Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)(63)

Something tickled her senses, the specter of a scent.

Snow. And frozen blood.

Then it was gone, and Viv tried to convince herself she’d imagined it.

When she strode back into the shop, Gallina met her at the door, knife in hand. Viv shook her head. “Nobody there. But …” She stared at Satchel, who glanced back at her. “I think you should maybe stay with me tonight. Just in case.”





31




I stood upon that windswept promontory, my hair a black flag whipping behind me, as the dark clouds above trailed like tattered banners across the sky. The grasses tumbled in purring waves, moonlight limning their crests.



Far off, the sea seemed still, though it was not. Its heaves and swells were too broad and slow at this remove to truly mark. In my mind’s eye, though, I knew their fury, trapped beneath the livid line of the horizon.



And solitary before it, like a pale tree, its autumn leaves storm-tossed, she awaited me.



Her eyes glittered black, finding mine across the seething distance.



The first—



Viv dropped the book onto her chest and sighed. She watched the tiny window high on the side of her room where the lamp quaked its light along the wall. Outside, the wind kicked up—maybe it even seethed—and every breath she inhaled seemed to bring with it the phantom scent of frozen copper.

“This book is not gods-damned helping,” she muttered, setting Stark House on the floor beside the strawtick mattress.

She glanced at the satchel resting against the sea chest. “You awake in there?” whispered Viv.

The bag didn’t rustle or otherwise respond.

Sighing again, she sat up and doused the lantern, lying back in the darkness. A slash of moonlight raked across the ceiling like a gap of sky visible from the depths of a canyon.

Eventually, the light faded, and so did she.



* * *



When she dreamed, she dreamed of Varine the Pale.

They faced one another on a familiar dark promontory whose grasses hissed in an insistent wind.

Of course it was familiar. She’d only just read about it.

The necromancer’s eyes were as black as words could make them, pits of nothing in white flesh, her hair unfurling in dark ribbons rich as earth watered with blood. Her lips were blue. Lifeless, but full and smiling.

Above her, the moon itself was inscribed with her sigil, a diamond with branches like horns.

Viv’s breath dwindled, her chest constricted by what felt like huge, crushing hands. The grass began to shrink away even as other forms rose from the earth. Their eyes glittered with icy blue pinpricks of starlight as they staggered upright, earth falling away in clods and streamers.

“I see you, Viv.” Varine’s form swelled, as though the grass were her mantle and she was gathering it around herself, magnifying her tenfold.

No, she was approaching, gliding fast between the wights that shambled toward their dumbstruck prey.

Viv shook herself and snatched for the saber at her hip, but it was missing. Only then did she notice the heavy weight slung across her back. Her searching fingers found the hilt of the greatsword over one shoulder and gratefully tightened on it. The leather creaked, and a current passed from the steel and into her flesh. She couldn’t have let go if she’d wanted to.

She didn’t want to.

“You have something that belongs to me,” purred Varine, looming impossibly large, empty and enormous, while the world hissed away from her like soot blown from white marble. Until there was nothing, nothing but Varine.

Viv unsheathed the blade and brought it before her, solid and right and hers.

“Blackblood.” Varine’s whisper boomed like thunder, and the necromancer was before and behind and above and, inevitably, below.

And then she was inside her like a blade between the ribs, cold and laughing.

Viv snapped awake in the darkness, clutching at her side and the fading burn of ice there.

Her other arm was flung across the bedframe, fingers tight on the greatsword’s hilt.

On Blackblood’s hilt.



* * *



Viv sat back on her haunches, her thigh burning and stretching with the motion. She recorked the bottle of bonedust and watched as Satchel boiled out of his resting place and into her room.

When his eyes lit blue, she said, “Couldn’t sleep. Do you mind?”

“You’d like some company?” he asked in his hollow, echoing voice.

“I guess so. Glad to see you’ve dropped the ‘m’lady,’ anyway.”

Satchel stared at the greatsword where it throbbed with lamplight on the bedframe.

“It has a name, doesn’t it?” asked Viv. “She has a name.”

“She does,” he replied.

“Blackblood,” said Viv.

His gaze sharpened. “Have you been dreaming?”

“So that is what she’s called,” Viv breathed. Then, “Only once,” she admitted.

The homunculus sighed, dead leaves on stone. “My Lady will come.”

“Not if Rackam finds her first,” said Viv. “But if he hasn’t done that by now … then you may be right.”

“Rackam?” asked Satchel.