Page 136 of Bones
“Bones,” he whispered, slipping his arms around me, “please let me in.”
I stayed stiff in his arms for several breaths, but as his warmth seeped into me, my body slowly relaxed and melted into his. I needed to open up. Iwantedto, even as my hands started trembling.
“Notawolf,” I said before I lost my nerve. “Wolf. My oldest brother.”
He paused. “Who’s Dune?” he finally asked.
Panic began roaring in my ears, but to my shock, I heard myself say, “My other older brother.”
“What happened to them?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, tears burning at the back of my throat. “I killed Dune.”
In the silence, I startled at his fingers under my chin, tilting my head up. I opened my eyes to see so much compassion and kindness in his eyes.
“Tell me about it?” he asked.
I stared at him, silent for a long time, but the words begged to be released—the secret I’d never told a soul.
"Dune was a couple years older than me, and he was the only one who knew what I could do," I whispered as though afraid to speak any louder. "He was trying to help me get better at healing. He'd bring me injured animals and he came to me whenever he had a scrape or cut. But he wanted me to push myself and I was too scared. Sometimes…the animals that were really hurt still died. And I didn't want to…" I sucked in a ragged breath. At some point, my gaze had dropped to his chest instead of his face, afraid of what I might see in his eyes. "So one day we were arguin' about it and he got soangry.And…” I had to stop and breathe for a moment. “I know it sounds crazy, but hestabbedhimself in the gut. I tried to stop him, but he…he did it, and then when I tried to heal him…” It got harder to push the words out, my throat tightening. “I don’t know what happened. It was like something went wrong and my powershurthim instead of healing him. He started screaming like I was torturing him and the bleeding wouldn’t stop and then…then…he justdied.”
In the silence, I didn't dare look at his face. Maybe he'd change his mind. Maybe he'd decide to leave. What kind of person killed their own brother? Maybe he didn't believe Dune had done it himself. Wolf sure as hell didn't. No one in their right mind would just stab themselves?—
“Bones.” Trey’s voice sounded so gentle, and suddenly I was more afraid of his forgiveness than I was of him pushing me away.
“No.” I squeezed my eyes shut again. “Don’t. Ikilledhim.”
“Sounds like you tried to heal him to me,” Trey said, his warm hands on my face.
I tried to push away the images that bubbled up, but it seemed I’d released them just by speaking Dune’s name. I could see his sandy blond hair blowing around his face in the hot summer breeze, the weird determined gleam in his blue eyes, and the flash of the knife. I could smell the blood that dribbled out between his hands. I could hear his screams of pain when my healing power flowed into him, my desperate cries for help, and then Dune’s pleas for me to stop, but I couldn’t stop because he wasdyingand I knew if I didn’t heal him with my power, he’ddie.
I could see Wolf’s face when he found us, the rage on his face when Dune cried his name, his horror at the blood and the knife, and the way he looked at me like I was a monster as he tried to stop the bleeding. Then Dune gave an awful shudder and went still, and the silence was worse. I stared numbly at his empty blue eyes, convinced at any moment he would blink and laugh at me for being so scared.
I remembered Wolf snarling at me through his sobs, the feel of the hot rooftop beneath my bare feet when I panicked and tried to run, Wolf's body crashing into me, knocking me to the roof so hard I couldn't breathe for a moment, his voice screaming in my ear, asking me what the fuck I'd done. And I had no answers because Ididn’t fucking know.I didn’t know. But Dune was dead. He was dead and he was never coming back, and his blood coated my hands and my clothes, and I’d killed him.
“Why would Dune fucking stab himself in the gut?” Wolf roared at me as I sat curled in a tiny ball in the cell that smelled like vomit. “That doesn’t make any sense! I saw you!Youstabbed him.”
"I didn't. I didn't do it. I was tryin' to help him." I was struggling to breathe, I was crying so hard.
“You’re lying.”
I'd never seen him so angry. I'd never seen my oldest brother look at me like he hated me like he wished I'd been the one to bleed to death on the rooftop.
“Come, Wolf.” Pa’s voice sounded cold and hard as he dragged Wolf away. He wouldn’t even look at me, no matter how much I begged him to. “The council will decide what to do with her.”
Wolf jerked himself free, slamming into the bars so hard I shrieked. “I don’t understand. Tell me why you did it! Why would you kill him? He loved you!”
“Hey.”
I came back to the present. Trey cupped my face as tears rolled down my cheeks. I tried to duck my head, embarrassed, but he held my face still.
“Bones,” he said, “it wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know that,” I bit out. “You weren’t there.”
“Maybe not,” he said, refusing to let me look away. “But I know you, an’ I’ve seen how far you’ll go when you’re trying to save someone. So Iknowit wasn’t your fault.”
“It was?—”
