Jaetheiri was going to be furious when she woke up that morning. To my incredulous amusement, that was Yethyr’s first thought when he withdrew me from Hegrir’s corpse.
Half of their hunters had been killed. Blood was gushing from an open wound in his shoulder, and yet he barely thought about it.
He carefully wiped away the blood from his sleeping bag. He did not want Jaetheiri to see the deathsong notations he had written in his blood.
Mandorias frantically began to tend to the wound, and Yethyr ignored him. “Kettir?”
That was not his real name, but the huntguard answered to it. He tore his gaze from Hegrir’s lifeless body and looked up at Yethyr with haunted eyes. “Yes, my prince?”
“You saved my life.”
Kettir swallowed. “I have sworn before Maethe to be your huntguard.”
“And in this moment, you are my only huntguard. Jaetheiri cannot be roused until Mandorias’ tea wears off. Heaven knows I won’t sleep further, so you have nothing to fear from Spryne, but I have need of you.”
“I am at your service.”
“Clear away the bodies.”
Kettir stood to do just that, and the Prince finally let himself acknowledge the agony blaring in his shoulder. “What’s your verdict, Mandorias?”
“By the grace of an angel, he somehow missed every vital organ and bone. It’s a miracle!”
“It’s a miracle you came at all,” Yethyr said breathlessly. He was dizzy, lightheaded from blood loss.
“That’s no miracle,” Mandorias pressed a poultice of strange-smelling herbs into the wound. “Hegrir was chanting about killing you. I’m surprised Kettir was the only one who woke up.”
Mandorias’ remedy stung, but Yethyr didn‘t so much as wince. He looked over the scholar’s bent head to glance at Wes, hovering in the corner of the tent.
The steelsinger was predictably looking at me.
Yethyr returned his attention to Mandorias. “Can I walk?”
“Walk?” Mandorias sputtered. “Master, you need to rest. You have lost a dangerous amount of blood, and you are not hardy on the best of days.”
Yethyr disagreed. Despite the nausea, he felt strong. In fact, he hadn’t felt this strong since he was a boy, before Spryne had taken his due. He flexed his toes in his sleeping bag and was surprised that they bent. He looked down at his right hand, still clutching me. He twitched his fingers along my hilt and grew nearly giddy as he felt my filigree along the sensitive pads of his fingers. He wasn’t wearing his bone armor. By his reckoning, he should not have been able to do even that much, and yet, he felt, for the first time in years, that he could move.
Yethyr thrummed with pent-up rage and adrenaline. His rage. My adrenaline. He had embraced my help to kill Hegrir, and he was still leaning on my power to sit up straight.
It reminded me of Mona fighting Brinn in the streets back during the siege. I had kept her body going, even when her muscles gave out.
Keeping the Prince sitting up was similar, but I was surprised he was letting me do it at all. Yethyr usually held the chain binding us together stretched taut, always straining to escape, never letting me too near.
Not now.
My control was coiled around him tightly, and I felt a hyperawareness of his body that I had never felt before. I probably could move him, if I tried.
I didn’t try.
No doubt, he would withdraw from this closeness come morning. Once he came down from the adrenaline, he would rightly grow wary and pull away. There was no stopping it. His will was too strong, and our bond was only three lives deep.
This lapse in control was temporary. This lapse in control was an opportunity I had to seize.
I considered all the damage I could do, and then set all those plans aside; I didn’t want him to regret his lapse. Quite the opposite. I needed him desperate. I needed him to want to let me in, again and again.
I needed Yethyr to remember this moment and crave to repeat it for the rest of his days.
I focused on his bleeding shoulder. I focused on his aching demon-possessed bones. It was all just pain of the body, and for the moment, Yethyr’s body was mine to command.
I touched the nerves screaming perpetual agony at him and silenced them, all at once.
The pain was gone. It was like a Datrean choir snapping their mouths shut at the command of a conductor, and Yethyr—the Prince who had taken a sword to the shoulder without a sound—made a whimper like he’d been punched.
“Master?” Mandorias frowned in great alarm.
Yethyr ignored him, gasping at the sudden cavernous relief. I had taken away his constant suffering, and its absence filled him like a physical thing. He felt like he was floating. He felt like a dream, a real dream, not one of Spryne’s hellish cruelty.
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It was my gift to him, a reward for finally wielding me in earnest.
And perhaps it was a gift for myself as well. I had controlled the bodies of my wielders to move them in battle, but this was a new type of control, subtle and interesting and full of potential.
I curiously explored the nerves along his skin to test the limits, and goosebumps were left in my wake. Struck dumb with sudden painlessness, he let me experiment. He probably would have let me do just about anything right then. The iron will that usually dueled me for dominance now eagerly scurried out of my way as I metaphorically poked and prodded his every tendon.
My father had given me great power. During the siege, I had only thought to strengthen the bodies of my wielders, but perhaps that had been a failure of imagination. How far could I really push this power?
I commanded the blood vessels in his shoulder wound, and Yethyr felt the rush in his veins slow.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” he asked, knowing the answer.
