An Inheritance of Ashes by Leah Bobet Read Free Book Online

untangled it from my shirtsleeve and held it out, trembling. Nat caught my left wrist much more carefully than before and pinned it precisely, fingers spread apart, on the cool flagstones. Her free hand laced through the loose fingers of my right hand. “Squeeze if it hurts,” she said shortly. Papa’s voice rose, a furious echo, behind it. That knife hovered over my tendons, close as his sour breath in my face, bleeding violence onto my skin. My throat went dry as fireplace sparks.
    â€œThey’re your friends,” I told myself, breath hitched, arms shaking.
    â€œYeah, we are,” Tyler said, and pressed the tip of the blade to my skin. I shut my eyes.
    The knife, coldly burning, dug into my swollen hand.
    It wasn’t a knife; it was a live coal. It seared through my hand and exploded in my head, shaking all the little birds of my thoughts into nothingness. Pain kindled orange behind my eyes. I gasped, and my squeeze around Nat’s fingers tightened into a death grip.
    Be brave,
I thought raggedly.
Be brave. Don’t make a sound
. Tyler turned the knife, and all my courage drowned in the flood.
    I yanked my hand away, but Tyler’s palm held it firm; Nat clamped down on my wrist. Tears leaked into my mouth. Thicker, rotten liquid seeped through my fingers—infection and curdled blood—and I let out a long, begging moan. “Just another second,” Tyler said tightly. His knife caught everything that ever hurt in the universe and
pulled.
    The world narrowed to a dark tunnel: my hand, the wet stone floor, the pain. My gasp hit the walls, echoed against the mortared rock. Nat flinched and dropped my free hand, and I slammed it instinctively toward the wound. “No—” she said, and caught my wrist inches from a mess of bloody pus and swollen, black-edged flesh. I stared at it, speechless.
    â€œDo
not
infect that again,” she said fiercely, and pulled my wrist back against her palm. “We’re almost finished. I swear.”
    â€œWe
are
finished,” Tyler said. The dirty knife drew out, from the spattered wound, a tiny wisp of brown feather. It smeared against Tyler’s shearing knife, bathed in thin, streaked blood that was already darkening from bright red to a reeking, rotten black. A bubble boiled up, rusted before our eyes, and burst.
    I gagged. I had nothing left to throw up.
    â€œThat’s all?” Nat said, faint.
    â€œThat’s all it needs,” Tyler replied shakily, and dropped the knife into an empty wicker basket. The smell of death and violets rose out of it like a stain. “You did great.”
    Nat passed my free hand to him. His touch was lighter, all fingertips and hesitation. “You ready for the next bit?”
    I shook my head, breathing hard.
    â€œIt’ll only last a second,” Nat said conversationally, and poured the alcohol over my hand.
    I had no more noise left in me. The world blacked out for a long, long moment, and then the pain faded, muttered its way down. There was air in my lungs again, drawing in, flowing out, all the automatic gestures of a body that was well.
    â€œYou’ll be okay,” Tyler said, small and oddly breathless. “You’re okay, Hal. I promise.” He looked even ghostlier than before. His awkward hand squeezed my own, light as dandelion.
    I looked down at the fleck of brown feather on his blade. My spilt blood had charred into black, ashy flakes. The metal beneath it was pitting with rust. “That was inside me,” I said unsteadily.
    Tyler nodded.
    I curled into a ball. I needed to get back in control. I needed to be invisible, untouched, contained. The battered table back in the dust was too small to hide under now, and Nat’s eyes were on me, Tyler’s eyes. My friends. They’d given me so much, and I had nothing to repay them: no tea on the boil or hospitality to even the ledger between us. As if tea or words would keep them from reacting