Page 20 of Serpent and Shadow

Then it agonized me.

Was he dead? Was this what happened when an object sat on the body of a dead person?

But that didn’t make sense. The ring wasn’t dead. Wouldn’t it still show me wherever the ring was, regardless of the condition of its wearer? Another, horrifying thought hit me. Would Malefic have buried him already? The thought made me sick, and brought that agonizing grief back so intensely I nearly passed out.

Could the ring itself have been destroyed?

Wait. That made the most sense.

Despite the bad news it represented, the thought of the ring and not Bones being destroyed caused the knot in my chest to loosen marginally.

That had to be it. They must have found the ring, destroyed it, or––

A grating, metallic sound broke the silence in my mind.

Slow, laborious, like iron scraping lingeringly over stone.

I froze.

The sound continued weakly, distinctly organic in nature. A machine couldn’t make that sound. It moved like something alive. It moved like an animal.

I stared into the darkness, unmoving, mostly in shock. I wasn’t alone. It took a few more seconds for my mind to pull that apart, and put it back together in the only way that made sense. I fought the understanding for some reason, even if it meant neither of the more catastrophic scenarios were true.

Was it him?

Whatever it was, it sounded only a few feet away. I couldn’t see anything moving, or anything at all, not even a darker or lighter silhouette.

The utter completeness of that darkness made it feel cloying, nearly alive, but I realized something else. I no longer felt only myself there.

And whatever I was feeling, it didn’t come from Bones’s tower apartment. I couldn’t see the light of the tower room through my closed eyelids. I couldn’t smell its unique blends of old stone, smoke, the lingering scent of Bones’s cologne, his fruit teas and coffees, the confusing mix of smells that came from his potion and ritual ingredients. I could no longer hear the fire crackle and pop, or the wind rattle the glass panes.

Another presence lived here, with me, and it was somewhere else.

Bones? I ventured cautiously.

I heard a rustle, a movement of skin and cloth to mix with that more grating sound of metal. Something about all those sounds felt shockingly visceral, like I experienced my own skin dragged over a cold, hard surface. Hearing it was the same as feeling it. That touch of metal and skin made me grit my teeth even as some part of me tried to reach for my throat.

I didn’t think he’d answer.

I’d already decided that he probably couldn’t answer.

He was hurt.

Gods, he was hurt as badly as I’d feared, worse maybe.

I could feel it. I could feel it as if––

Go away, Leda.

His words hurt as they hit into my mind. At the same time, they wrenched out of him; I could feel the effort it took to speak them. When they left him, a cold, dense, throbbing exploded behind my eyes. It felt like I’d been hit in the temple with a mallet.

Go away. Get the fuck out of here.

Those words took just as much effort.

I think his presence shocked me more than the voice.

The presence hung around me, as tangible as that rubbing of bare skin over stone. I could feel it as skin, nearly smell it as skin and hair and breath. I could feel the effort in his lungs and muscles as he forced his mind to work, as he struggled to stay awake. He fought his way through consciousness for the sole purpose of forcing his words into me.