Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Read online

  LINDSAY CUMMINGS is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels and co-founder of the Scribbler Box for writers. She lives in Texas and writes part-time, when she’s not chasing around a toddler or running media for her church. You can find out more at www.lindsaycummingsbooks.com and follow Lindsay @authorlindsayc on Twitter or @authorlindsaycummings on Instagram.

  Also by Lindsay Cummings

  THE BALANCE KEEPERS SERIES

  The Fires of Calderon

  The Pillars of Ponderay

  The Traitor of Belltroll

  THE MURDER COMPLEX SERIES

  The Murder Complex

  The Death Code

  THE ANDROMA SAGA

  (with Sasha Alsberg)

  Zenith

  Nexus

  BLOOD METAL BONE

  LINDSAY CUMMINGS

  ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2021

  Copyright © Lindsay Cummings 2021

  Lindsay Cummings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © January 2021 ISBN: 9780008292805

  Version 2020-12-10

  Note to Readers

  This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

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  Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008292799

  For Dan the Man, the horse that started it all.

  And as always, to my dad, Don Cummings.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Lindsay Cummings

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Readers

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Ten Years Ago: The Kingdom of Soreia

  Five Months Later

  Part One: Blood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Two Hours Later: Geisinger Tower, Beta Earth

  Part Two: Metal

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part Three: Bone

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Acknowledgements

  Pronunciation Guide

  A Quick Chat With Lindsay Cummings!

  About the Publisher

  Cast of Characters

  The Kingdom of the Deadlands

  Azariah of Stonegrave, a mysterious stranger*

  Jaxon of Wildeweb, Sonara’s closest friend*

  Markam of Wildeweb, his mischievous brother*

  King Jira, ruler of the Deadlands

  Razor, the wyvern

  The Kingdom of Soreia

  Queen Iridis, ruler of Soreia

  Sonara, the Devil of the Deadlands*

  Duran, Sonara’s steed

  Crown Prince Soahm, heir to the throne

  The Kingdom of the White Wastes

  Queen Marisk, ruler of the White Wastes

  Thali the Cleric, companion to Azariah of Stonegrave

  The Crew of the Starfall

  Captain Cade Kingston, captain of the Starfall

  Karr Kingston, his younger brother

  Communications Manager Jameson, Karr’s closest friend on the Starfall

  Rohtt, the medhead

  Beta Earth

  Friedrich Geisinger, a famed inventor and businessman

  Jeb Montforth, a scavenger and space pirate

  * indicates Shadowbloods

  Ten Years Ago

  The Kingdom of Soreia

  Tears trickled down Sonara’s cheeks as she crouched in the shadowy corners of the Soreian royal stables.

  She’d awoken early that morning to find the word scraped in the sand between the aisles of stalls. Exactly where they knew she’d find it.

  BASTARD

  It had been gouged deep, as if drawn with the sharp edge of a warrior’s sword.

  Many times, Sonara of Soreia wished the goddesses had never granted her life in her mother’s womb. For what was living, when you spent your days tucked away in the shadows, disowned and unwanted?

  Sonara had scraped the awful word away with a mucking fork, then spent the rest of the morning cleaning out stalls, telling herself she wasn’t going to cry.

  The damned tears came anyway, pesky drops that fell hard and fast the moment her brother entered the stables.

  Soahm came as he always did: unannounced and disguised in a cerulean hooded cloak that did little to conceal his true identity.

  Everyone knew the Crown Prince of Soreia.

  He stood a few paces away, a pale mare nuzzling at his pocket, trying to uncover the hidden wintermints he’d purchased on his latest journey to the neighboring kingdom of the Deadlands. Soahm’s azure hair and eyes, deep as the sea, were the mark of Soreian purity; a trait that had passed down from generation to generation, marking the worthy from the not.

  “If I were you,” Soahm said as he stroked the mare’s nose with a bejeweled hand, “I’d consider it a blessing that mother doesn’t look upon you at all. Some days I swear the goddesses are punishing me beneath her wretched stare.”

  Mother.

  Sonara flinched at the word.

  “Careful,” she said softly. She glanced over her shoulder, where a quiet stablehand hauled hay around the corner. A chorus of nickers followed after it, steeds poking th
eir heads out of stall windows in hope of sneaking a bite. “You’re speaking words of treason, Prince.”

  But the stablehands and grooms were sworn to secrecy. Their very lives, their children’s lives, depended upon it. The last one who’d uttered a word of Sonara’s lineage was still displayed as an ornament upon the palace gates.

