Page 47 of Bonepetal
CHAPTER 10
SALEM
Iwake to light, not a hum.
No bass under my skin.
No ripples at the corners of the room.
The ceiling is white and cracked in the same place as always.
The building breathes—pipes tick, a radiator coughs somewhere, a bus sighs past two streets over. My sheets are twisted at my calves.
My toes are warm, and my mouth tastes like sleep, not smoke.
For the first time in days, my body feels like mine.
I stay still and test it.In. Out. No invisible tug on my pulse.
No phantom hand at my throat.
The weight in my chest, the one that sat there like a stone is smaller.
Maybe gone.
It’s not joy. Not victory.
Just… lighter. Like I’m a balloon tied to a chair and the knot finally let go.
I almost smile. I let it happen.
Then the memory comes. Of course it does.
The knife, hot in my palm. The wrong give of his back. The forest splitting open like it had been waiting for that exact second. His breath at my ear when I pushed the blade in.
The tether drawing tight, humming, then snapping.
My knees hitting the ground.
I swallow and it feels like glass. The veil pulled shut as he went, like he took the open door with him.
It had to be done.I repeat it in my head like a spell, careful with the order.
I have to remind myself he wasn’t my Finn—the boy who walked me home with his hands shoved in his pockets so he wouldn’t touch me before I asked. Not the boy who tucked flowers in my hair, who made mud balls with me in the woods behind the prayer house, who walked me to and from the kitchen every morning like it was his job.
Like I was his to protect.
No, the boy who showed me what it means to be loved died one year ago.
And that thing that spent days following me, that killed Nathan and ruined me over and over preaching about broken vows and what was owed—that wasn’t my Finn.
And yet I still ache.
Not because I doubt it but because my body doesn’t know what to do with quiet yet after all that.
“Okay,” I tell the ceiling. “We’re okay.”
My bones don’t argue.
