance, Razor.” The knots in her chest fell free for the first time in three days as the wyvern growled. “It’s good to see you, too, vile beast.” The caravan driver’s dismembered head was held between Razor’s teeth. Sonara grimaced. “Enjoying a treat?”
Razor chomped down on the skull.
There was plenty of merit to choosing Razor. But Sonara preferred the swift gentle soul of her steed.
She felt for that little burning flame inside of her. It was always there, sometimes hotter than others. The most frightening of times, the loneliest of times, it was merely an ember close to cold. It had been so for these three days.
That little flame was Duran’s soul, and it was tangled up with hers. A bond that could not be broken.
Sonara’s blood was replaced with living shadows, the side effects being her curse and a soul connection with Duran. She wished only the latter had remained.
That soul-ember flared bright, signifying his closeness and safety.
“Alright, Sonara?” Jaxon appeared beside Razor as she spewed a breath of green fire. The diamond melted like liquid starlight, pooling and hissing into the sand.
So fast, the prisoners rushed to freedom, shaking off their chains, not caring that their manacles still held. No one uttered a thanks. They were gone before Jaxon could offer to set them free of those, too.
Typical, even for prisoners heading to Deadwood. Nobody wanted to be near a Shadowblood. Not even one that had just saved them from certain death.
The wound on his back wasn’t as bad as she’d originally suspected. It was open, and bleeding, but he’d endured worse before. It was the use of his power that drained him far more.
“Next time, Jax,” Sonara said, relief flooding through her as he smiled and crawled into the wagon, “try not to get yourself killed when you’re saving me. You scared the hell out of me.”
“I don’t fear a second death,” he said with a wink. “I have a pretty close relationship with the Devil herself.”
Sonara cursed under her breath as he worked at her manacles, whistling softly to send tiny bones soaring into the locks of her cuffs. A twist, a sigh from Jaxon as he let the last dregs of his power loose, and the manacles fell free. He smiled up at her, exhaustion darkening his eyes. “If I remember correctly, you’re the one who knocked me out and left me buried in a pile of corpses outside Jira’s castle, leaving my fate to Markam, of all people.”
Sonara winced. That was true. “What did it take, to get him to fly you here to save me?”
Jaxon closed his eyes. “I agreed to another job.”
“Of course,” Sonara said with a groan. Markam never did any good deeds, even for family, without demanding a prize of his own. “No rest for the weary. Did you ask him for details of this job, before you signed the deal in blood?”
Jaxon’s sudden silence, and the way his posture went rigid, was all the answer she needed.
He was helplessly, hopelessly loyal. “Blast, Jax. What have you done?”
“I’ve saved you, for starters,” Jaxon said. “He wouldn’t tell me the details until you were present and accounted for. But whatever it is, Markam has promised a fine prize. The Lady is wealthy beyond measure.”
He glanced behind his shoulder, where the two strange new arriva
ls sat. The lady in crimson, who still had her hood pulled low over her eyes, stood in the sand beside Duran, staring down at the corpses.
Only the wind pulling at her cloak revealed that she was not made of stone.
Perhaps she’d never killed before. It changed a person; placed a coldness inside of their hearts that no other deed on the continent ever could.
“Come on,” Jaxon said. “One can see that smoke for miles and miles. Jira’s guards will be swift on their way.”
He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept in days. And perhaps he hadn’t… but Sonara knew a large part of that exhaustion came from using his curse.
Jaxon’s only worked with the bones of the dead. Beasts were far more common, for the bones of dead Dohrsarans were often buried far, far beneath the earth. To summon the bones of a person would be to call upon every ounce of power inside Jaxon, pushing him too close to a second death.
Every curse had its own twists, its own walls that couldn’t be broken. Sonara’s curse was the same. She could only sense emotions—never manipulate them. She’d only ended up with a massive headache when she’d tried.
The rest of the time, there was pain, a constant ache that just wouldn’t quit. The longer she held her curse within its cage, the more it plagued her. But once she released it, the world was hers to breathe in… until the after-effects kicked in, a dull throb that reminded her she was not entirely normal in this second life.
There was a cost to every curse.
“Well. You’ve a story to tell,” Sonara said. Blast, it would take days to rid herself of the soreness. Jaxon helped haul her to her feet, despite his own exhaustion. His heavy breaths were warm on her cheeks. His aura, comforting as always. A hard, heavy drink after a long day’s ride.
“I need to know everything,” Sonara said. “Starting with her.” She glanced outside the wagon, where the woman wearing a bone mask had pulled the lady in crimson aside, speaking to her in hushed tones. “Shadowbloods don’t come out of hiding. And here out of nowhere, one of the strongest we’ve ever seen just rides into the sunlight to save the day?”
“That would be a side effect of knowing my brother,” he said, eyeing Markam, who was busy digging through the suits of the uncharred King’s Men, likely for any extra coin or bits of gold. Heartless as ever, Markam broke rules that Sonara never would.
She always let the dead lie still.
She still wondered what the afterlife would have been like, if whatever sent her barreling back to live a second life would have just left her alone.
“The sword?” she asked suddenly, still swaying a little on her feet.
Jaxon swallowed. “It’s safe. Stashed in the cache at Sandbank. But I do have this, to tide you over.” Jaxon lifted his duster, revealing a glimpse of a sword tucked carefully into a black scabbard.
Sonara’s heart practically sang at the sight of it. “Hello, gorgeous.”
Lazaris, the menacing black blade with a single stripe of blue running down its center.
Forget diamonds. Blades were a girl’s true best friend.
Sonara strapped Lazaris to her waist, the aura of the sword—that had once belonged to her brother—like a healing balm to her soul.
Blood and metal and bone.
Sonara smiled, and whistled twice, high and loud.