  “Perhaps,” Soahm said. He shrugged out of his cloak and placed it on a bridle hook just outside the nearest stall. The mare huffed at it, then stuck her head over the polished gate and promptly removed it with her teeth. The cloak tumbled to the sand in a heap, the fine silk worth more than an entire year’s worths of wages for Sonara. Soahm sighed as he lifted it from the sand, a golden chain dangling from his throat as he shook out the dust. “But these aren’t the words of the crown prince. They’re the words of an older brother, who is doing his utmost to comfort his little sister.”

  “That could be treason, too,” Sonara said. “Calling me such a thing.”

  The crown prince held his arms wide. “Then let the queen send me over the cliffs to my death. I don’t fear the Leaping. And besides, when Rhya takes the crown in my stead and spends half the kingdom’s wages on flagons of liquor and ladies in waiting, mother will be begging the goddesses to pull me back from the depths.” He flashed that summertime smile of his. “You’re my sister, Sonara. You always will be, regardless of how much shared blood runs in our veins.”

  He’d meant the words as a comfort. But Sonara sniffed, and more tears slipped from her eyes. They were darker than Soahm’s crystalline blue; a brown so deep they were almost black, her pupils scarcely visible in the dim light of morning.

  She holds the darkness of night in her eyes, her mother’s voice whispered into her memories. The darkness of a demon.

  “Don’t waste your tears,” Soahm said. He gently patted her shoulder, then tucked her long braid behind her ear. The strands caught in a ray of sunlight peeking through the gabled stall window, revealing the natural smudges of muddy brown mixed with pure Soreian blue. “Not on a single one of them.”

  As he spoke, Sonara saw the royal family in her mind, the outline of the Queen, a shimmering crown perched atop her blue braids. And the three other half-siblings, all manicured menaces whose hearts had never known softness, never longed to show compassion. Not like Soahm.

  “Easier said than done,” Sonara answered.

  Soahm was older by several years. He’d traveled all across the continent, visiting the neighboring kingdom of the Deadlands, even traveling so far as the White Wastes up north. He’d seen other castles and cultures, dined with kings and queens and learned to wield a sword as any Soreian warrior should. He bore the weight of their kingdom’s future upon his shoulders, for someday, their mother’s crown would become his.

  Soahm knew a great many things. But he would never truly understand what it was like to bear the burden of bastard.

  It was whispered behind Sonara like a devil’s hiss in the city streets.

  It sung wickedly to her each night in her dreams, when the wind sighed and the stars came out to shed their light on the kingdom below.

  Sonara was a child without a known father to claim her, with a royal mother who’d never wanted to bear her at all.

  “Well,” Sonara said, as her tears dried up. “I’ve work to do, and seeing as you’re here…”

  “Fine,” Soahm said. “But I’m not going anywhere near Duran.”

  Sonara raised a brow. “Scared, princeling?”

  Almost as if in response, a great boom exploded against the stall door at the edge of the aisle.

  Sonara clicked her teeth and went to soothe the source of the noise.

  Duran, a beautiful beast with a coat the color of desert sand, mane and tail deep as blackest night, stood at the stall door, pounding his wide hoof against the gate. The entire stable seemed to shake with each kick. Some of the other steeds whinnied or snorted in response, their ears twitching this way and that. Dust kicked up outside Duran’s stall, the lock doubled to ensure he wouldn’t escape.

  “That’s enough now,” Sonara said, as she stopped just out of his reach.

  The beast looked at her with eyes that glowed as red as the bleeding suns.

  He was in the last few months of being a young steedling. His dark heavily feathered legs had grown stronger, his back broader, his thick neck arched and noble. Soon, he’d be fitted for armor with the rest of the young steeds. They were a tougher, broader breed than the royal procession, bred for war instead of elegance. For death instead of life.

  Sonara reached into her pocket and plucked out one of Soahm’s wintermints.

  “Don’t bite me, beast,” she warned him. “Or I’ll bite you right back.”

  Duran’s ears flattened against his head. But he promptly lipped the mint off of her palm, crunching it down before releasing a wintry huff in her direction.

  “I can’t believe you touch that thing,” Soahm said, eyes wide.

  “Steed,” Sonara corrected him. “He’s harmless.”

  “Tell that to the rider whose back he broke last week.”

  Sonara’s stomach sank at the thought of Duran’s future. As soon as he could be tamed, he’d join the steed army, paired with a warrior who’d ride with a heavy hand, a blue sword at his or her side.

