Page 6 of Bonepetal
Now it’s more than bone. More than memory. It’s him. Always him. A vow around my neck I never broke, even when everything else fell apart.
My reflection doesn’t scare me anymore.
Shecut her hair short. Wears rings on every finger. Keeps her smile tucked beneath her tongue like a blade. Her eyes are shadowed and older than they were a year ago. But she’s still me. Still alive.
Finn would’ve wanted that.
“Live for both of us, bonepetal.”
The nickname hits like a bruise wrapped in silk, tender, intimate, and full of rot. My fingers tighten around the edge of Nathan’s dresser, the wood worn smooth beneath my grip. Finn started calling me that the first time he caught me stringing tiny bone beads into a choker, weaving them between dried flowerpetals on my bedroom floor. I’d shrugged, told him I liked pretty things with sharp edges. He’d grinned, kissed my wrist, and said, “So, bonepetal it is.” Like it made perfect sense. Like he saw straight through the darkness and still wanted the mess inside.
I shove the thought back down where all the others fester, right between grief and denial, and grab my bag.
Nathan’s still in the shower when I slip out, boots echoing down the narrow stairwell.
Outside, the October air slices against my cheeks, cool and sharp. The street is already draped in Halloween—jack-o’-lanterns on stoops, skeletons with plastic scythes leaning in doorways, black-and-orange bunting sagging between lampposts. Fallen leaves skitter across the pavement, crisp as paper.
On the corner, the café hums with soft jazz and the hiss of the espresso machine. Warm light spills through the windows, catching the steam rising from cups. The air inside smells like cinnamon, burnt sugar, and coffee strong enough to wake the dead.
“Morning, Salem,” the barista says, already reaching for a to-go cup. I’m here too often for them to bother asking my order anymore.
“Morning,” I say, sliding a few crumpled bills across the counter. My gloves are still cool from the outside air.
While they pour, I scan the chalkboard menu, today’s specials written in loopy handwriting beneath doodles of ghosts and candy corn. Couples in scarves murmur over pastries. A little kid in a witch costume stomps her rain boots on the mat while her mom tries to tie her hat back on.
I wrap my hands around the paper cup when it’s passed to me, letting the heat bleed into my fingers. The first sip is bitter, grounding.
Coffee in hand, I step back into the street. The wind lifts my hair, tangling it across my cheek. The town feels small in that postcard way—brick storefronts, peeling paint, the library’s stone steps worn from a hundred years of use. But under the fall prettiness, there’s something else. A weight in the air. The way shadows stretch a little too far.
Miles was the one who told me I should go back to school. “Something to keep your hands busy so you don’t go digging in graveyards for fun,” he’d said. He wasn’t wrong. I study art history now. I sketch when I can’t sleep. Graveyards mostly, but sometimes fire, and eyes I can’t forget.
Finn’s eyes.
Finn, who could recite the old chants in the dark without looking at the book. Who knew how to draw salt symbols that made the air feel heavy. Who kissed me in the candlelight like I was both the sacrifice and the priestess.
We were twenty when the cult made their move on me. I wasn’t supposed to know what was happening, I was just the girl they needed for the offering, the one born under the right moon with the right bloodline. But Finn knew. He’d been raised in it. Groomed for it. He told me the truth one night with his hands shaking on my face that they were going to give me to the dark at harvest.
He swore he wouldn’t let them, and he didn’t.
Instead, he took my place. He killed all of them. Every one of them who had taken part in it.
Who had touched my skin.
He dragged me from the altar, cut the ropes from my wrists, kissed me once like it was goodbye, and stepped into the circle and marked himself with the sacrificial symbol. I remember screaming his name. Remember the heavy scent of iron and smoke, the shadows crawling up his body like they wanted to eathim whole. He looked back at me through it, eyes steady and shoved the blade into his own chest.
I swore I’d never let another touch that hollow, that no one could ever reach the place in me he would leave behind, and then, he was gone.
Pulled down into the dark by hands I couldn’t see.
That was a year ago today, and still, sometimes, I swear I feel him close. Like the air shifts in certain places. Like the world holds its breath, for him.
October 29th – Night
By the timeI get home from class, the sun’s dropping low over the crooked rooftops, bleeding pink and gold into the cracked pavement. My apartment door sticks like always, the wood swollen from years of damp autumns. Inside, the air smells faintly of sage smoke and melted wax. The light is soft here, catching on the mismatched furniture, the stacks of sketchbooks piled on the floor.
In the corner, on the vanity I dragged home from a thrift store, sit the only things I managed to salvage from what was left of him—his hoodie and an empty cologne bottle.
After the police raided and gutted the property, turning over drawers, tearing up floorboards, most of it was left to rot or was burned to the ground. Weeks later, I went back. I told myself it was just to see, to know for sure, but really, I was searching. Hunting for anything that still had him on it.
