Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,142

or she’d scream. “Thank you.”

His eyes were colorless by witchlight, and more serious than she’d ever seen. “I can only try to earn your forgiveness.”

“Start by keeping the princess safe.” She kissed his cheek, cold skin against colder.

She watched Ashlin and Varis till the fog swallowed them. Then she stepped into the tower’s black mouth.

Isyllt didn’t have to wait long before she heard Spider’s voice.

“Isyllt.”

He crouched on a broken pillar, a white-marble grotesque. She was so used to his mocking diminutives that the sound of her name in his mouth startled her. He uncoiled and leapt, landing silently before her. The red haze thinned around him. “I can’t let you interfere. You know that.”

Her blade rasped from its sheath. “Haven’t you always wanted to know how it would really have ended between us?” The chill in her voice was only bravado—after everything he’d done, the thought of killing him made her stomach ache. But she couldn’t face him and Phaedra together. Spellfire licked the edges of her blade.

“I wanted us to be friends.” The quiet sadness in his voice made her wonder how many friends he’d had in the catacombs. How many he’d sacrificed to further his plans.

“Spider—” The catch in her voice was real; the lowering of her blade was a feint.

She threw witchlights in his eyes and lunged, swinging the silver kukri. Fabric opened against the edge, and skin below that. He was gone before the stroke bit deeper, his animal hiss echoing in her ears. Isyllt spun, cold fire in her left hand and spelled silver in her right.

Her heartbeat’s advantage was already spent. He moved in a white blur and she staggered, a sudden pressure on her jaw warming to pain. Copper washed her tongue again, mingling with the acrid taste of nerves. Her jaw wasn’t broken; luck, or had he pulled the blow? She turned the stumble into a crouch, rocking on the balls of her feet as she tried to keep him in sight.

Easier tried than done—he moved silently and weightlessly as any ghost, but much faster. She blocked a blow that would have opened her throat, and it felt like dragging her limbs through honey. She was rewarded with the jolt of blade on bone and Spider’s quite audible cursing. He cradled his hand to his chest, black blood seeping between his fingers.

“This is foolish, little witch.”

“It certainly is.” She flung another blaze of light and lunged again. Her shoulder struck his chest and her knife turned on his ribs, slicing through cloth and skin and desiccated muscle. The smell of musk and anise and bitter earth filled her nose.

Spider snarled, fangs shining inches from her face. He tore the knife from her hand; it clattered across the stones, out of reach. His other hand seized her jaw, redoubling the ache from his last blow.

“I would have let you live,” he murmured as he forced her head back. She kicked and clawed, but it was like fighting a statue.

She hadn’t wanted to use the cold, not with Phaedra still to face, but she was out of options. She reached for the emptiness inside her—the Arcanost called it entropomancy, but to her it was the nothing, the chill that ran deeper than death.

“Oh, Spider.”

Isyllt teetered on the brink of the void; Spider froze, his jaw distending like a snake’s as he leaned in for the kill. She knew that voice, like slow-pouring water….

“This is not what we do.”

He dropped Isyllt and spun, fangs bared as he faced Tenebris.

The red fog curled away from her. Shadows deepened in its place, spilling ink-black from beneath pillars and arches to cling to her skirts. They twined her arms and nestled in her hair, pressing against her neck like children. Of her face Isyllt could see nothing, save for the angry glitter of her eyes and the gleam of her fangs when she spoke.

“Did you think we would take no notice of your revolution?”

“Why would you?” Spider spat. “You sleep away the years and do nothing while the mortals keep us locked in the darkness.”

“We are the darkness, little fledgling.” Humor and sadness veined her voice, a warmer current amidst the cold tide. “We are darkness and dust. It may be our nature to hunger for warmth and light, but we must extinguish them or be seared. We are hunters, teeth in the night, not shepherds to keep humans for chattel. The kingdoms of men mean nothing to us.”

“Rot in your ossuaries, then. I want something more, and