Today I have the honour of hosting the sixth and final stop of the This Savage Song blog tour to celebrate the release of This Savage Song by bestselling author V.E. Schwab! The book itself is out tomorrow and it has a STUNNING cover! What I really love about this blog tour is that it features extracts from the book so it's giving us plenty of snippets to get us excited about the book! So without further ado... I present to you...
Leo reached into his jacket. August assumed he was fetching one of his own instruments. Instead, he withdrew a long, thin knife, and passed it to August.
“What is this for?” he asked.
Leo didn’t answer. He was staring down at his hand, now empty, and August watched as darkness began to roll up his fingers and across his palm. August recoiled instinctively, but only Leo’s hand blackened to shadow. The way he did that, slid between the two forms, that worked only because he’d torn away the walls between. August tried to imagine what Leo must have been like, back before he burned through his humanity, but he couldn’t. He watched as Leo reached out his shadowed hand and gripped the rusted doorknob. The metal
crunched like paper under his touch and fell away. The door swung open.
“Do what I say, little brother,” he said, his voice lower, stranger, more resonant.
“How do you know they’re here?” whispered August.
“I can smell the blood on their hands,” said Leo, the darkness receding from his skin, his voice returning to its usual pitch. He strode inside, and August followed, nudging the door shut behind him.
The house was dark and smelled of stale smoke and liquor, and when they moved, the boards creaked under their feet. August cringed. Leo didn’t. They reached the center of the room and stopped. Leo cocked his head, listening. And then August heard it, too. The floorboards groaned again. They were both standing still.
The first guy came out of nowhere. He lunged at Leo, but his brother was too fast; he plucked the man out of the air and slammed him down against the rotting boards so hard they split. The man squirmed and spat obscenities, but Leo crouched calmly over him like a cat pinning a mouse, but without the playful glee.
“What is your name?” he asked, and the air vibrated with his will.
“Foster,” spat the thug. His shadow writhed beneath him, clawing at the broken floor.
“Foster,” repeated Leo. “Are you here alone?”
The man thrashed, coughed, answered, “No.”
August’s grip tightened reflexively on the knife, but his brother looked unconcerned as he hauled Foster to his feet and spun him around so his back was pressed to Leo’s chest.
“Pay attention, August,” he said. “There is more than one way to bring a soul to surface.”
With that, Leo wrenched Foster’s arm up behind his back, and the man cried out. August cringed, but Leo remained calm, unmoved. He kept twisting until August heard the tearing ligaments, and the man let out a scream.
“Why are you doing this?” asked August.
“To educate you,” said Leo simply. He twisted harder, and Foster keened.
Bones broke audibly and August watched, horrified, first as sweat broke out across the man’s face, and then as his skin began to glow red. The light rose
like blood to the surface, and as it did, it began to pass from Foster’s body into Leo’s.
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