Duran’s ears pricked up, and in an instant, he was trotting towards her, head held high.
Dirt and grime, the after-scent of hard work and summer heat and wheat sprouts, crushed beneath layers of solid teeth.
Beside his aura, Sonara could feel the ember of Duran’s soul heating in her chest, feel his excitement as he tore across the sand. His coat was a blur of red-brown like cavern rocks, his body all muscle on large feathered legs and hooves. In his first life, his eyes were red as hot coals. But now they were dark as a starless night.
The steed was her family, the only family she needed other than Jaxon.
Duran reached her, dark eyes boring into hers, nostrils blowing hot air into her face. Their connection brightened, a certain feeling of rightness sliding into place as she patted him on the small white star in the center of his forehead. Sonara dug her fingers into his dark mane and flung herself onto his back. He snorted as if to say hello, and she was home again in an instant.
“To Sandbank, then?” Sonara said. “Where we’ll receive the terms of this little deal you’ve made with Markam and his strange new companions.”
Jaxon bit his lip. “I did it to save you. I hope you remember that, when we discover whatever it is that I’ve signed us up to do.”
“Markam saved us both,” Sonara said, as she watched Markam climb atop Razor’s back. He whistled, waving for Jaxon to join him so they could fly south. “I’m grateful… however damned we might be, in his debt again.”
Markam was a Trickster. A liar. A true Shadowblood, who cared not for the lives of anyone other than himself. He hadn’t saved them out of the goodness of his heart. No, there was always a second layer to his actions; a driving force that made his heart beat so cold.
“Onwards, then,” Jaxon said.
“Do me a favor?” Sonara asked, as Jaxon walked away, heaviness treading with him across the sand. “When you’re up there, high above the clouds… push your brother off. Then we’ll have no debts to pay.”
Jaxon only chuckled, and went to join Markam and Razor. He climbed slowly atop her, just barely settling himself before Razor leapt into the skies. With each mighty beat of her wings, the wyvern rose until she was a mere speck in the distance.
Sonara watched the brothers go, chewing on her lip. Frustration threatened to build within her, but she forced it down. She trusted Jaxon. He was her counterpart, nearly as much as Duran. He’d earned that trust through fire and blood, over the course of ten years traveling together. Never once had he betrayed her. Markam, on the other hand…
Sonara sighed, her attention turning to the pale steed as both ladies galloped away. “Whatever you’ve gotten us into with them Jax, whoever they are… it had better be worth the fight.”
She looked back at the wrecked caravan, the roofless wagons with smoke still snaking into the sky, the bodies of the fallen guards scattered around it.
Then she clicked her teeth and urged Duran forward.
She rode, on and on into the blazing suns, with the distant shadow of Razor’s wings above them, the sharp kiss of her sword at her side, and the taste of sweet freedom on her tongue.
Chapter 4
Sonara
The Deadlands were hell.
Sonara had always hated them, from the first day she and Duran crossed over the kingdom’s southern border. She’d been thirteen then, and now, ten years later, she hated Jira’s domain even more.
It was like a fragment of home; sand, sky, and sweat, but there was something missing.
The sea. Deep blue and beautiful, like a little piece of heaven.
And even though it was the sea that had killed her, some part of it still called her home.
The Deadlands had only a few small bodies of water: the largest was the Briyne, a salt river that spanned from Soreia all the way to the Wastes. It snaked right through the gates of Jira’s fortress, giving him the keys to the main trading route between all three kingdoms.
Duran thundered up a hillside, and Sonara paused him for a breath.
In the distance, she could see the distant shine of the Briyne, like an unraveled spool of emerald thread in the middle of endless pale sand.
She squinted in the bright suns, just able see the colorful specks on the Briyne that marked the sailboats that traveled north and south along the body of water. They were often targets for outlaws and bandits to pick off, hauling away their wares.
Sonara, Jaxon and Markam had spent years perfecting those attacks. Work was hard to come by in the Deadlands, especially for those who couldn’t stay in one place too long, for fear of revealing their Shadowblood powers.
They’d become outlaws instead, for with their curses
the prizes were quickly earned, and they paid bountiful amounts of gold, even split thrice. For years, the troupe worked the Briyne, but in recent months had grown tired of the jobs on the salt river. They’d turned their eyes to Jira instead; the ultimate prize. His ring had evaded them, but Gutrender… well, that was a prize far mightier, and one Sonara hadn’t ever dreamt of getting her hands on.
A cry resounded overhead, and Razor banked in the sky, turning backwards as if Jaxon had wanted to check on Sonara. He removed his hat and waved, pointing as if trying to draw her attention to something.
Sonara lifted a hand, signaling back that she’d understood.
For she saw it then: the flash in the distance. The strange, otherworldly thing that bobbed across the sky at the base of the hill.
Metallic, fast, and heading further away by the second.
“Gazer,” Sonara said. She clicked her teeth. “It’s a Gazer, Duran!”
A kick of her heels had the steed tearing down the hillside to give chase.
Sonara leaned close to him, her fingertips digging into his mane as he thundered across the desert.
The Gazers had been around for years now. Strange, metal orbs in the sky, something from another planet, another world.
They did not show up often, but when they did…
“Faster!” Sonara shouted, squeezing her legs as she urged Duran onwards.
The world became a blur, her focus only on the metal orb that bobbed away, buzzing slightly as if some strange power was held within it, moving it along.
Most were the same, battered old floating orbs that catalogued information and sent them back to wherever they’d come from, in another world across the sky, beyond the domain of the goddesses.
But Jaxon was right to have signaled her. For as Duran’s hooves caught up with the Gazer…
Sonara glanced sideways, the wind stinging her eyes as she tried to focus on the Gazer.
“Steady,” she said, and her loyal beast held pace with it.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 7
