Page 75 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“Oh, youswearit?” The amusement in my words is a sharp contrast to the scent of blood in the air, to the wet, red rags dripping crimson puddles on the floor. “As you swore that no harm would come to her from your tame little beast? As you swore she would be safe under your protection? We chose the wrong man,” she spits out, bitterness and fury warring in my voice. “We had such hopes for you, but you have failed us at every turn.”

Silas looks helpless and furious at the same time. “Ihave failed you?”

I shrug.

“What test did I fail?”

And she laughs for me, a colder laugh than my own, the clattering of bones in my voice a Reaping pit song.

“What test have younotfailed? It would be the easier question to answer.” There is a long pause, and then, sharply, “Where is her Protector?”

Silas and Rannoch exchange hopeless looks. “Someone stole into her cottage and destroyed the bones there. We…we don’t know if her Protector made it through or not. She won’t tell us. But I’ve never seen her neck free of him before. We haven’t had time to…” Rannoch’s voice trails off.

“You strip her of her armor and then are surprised when invading armies take advantage. What an absolute waste you have been.”

“I was achild,” Silas snaps out.

“So was she,” the voice replies coldly. “You are nothing but excuses. Councilor? Her Protector? He is not gone. I assume he’s in her home still. Take a torch and get him.”

“It’s full night?—”

There is no response but expectant silence, and he leaves the room. Nothing is said in his absence, the woman curving around my consciousness, not exactly preventing me from returning, but not encouraging it either, and I drift in the timeless nowhere until Rannoch returns, breathing hard as though he’d run the entire length there and back. Lorcan’s bones are carefully draped in his hands, and he moves to put them around my neck, but she clicks my tongue in warning, taking them from him and looking over the teeth and fingers carefully. “He has been off you too long. You are already bleeding. It is necessary.”

She doesn’t wait for a response, as though I could even give her one, and wipes my bloody hands down the length of the necklace over and over and over again before wrapping it tightly around my throat like a collar.

Little Keeper? Oh Gods, Wren! I’m sorry. I’m sorry.Lorcan surges forth, beyond frantic, horrified, but even for him I cannot speak.

“At peace, Protector. She is going to sleep soon, and you will not be removed again.” She turns me toward Silas and Rannoch, about tospeak, when from outside the entryway, close enough to touch the sound, the liquid howl of the horned man rings out. It is muffled by the door, but it seeps in the cracks, bouncing off the walls. Jerking my head up suddenly, I can feel my eyes flare wide in surprise, chest constricting painfully. “Is it?” The hope in my voice is beyond anything I have in my heart or body — it is full of centuries I have not lived, and she pulls me to my feet, unsteady as a newborn foal, as though wearing my body.

Silas and Rannoch startle back, and move to grab me, but I shake them off. That sound…it shivers through me, running through my veins, calling to me. He is much too close, whoever he is, but too far away at the same time. The two men move in front of me, as though to protect me from whatever is outside the barred entrance. If I took back my body, my voice, I could tell them that he would not hurt me, that something in him sings to me, but for the first time, I cannot. The bone memory keeps me back, locked away in my body.

From the night his song rings out again.

“Ah.” The longing in my voice is so melancholy it hurts my throat.

She is still smiling though, and, before I know it is happening, she leans my head back, white and red hair dripping down my back, and sings out, a hunting bird’s call, a keening, shivering sound that is pain and pleasure all at once. Everything and everyone freezes, Silas and Rannoch whipping around to face me. There is nothing but silence, both inside and out, just the staggered inhale and exhale of the men inside the walls of the keep.

From outside the door, the whisper of a startled motion, and then the call of darkness, a low, chuffing purr, like one of the beasts in the bones’ memories. No one moves. I do not know how long we stand there, but at some point the chuffing noise quiets, and the woman in me smiles in apparent satisfaction.

“She’ll sleep here now, Councilmen. There is one outside the doors guarding her who will not fail.” And, without my consent, she shuts my eyes, and my world disappears.

AN ETERNITY AND A DAY

SILAS

“And I am tellingyou, Trader, that she is not available to see you.” Rannoch lays a steadying hand on my shoulder from behind me, less to comfort me, I think, than to calm me, but I’ve had enough of the foreigner in front of me, and for the first time, am beginning to regret the trade, supplies be damned. He came, uninvited, pounding on the Council House door before first light, before it was safe to walk the street, frantic and demanding, as though he has a right toanyinformation regardinganyone in our village, least of all our BoneKeeper.

“Don’t push me, Village Father.” The threat is clear in his voice; it is not a sheathed sword. The blade is exposed and ready. “You need this trade far more than we do. You think I don’t know the look of desperation on people’s faces? Hunger is hard to hide, no matter how late into the night you let people dance. Where is she?”

“She is safe.” Rannoch answers behind me, and I have to clench my fist to keep from swinging it. We owe him no answers.

“There is blood in her home, Councilman, and clear signs of struggle. You’ll forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.” The hard lines of his face are granite, much different than the laughing carelessness heshowed her last night during the feast, and I narrow my eyes, reassessing him.

“Kaden, correct?” I ask flatly, and he nods in reply. “Your concern does you credit, but you are not of our village, of our people, of our ways. You have two days left in our city, that is all. My word will have to suffice. She is safe. And not your concern.”

Kaden’s nostrils flare, shoulders tensing, and then all at once the anger drains from his body, leaving only quiet misery. “She left her door open for me. Do you understand? If harm came to her, it’s because I promised to return. By the time I was able to…please.” I can tell how difficult it is for him, how much guilt he is bearing, but in the moment I’m viciously glad to have someone other than myself to blame. Someone else to look at so I don’t have to see my face in the mirror and know,know, that her blood is on my hands.

The sound of Rannoch’s choked breath behind me distracts me from answering, though. “She…left her door open for you?”

---