We took the staircase to the upper floors in silence that danced across the skin in a discomfiting tension.

Emi waited for us there, twisting her fingers nervously.

You should go to Yrsa, I gestured quickly.

“I will. But first, how do you plan to keep her from the bones?”

I shook my head. I’d think of something. There was no choice.

“What are you talking about?” Kael’s face tightened again.

Emi glanced at me. I waved my hand, a lazy gesture to give her freedom to speak what she wished.

“You heard Thane. Lyra will not survive melding so many bones, Kael.”

“But King Damir—”

“Is obsessed with power.” Emi kept our pace of two stairs at a time. “He grows in might and viciousness the more bones he uses. This attack was an insult on his fortress, so he will prove his strength without considering what will happen to Lyra when he does.”

I gestured wildly. Soul bones always fuel the Dravens to act. They will come against Stonegate with their Dark Watch. Not only ravagers.

“Why?” Kael quickened his steps to meet my pace. “Do they want to use the bones for their armies, like Damir?”

I shook my head. Lyra knew the king was searching for the Wanderer’s bones. Lyra had only just learned the truth, but I had known it all my life.

The soul of the man who once commanded all craft was the prize of Jorvandal, and always had been, since Damir’s grandfather melded his father’s bone to his chest. It’d be wise to give up the truth to Darkwin. The more he knew of the risks, the more his own devotion for Lyra’s safety would take hold.

I glanced at Emi. Tell him.

She gave a swift explanation of foraging the burial grounds of the Wanderer’s armies. Fallen crafters of old. But Kael came to a halt when she told the rest.

“The Wanderer was…real?”

Emi shook her hands, as though sloughing off a swell of nerves. “We believe he was. Damir wants to meld the soul of the Wanderer to his own, but the bones are scattered. Soul bones don’t merely strengthen a body, Kael, they bring a soul damn close to immortality. But they can also corrupt. That was why Ake could not escape the lust for death. He was a vicious man before, and his bones made him crueler.”

“I don’t feel a great change after taking the soul bone.”

“You just nearly threatened the Sentry,” Emi said, grinning. “The man I met during frost trainings would not have dared meet Roark’s gaze out of turn.”

“So I’m damned to become a brute?”

“No.” Emi snickered softly. “I truly think that came from your love for Lyra. You would’ve been much crueler if the bone in your chest was one wrapped in darkness. Roark chose it carefully.”