Bonesmith Readalong: Day 3!

Lovely photo by @cosycoffeereader!

Hi fairies!

Happy Wednesday and welcome to day 3 of our readalong of Bonesmith by Nicki. Pau Preto. I’m so excited to be reading this one with you, I hope you are loving it so far!

But before we start reading, we have our secret giveaway! What’s that? Oh, just a chance to get your next FairyLoot for free as a reward for reading! Doesn’t really get better than that! And your chances are so good too! We don’t really announce this anywhere else as we truly want the person from the readalong to win! If you’d like to try your luck, all you need to do is follow these steps!

1. Take a photo of our edition of Bonesmith.
2. Include the hashtag #Fairyphoto77
3. Do all of this by the end of Friday 20th of October.
4. Mention down below in your comment that you have entered and include your Instagram handle (also super important!)

Good luck!

Well, A LOT happened in yesterdays chapters didn’t it? 

Today we’re reading from chapter 17 to the end of chapter 25. Let’s do this!

When you’ve finished today’s section, catch up with me in the comments down below so we can discuss the beginning of the book. Happy reading!

Please be warned, the following section will include spoilers for Bonesmith by Nicki Pau Preto from Chapter 17 to Chapter 25. Please only read on if you have finished this section!

-!SPOILERS!-

What a way to start todays chapters off with a chapter from Leo’s POV! Did anyone else get super excited? It felt like a nice surprise amongst the chaos so far. BUT WAIT – PLOT TWIST! He knew he was going to get kidnapped?! 

“Still, He wasn’t going to let a silly little thing like a hostage situation dampen his spirits.” Leo is SO funny. Even in a dire situation he remains optimistic and witty. But our prince is clever and calculating. After his cousin Galen had ended their previous inspection without warning or sufficient explanation it had caused Leo to go snooping. And that is when he discovered the letters and his cousins involvement in the plot to kidnap him. It turns out Galen was being paid to set him up and hand him over to his current kidnapers. But who was the person who had paid him to do so? Leo decided to play along with the plot as he didn’t know who he could trust and alerting the wrong people could have made things worse for himself. He was also “incredibly bored” – a great excuse to allow yourself to be kidnapped…

At the top of Leo’s suspects list we have the Gravens of Marrow Hall who had rose quite high in the wake of the Breach, and he suspected maybe they where hoping to orchestrate action on the front lines again to attain some semblance of relevancy. His suspicion is only deepened when he finds that one of them was recently appointed at the Breachfort: Wren. So he had decided to get closer to her the night before his kindaping to glean what little information he could, but he hadn’t anticipated that she would fight for him and try to protect him during the attack.

Through his calculated tactics Leo shortly figures out a few things; there is something called the “corpse Queen” that these people fear, there is a regent east of the wall named ‘Lord Smith Francis’, and he is being taken to a place called Southbridge. We also come to find out that the captain who had attempted to kill Julian told the rest of the party a bold face lie regarding his ‘death’ when he in-fact had been the one to loose the arrow that had taken him down. However, the captain is unaware that Leo had witnessed the whole event. As they arrive at the town and Leo is alone with a servant he asks her if she wants to hear about the “adventure he’s had today”, and thus begins the planting of rumours and information that will spread throughout the townspeople; Leo is quite the schemer.

As we start chapter 19 we’re back to Wren’s POV as they embark on their journey together; united in their quest but still enemies. They spend the night at the broken down mill-house where Wren ‘sleeps like the undead’. Julian refuses to show any interest in her and Wren remarks that he is “determined not to look at her”. Are we all suspecting he feels awkward and maybe a little shy around Wren? In typical Wren fashion she decides not to bother putting on anything else and sits across from him at the table in nothing but her flimsy under tunic. He’s definitely feeling shy now! They make a start at breakfast and an attempt at friendly banter which ultimately leads to raised voices and snarky comments. Enemies, remember? After noticing that Julian never takes his gloves off Wren remarks “I doubt you need those gloves when you wash your face, but here we are.” to which Julian stands abruptly. Why does he always keep the gloves on? What is he hiding?

So was anybody else absolutely startled when Wren and Julian enter the Haunted Territory and two tier fives/revenants and then some, appear? And not only that they then speak?! Which is impossible according to everything Wren has learnt as a Bonesmith. One of the revenants says “Go.” the sound coming not directly from their mouth, but from their souls, their spirits, the beyond. What is giving these ghosts the ability to talk, or rather, who? After the initial shock at the ghost speaking Wren decides enough is enough and releases a cloud of bonedust which has the revenant screeching in pain and sends a kick to it’s chest cavity, cracking the brittle bones and sending the corpse crashing to the ground. The ghost then begins reshaping, something that should be impossible. In response the ghost then launches its own attack straight at Wren’s face. In order to try and protect her, Julian dives for Wren and they both end up on the ground. However, Julian’s gloved hand came into contact with the vapour of the ghost in doing so. Will the deathrot be less potent or is Julian now fated to die? They find an abandoned watchtower and seek shelter from the revenants below. Julian is shaking and cold from the potential deathrot in his hand. In order to try and save him Wren envelops him an almost hug as they lie on the blankets to help transfer heat to his body. And they fall asleep that way. We’re all giggling and kicking our feet at this, right?!

