18

Shane

shane raised her ax high, bringing it down through a particularly dense patch of pine. Branches splintered and pine needles exploded in all directions with a satisfying crunch. Would it have been easier to go around? Probably. But Shane was in the mood to hack something apart.

They still had no leads on the whereabouts of Fi and her Butterfly Curse. Shane was having a rough time finding an outlet for her rage among the peaceful people of Everlynd. All the soldiers of the Red Ember were either on guard duty, patrolling for Witch Hunters, or patching up the sad little huts so no Witches would get drenched in the next big storm. She’d been sorely tempted to invite herself along every time Captain Hane set out to patrol for Witch Hunters, but she always stopped short at the last second. What if Perrin found something while she was gone? What if Red needed her and she wasn’t here?

Shane wiped sweat from her forehead, listening to a pair of blue jays jeering at each other overhead. Perrin and the Paper Witch spent every day locked in the tower, working on Perrin’s dream magic. Not that it had gotten them any closer to Fi.

The only thing Perrin seemed to be getting out of it was the bags under his eyes, and all Shane had was one creepy night when Perrin had appeared in her dream as if through a heavy mist, calling out for Fi. Long after he disappeared, his voice echoed in Shane’s dreams. She’d had nothing but nightmares—first of Briar as the bone creature dragging Fi by a golden chain, and then of Fi with her own flesh melting away as she became a creature of the Spindle Witch.

She’d started awake so suddenly that she elbowed Red in the pallet next to hers. Red yelped, waking Cinzel, who started whining and howling at the top of his mangy lungs until nobody got any sleep. She just hoped it meant Perrin was close to harnessing his powers; four people and a wolf under one dilapidated roof was a pretty tight squeeze.

Her ax stuck in the gap of a thick, stubborn branch. Shane lifted her boot, kicking the branch until it splintered away. She ducked through her newly forged path in the trees. Maybe she couldn’t go out with the patrols, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t scout around the camp. That’s what she was doing—scouting. Not taking her ax for a walk because the Paper Witch had politely but firmly suggested that she blow off some steam elsewhere.

Tempers were running a little high these days.

A sound beyond the trees caught Shane’s ears. She stilled. Something was tearing through the underbrush, moving fast.

She hadn’t actually expected to find anything out here, but something was definitely coming her way. She adjusted her grip on the ax, holding it like a proper Steelwight weapon instead of a cudgel.

The forest had gone quiet, the blue jays vanished. Shane listened hard. She could pick out bootsteps between the cracking of branches and the rustling of brush. Someone was in this forest, running.

She caught a glimpse of a red tunic first, followed by a flash of dark hair. Then a man stumbled through the aspens in front of her, dirty and ragged and breathing hard. Shane’s mouth fell open as he skidded to a stop, lifting his head to reveal very familiar features.

“Armand Bellicia?” Shane said, shocked. She was lucky she didn’t drop her ax and sever a few of her toes.

“Fi’s partner . . . Shane,” he said between pants. “I am so glad to see you.”

She glanced back as though there might be another Shane standing behind her that Armand was talking to. She had honestly never thought she would see this particular snaky bastard again, much less scrambling around in the backwoods of Andar. She opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but Armand wasn’t even looking at her anymore. He was looking desperately over his shoulder.

“They’re after me!” he warned, and Shane realized there was still something moving through the trees—something much bigger than the weasel-faced heir of Bellicia.

“Who’s after you?” she began.

A creature made entirely of bones burst through the trees, toppling the thin aspens and snapping the branches off bushy pines. Armand yelled and threw himself out of the way. Shane swore under her breath, swinging her ax out before she even got a proper look at the thing.

Her blade slammed into a thick skull that must have belonged to a bear or a wolf. The rest of its body was malformed, with too many rib bones and long hind legs that made its gait sickly and uneven. Long teeth pitted with yellow grime grinned out of its sagging jaw. It looked like the bones had been chosen haphazardly, pieces of many different creatures jigsawed together and held fast by—

Golden thread.

Shane’s ax had chipped the skull and thrown the creature backward a few steps. It shook the blow off, the bones rattling as it straightened with little more than a deep gouge under its eye socket.

“They’re undead. They belong to the Spindle Witch!” Armand yelled from where he’d hit the dirt.

“Yeah, I worked that out!” Shane growled.

The creature leapt forward, snapping its bone jaws. Shane caught it with the flat of the ax, heaving the monstrous beast away. Its malformed back legs scrabbled in the grass, and Shane darted in before it could recover, swinging her ax wide and smashing it into the body this time. Curved ribs splintered and burst. The creature’s jaw gave another disconcerting rattle, and it lunged down at Shane, its teeth almost closing around her shoulder. She dodged just in time. Muscles clenching, she slammed her ax handle into the jaw, breaking the joint.

