Chapter 9 The Girl in the Bone Chair

Chapter 9 – The Girl in the Bone Chair

Elya sat sideways in her throne of bone and glass, legs swinging lazily as she flicked through a black-paged book that whispered when it turned.

She didn't look up as Isaac approached.

"You walk loud for someone with serpent blood," she said, flipping a page. "Most of your kind slither. You stomp."

Isaac stood still. Eyes sharp. Breathing steady.

"Who the hell are you?"

Elya grinned. "I'm the girl who keeps the dead talking. And right now, every one of them is whispering your name."

She snapped the book shut and looked up. Her eyes were pitch-black, rimmed in gold. Not just strange-impossible.

"Isaac Marshall. Son of Silas. Fire-blooded. War-marked. Yeah, I know exactly who you are."

"You said we needed to talk."

"We do." She leaned forward. "Because someone told the Lunecarve to kill you, and that someone shouldn't be alive."

Isaac stared. "You knew my father?"

"No," she said simply. "But I know what he was. And more importantly-I know why he disappeared."

Isaac didn't breathe.

Elya hopped down from her throne, barefoot on the stone floor, and walked slowly toward a wall covered in maps and red thread. Her fingers traced a spiral drawn in charcoal.

"You think this story starts with you, but it doesn't. You're just the flare-up. The bloodfire's been dormant since your father vanished. But now? It's burning again. And that makes a lot of people very, very nervous."

"I want the truth," Isaac said. "All of it."

"You can't handle all of it yet," she said, not unkindly. "But I'll give you a piece."

She pressed her palm against the spiral.

A hidden drawer slid open.

Inside, a folder bound in old leather and stitched shut with something that looked like dried tendon.

"Silas Marshall," she said. "He wasn't just serpent-blooded. He was one of the seven Wyrm-Heirs. Last of the true-blood line. And he broke the unspoken pact."

Isaac opened the folder.

Photos.

Maps.

A journal page in his father's handwriting.

"The fire is no longer mine. The boy must carry it now."

He closed his fist over it.

"Why would he put a hit on me?" Isaac asked, voice shaking. "Why try to kill me if he wanted me to carry it?"

Elya's face softened-for a second, she almost looked like a kid.

"Because Silas didn't put the hit out."

Isaac frowned. "But the assassin said-"

"They were told to say it," she said. "By someone who wants you to believe your father betrayed you. Someone who wants to cut your bloodline off completely. And if you don't figure out who they are fast, they're going to finish what they started."

Isaac's eyes burned with golden light.

"So who are they?"

She hesitated.

Then whispered:

"The Black Serpent."

Above ground, rain started falling.

Across the city, five figures in dark armor stood in a circle beneath the shattered statue of Saint Gracelin.

They each bore a brand on their necks: a serpent with wings.

The man in the center, tall with a golden jaw and eyes like razors, spoke first.

"Isaac Marshall has survived two hits. Untrained. Unbound. That's a problem."

A woman with long white braids nodded. "He drank from the Archive."

"And left Selene alive."

"Pity," said another. "She would've made a good corpse."

The leader looked at the sky.

"Send the Crows. Make it look like war."

Back underground, Elya turned back to Isaac.

"You've got three days before the Black Serpent makes their next move."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I stole the message from their soul courier," she said casually. "He wasn't using it anymore."

She handed Isaac a burnt scrap of parchment. One word remained:

"Ascension."

Isaac stared at it.

"What does it mean?"

Elya grinned.

"It means you're not being hunted. Not anymore."

He looked at her, confused.

She smiled wider.

"You're being tested."