Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(57)

I pause, holding still and silent, and listen again. My attention catches on another rustling sound, like footsteps coming through the trees. Noni looks up too, and this time, so does Black Dog.

My imagination might play tricks on me—Noni’s might play tricks on her—but I trust the dog’s senses. Lees’s spear rolls in my hand, my grip ready, as I turn in the direction of the sound.

I see nothing . . . nothing . . . until all at once a dark shape is hurtling toward me. . . . A person running, a spear raised over her shoulder. In the pale light of the dying day, I see her face. Anki. She slows, and I see her eyes. Her gaze locks on my face as she cocks her arm back at the elbow and throws.

But her aim is compromised. The clutter of trees and the tricks of the shadows confuse her throw, and her spear bounces off the bent branch of a poplar that twists up through the shade. I don’t know what other weapons she might have, but I know I need to retrieve that spear before she does. I take off toward the place where it lies, not far beyond the circle of ground where Black Dog keeps watch over Noni and Kol.

I tear over the ground, Anki running hard from the other direction. I am so close, much closer than she is. I reach the spear, trading Lees’s to my other hand in favor of this larger, fiercer weapon. My feet plant, my arm rises over my shoulder, and I measure my aim.

A violent shudder tears through me, as if my will has torn in two. I ready myself to take a life—something that feels so wrong—while I revel in the privilege of ending the person who ended Chev. The two sides of my heart struggle, wrestling inside me, right up until Anki stops. She pulls a long flint blade from her belt. Black Dog appears at my heels, growling through bared teeth, and Anki aims the knife at the dog. The memory of Chev’s knife clutched in that same hand rushes back, and my resolve hardens.

The spear flies from my hand and finds its home, deep in Anki’s thigh. I know at the moment the spear pierces the hide of her pants that I’ve hit the mark I sought. Blood runs, pulsing, over her knee and down her calf. Thick, heavy blood, so dark it’s almost black. It won’t take long until she has nothing left to bleed.

Still she struggles forward, her face a knot of concentration and rage. “You may think that you will win. That I will die and you will have beaten me.” She takes a few stumbling steps, and my eyes move to Noni, vulnerable on the ground.

Black Dog watches, sniffing the air, as if he recognizes the scent of Anki’s blood.

“Yes, you may think that you’ve won,” she says. “I certainly won’t last.” She reaches down to press her fingers into the wound. The flow of blood doesn’t slow. It runs out over her hands, painting them red up to her wrists. “But I don’t need to survive to get what I want. I just need to kill you.”

Even as she threatens me, her legs give out and she collapses, landing in a thicket of thorns that tear small red gashes in her cheeks. She hardly seems to notice. Instead she struggles to her knees, grabs the spear with both hands, and pulls it out, leaving a gaping hole in her leg that goes all the way through muscle to bone. “Thank you for returning my spear,” she says. She braces all her weight on it and forces herself to her feet.

She raises the spear, steadying herself against a tree.

But there is no strength left in her, and she drops back to the ground, the spear still clasped in her fist.

For a long stretch of time I stand there, not making a move toward Anki or away. A breeze picks up, swirling the branches above my head. Could it be the movement of her Spirit as it leaves her? As the gust fades, I force myself to slide toward her. We are too short on weapons. I cannot leave this spear—even covered in her blood—cast aside on the ground.

As I tug it free from Anki’s hand, I think again of my brother’s knife—the one I’d seen her treating like a toy—the one she took from his body when he died. And I think of Dora’s words to her daughter—You know better than to steal from the dead. Does taking this spear make me no better than Anki?

But then I turn and see Noni and Kol lying side by side on the hard ground. Both of them weak. Both nearly defenseless.

I grasp the spear. I will return it to her clan when I see them again. I am not stealing from the dead, but for now I am borrowing this spear.

Back under the trees that overhang Kol and Noni, I slide to the ground.

“Is she dead?”

I startle at the sound of Kol’s voice. “You’re awake.”

“I am.”

I drag myself to his side. His eyes are open, and in the thin light of the fading day, I see a bit of fire in them. His head is damp with sweat. “Your fever’s coming down.”

“Maybe the plant is working.”

I slide over to Noni’s side. Blood still leaks around the feverweed packed around the dart, but after seeing Anki’s leg, this doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it did.

Kol sits up. “I thought I would die today,” he says. “And do you know what I feared?” He leans forward. Through the deepening shade, I can just barely see the shape of Kol’s mouth, a straight even line with only a hint of a curl at the corners. “I feared that I would never get the chance to marry you. That I would never get the chance to be your husband.”

I flinch at Kol’s words, and I hope he doesn’t see. I’ve feared the same thing today. I’ve feared that we would never marry. But not because Kol would die, but because Chev has died, because Arem has died. I feared our new duties to our clans would tear our betrothal apart. That the need to lead separate, independent clans would mean we would have to stay separate and independent, too.