Dark Tides (Kingdom of Bones #2)

The Ash Wastes

West Incendia

Early Frostfall

Jaron Thorne was afraid of neither man nor monster.

From the time his parents had left him and his little brother in the care of their uncle, he'd faced each morning with a brave heart and a steady mind. Ready to carry on like his mother and father hadn't left a gaping hole in his chest. When he left the small harbor town he called home, he didn't look back, even though his absence caused holes of his own making. Even when he'd been lined up against the wall at the training grounds of the Incendian Navy, he'd stood strong as stone, waiting his turn to face an emberblood and hoping to the gods that his flesh would heal soon after.

But now, as he stood in front of a monstrous volcano, fear took root in his heart, spreading through his veins like weeds. Smoke billowed from its top, the air surrounding him reeking of sulfur, a clear sign of imminent explosion. He'd die from the fumes or magma, whichever got him first.

He should be far away from West Incendia, searching Cerulia for the pirates who'd pillaged his harbor home years ago, but the whispers, always creeping along the edges of his mind, told him to come to this barren wasteland instead. Jaron cursed himself every moment he spent sailing through the Frozen Gap and riding horseback across the Ash Wastes. He tried to ignore the whispers completely, but they were there, scratching at the back of his mind with rusty nails.

Dig.

The whisper was so sudden it nearly made him jump out of the thick cloak he wore. He looked around, taking in the remains of what used to be a forest, thin spikes of bone-white wood jutting up from the pale, cracked dirt. The whisper had first come to him during the loneliest of nights, when a leap from the nearest cliff seemed better than facing another day, when there was nothing left for him to live for.

And they'd offered him everything.

Dig.

Firmer this time, a command. He questioned the voices: Dig? Here?

The whispered command repeated again and Jaron dropped the satchel from his back with a clunk and unbuttoned the collar of his cloak, removing it from his shoulders so that he could roll up his sleeves. The broad end of the shovel he'd brought with him all this way gleamed in the occasional flashes of light from the sun hidden behind the clouds and smoke. If the whispers wanted him to dig, then he'd dig. Maybe then they would leave his head for good.

Whoever or whatever the whispers belonged to, they didn't stop, even when his shovel broke earth. They continued their cadence, becoming a song that mirrored the rhythm of his strokes.

Dig. Dig. Dig.

He was knee-deep in a hole when the words became his own thoughts, a part of his every breath.

Dig. Dig. Dig.

When the height of the dirt walls reached his shoulders, his blistering hands went numb and the whisper became his own. "Dig," Jaron grunted as he threw each scoop of earth above him. "Dig. Dig."

The wretched whisper screamed back at him, an echo only Jaron could hear.

The sun had disappeared and the moon had taken its place when he discarded his shovel at the top and began digging through the raw earth with bare hands like a crazed animal, losing more of himself than he ever knew he had within him. Blood mixed with dirt on his palms, skin peeling away from his fingers with each strike of his hands into the ground. The bone forest above had been quiet before, but now it seemed that even the volcano had ceased its grumbling to watch him fall apart, his grunts and yells filling the silence, darkening the area even as the dawn of the next morning tried to peek through the clouds.

Dig. Dig. D—

Jaron's fingers scraped against something hard, and he stilled. For a flicker of a moment, he wondered if it was only a rock. Then he started digging even faster than before, brushing away the dirt until the outline of a long ebony box emerged.

Take it.

The sudden change of lyrics in the whisper's song took him aback. He'd thought of the whispers in his head as blind ambition or sheer insanity, or maybe the echo of some tale he'd heard that had brought him to this dark place. But perhaps the voice was more after all. Perhaps his losses hadn't riddled his mind the way the other Scouts claimed as they'd jeered at him.

He stayed in the hole he'd dug and laid the box on the unsettled ground in front of him. Across the wood were etchings that mirrored tendrils of flame, an ebony as vast as he'd ever seen. Bottomless. Threatening to swallow him if he stared too long. His mutilated hands remained at his sides, quivering.

Why aren't you taking it? It'sss what you came here for.

A shadow grew around the edges of the box, blossoming from beneath as if it were awakening from a deep sleep. A piece of him—maybe the sliver of him he'd left behind in Port Hullscar—knew he should be scrambling out of the hole, but he only leaned closer, drawn in by the allure of the treasure he'd dug up.

I can give you everything you want. Everything you need.

Power. Strength. Revenge.

Jaron traced his bloody fingers over the box, mumbling his lost brother's name and promising to find him as his voice cracked like the broken man he was.

Wield the Flame and the Torch. Be my champion. Do what othersss before you could not, and you will have it all.

No longer hesitating, he curled his fingers around the box and for the first time in his life, he took something for himself.