  She’d likely never see him again, and it was that thought that hurt, strangely, worse than any words of cowardice the royal siblings could scribble in the sand.

  “I have half a mind to take Duran and ride far away from here,” Sonara said as she undid both locks and entered the stall, pushing Duran back a few steps. He tossed his head but relented as she clicked her teeth and stared him down. The beast stilled as she ran a brush across his back in steady strokes, even going so far as to lower his head to her. Sonara sighed and gave him another mint. “Imagine, the life he and I would have in the Deadlands. Freedom, Soahm. As wild as the winds.”

  Soahm chuckled from the stall across the aisle. “You, in the Deadlands? If you don’t die of starvation or thirst or getting lost in the endless sands, you’ll definitely die of an attack by outlaws. The desert has eyes, Sonara. And they’re always watching, waiting for their moment to strike.” He shivered as if his memories of traveling to the neighboring kingdom were more than enough to set him on edge. “And their king, I might add, is one who thirsts for blood. He sits upon a throne of bones.”

  “Laugh all you wish, Prince.” Sonara tossed him a glare worthy of any war mare. “But I’m plenty capable of surviving anywhere. Outlaws be damned.”

  “Are you?” Soahm crossed his tan arms over the stall door, gemstone rings glinting in the stray tendrils of sunlight. “Prove it.”

  Sonara weighed the onyx brush in her hand. Before he could react, she hurled it at him. It spun, bristles over back, until it landed with a dull thud against Soahm’s chest.

  It left nothing more than a smudge of dirt against his tunic before it fell to his polished boots.

  “Terrifying.” He arched a blue brow.

  “I warned you.”

  “You’ll need a name, if you’re to be a dangerous outlaw.”

  “Sonara the Shadowrider,” she mused, catching the brush as Soahm tossed it back to her. Duran huffed and shifted his weight as if he were tired of their game.

  “Too obvious,” Soahm said. “Something more sinister. Sonara the Stabber? You’d carry a warrior’s sword, of course.”

  She snorted back a laugh as she brushed Duran. “That’s ridiculous. I’m no weaponsmaiden.”

  They paused as a commotion rose outside the carved stable windows. Murmured voices of distant onlookers mixed with the soft sigh of seashells dancing among braided wind chimes. Cheers rose up as hoofbeats pounded against the sand, and a conch blew in three long blasts. Sonara paused to glance outside Duran’s stall window as the royal procession snaked past.

  Warriors rode on the backs of glamorous steeds as they escorted the Queen of Soreia towards her towering fortress at the ocean’s edge.

&n
bsp; Sonara glared from the shadows as Queen Iridis rode past. Her long hair was loose, a brilliant natural blue that hung in long coils down her back. “She makes the steeds’ sides bleed from whipping them,” Sonara said.

  Sonara groomed and fed all the young steeds. She helped train them when allowed, and though Duran was especially stubborn, and though he didn’t like to listen, he’d stolen her heart all the same, far more than any of the other steeds ever had.

  “Do you know how many of them she’s turned sour?” Sonara sighed and felt Duran’s hot breath on her neck as he drew her attention away from the window.

  It was as if he could sense her mood dropping, sense the light within her fading the more she stood in her mother’s presence.

  Sonara dug her hands into Duran’s mane. “If the devil of a woman ever touches you, Duran…”

  “That’s it!” Soahm cried out. He clapped his hands together just outside the stall door, so loudly that Duran skittered sideways at the sudden sound.

  “Some War Steed you’ll make,” Sonara murmured with a smile. Duran’s ears flattened as if he very much disagreed.

  “The Devil,” Soahm said, crossing his arms atop Duran’s stall door. “Someday, Sonara, you’re going to become the She-Devil, riding on Duran’s back, spreading hell across Dohrsar. And don’t forget the sword.”

  He reached to his hip, where his blade was held.

  Lazaris; the blade of their ancestors. A sword Soahm had trained with since he was only a boy, beautiful in its simplicity. The blade was solid black, with a strip of Soreian blue steel running down the middle, cool as a river.

  The sword was once their mother’s, wielded as she slew her way to the crown. But Soahm had been gifted Lazaris upon birth, a sword he’d finally grown into with age. Sometimes, Sonara watched from the stables as Soahm trained with the royal weaponsmaidens, who forged blue Soreian steel into weapons capable of withstanding a lifetime of warriors’ hits.

  When Soahm held Lazaris in the bright light of day, practicing on the elevated castle grounds in full view of the citizens, Sonara hid in the shadows of the stable, and mirrored his motions with a mucking fork.