Yethyr wanted to sleep. So did Jaetheiri. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly, but it seemed to be related to their exhaustion and the tent. I guessed one had to do this sleeping thing in a tent? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that every obstacle in the way of that apparent goal made them both more and more irritable.
I wished I understood if only to understand how I could irritate them further. Conveniently, I did not have to do much.
His own people did the job for me.
“My prince, is it true we are to chase after escaped Datreans?” A large, broad hunter waylaid Yethyr in front of his tent. The man was clearly known to the Prince, seeing as he wasn’t killed for the interruption.
“The King has spoken,” Yethyr said hollowly.
“When are we to break camp?”
“Tomorrow, Grokar.”
“My prince, we just took the city. The men need rest.”
I need rest, Yethyr thought petulantly. Instead, he said, “Most men will get rest. Only my personal party has been blessed with this divine mandate.”
Grokar paled, decidedly not feeling blessed. “We are doing this alone?” Ah, so this man was part of this “personal party.” Presumably, that meant he reported directly to the Prince.
Poor man.
“The King has spoken,” Yethyr repeated sullenly.
Grokar fidgeted. “We have been encamped for months. We need time, certainly more than a day to pack everything up and sort through the spoils—”
“Those who wish to may do so, but the hunt will begin tomorrow and those who are not ready by then will be seen as refusing the call, which I will not judge.” He shrugged. “I will leave such judgments to Maethe and Heaven.”
Grokar swallowed. “We have many preparations to make then.”
“Aye. We most assuredly do.”
Yethyr would much rather leave it to the rest of his personal party to sort out, but his pathological exactness screwed him over as he was repeatedly pulled into conversations on logistics and cartography. He dictated messages to couriers as he ordered the preparation of provisions and people.
I tried to concentrate on it; I tried even to understand it, but his exhaustion was like a fog and it covered even my thinking.
By the time the sun had set, similar, but so different to my first sunrise that morning, Yethyr was issuing commands through a mental haze.
At some point, Jaetheiri dismissed whoever it was Yethyr was talking to and gently guided him to the tent they had been trying to reach hours before.
Jaetheiri issued commands to guards and at last, they were alone.
Jaetheiri’s sigh was loud as Yethyr shrugged out of my father’s coat. They stood before a bed. I knew what a bed was. I had memories of Zunad and Frida performing violently passionate acts in a bed less haphazardly built than this one.
The Prince struck me as having neither the energy nor the physical capability to attempt what Zunad’s memories dictated happened on a bed, so when Yethyr sat down on it, I figured it had to have another purpose.
Perhaps this elusive thing called “sleep?”
Jaetheiri delicately removed her bone circlet from her hair and shook loose her brown curls. Yethyr watched intently as she set the circlet aside; there was a ritual in her movements and in his stillness. It was important somehow, to both of them, that she not wear the circlet as she approached the bed.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Even I can admit when I have put it off enough.”
Wordlessly, Jaetheiri knelt and carefully unbuckled the bone greaves that helped him balance on his feet. Yethyr shut his eyes and conducted the deathsong below his waist to reach its end. At its sudden silence, his legs went limp, like a corpse thrall suddenly returned to death. All at once, I was confronted by just how weak he was. He could do nothing to help as Jaetheiri undressed him. He could feel it though.
Jaetheiri’s hands were gentle and quick. She had clearly done this thousands of times.
When she had finished with his legs, she reached for me and he jerked away.
“Don’t touch it!”
Jaetheiri flinched. “You don’t trust me to—”
“It’s not that.” Yethyr waved her words aside. “When I was in Hell, I killed a demon with it and—”
“You killed a demon?” She gasped. “You actually swung a sword?” The smile that burst across her face was the softest expression I had ever seen on her.
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Yethyr squirmed at the sight. “No need to be dramatic.”
“How could I not be?” She seized his gloved hand. “When you are so justly rewarded for your efforts.”
“This is no reward!” Yethyr pulled away. “The sword made itself lighter; it was not my strength that cut the demon down.”
Jaetheiri frowned. “Was this not the very reason you desired songsteel in the first place? To make up for your fading strength?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then so what?” She shrugged. “It is not the bowstring nor the hand that draws it that pierces flesh when an arrow flies. Maethe embraces all weapons.”
“This ‘Bonesong’ is more than a weapon.” Yethyr looked her in the eye. “Listen to me, Jaethe. When I killed that demon, I felt a trap spring closed around me. It invades my thoughts; it tries to invade my body. It is in me.”
Jaetheiri leaned back. “Like a demon?”
“The comparison is harsh but apt.” Yethyr unbuckled me from his belt himself. “The act of killing with it must seal a sort of pact. One writ in blood; one I do not yet know the terms of, but what I do know is that I feel it still.”
