Bonesmith (House of the Dead, #1)(60)
A visible shudder went down Julian’s spine. He hesitated, then shook his head resolutely. “No. It was mining that caused it, and no one would be fool enough to go digging down there anymore. It’s going to be a hard journey, but if we stick to the tree line…” He trailed off. “It’s our best chance.”
They climbed back down, Wren going over everything Julian had said. It was logically sound, and before their run-in the previous night, she might have agreed with it. But right now she didn’t.
Julian continued to pack up the bedding while Wren dug through their bags for breakfast.
As they sat together on the floor chewing dried meat and sour pickled vegetables, Wren asked about something she’d seen spanning the gaping maw of the Breach.
A bridge.
It had looked spindly and unfinished, a skeletal scrap of metal.
“Has anyone ever crossed it?”
Julian’s hand stilled as he reached for another piece of meat. He darted a glance up at her before focusing on his meal. “My father did,” he said shortly. “During the Uprising. It was built to sneak troops to the Wall.”
Oh. So that was how they’d tried to outsmart the Dominion soldiers. Instead of traveling miles to avoid the Haunted Territory, making it easy to predict their strikes, they’d decided to cut through, hoping to catch the Dominion soldiers and the garrisons at the Wall unprepared. Unfortunately for them, Locke’s scouting unit had found them first.
Looking to Julian, an unasked question hovered on the tip of her tongue: Was Julian’s father lucky enough to walk away, or had he died not long after crossing that bridge?
“Has anyone crossed it since?” she asked delicately.
“Why?”
“Because I think we should.”
“You want to cross over the actual Breach when we barely survived crossing the border into the Haunted Territory that surrounds it? You’re mad. This is last night all over again—you don’t think.”
“This is me thinking,” Wren protested. “We need to get to the prince, and this route you’ve proposed will waste too much time. I can’t afford to fail.”
“That’s all this prince is to you, isn’t he? A trophy to be won? A balm against your wounded pride? A chance to prove how tough you are, how many ghosts you can take on by yourself?”
He may have hit closer to the mark than Wren wanted to admit, but he didn’t understand. In the Bonewood, she had tried to do things the right way, the honorable way—and look what had happened. How else was she to regain her place? How else was she to prove herself to her father?
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And what is he to you? An object to bargain with? A pawn in a game?”
“My life, and the lives of my people, are no game,” he practically growled. “You see them out there, don’t you? You see what we’re up against? Every day we’re trapped in here is a day closer to all of us winding up like that. Do you know what we do with our dead? Have you ever even thought of it?” Wren didn’t respond, but it seemed he didn’t need her to. “We used to burn them.” Her stomach twisted, knowing what he would say next. “It didn’t work.”
Without severing the soul from the bones first, that spirit would be doomed to wander the living world for eternity, their bones too damaged for their soul to be properly reaped.
“Now we toss them into the ocean in cages. They sink to the bottom, undead but unable to hurt the living. Trapped there until we find a way to free ourselves from this waking nightmare.”
“I know it’s not a game,” Wren said, once she found her voice. “He’s a friend, okay? The prince is a friend.”
Julian’s anger seemed to have subsided somewhat. He slumped against the wall opposite, staring down at his food once more.
“And even though he’s a prince… they left him, didn’t they? Everyone at the fort, they discussed his life like he was… like he’s nothing but—”
“A pawn?” Julian supplied dryly.
Wren rolled her eyes but nodded. “I suppose being a pawn is better than being nothing at all.” He continued to stare at her, and she wished she’d never opened her mouth, but she plowed on. “I mean, I was missing too. Not that I’d fetch any sort of price—I’m no royal—but, well… Suspecting that no one will care if you’re gone and then knowing it for certain are two different things. The fact of the matter is, I care that Leo was taken, and I’m in a position to do something about it. So I will.”
Julian straightened a bit at her words, and his cool gaze roved her face, searching. Then his lips quirked. “Leo?”
Wren felt her cheeks flush, though she didn’t know why. “He told me to call him that.”
An eyebrow shot up. “I bet he did.”
“He wishes,” Wren muttered. “Look, I know it’s risky,” she said, referencing her original proposal. “And I know I’ve acted without thinking things through before….” She swallowed. “I’ve been doing that long before I met you. But this time I have thought this through, and given what I’ve seen so far, nowhere is safe. And these undead… They’re nothing like what I’ve studied or been told about. They’re intelligent and seem to have some means of communicating or connecting with one another. They have unified goals, some joint purpose, and I worry that the longer we take, the greater the chances they could bring the entire undead population of the Haunted Territory down upon us. The sooner we get through, the better.”