The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [72]
The last of her restraint broke and Isyllt pulled the dead woman into her arms, held her as she shook and whispered to her low and fast. “It’s all right. It’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re free of them, and you don’t have to wear their shackles.” She wrapped a hand over the wound, pressing icy flesh together. Her ring blazed so fiercely the shadow of her bones showed through.
“Rest,” she murmured, each breath a frosted plume. “Rest, Forsythia, Ilora. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll find them, I swear. I’ll stop them.” Madness, to make vows to the dead, madness and folly, but the woman wept like a child in her lap and the words tumbled past her lips before she could stop them. “I’ll stop them.”
With one last sob, Forsythia faded. The diamond flared once as a new soul entered, then dimmed. The room was black without its light.
Isyllt’s pulse roared in her ears, drowning the song and voices below, dulling the closer sounds of weeping. She tried to move, but her limbs were frozen and useless. She tumbled off the edge of the bed, landed hard on one hand and hip. Her wounded hand—the pain of that cut through pins-and-needles numbness.
Something scratched and chattered in the darkness; glass rattled against wood. A tiny opportunistic spirit trying to slip through an unguarded mirror. Isyllt pressed her bleeding hand to the cold surface and banished it with a word. She fumbled the silk cover over the glass and shoved it back into her kit as the lamp glowed to life again.
Mekaran and Dahlia both wept. The thorn had fallen to his knees, while the girl pressed a fist against her mouth hard enough to split skin.
“What happened?” he asked, stopping before he scrubbed his cheeks. “Where is she?”
“Safe,” Isyllt rasped. The cold had stolen her voice. “Resting.” Her teeth began to chatter. She stumbled twice as she stood. She needed to rest, to get warm, but she couldn’t stay in this narrow coffin of a room any longer. Mekaran called her back as she fumbled with the door, but she only shook her head.
The warmer air of the hall dizzied her, the smells of beer and food and sweat. She tripped on an uneven floorboard, staggered into the wall hard enough to send a sharp shock down her right arm, and fell to her knees in a tangle of skirts.
A worn pair of boots stopped in front of her and a familiar voice spoke her name.
“C—Ciaran?” She could hardly raise her head. The chill in her bones curved her spine into a fetal hunch.
“Saints and shadows,” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself this time?”
Footsteps shivered through the floor as Mekaran and Dahlia followed. Ciaran cut off Mekaran’s stammered explanation. “Later. I’ll take care of her.”
He crouched beside her and wound an arm under hers; his flesh burned. She barely kept her legs from buckling as he hauled her to her feet. “You have to walk,” he told her. “My room is another flight up and you’re too tall to carry up these stairs.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You’re not leaving—there’s rioting outside the Garden. Besides, you’d stay in this hall all night if I dropped you. I’d like to think my bed is the more pleasant option.”
She gave up arguing and concentrated on moving her feet. And, when she finally collapsed on to Ciaran’s bed and breathed in the musk and spices that lingered in his pillow, she was forced to agree. He piled blankets on top of her and kindled the brazier. Light glowed through cut brass, tracing filigree patterns across the walls and ceiling. Isyllt closed her eyes and curled tighter. Feeling returned to her extremities, but the ice settled thick and deep in her core.
The bed creaked as Ciaran wedged himself between her and the wall and held her close. It wasn’t wide enough for two, but that had never stopped them before.
“You push yourself too hard.” His beard tickled her neck, but she couldn’t pull away. “You’ll die if you don’t stop this.”
“Maybe not even then.”
“What do you mean?”
It was not the sort of thing to be spoken of, but