Page 33 of Bonepetal
The way she says my name is half demand, half plea. I step closer, savoring the tremor in her voice.
“I bound you,” I say, voice low, thick with certainty.
Her eyes snap wide, rage slashing through the daze. “You—fuck—you can’t just do that to me.”
I chuckle dark, cruel. “Can’t? The elders used to whisper about it, remember? How a soul could be tethered. One to another. How the right rite could knot you tighter than blood or bone.” I tilt my head, shadows sliding with me. “They were half-right. I learned more than whispers down there.”
Her throat bobs, pulse frantic. “Down… there?”
“Hell teaches, bonepetal. Every scream’s a lesson, every burn a fucking scripture. I came back carved in knowledge. And this” —I lift our joined hands, the wax and blood seal still raw, the shadows curling at the edges— “this is mine.”
Her breath shudders out, fury twisting with fear. “But you—you don’t even have a soul anymore. You’re?—”
“Soulless?” My grin is jagged. “Maybe. But I don’t need one to tie myself to yours. That’s the trick they never told us—once there’s a soul inside you, even a shard, even a stolen piece, you get to stay. No veil. No grave. No fire dragging you back. And now your soul is in me.”
She stares like I gutted her, shock flooding her features before rage hardens them again. “You used me,” she snaps, voice cracking between betrayal and grief. “You fucking used me to crawl out of hell.”
I step closer, towering over her, my smile unrepentant. “No, Salem. I used what was always mine.”
Shadows climb higher, curling up her arms, licking over her stomach like proof she can’t deny. She flinches, shakes her head hard, panic and rage knotted together. “No. No, fuck you—don’t touch me.” Her voice cracks, then sharpens to a blade. “Stay back, Finn. I swear if you take one more step?—”
I move anyway, one deliberate pace, and she spins on me, eyes blazing wet. “Don’t. Don’t you fucking follow me. You don’t get to bind me, break me, and then act like you own my next breath. You don’t get that.” Her chest heaves, bare skin glowing in the candlelight, trembling but unyielding. “Not right now. Not after this.”
I let her go. For now.
But only because I want her to believe she still has a choice left.
She yanks her jacket on, zipper rasping loud in the silence, but it hangs loose over bare skin, nothing beneath it but the heat and wax left behind. Her hands shake as she fumbles with the sleeves, as if fabric could shield her from what just happened.
Then she’s moving, fast, and unsteady, boots crunching over leaves and stone as she stumbles down the hill.
The crows stir in the branches above, their wings splitting the night, their black laughter chasing her descent into the graveyard.
I stay where I am. Watching. Knowing the tether hums under her skin already, whether she wants it to or not.
I press my palm to the scar over my chest.
A minute won’t save her. Distance won’t save her.
She’ll come to understand soon enough.
She’s bound, and now, now she’s all fucking mine.
CHAPTER 7
SALEM
The hill feels different going down than it did going up.
Maybe it’s the wax cooling in constellations on my skin, the ghost-heat of his hands where he steadied me before I ripped myself away from him, or the metal taste the night leaves on my tongue.
Whatever it is, the world sits an inch to the left of where it used to be, and something under my sternum feels lighter. Burned clean. Wrong, too, like shadows have learned my veins, and are practicing how to move inside them.
I breathe, and the breath goes all the way in.
The graveyard opens its rusting mouth.
Wet grass, slick as a tongue. Names slouching on their stones like they’re tired of being remembered. The crows keep pace along the fence, black shapes hop post to post, punctuating a sentence I’m not ready to read.
