The Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash 3)

My heart—it faltered. I felt it. Oh, gods, I felt it miss a beat, skipping two, and then sluggishly trying to keep up, to restart. And then it failed. Everything seized in me. My lungs. My muscles. Every organ. My eyes were wide, my gaze fixed as my entire body strained for breath, for relief, and then…death swept in so sweetly, it swallowed me whole. I drowned in its lush, dark spice.

Chapter 8

There was no light, no color, and I floated in there for a while, untethered, hollow and cold. I didn’t think. I didn’t feel. I just existed in the nothingness…

Until I saw a speck of silvery light that seemed a world away from me. The illumination throbbed, and with each beat, it expanded. Wispy tendrils seeped out from the edges, stretching across the void. Slowly, I drifted toward it.

Sound came back without warning. A voice so deep and powerful that it found me in the nothing, caught hold of me so I was no longer slipping toward the silvery light. The voice held me captive.

“Drink. Keep drinking,” it ordered. “That’s it. Keep swallowing. Drink, Princess, drink for me…”

The words repeated themselves over and over for what felt like an eternity before they faded away, and I was once again in the stillness. There was no silvery light now. Nothing but a warm and empty darkness with the sweet, comforting scent of…lilacs.

I stayed there until flashes of muted color surrounded me. Reds. Silvers. Golds. They swirled together, and I slipped through them, falling back through the nights, through the years, until I was small and helpless, standing before my father.

I could see him clearly, his hair a coppery red in the lamplight. His square jaw covered in several days-worth of a beard. Straight nose. Eyes the color of pine.

“What a pretty, little flower. What a pretty poppy.” Papa leaned in, kissing the crown of my head. “I love you more than all the stars in the sky.”

“I love you more than all the fish in the sea.”

“That’s my girl.” Papa’s hands trembled on my cheeks. “Cora?”

Momma came forward, her face pale. “You should’ve known she would find a way down here.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You trust him?”

“I do,” he said as Momma took my hand in hers. “He’s going to lead us to safety….”

Wind roared like thunder through the inn, coming from a place that was not here. Voices rose, ones that didn’t come from Papa or Momma, but from above, somewhere beyond the whirlpool of colors at the other end of the nothingness.

“Who remains?” a male voice reached me, the same one that had found me when I was drifting toward the silvery light, but it was now hoarse and faint, weary and weakened.

“Just us,” another deep voice replied, this one strained. “We don’t have to worry about the guards. I think Jasper decided it would be best if they were…no more.”

“My father?”

“Not an issue for now.” There was a pause. “We won’t make it back to the Cove, but there is…” He faded out briefly. “We’ll have to make it work just in case she… Do you think you can move?”

There wasn’t an answer for a long moment. “I…I don’t know.”

I fell again, slipping back through the years once more.

“Stay with your momma, baby.” Papa touched my cheeks, drawing me away from the voices. “Stay with her and find your brother. I’ll be back for you soon.”

Papa rose and turned to the door—to the man who stood there, watching from the small crack between the panels. “Do you see him?”

The man at the door, whose hair reminded me of the beaches of the Stroud Sea, nodded. “He knows you’re here.”

“He knows she’s here.”

“Either way, he’s leading them here. If they get in here…”

“We don’t let that happen,” Papa said, reaching for the hilt of a sword. “They can’t have her. We can’t let that happen.”

“No,” the man agreed softly, looking over his shoulder at me with strange blue eyes. “I won’t.”

“Come, Poppy.” Momma pulled on my hand—

The voice pulled me beyond the colors and the nothing.

“I don’t know what will happen from here.” He sounded closer, but even more tired than the last time his voice had reached me. Each word seemed to require an effort that he was quickly losing the ability to give. “She breathes. Her heart beats. She lives.”

“That is all that matters,” the other voice said, less strained. “You need to feed.”

“I’m fine—”

“Bullshit. You were barely able to get on your horse and stay on it. You’ve lost too much blood,” the other argued. “She’s going to wake eventually, and you know what will happen. You won’t be able to take care of her. Would you like Naill or Emil to service you, or would you prefer that they service—?”

“Naill,” he barked out. “Get Naill, dammit.”