Page 46 of Bonepetal
My knees bite into leaves and grit.
The dagger lies beside us, still warm. My hat bangs my collarbone on its cord. I’m crying too hard to breathe right—breaths stuttering, and shoulders shaking. Tears making muddy streaks where the ash sticks to my skin.
I press my palm to the space he was like I can force the world to rewind.
Bark and heat but no him.
The night rushes in—crickets, leaves ticking, the lake breathing.
The shadows knit shut where he tore out of the world.
Everything feels too bright.
I hold my face in both hands and try to breathe around the hole in my chest.
I’m alone.
I stay until the crying goes from ugly to mean little breaths I can ignore. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and tuck the bone knife into my thigh high sock.
Then I fold forward and let two last sobs rip up from wherever they were hiding, loud enough to make a crow shift and glare, but soft enough to be swallowed by the trees.
When I stand, my legs tremble.
I fix the hat and wipe my face.
I look back once.
The grass that lay under him is already springing up like nothing happened.
I turn toward the house. Back to the cheap lights, fake cobwebs, and bass thudding like a bad heartbeat. Because the world doesn’t pause just because I broke.
Miles will start blowing up my phone in five, and I need noise thick enough to smother the quiet clawing at my ribs.
Ash streaks my palm like war paint.
My chest hurts. My eyes sting.
It had to be done. He wasn’t the boy I loved anymore; the devil had his hands in him and wouldn’t let go.
What I did tonight is going to live under my skin.
I can’t tell anyone. Not even Miles.
This is mine to carry—my secret, my sin, my fucking weight.
So maybe Finn was right.
He’ll always be with me.
In my lungs when I breathe smoke, in the seams of this ruined dress, and in the cut humming under my palm.
Tied to everything, because I made the knot.
I walk back into the lights tasting copper and shadow.
His name a splinter under my tongue, and I practice the only magic I have left.
Smile, lie,survive.