Its mouth hung loose in its socket now, and the entire chest cavity was nothing but a mess of splintered bone. Still, it limped toward her. Shane swore under her breath.

She had a feeling there was only going to be one way to end this. She dug her heels in, turning the ax to favor the blunt back of the blade. The creature’s feet scratched through the dirt, like a bull readying to charge. Shane held her ground. The bleached skull lowered, and the creature launched itself forward, barreling toward her.

Shane waited until the last possible second, then threw herself to the side, bringing the ax down with all her might over the creature’s head. This time, the skull shattered, chunks of bone pelting Shane while the rest of it crumpled to the ground.

The body was still moving. She lifted the ax again, bringing it down over and over until the segmented spine was nothing but bone chips and dust. The creature had stopped twitching finally, but she struck it once or twice more, just to be sure.

Shane wiped a shaky hand across her face. She really hated everything to do with the Spindle Witch.

Armand got to his feet, glancing around warily. “That wasn’t the only one.”

A scream rang out from the direction of the Everlynd camp. Shane’s guts lurched. She chambered her ax on her shoulder and took off through the grove, running as fast as she could. She could hear Armand’s footsteps thundering after her. She doubted he was coming along to help—more likely he needed protection. Shane didn’t know how the little lordling was even here, much less how he’d gotten on the Spindle Witch’s bad side, but she did know that was a one-way trip.

Shane leapt through the last line of trees and reached the edge of camp at a dead sprint. Screams and shouts rang in her ears. Two of the bone creatures had gotten ahead of her, and they’d gone straight for the nearest houses, overturning carts and baskets of wild apples in their rampage. They were both a hodgepodge of animal pieces, as tall as horses with a snarl of ill-fitting ribs. Shane’s stomach went queasy imagining the stockpile of bones the Spindle Witch had to be sitting on to create these.

Some people were fleeing deeper into camp. Others had taken up weapons and were trying to face the creatures down. Shane was glad to see Captain Hane among them, the tall, dark-haired leader of the Red Ember smashing a long plank of wood against one of the creatures’ legs. The board splintered with a crunch. Captain Hane dove out of the way of the monster’s bristling claws, her brown skin glistening with sweat. A group of men and women trapped on the roof they’d been rebuilding threw buckets of hot tar, splattering the bone faces with gashes of black.

Shane lost track of Armand as soon as they hit the houses, but she had much more important things to worry about. The second bone creature had someone cornered against a house, and as soon as she was a few feet closer, she could see it was—

“Red!” Shane ran straight for her. Red had thrown her arms around the monster’s muzzle, desperately holding the clacking jaws shut while Cinzel snapped at its bony ankles. Red’s wild eyes locked on Shane’s. Then the creature wrenched its long neck, and Red shrieked as she was flung off, her head cracking against the stone wall.

“Red, hang on!” Shane smashed the blunt of her ax right into the creature’s shoulder socket and skidded under its bristling ribs. She hauled Red to her feet. “I’ve got you.”

The creature lunged again. Shane barely had time to drag a dazed Red out of the way, pushing the unsteady girl behind her. It slammed into the stone wall of the house skull first. For one second Shane thought it had taken itself out—but the creature only unfolded slowly from a pile of bones, knees creaking and joints snapping. The little golden threads glinted in the sun.

If an ageless corpse with a cracked face could laugh at her, Shane had a feeling that’s what it was doing right now.

“Still with me, Red?” Shane asked. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the bone creature, but she snaked a hand back, searching for the other girl’s.

Warm fingers wrapped around hers. “I’m alive,” Red groused, dusting her ragged skirt. “Now stop pawing at me and finish that thing off.” She squeezed Shane’s hand once and then pushed her back into the fight.

“Any idea what these things are?” Captain Hane shouted. Shane risked a glance over her shoulder to see the woman throwing her ruined plank of wood aside and drawing her broadsword.

Shane shook her head. “Undead . . . somethings. You can’t kill it. You just have to keep hacking until it’s in small enough pieces.”

Luckily, they weren’t alone. The street was suddenly thick with the soldiers of the Red Ember, men and women in swirling red capes clutching pikes and staffs as they charged the creatures.

Shane hefted her ax and joined the fray. She ducked the snapping jaws and went straight for the base of the bone monster’s neck, knocking the cracked skull off with a few expert swings. The soldiers made quick work of the rest. Soon both creatures were just ugly piles of tar-streaked bones. Shane slung her ax onto her back and leaned on her knees, taking a second to catch her breath. She looked up at Captain Hane through her sweaty bangs.

