Page 166 of Silver in the Bone

Gently, gently, I placed Flea’s hand over her stomach, but as I pulled back, my fingers skimmed over something tucked into the waistband of her breeches. Frowning, I lifted the blood-stiff fabric.

“What is that?” Neve asked, leaning over my shoulder.

The others crowded around me as I held the flat, palm-sized rock toward the nearest wisp of glowing mist.

No. It wasn’t rock at all, but bone. And the etchings ...

Olwen rose, disappearing into her workshop, only to reappear a few moments later with a basket holding the vessel of High Priestess Viviane. She turned the sculpture upside down and I brought the shard of bone to the hole there, adjusting its angle until it fit perfectly in place.

“Where did she find that?” Caitriona breathed out.

“Or who did she steal it from?” I said, my words scratchy.

“We were checking her each night for missing belongings,” Olwen said, resting her hands over Flea’s smaller ones. “She must have come across it while we were gone.”

“Can the vessel be repaired?” I asked. “If someone broke it intentionally, I want to know what memories they were trying to hide.”

Olwen shook her head. “There is no one alive who can repair it and rejoin it magically.”

A thought slithered through my mind, hushed and coiling with anticipation. “Not in this world. But what if there was someone in the mortal one?”

The Bonecutter had been crafting keys for skeleton knobs for ages and could procure anything, even basilisk venom. If they couldn’t repair the vessel, maybe they would know someone who could.

I tucked the bone shard into the basket and covered it with the cloth. It would be coming with us on our journey.

Caitriona stroked Flea’s cold cheek.

“What should we do?” Neve asked after a moment. “Bury them?”

Caitriona shook her head. “We cannot. We have to burn them, as we did the others.”

“But the curse—” Olwen began.

“We do not know if the curse is still upon the land,” Caitriona said. “Better their souls release forever to death than risk them turning into the very creatures that killed them.”

“Tamsin and I can do it,” Neve told them.

“No,” Caitriona said. “Honoring the dead is one of the most sacred duties of a priestess of Avalon. It must be our final act as such.”

“You’re still a priestess of Avalon,” I told her.

“I am the priestess of nothing,” Caitriona said, rising. “That is all I shall ever be.”

We placed the bodies on the field within the courtyard, where crops might have grown, if there’d been time. Caitriona sang for the fire, the words gritty as they emerged from her throat. Yet when Olwen took her hand and began to hum a low tune, Caitriona pulled away.

Sparks gathered among the bodies, nurtured into small flames by the debris we’d used for kindling.

“I will not pray to a goddess who allowed such a thing to happen,” Caitriona said.

Olwen looked as if she wanted to reach for her, but in the end, she only bowed her head and sang the prayer alone.

“To you, Mother, we send the beloved of our hearts ...”

Her song vanished beneath the whoosh of fire as it caught and spread, climbing higher and higher over the broken pieces of furniture, over the hay, over the bodies, encasing them, just for a moment, in pure light.

The four of us stood together, watching as the smoke turned silver against the darkness and merged into the looming mist. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caitriona take a step forward, as if to climb onto the pyre.

“If we were to die ... ,” she rasped out. “If we were to die, it should have been together. This pain ... I cannot bear the thought of never meeting them again.”

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