Page 26 of Bonepetal
I take it, shaking, weak. But the second I’m upright, my instincts cut through the fog.
I run.
The corn splits around me, my legs stumbling into speed I didn’t know I had left.
Behind me, his laugh follows, jagged and merciless, promising there will be a next time.
Crows burst overhead, their wings a black tide blotting out the sliver of moon as I sprint toward the line of trees, toward the forest we grew up in. My chest aches, not just from running but from the war tearing through me. I wanted it. God help me, I wanted him. Even though I know I shouldn’t.
He’s dead.
He’s gone.
And yet every part of me still answers to him like he never left.
CHAPTER 6
FINN
She runs like prey. But she was never prey.
They wanted her to be a sacrifice. She was never theirs to burn. She was always mine.
The corn spits her out into the night, her boots hammering gravel, short black hair whipping in the wind, slick with sweat as she stumbles.
Above, the crows split the sky for me, black wings carving the moon to ribbons, their cries a chorus dragged straight out of hell.
They’ve always been my eyes. My hounds. My fucking choir.
She thinks she’s running away.
But she’s running home. To me.
The cemetery yawns open, rows of stones like crooked teeth. She stumbles right where I knew she would, straight to the marker carved with my name.
A neat little lie for the town to mourn, a stone to make them think I ever rested. My body rotted here, sure.
But my soul?
My soul never fucking touched it.
The devil dragged that down the second I stopped breathing.
She braces against the broken slab, forehead pressed to cold moss, chest heaving, hair plastered damp to her temples.
I slow, savoring her panic. Her trembling. The way her body remembers what her mind keeps trying to deny.
She wanted to believe I was just a ghost.
But tonight, tonight I get to show her what crawled back.
“Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got, bonepetal. I know you can run harder,” I growl, low enough to make the night itself lean in.
Her head jerks up, eyes wide, and she’s off again, boots skidding over dried earth, breath breaking sharp in the dark.
But I don’t need to chase. I let her feel me close, pressing at her back like a shadow that never learned how to leave.
Because when it comes to her, I never did.