“A little present from the Spindle Witch,” she panted.

Captain Hane nodded. Her expression was grim. “Bone creatures were said to be among those that ravaged Andar a hundred years ago when the Spindle Witch waged her war.”

“Fantastic,” Shane muttered. “Here I was just thinking we weren’t outmatched by quite enough yet.” She kicked one of the shattered bones while Captain Hane turned to the soldier at her side.

“Scout the forest. Make sure there are no more of them. We’ve had enough surprises for one day.”

As the man headed off, Shane noticed a familiar figure among the people of Everlynd, his nose wrinkling as he considered the crushed apples splattered over his expensive boots. Shane crossed the street and hauled Armand out of the crowd.

“You owe me some answers,” she growled.

Captain Hane crossed her arms, looking Armand up and down. “Who’s this?” she asked, unimpressed.

“He’s a . . . someone I know.” Shane wasn’t even going to imply Armand might be an acquaintance, much less a friend. She turned back to the lordling and shook a finger in his face. “Now that I’ve saved you at least twice over, you better tell me how you got here.”

“You can thank your old partner for that,” Armand sniffed.

Shane’s hands fell back to her side. “Fi?” She couldn’t believe it. “You were with Fi? How? Why?”

Armand scoffed. “Not by choice. I was threatened.”

“Oh, like I care,” Shane snapped. In fact, good for her partner. If Fi had been letting herself get jerked around by her ex again, Shane would have had to kick her tail for a whole new reason. She snagged Armand by the collar, giving him a rough shake. “Where was she? Is she okay?”

Armand’s expression twisted into a grimace. “Last I saw her, she was fighting the Spindle Witch. And losing.” Shane’s stomach twisted like he’d jabbed a knife in it. Armand pushed a hand through his hair to hide his shudder. “Some horrible bone creature threw me into the river, and when I washed up, there were more of them waiting for me. I’ve been running for my life since.”

Shane jerked him down to her height. “You left her there to fight alone?” Her voice was low and dangerous.

Armand just gave her a flat look. “I was washed away by the river,” he repeated, enunciating every word.

Shane barely heard him anyway. Her mind was roaring like a hurricane. Fi was still all right, or at least she had been recently. And, most importantly, she was fighting the Spindle Witch, just like she’d promised.

“It’s not over yet . . .” Shane said, almost to herself.

Armand shook her off with a snort. “It is for me. I want no part in any of this. Have a horse prepared for my journey back to Bellicia, and I will happily get out of your way.”

Armand had probably lived his whole life getting off the hook that easy. It wasn’t happening this time. Shane yanked him back by the sleeve, more than a little satisfied by the sound of that expensive coat ripping.

“You’re not going anywhere until you’ve given a full account of what you saw to anyone and everyone who wants to hear it.”

Captain Hane stepped forward. “Starting with me. I have a feeling the council will be very interested in what you have to say.”

Shane was glad to let the woman have him. She watched with satisfaction as Hane marched Armand toward the tower, most of the Red Ember soldiers following her. Nikor could rake him over the coals like he’d been salivating to do with Red.

Red.

Shane jerked her head around. Where had Red disappeared to? She’d lost track of the other girl in the scuffle. She hadn’t seemed that badly injured, but Shane couldn’t banish the image of Red’s skull cracking against the wall.

A few soldiers were pulling debris from a collapsed house while the camp’s healers tended to the wounded. The tar-stained bones from the creature she’d pulverized gleamed in the sunlight. But there was no sign of Red, or Cinzel. Shane wouldn’t put it past her to slink off and lick her wounds alone.

She caught the arm of a young blond man—Soren, a soldier of the Red Ember and Nikor’s cousin. That nasty expression must run in the family.

“Did you see what happened to Red? The girl with the wolf. She was right here.”

“You mean the Spindle Witch’s traitor,” the man spat. “Maybe she disappeared after bringing her creatures down on us.”

“Red had nothing to do with this. Those creatures were attacking her, too, if you bothered to notice.” Shane was horribly tempted to break a nose for the first time in a while.

Soren sniffed, shrugging her off. “Maybe she called them, or maybe the Spindle Witch sent them to kill her. Either way, no one is safe with her around.”

Shane had no time to waste putting Soren in the dirt right now. A pit had opened up in her stomach. Something was wrong.

“Red!” Shane yelled, moving away from the knot of people, twisting her head to look up and down every street. Then she heard it—the low, tense whine of a wolf. And there, in the distance, a flicker of crimson disappearing around a corner.

