The Lady of Rapture (Volume 3) (Bones of Ruin Trilogy) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sarah Raughley is a Nigerian-Canadian novelist and a member of the Royal Society of Canada: the national council of distinguished Canadian scholars, scientists, and artists. She’s best known for her YA books: The Effigies Series, The Bones of Ruin Trilogy, and The Queen’s Spade duology. Raughley is also an English professor and public intellectual who has written for journals such as The Washington Post and CBC. You can find out more about her work at SarahRaughley.com.  

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Chapter 1

1

MAX’S HANDS SLIPPED OFF THE COOL, rough surface of Iris’s bone—remnants of her forearm sharpened into a deadly blade. He stumbled back, his mouth parted, his heart pounding in his ears, as two corpses collapsed to the ground at the same time.

Jinn and Iris.

Partners.

Lovers.

Lovers. They were lovers, weren’t they? They’d been lovers long before Max had met either of them. None of the childish stunts he’d pulled had managed to change that. Not even this final one.

It took Max’s mind a moment to catch up to what he’d done. Hiva, the other god of death, had appeared with his friends in tow. He’d brought them a sword made of Iris’s bones and given them all a choice: kill Iris here and now, or risk her turning against humanity.

For Max, the choice had been clear.

He’d taken the bone sword and run Iris through. But not before Jinn had leapt in front of her.

To protect her.

Now blood seeped from their bodies and pooled against the marble floor of the Coral Temple.

This was Maximo’s crime.

“I had to do it,” Max whispered to their dead bodies, and then again to his own wide-eyed, unfocused reflection in the cracked glass of Hiva’s Tomb. Iris’s last breath remained on the chilled cylinder.

Hiva’s Tomb. The Naacal, an ancient civilization, had created this technological wonder. Whoever stepped inside the glass chamber would become “disassembled” down to their very atoms. Iris had refused to walk inside. She wouldn’t sacrifice herself, even if it meant she would one day fulfill her biological purpose and burn down the world.

That’s why Max had had to do it. In that one moment when he’d felt his hands grip the sword made from her bones, he’d made the decision to bear the responsibility of her death. It was his duty as her friend. It was what he’d had to do to save countless lives.

Max was too dazed to block Rin’s sword bearing down upon his head. He looked up and saw the glint of its sharp edge.

“Max!”

Max barely registered the frantic cry of his childhood friend Lawrence Hawkins as the young man tackled him to the ground. Rin’s sword crashed against the floor where he’d been standing.

Rin, the Dahomean warrior, who had followed Iris all the way here, to the ends of the earth.

Her attack thwarted, Rin’s resultant cry of fury shuddered through Max’s bones. As Hawkins held him in a vice grip on the floor, Max spied the tears streaming down Rin’s round cheeks.

Max’s body was numb. His fingers throbbed painfully. He was a hero. Why didn’t she understand that?

While his childhood friends Cherice and Jacob watched, frozen, it was his sister Berta who lunged forward and grabbed Rin’s sword-wielding arm.

“Stop!” Berta screamed, her dark curls spilling over her face. “Stop, damn it!”

Berta and Rin were both young, younger than he was, and yet both had been forced into a warrior’s life through no fault of their own. He couldn’t protect Berta when they’d been separated as children. He wanted to protect her now, but his mind was hollowed out, and once he stood, his legs couldn’t support his weight. Only Hawkins kept him upright, pulling him away from the battle toward Cherice and Jacob.

“Berta! Keep that crazy savage away from us!” shouted a boy Max didn’t know, a lanky bloke with tan skin and crooked teeth standing on the edge of the dais. Max hadn’t caught his name, but he could tell how cowardly he was by the way the boy’s knees knocked. The little girl next to him, Lulu, seemed far more composed. Though she gripped her dress tightly, she watched the scene carefully, silently, waiting to see who’d come out victorious.

Berta had to wrap her entire upper body around Rin’s arm to keep it still. “It’s done. She’s gone. What did you expect him to do now? Just let it go!”

Rin was shouting something back, but Max couldn’t understand her. He didn’t speak Fon. He didn’t need to. Her bloodlust and pain signaled her murderous desires. He could almost hear their echoes bouncing off the walls of the dark temple.

“It’s done,” Berta cried, shouting in pain when Rin pushed her down to the floor. “You’re pissed, I get it! But what’s the point of shedding any more blood now? Stop! I don’t want to hurt you, but I will!”

She wasn’t in any position to be making threats. Rin hissed something vicious and lifted her sword.

Time slowed.

It’d slowed for Max that day too: when he, as a child, had seen that carriage steal his little sister away. When he had been left stranded in London, alone and frightened.

Never again.

Max’s body moved on its own. He held his breath. His senses heightened. Rin’s sword whooshed through the air as her strike slowed to a crawl. Berta’s cry began to spring off her lips as she raised her arm to block the blow. Bodies in slow motion. All were affected except him. For that short moment, Max was time’s master.

And he would only need a moment.

He strode over to Rin and plucked her sword out of her hand.

No. She’ll just be able to summon it again, he thought to himself.

That was Rin’s power—summoning a sword from inside her chest. Iris was dead. Rin wouldn’t stop. Not until she had sated her need for revenge.

Max needed to kill her. Now.

And why not? He’d killed before. On that pirate ship, he’d murdered whomever he’d needed to if it meant he’d survive, if it meant he’d find his family again. Hadn’t he killed his way through those British soldiers too, to get to the mining site that had held everyone’s fates? Rin was loyal to Iris and Jinn. He’d already killed the latter two. Kill the third and he’d be in the clear.

Since the moment he’d been bamboozled into coming to England as a child, since the moment he’d been left on the streets of London as an orphan, since the moment he’d lost his sister, Max had only ever done what he’d had to in order to survive.

I really am such an asshole, Max thought to himself with a wry smile as he flipped Rin’s sword around and readied himself to stab the young girl.

But out of the corner of his eye, he saw him: a man whose existence shouldn’t have been possible. A statuesque body crafted from bronze. Curling brown hair stretching down to his waist. A chiseled face cut from glass. Pupilless golden eyes watching him with interest, unaffected by space or time.

The other Hiva. Max had almost forgotten he was there, but at the sight of the other god, in the sudden realization of his presence, Max jolted in fear. His breath hitched. And the moment he breathed again, time began to flow.

The spell was broken. It took Rin seconds to realize what Max had done. She squeezed her empty hands into fists, furious. Swearing, Max tried to run her through but missed, as Rin dodged his strike and kicked him in the stomach.

The sword flew from his hands and landed upon the dais’s marble floor, breaking into pieces, disappearing into dust. And just as Max had anticipated, Rin summoned it again,...