Page 12 of Bonepetal
Black twine coils in my pocket the way other men keep promises. I thread it through the orbital sockets, hug it under cheekbones, lace it behind the occipital like I’m tying a ring onto a broken finger.
Tug. Knot. Tug.
When I lift it by the strings, it swings like a lantern. The teeth grin with architectural certainty.
“You touched her,” I tell the skull, because Nathan is too dead to be troubled by my opinion. My voice drips with the certainty of scripture. “And now, I’ll wear you while I take her back.”
I set bone to face and cinch the twine. The skull kisses the ridge of my nose, the shelf of my brow, the hard line of my cheek. Weight settles in. Sight narrows. The world frames itself in white and dark—jaw and emptiness. Breath fogs the bone and warms it, as if it approves.
I stand, wipe the blade clean on his shirt, and sheath it. My boots sink an inch into the soft ground. Fog fingers my calves like kin. Above, the crows shuffle, black priests at their sermon.
Vision tilts. For a second I’m a doubled, skull-faced bastard breathing fog, a crow on wire with the night jammed in its chest.
I let the bird’s eyes bleed into mine. The maze flattens into a grid of light and shadow, motion the only law worth keeping. People flicker warm like cheap lanterns.
Her? She doesn’t flicker.
She fuckingburns.
Not soft. Not safe.
She’s a coal buried under ash, waiting for me to claw it out with my teeth.
There you are.
The crow croaks once and rips off across the maze, a black stitch pulling the night tight. I fall in behind it like I was made to, breath and hands steady, heart anything but. That chaos? Useful. Faster. Meaner. Tuned to one goddamn frequency,her.
And anyone dumb enough to step into that frequency? They don’t walk back out. I’ll turn their bodies into warnings. Their faces into fucking tools. And when I take her back, when I drag her home, she’ll remember exactly what my love is.
Not mercy. Not forgiveness.
Fucking conquest.
The lights stutter. Fog thickens.
The speaker somewhere plays a looping woman’s scream; someone laughs to prove they know it’s fake.
I don’t laugh.
I follow the fucking crow.
CHAPTER 3
SALEM
Nathan’s been gone so long Miles has started timing my eye rolls like it’s an Olympic event.
Twenty-three minutes on the clock.
I flick my phone screen on for the tenth time and shove it in his face. “Receipts,” I say.
Miles leans his shoulder into mine, sucks air through his teeth like a bad referee. “Ooo, he’s on thin ice. Want me to text him a picture of me crying? Works every time. Manipulation one-o-one.”
“Text him your Venmo,” I shoot back. “Charge him for wasting my youth.”
Jamie—Miles’s date, jawline sharp enough to carve a pumpkin, snorts into his cider. “We could invoice him for emotional damages. Add interest.”
“Perfect,” I say. “Bill him in pumpkin spice. Seasonal, overpriced, and not that good.”
