Page 166 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“I’m sorry, Teo. Truly I am. I don’t know what to do. My hands are tied. I can only promise that, when your time comes, I will be beside you if I am able, and will put your bones to rest by hers?”

“There is no surety that you’ll be by me when I pass, even if I am able to stay with you in the Crimson City. Death could take me silently in the night, and I would have missed my chance. Forever. There is only one way that is apromise.”

“What you want me to do — thereisno guarantee, Teo. You can’t ask me to do that. To risk you, and Ellie.” Swallowing convulsively, I shiver. “You’re asking me to risk more than myself. If your people found out…oh Gods. And the BloodLetter took my Guiding Knife. I have no Silent Bone to keep you, anyway. Only Lorcan –” My eyes flare wide in panic, sudden realization hitting me and sending a lightning bolt of fear through me. Reaching up, I fumble at my neck, which iscompletely bare. “Teo!” Sheer terror floods me when I look back at him, and see how he is sitting now, so calmly, Ellie’s bone fragment in one hand, a hammer and my bone necklace in the other. “Teo!”

“I’m not asking you, Wren.” His voice is unbearably gentle. “I am not giving you a choice.” Putting Lorcan’s bones on the floor in front of him, he motions to a small pile of jewel-red berries beside him, which I am only now noticing for the first time. “Sunseed. It grows in the wild here. Our children are taught not to touch it from birth.Sunseed, Moonseed all in a row. Eat of the fire and away you will go. Drink down the moon and home you’ll return, moonseed for dreaming, but fire will burn.”

“What —”

He points at the tiny table with the small white vial on it. “That is moonseed, pressed to juice. If you pour it in my mouth quickly enough after I eat the fireseed, it will nullify the poison. But Wren,” his voice darkens to a warning, “if you try to put me back, I will only keep doing this, over and over and over, until you are forced to accept it.” My eyes flicker frantically between him and Lorcan’s bones, piled awkwardly on the cold stone floor.

“What are you doing, Teo?” I can barely breathe.A hammer and bone. A hammer and bone.

Teo shrugs, lips pressed together, clearly regretful. “I had to have a guarantee of some sort. I’m not a bad man. But Iamdesperate. You…you won’t have much time, I think. For what is to happen. You will have to move quickly. Very, very quickly if this is to work.”

Pushing myself to my feet, I stagger forward a step before collapsing, hands outstretched. Begging, I try to drag myself to my necklace. “I don’tunderstand. But…give me Lorcan.Please.Gods.Give me Lorcan!”

“I’m trying to, Wren,” he replies, lips twisting into a secret smile, eyes shining. “Goodbye, my friend. Thank you. And good luck.” With that, he lifts the hammer, smashing the necklace of bones in front of him over and over and over until it is nothing but dust and needle-thin shards too small to ever hold a soul. A piercing wail bursts from my throat, raw and jagged, and I claw mindlessly at my face, tearingmy hair in agonizing helplessness. It’s bloody and vicious, the sound of an animal caught in the steel jaws of a trap, the sharp teeth biting through flesh and snapping bone, a wild, crazed sound ofpain, pain, pain.

Lorcan’s soul hovers above the wreckage, pale and silent.

There is no place I can Guide him.

There is no way for me to save him.

So he does not ask, somehow swallowing his song — a thing I didn’t know possible. He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to add to my suffering.

Teo stares down at the powder before him and nods once. He inhales deeply, then glances at me, face soft and affectionate, his lips tilted up in a sweet smile, so incongruous with the chaos inside me that I feel like I have lost my mind, that I am watching life through a mirror, or from the other side of the veil. Everything freezes in the brief, bright moment — Lorcan’s soul a paused shiver, Teo’s face still the friend I knew, and me, trapped on bloody knees wondering if I have it all wrong, if maybe I missed something. If I am given enough space in this stolen second, maybe,maybeI can figure a way out of this.

But time surges ahead on his exhale. Shrugging almost carelessly, Teo reaches down, grabs the entire pile of fireseeds, and shoves them into his mouth. His body stiffens immediately in one sudden, jerking motion, his eyes flaring wide, whites flashing before they roll back in his head. It is as though he’s been struck by lightning — he is electrified, every hair on end, then, without warning, he collapses, completely still, on the thick mat.

The room is grave silent for what feels like a millennia but is only the space of a breath, before his soul bursts from his body in bright, chaotic song.Quickly quicklyTeo sings,QUICKLY!and feeling suddenly surges through my petrified body. Flinging myself toward the small table, I pull my body forward, scraping skin along the rough floor, leaving a trail of crimson behind me. My fingers fumble frantically at the tiny vial on the table, hands shaking so hard I almost drop it twice before finally finding purchase. Crawling on shaking elbows, Imake my way to where Teo’s body lies, vibrating but empty, on the mat.

Faster, faster! You must go faster!His soul commands. Shuddering with the effort, I pour the moonseed into his mouth.

His body relaxes.

But Teo’s soul does not return to it as it should.

Any other soul I have ever seen thrown from its body, however briefly, is forcibly pulled back if its body is still able to hold it.

Any hint of life keeps it tethered there.

Teo’s…is not.

Instead, in front of me, two souls hover unbound.

Making a quick decision, I reach for Teo, fumbling as he fights me unexpectedly, slipping from my grasping hands over and over until I am finally able to grab him in a bruising grip, his soul flickering white where my fingers press into him. Breathing hard, tears pouring down my face, I try desperately to force him to obey.Teo to his body, Lorcan to bone, then you will figure out the rest,I recite over and over in my head, looking frantically around for anywhere,anywhereI can bind Lorcan.Where? WHERE?

But there is nothing. The room is studiously empty; it is only me, two souls, a body, a fragment of bone, and the dust of my heart beaten into an unassuming pile on the floor.

Lorcan is fading quickly, a glint of candlelight now instead of a torch in the night. As he dims, he finally sings to me, almost an echo of a sound. I can feel his sorrow ringing through my bones when he whispersGoodbye, Wren. I am sorry I could not stay. I would not have left you. I would never have left.

Teo is still vibrating in my hands; I frantically look between his soul, and Lorcan’s, and Ellie’s bone, which is calling now, almost as loud as Teo’s. In sheer, blind panic, I grab Lorcan in one hand, barely keeping control of Teo in the other, and turn to Ellie’s bone.

Make room, make room!I command with every ounce of power within me, but she refuses.

I will not take him, Keeper. Even for you.

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