Mandorias peeked under his poultice and frowned. “It appears so, which is shockingly fast! Don't make any sudden movements and spoil your luck.”
That was sound wisdom, but I urged Yethyr to ignore it. I needed to show him. I needed to give him a taste of what I offered if he gave in to me.
He recognized the false thoughts for what they were and frowned down at me.
“I can’t,” he croaked mournfully. “I can’t without my armor. You ask the impossible, Bonesong.”
“I can,” I insisted in his voice. “Not impossible. Not anymore”
Yethyr waved Mandorias off him. The scholar squawked objections, but he didn’t hear them. He only heard me, whispering an impossible command into his thoughts with his voice.
“Stand.”
Shakily he pulled off the covers. He went through each motion slowly. His frail bones creaked, but I took command of the song thrumming through them, letting each note shift to accommodate Yethyr’s will. It was like what the Prince did for Wes so that the steelsinger could move under his own power, but that was just deathsong.
This was more confusing. Some of Yethyr’s bones were strangely dead and sang deathsong. Some were alive and sang stonesong. Some answered my will and some didn’t, and I was unsure how to navigate the cacophony thrumming beneath his skin.
Yethyr got his knees under him, and I wrangled the music of his bones to support him. It was unstable and shaky, but it would hold. Just enough. Just enough…
Yethyr stood.
There was a gasp. Mandorias gawked, Wes stared knowingly, but it was Kettir who gasped. Kettir stood by the entrance of the tent, just returning from dealing with the bodies of Vezemar, Grokar, and Hegrir.
I could hardly imagine what it must look like to him: his invalid prince standing in that darkened tent, nearly naked without his armor, holding only a white blade aloft.
Through my power alone, Yethyr was standing. Without pain. Without bone armor encasing him. Without conducting deathsong to puppet him like a corpse. I was conducting that music for him, leaving him free to move like his body was whole. He felt whole. His knees did not ache, and his bare feet stood firm and solid in the dirt.
He had not felt the ground with his toes since he was a child.
Tears welled up in his eyes that he fought to keep down. He felt like a child again, lost and trembling and shattered.
A Highlord of Hell could not break him with torment. In one night, I had broken him with something much simpler.
Spryne did not like that.
I suddenly became aware of him, another presence coiling beneath Yethyr’s skin. All the bones that did not listen to me stirred. They belonged to Spryne, I realized, and they were fighting me, resisting me, trying to knock Yethyr back to the earth.
The Prince tensed, recognizing the tremors in his legs for what they were. His knees buckled, but I kept him standing. Barely. Spryne was an endless roar, an endless tide that pushed and pushed. It was like being back in Hell. It was like having Hell itself inside you.
Now, I understood why Yethyr wore the armor. He needed all the support he could get in this constant war he waged with a demon.
I could be more than support, though. If I wanted to, I could wage this war in Yethyr’s stead. I was better equipped for it. I thought of all the powers my father had blessed me with; I could command a body in rebellion with itself, couldn’t I?
I thought fast.
Spryne owned most of his bones, that was true, but I currently controlled the rest of him—the sweatslicked skin, the labored lungs, the pumping blood…
The muscles that moved the bones.
I plucked at those muscles as if they were an instrument that could be played, trying to achieve a rhythm that would trap the demon-possessed bones into doing what I wanted.
The demon roared within Yethyr and pushed harder. The Prince began to shake from our duel, at the very edge of crumbling to the ground.
Spryne was probably stronger than I was, but he was still in Hell, and I was here, glimmering white in the palm of the Prince’s hand. I forced the bones in Yethyr’s knees to lock and waited.
I held him there. For one second. And then another. Long enough for Spryne to know that I could. Long enough for Yethyr to know that I could.
Only then did I urge him to sit back down, and to my relief, he listened. I didn’t think I could have resisted Spryne much longer, and I didn’t want the Prince or his demon to know that.
Let them wonder at my true limit.
Yethyr stumbled down onto the sleeping bag gracelessly. I could have done it for him, but taking his autonomy would have defeated the purpose.
Yethyr, more than anything else, wanted his body back, and for a brief moment, I had given it to him. Through my power, he had almost walked free.
The Prince clutched my hilt tighter and it was my strength thrumming through his fingers.
“Master,” Mandorias breathed. “You stood! Without armor!”
He had stood, so briefly that he almost feared it had been a delusion. Then he realized that he was still free of pain, even now, and swallowed back a dry sob.
“Leave me,” Yethyr choked.
“But your wound could reopen—”
“Leave me!” he hissed, and both Mandorias and Wes scurried out of the tent at once.
“Kettir.” Yethyr did not turn to look at the huntguard.
“My prince?”
“Guard the camp. Inform the others when they wake. I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Of course,” Kettir fled the tent just as hastily as Mandorias or Wes had.
Yethyr was glad. He waited until they were far from the tent. He waited until he felt Spryne’s gaze turn away from his bones. He waited until he was certain no one could hear him.
No one but me.
And with only me to witness in the dark solitude of the tent, Yethyr wept.
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