Yethyr looked down at me, in awe, in fear, in hunger. “There is something…squirming at the edge of my senses. I cannot speak to its intelligence, but it feels deeply. It’s angry and confused like a wounded hound unleashed in a fighting pit.”
I shuddered beneath his fingers. My docile facade had not convinced him and it frightened me. It frightened me to be seen so clearly.
“Mark my words, Jaethe I will tame this last creation of Datrea, but in the meantime, I am leashed to it and so are you.”
Jaetheiri eyed me warily. “I let it go twice.”
“And twice you have killed with it, binding you to it just as it has bound me, perhaps to an even stronger degree. That is not a bond you want to strengthen any further, Tezem. Using Bonesong to kill comes with some sort of price, one I am hesitant to pay. We must avoid it until I understand it more and you must avoid it altogether. I have…practice in these sorts of battles. For your own safety, stay away from it.”
Jaetheiri’s bucked at the order, I could feel it through our bond. She still wanted me, try as she did to repress it. She wanted deeply, so very deeply, and—
“I understand, my prince.”
Yethyr smiled gratefully. “I fear I have only stumbled on a new curse, one I do not want you to suffer. Do you understand? What this ‘Bonesong” is…it is dangerous, regardless of whether its intentions are good or ill.”
“I understand.”
Yethyr sighed, looked down at me once more, set me against the bedpost, and let me go. I was startled at the sudden separation. It was the first time I had ever been properly set down while a wielder of mine still lived.
Without Yethyr’s eyes, I was both blind and not. The darkness heightened my senses.
I could hear Yethyr’s deathsong at last go silent. I could hear him collapse on the bed like a puppet with cut strings. I could hear the soft rustling of Jaetheiri gently undressing him and setting his bone armor down on the ground.
But I could feel the bond I had with both of them more strongly too, ethereal and unbreakable. If I really focused, I could almost still see through Jaetheiri’s eyes.
That probably meant that if they bloodied my blade enough, I would be able to see through them no matter how far they were physically.
But it would take time to get to that point.
Yethyr was annoyingly determined not to ever kill with me again, which meant I was going to have to trick him into it, again and again. I was not sure how I could do that, but I would have to figure it out and I had to figure it out fast.
My duel with Yethyr was a duel against time. I had to dominate him before he figured out how to dominate me, and right now, he had every advantage. He had agency; he had knowledge; he even had Wes on his side.
But I had the knowledge of Wes’ betters locked within me and little by little Yethyr’s knowledge would be mine eventually.
And so would his agency, with time.
So I waited. Yethyr settled down in the bed and Jaethe slipped into the tent right beside him.
For minutes, many minutes, both of their minds were quiet. Their minds floated peacefully and I found myself drifting through the ebb and flow of that tranquility. Their eyes were shut and there was only darkness.
Then within Jaetheiri, I suddenly saw colors, images, fragments of thoughts that were not thoughts. I could see through her eyes even though she did not hold me. Perhaps this deep tranquility that sleep induced lowered their defenses enough for me to see through them even with a weak bond.
Even through shut eyes, I could see!
A bed, so big it would not have fit in the tent.
Crimson sheets. A crimson smile. A crimson dagger.
The flashes did not make sense; they were not real, but Jaetheiri saw them and they meant something real to her.
Dreaming, my maker’s memories supplied the term. Jaetheiri was dreaming. I was awed, moved by the soft paintings that flickered across her unseeing eyes. They were constructed from her unconscious mind, that much was clear, and I was fascinated.
Curiously, I turned my attention to Yethyr, wondering if these images, these “dreams” would be different for him, and found myself immediately consumed with the sound of deathsong and the stench of Hell.
It made sense, I reasoned. Of course, a twisted man like him would have dark dreams. And yet…the song playing in Yethyr’s head was not mere deathsong. It was fuller, encompassing a more complete frequency than Yethyr could even hear. I lurched at the wrongness. Yethyr’s mind did not have the knowledge to construct a sound so complete, so hellish, so familiar.
This was not a dream.
I shuddered down to my steel. Somehow, Yethyr’s mind had drifted down to Hell, real Hell, as if a Hellgate had been opened using his very bones. His body was sound asleep in the bed and yet within, he tiptoed over bone bridges, scraped against brimstone, and flinched at every rattle in the dark.
I was so used to Yethyr analyzing anything and everything that it was unsettling to feel him react so blindly. He was not thinking; he was still asleep; he was still dreaming. He was a defenseless stumbling child in the dark and he was terrified.
No, horrified. Terror implied surprise, but Yethyr’s inner child knew exactly where he was and why he was there.
Because Spryne had come to visit him.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
I will be posting a chapter every day until July 30, 2025. Make sure to follow the story and come back to read more!
If someone could eavesdrop on your dreams, what would they see?