Shane cursed, leaping over the scattered bones and racing after her. Where was Red going? Their little house was in the opposite direction.

“Red, hey!” she called. But the figure just kept walking. In fact, Shane was pretty sure she’d sped up. Not running from the battle. Running from Shane.

She caught Red at the outskirts of the camp. Shane banked around a corner and found herself in a narrow alley, a twisted apple tree bursting through the cracks in a crumbled wall. Fallen globes of fruit crunched under Red’s boots.

“Red, stop!”

Red paused, her back stiff. Her curls were disheveled, her long skirt ripped along the hem. Only now did Shane realize Cinzel wasn’t padding obediently at her side but yanking at her torn skirt, whining helplessly around a mouthful of cloth.

Dread pooled in Shane’s stomach. She reached for Red’s shoulder and barely leapt back in time as a dagger flashed from Red’s sleeve, nearly slicing off her fingers.

“Miss me?” The voice was Red’s, but the glowing silver eyes piercing her belonged to someone else entirely. Shane’s guts gave a hard lurch.

“Wraith,” she hissed.

Cinzel pressed against her legs. Shane unslung her ax and pointed it at the Wraith. “Get out of that body right now.”

“Or what?” The Wraith blinked Red’s pretty eyelashes. “I don’t think you’re going to touch me in this skin. And I’m very comfortable here.” He flicked the dagger easily from hand to hand.

The stench of rotting apples was so thick Shane was choking on it. Or maybe it was a memory she was choking on: Red’s ashen face when she’d told them about the Spindle Witch’s assassin. She couldn’t stand the thought of that monster crawling in Red’s mind.

“Red,” Shane said through her teeth, “I know you’re in there. You have to fight this—shove that creepy Witch out and come back to me.”

“How touching. She can’t hear you, of course, after that knock she took to the head. But I can just imagine what she’d say.” The Wraith’s eyes gleamed as the face in front of her softened into a horrible bittersweet smile that Shane could just imagine the real Red giving her. “Shane, please—you have to stop the Wraith. Even if you have to hack me to pieces.”

“Stop it,” Shane growled.

The Wraith stepped forward, holding Red’s arms wide as though he were daring her to do it.

Shane could feel Cinzel shivering against her, whining in confusion and fear. Her pulse thudded in her head. She should force him out of that body—smash her ax handle into the girl’s leg and snap her knee. But this was Red.

Shane’s grip tightened on the ax. Then it slipped from her hands, thudding into the dirt.

The Wraith tossed Red’s hair back, smug. “That’s what I thought. I’m taking this little traitor back to the Spindle Witch, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Shane ground her hands into fists. “Just because I can’t kill you in there doesn’t mean I can’t stop you.”

She lunged all at once, driving Red back against the wall. Red’s elbow clapped off the hard stones as they grappled for the knife. But she didn’t yelp in pain. She just laughed—a low, vicious laugh that was nothing like Red’s.

“Get out,” Shane hissed. Then she almost lost her grip as Cinzel seized her coat in his teeth, wrestling her away. “Mutt, I’m trying to save her!”

“Your helplessness is delicious.” The Wraith’s voice dripped with glee. “How many bones do you think you’d have to break to stop me from taking this body? A leg? Both legs? Here—I’ll get you started.”

He twisted Red’s hand cruelly in Shane’s grip until she could feel the bones straining, Red’s fingers bent back against the wall, her wrist tight enough to snap.

“Stop it. Hey!” Shane shouted. But he just kept bending.

Shane let go. The Wraith cracked his elbow right across her jaw. Shane staggered back, tasting blood on her lip.

Red’s body uncurled, holding the knife at her own neck. The Wraith took a step toward the end of the alley.

Shane swiped blood off her lip, eyes blazing. “I’ll hunt you down. I’ll never stop until I find her.”

The Wraith took another step, tracing the knife down Red’s throat. “What do you think will be left of her by the time you do?”

Shane’s heart stuttered. Then a voice soared above her.

“Hold her, Shane!”

A figure vaulted over the broken wall.

“Perrin!” Shane called in relief.

The Wraith spun toward him. Shane seized that moment of distraction, catching Red under the arms and hauling the girl back against her chest. The knife jerked toward Red’s neck. Shane grabbed the blade barehanded, flinging the dagger away.

“Looks like I’m just in time,” Perrin said breathlessly, darting under the apple boughs. He met Red’s furious silver eyes. “You didn’t think you could use that kind of magic here without someone noticing, did you? I’ll show you what real dream magic is.” Then Perrin’s eyes darted to Shane. “No matter what happens, don’t let go.”

“Not a problem,” Shane promised, holding her tight.

Red was the one person she would never let go of.