Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(13)

Wren bowed her head. If she could just explain… Sonya was fine, and they had performed three successful reapings together. Yes, they had gotten separated, but Wren had recovered from that bullshit betrayal, had fought off a swarm of tier-three ghosts, had climbed out of a sunken cavern in the deadliest part of the Bonewood, and still made it back before dawn. If that didn’t prove she deserved to be a valkyr, she didn’t know what did.

“Smith Colm and Smith Eiryn,” Svetlana said loudly and clearly. “Ready your blade.”

Both dropped to their knees, weapons unsheathed and held high in the exact pose they’d taken at the start of their trial.

There was no sound save for the wind in the bonetrees and the crackle of the torches.

“Do you offer it and yourselves, now and forever, in service to the House of Bone?”

“Yes, Lady-Smith Svetlana,” they said in unison.

“Stand, valkyr and reapyr. Death is as certain as the dawn, and just as a new day will come, so too will the new dead rise. And we will be there. To find. To fight. To free. So the living may thrive, and the dead may rest in peace.”

They were the House of Bone words, their most sacred purpose and rallying cry. Colm and Eiryn had passed the trial. They shared a grin, their shoulders rounding in relief before they moved to the side.

Then came Kalisen and Ginevra.

Leif and Imogen.

Finally Inara and Ethen.

“And Smith Sonya,” Svetlana added.

Wren’s head jerked up, and she stepped forward too, but her grandmother’s cold look stopped her short.

“Ready your blade,” Svetlana said, and all three went to their knees. “Rise, valkyr and reapyr… and reapyr.”

There was a buzzing in Wren’s ears as Svetlana spoke the rest of the words, and she could only watch numbly as her reapyr and the valkyr who had betrayed her accepted their victory.

“I would like to call special attention to Smith Inara,” Svetlana continued. Wren’s stomach twisted while Inara flashed her perfect white teeth. “For not only finishing the Bonewood Trial first among her fellow valkyr novitiates but for acts of bravery above and beyond the call of duty and for getting two of our precious reapyrs home safe.”

She gestured to one of her retainers, who stood on the ground next to the dais. He hurried forward, placing something on Inara’s head—a champion’s wreath, crafted from linked finger bones and dipped in gold.

Wren had never seen one before, though she’d heard tell of them. She glanced at her father—surely this was the sort of thing he’d been hoping for her to achieve. Something spectacular.

The three of them stepped aside, leaving Wren alone in front of the dais.

Silence fell once more, and it seemed to grow and shift, like a ghost gathering its strength.

She couldn’t take it anymore. “Lady-Smith Svetlana, I—” she tried again, but a raised hand was all it took to make the words die in her throat.

“Your blade,” Svetlana said. Hope flared inside Wren’s chest. They were so very nearly the words she wanted to hear…

She withdrew her dagger, uncertain. She dared a look at her father, but his expression told her nothing. Did he know what was coming? If he did, and it was bad, he’d try to warn her, wouldn’t he?

“Onto the ground,” Svetlana continued.

Wren moved to kneel, hardly daring to breathe, but a harsh burst of cold laughter made her falter.

“Oh no, not you,” Svetlana said, whatever humor had flickered there already gone from her face. “The blade.”

Wren’s fingers clenched convulsively on the hilt of Ghostbane. She glanced at Inara. Even she looked uncertain about what would come next.

Despite their bet, Wren had never really intended to part with the dagger because she had never intended to lose. Ghostbane was her most prized possession, the only gift her father had ever given to her.

But Wren pushed past that sentimental attachment to consider what Svetlana’s words truly meant. Every valkyr had a bone blade dagger, either inherited from a family member or gifted to them by the House of Bone when they began their training.

Without it, Wren wasn’t a valkyr… or a valkyr novitiate.

“But I need it,” Wren said blankly, still clutching the weapon.

Lady-Smith Svetlana was unmoved. “No, you don’t.”

Those words woke Wren up. “Yes, I do,” she said, taking a step forward. “My lady, please, you have to let me explain—”

“Wren,” came her father’s voice, sharp with warning.

Wren ignored him. “Grandmother,” she said daringly—desperately. She had never addressed the head of her house so informally before, and certainly not in public, but Svetlana was her father’s mother, her blood, and Wren needed the woman to remember that. Svetlana had always been a distant presence in Wren’s life, a figurehead, not family, but it was all she had left. “Please.”

Svetlana’s eyes flashed. “Bone blade daggers are for Bone House valkyrs, and you are not worthy of such a title.” The words cracked like a whip, shattering Wren’s barely held composure. “Not only did you fail to finish the trial with your reapyr, but you left her to traverse the Bonewood alone. If it weren’t for Inara, I shudder to think what might have happened.”

“If it weren’t for Inara, we never would have gotten separated in the first place,” Wren said furiously. “She was the one who—”