Broken Souls and Bones (Stonegate #1)

The feral baying of the king's hounds stirred her from the void. Mists tangled around knobby branches, and the sting of lingering heat from the flames still burned behind her eyelids.

"Keep them closed." Leather-wrapped fingers brushed over her lashes. "Don't let anyone see the silver in those eyes, girl. Hear me?"

The voice was hoarse and rough, older than hers but not as deep as her pap's.

"If we get caught, we're dead. Maybe we shouldn't have done it." A new voice spoke—a boy's, young enough that it cracked and squeaked, uncertain whether it belonged to a man or a child.

"Quiet. We're here now, and we're seeing it through," the first man snapped. "Get yourself into the damn shadows and stay down. Go. Go."

A petulant protest rose from the boy, but in the end, the scrape of boots faded into the briars of the wood, lost within the mists. The girl shifted and whimpered, muscles aching from the run. Her mother had told her to run—screamed at her to do it—and not look back.

Ropes held her tightly when she shifted, binding her as she tried to break free, desperate all at once to find her family.

Through the haze in her mind, she recalled the cruel sound of the door cracking against the wall, the iron and bronze blades cutting through the air, seeking flesh to split. She recalled the screams and the blood.

So much blood.

"Stop fidgeting, godsdammit."

She froze. The ropes keeping her bound were arms. Her cheek was pressed to cold leather that reeked of ash, sweat, and the bite of forest mist.

Buried beneath a dark cowl, she could make out a stubbled chin. It wasn't bearded in long double braids and bone beads like her pap's, but the ghost of a beard was there.

She wanted to cry out, to plead with the man to let her be. There were straps of leather for knives and weapons over his shoulders, much the same as the raiders who burned her village. Fear choked off her pleas into nothing but jagged whimpers.

"Not a word, girl," he whispered. She felt her weak body lowered to the chilled forest floor. Brambles and little pebbles jabbed into her ribs. She tried to shift, but those leather-wrapped fingers curled around her chin, tilting her head back. "This'll sting, but it won't last long. Don't make a sound."

A hiss slid through the girl's teeth when a sharp bite of pain lanced across her throat. Through hooded lashes, she watched the faceless man pull back a knife. He mumbled strange words and brushed his fingers through something wet and hot on her neck.

She trembled, keeping still, terrified he might use the edge of his blade to finish her off.

In the next breath, her eyes fluttered, heavy with fatigue, and his sturdy arms scooped her up once again.

The fear burning in her veins faded to something gentler, something calm. Enough, the girl thought, that she might fall into a deep sleep.

Until her body shifted and she was handed over to new arms, thicker and smellier.

"She going to talk?" A smoke-burned rasp of a new voice broke the darkness.

"I've made certain she won't recall much of anything about this night. See that she's forgotten from others' memories, too."

"With what you be payin', I'll bury her in the realm of souls if you want. Won't be found, this one. You've my word."

Her pulse raced, her mind grew frantic, but her body kept still as heavy steps thudded across wood. Somewhere beneath it all was the lap of the tides and the smell of brine and rotting scales.

With a grunt and a breath of smoking spices in her face, the girl was nestled beside rigging and damp linens.

"Blessed little bairn, you are." The man spoke in the common tongue, a dialect known throughout the three kingdoms and over the Night Ledges, where feral folk acknowledged no king. Doubtless he was a tide wanderer, a soul without a land to call his own. "They coulda torn out your skinny little throat."

His thumping steps plodded away over wooden boards—a longship. She was on a boat.

No, she couldn't leave. There were people she was leaving behind. But… who?

As though the thick mists of the wood had dug into her skull, the girl could not recall the fading faces in her mind. It was merely a feeling, a sense that there was something—someone—she was forgetting.

Before the weight of exhaustion drew her into a murky sleep, the girl saw a darkly clad figure on the water's edge, a glow of flames at his back.

Across the breast of his leather jerkin was a double-headed raven. The emblem of Dravenmoor—the enemy kingdom. The land behind the raiders.

By the gods, they'd found her, and the curse in her eyes had finally destroyed her entire world.