Page 30 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“Is he chiding you for giving away your secrets?” I ask, startling her, and, instead of answering, she takes my hand, guiding it along the wall until she finds a little hole in the surface, almost impossible to see. She moves my hand inside it, cool fingers squeezing mine gently in the hidden dark.

“There she is,” Wren says affectionately. “How you can never find her I don’t know. She sings so loudly!” Her voice is warm, as it always is when we visit my little sister. Cara doesn’t mind being part of the deception — she loves tricks, and never liked the Council, so I knew her bones would be the same. Remembering her as she was, mischievous face crinkling into a gap toothed smile, I feel suddenly and overwhelmingly lost.

“I wish I could hear her as you do,” I murmur, fingers resting gently on the familiar curves.

Wren squeezes my hand again in sympathy, slowly, so slowly Ialmost can’t tell that she’s moving at first, leans her head until it rests lightly on my shoulder; I freeze, motionless, barely breathing. All other thought flees my head; Wren has never done this — leaned against me, rested her skin against mine. In all our time together we’ve had nothing but passing seconds of contact, where she guided my hand to bone or where I brushed against her as I passed by. I’ve never known the surprising warmth of her body, never lingered against her, petal soft, pressed against me.

She feels…she feels likehome.

I am locked in place, and if the bone wall in front of us were to crash down and break me to pieces in this moment, I would go to the earth a happy man.

“I wish many things…” she replies, just as softly, and my heart clenches.

I don’t know this version of Wren. She has been so strange lately; not in a bad way, but in a way where I am unsure of the next step with her, though I have never been so before.

“Like what?” I ask, only just daring to turn my cheek enough that it brushes the edge of her hair, and I close my eyes, inhaling the sweet, herb scent of her skin. We have never been this close for this long; never stood like this, as a man and a woman with no song between us.

“I don’t know.” Frustration bares sharpened teeth in her tone. “Do you ever… do you ever want something different than this, Tahrik? Somethingmore?”

“There is only one thing I want in this world, Wren. And I would give the sky and earth for it.”

“Would you?” She turns to me, pale eyes shining, full of hope and trepidation, and I’m suddenly scared to hear what she is about to say. Her voice drops to below a whisper. “Would you ever…leave the village, do you think? If it meant a quiet, peaceful life?”

The longing in her voice shatters me, but her question stuns me to silence.Leave? Our people? Our home? I want to answer, want to say “of course” without hesitation, but in the space between thought and word she has already pulled away, straightened, and removed her hand from mine in the wall. She has withdrawn into herself, behindher bone armor, and I feel like I’ve failed a test I didn’t know I was taking.

“I would go anywhere for that dream, Wren,” I say as firmly as I’m able, trying to get her to look at me, but I don’t know if it was too little, too late, if I was too slow to respond. She surprised me by suddenly jumping off the cliff where we have walked, carefully balanced, for years. And it strikes me in a lightning flash that, if I don’t follow, I will be left on the ledge alone. Turning fully to her, I take her hands in mine, not bothering to look if anyone else is near. “If you say the word, I will build a cottage for us. We can fill it with children and laughter, and I will rub your feet by the fire at night. I would make you a soft nest of woolen blankets, and bake you sweet breads–”

It is working, and she unfurls, softening, and interrupts me, voice wistful. “I want chickens.”

“I will get you as many chickens as there are in the world,” I promise, voice shaking from laughter and emotion, and my reward is a single tear from her eyes. “Where it is safe for you. Here in the village, I will make you a home.”

Her brows knit together slightly, and she closes her eyes in response, but before I can ask her what’s wrong, her face changes, empties, as though she’s looking at a white void. All emotion leaves it; there is nothing left but smooth marble in the cold lines of her lips. Stepping away from me, she presses into the bones, letting go of my hand and fixing her lips into her practiced, BoneKeeper smile.

Ah, I think, and mimic her expression.

In the near distance, the steady clop of a pony’s hooves approaches. Wren turns blankly toward the sound, body tense like an overly tight string. I debate leaving — we try hard not to be seen together — but I am within my rights to visit my family, and I’m suddenly loath to abandon her.Perhaps the rider isn’t coming here; perhaps they will pass a lane over, never seeing us, and we can resume building castles in the sky together.Stay or go? Stay or go?Anxiety brushes my skin like blood moth wings.

As the sound gets closer, though, almost upon us, the wings change to teeth as her face softens into an unfamiliar expression. A knottwists in my stomach. I’m not used to not being able to read her; usually I can hear every song in her heart. At least I know she is not scared, so it cannot be Raek or Nickolas, but she is moreWrenand lessBoneKeeperin her response, and my shoulders tighten. She has no friends here; I cannot think of who she would turn to greet with a face that gentled at his approach.

The answer feels like a blade to my throat.

Councilor Rannoch pulls up sharply in front of us, swinging from his mount, dropping the reins casually behind him. As he approaches, her lips curve into the shadow of real happiness, and I know,I knowhe thinks it’s for him by the satisfied smirk on his face. He doesn’t know that it is just her showing the memory of our few minutes together.

“You are in the wrong part of the village right now,” she says to him, voice wary but...not empty. It’s not exactly friendly, but it’s not formal either. I have never heard her talk to another this way; Wren usually only speaks to the Council or for the bones, and very rarely has any emotion in her voice other than that of the dead. She isbarelywarm, but he smiles at her response with cold affection.

I know this Councilor, have watched him watch her; he craves her like he craves power, can’t tell the difference between that and love. He stands on the stage with the others, but where they are smug and satisfied, he is silent and searching, the tension in his body never draining until his eyes touch on her face, however briefly. No one else would notice — he never lets his gaze linger, never seeks her out to speak with her. I’ve just played the same game too many times to not recognize myself in another.

To his limited credit, he is kind to her in the ways he knows how to be, and I think he truly believes he cares for her, but he would never go to the Sun God in her place, would never let her out again if he knew she were speaking to me, not the bones.

“Should you not be in council still?”

He hears her question with false ears, laughing because he thinks she’s tracking him in interest, rather than to keep him away.

“You follow my movements, BoneKeeper?” he says, voice low andseductive, though I’m sure she doesn’t understand the strangled note in his tone. She has been kept away from the living for so long that the louder emotions of a beating heart are more a cacophony than a symphony in her ears. She’s a creature made of whispers and half-breaths; anything more feels like an attack, not an approach. He is too used to the women of this place, does not understand my Wren.

“Not follow,” she replies, almost thoughtfully. “I just know where you’re meant to be.”

His answering smile is pure satisfaction. “I know where you’re meant to be as well, and it’s not here.” But he’s not angry, just teasing, and there is an almost playful challenge in her words when she replies.

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