As they get closer to the Breach they notice a bridge going across and decide their best and quickest way through is to attempt to cross it. They find an old road that will lead them directly to the bridge. Behind the road is a valley emanating a large amount of ghostlight, which Julian is staring at and begins walking towards. Wren follows him and they arrive at the remnants of a battlefield where she discovers severely damaged bones unlike anything she has ever seen, their ghosts little more than dust blowing in the wind. Wren cannot reconcile with how this is even possible, especially when she realises that this is where the end of the uprising took place. “Others say it was the Graven heir. They say he had limitless power. That he was able to control the bones of the living as well as the dead. That he was able to bend and break and shatter them. He turned it on everyone, even some of his own people, before the abuse of power killed him”. Wren begins to realise that her uncle Locke hailed as a hero, could be responsible for the sight in front of her; meaning everything she thought she knew could be a lie.

Things take an even more sinister turn (if you can believe it) when ghosts are blocking their way to the bridge and tell them to “Go. Now. Because she wills it. And he commands it.” Are they referring to the Corpse Queen? and who is he? Could this mean that there is someone behind the ghosts abilities to speak and act together? Things just keep getting more and more tense and complex. During this situation it is also revealed that only Wren can communicate with the ghosts and Julian cannot hear them. Is this to do with Wren being a Bonesmith? If so why can’t all Bonesmiths hear ghosts? What is so special about Wren?…

Due to the ghosts blocking their way to the bridge Julian comes up with an amazing yet dangerous idea. Transforming his sword into a whip, he tosses the whip out into the abyss of the Breach wrapping it around a joint securely. With his arm looped around Wren’s back Julian leaps from the edge and they are swinging across the open space toward the bridge. They collide against the outer railing, clinging to a vertical beam and then climbing the railing to land on the wide deck of the bridge. Whole beams of the bridge are gone, missing bolts and rusted. It will be a miracle if they manage to cross it. Revenants begin coming at them from both sides of the bridge. As a revenant takes a step towards Wren on the same plank she is standing on, it gives out beneath them. At the last second Julian manages to catch her using his whip leaving Wren dangling and Julian hanging over the edge of the bridge trying to hoist Wren back up, whilst revenants make their way toward him across the bridge. Julian refuses to let her go despite Wren’s requests to do so. However, the whip gives way and Wren is dropped down into darkness.

In chapter 23 we are gifted with another Leo POV (yay) and he continues to scheme and collect scraps of information ever so subtly from his captors. Leo soon learns that there was in fact another target besides him who they did not manage to capture. But who was this second target? He had assumed they were heading toward the Iron Citadel, home of the Ironsmiths when suddenly they started to turn in a different direction away from the Coastal Road that would lead them there. Everything he thought he knew and had discovered is called into question because if they aren’t heading to the Iron Citadel then where are they taking him?

Wren awakes in complete and utter darkness, and water. Disorientated and with a head wound from the impact of her fall, she tries desperately to get to the distant shoreline. When she finally reaches the shoreline and collapses closing her eyes for a moment, a shiver goes down her spine and she opens her eyes to find a revenant bent directly over her inches from her face. She immediately scrambles back into the water. The revenant then speaks to her “Shouldn’t be here.Alive. So alive. For now.” Now that is ominous… More undead appear all around lining the shore in all directions. Then she hears a sound and Julian is right before her. He explains he found an old mining shaft and made his way down to her. He had chosen to come back for her. Could he have feelings for Wren and really care about her? 👀

They wade through the water try to find somewhere safe from the revenants and discover Ghostsmith ruins. “This was a necropolis, the source of all the revenants roaming their lands. The source of the deep rooted magic that reanimated them.” Julian remarks how the shaft he came down in looked Stonesmith made and not used for mining, leaving them to believe someone wanted to find a way down here and access this magic and could have been the real cause of the Breach. Could it have been Locke, Wren’s uncle?

They find shelter in some kind of Stonesmith structure and start a fire. Julian helps Wren out of her wet clothes and looks after her.

The final chapter of todays reading being in Julians POV could not have been a better way to finish reading for the day! He is starting to see Wren in a different light and the lines between enemy and something else entirely are beginning to blur. He admits it was out of the question to leaver her behind and that she is everything thats wrong with this world but also the only thing that’s right. He is definitely developing feelings for Wren and is at war with himself about it as a result.

Do you think Wren and Julian have feelings for one another?

What do you think about the Corpse Queen and this mysterious “he”? Could they be controlling the undead somehow?

What is your theory about Wren being able to hear the undead?

I’m so excited to see what will happen in tomorrow’s chapters but also very scared, see you there fairies!

Love,
Jodie