Page 58 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Tyghan shrugged. “Maybe a little. You do it so predictably.”
He was not getting much better at compliments. His attention shifted to the pebbles pressed into the soil. “C I?”
“It was going to beC Kbefore you snuck up on me. My sister’s initials.” She knelt to pick up the scattered pebbles. Tyghan stooped beside her to help gather them, his shoulder brushing hers, the small touch sucking up every ounce of her attention, even his woodsy scent making her heady.
“And you’re doing this exercisewhy?” he asked.
“I was thinking about my sister. It was a quirk of hers when we were growing up and always on the move. She pressed stones into the dirt to create her initials, then wondered if they’d still be there if we passed through again. At campgrounds, rest stops, anywhere. A little piece of herself left behind in some hidden corner. Sometimes we teased her about it.”
Tyghan pressed the last stone into the dirt to complete theK. “Nothing wrong with wanting to leave something of yourself behind.”
“I suppose not,” Bristol mused, a familiar melancholy roosting in her chest. She stood and brushed the dirt from her fingers. “But her initials were never there when we came back. I always felt bad about that, but it didn’t stop Cat from doing it at the next stop, or the next.”
“Why didn’t she just carve or paint her initials, so they’d be permanent?”
“No, it always had to be little stones. She said they were fragile, movable, like a human life. They could be scattered anywhere—”
For the first time it hit Bristol. Maybe Cat wasn’t leaving the stones so they could stay in place, but so she could imagine where they had gone. Where a piece of her had gone. Maybe she was imagining a different life for herself and what it might look like—the same way Bristol did. A faraway place where a stone might land and stay forever. An ache pierced her throat.
Tyghan still waited for her to finish her sentence. She swallowed away the ache. “My sister Harper has her quirks too,” she went on, to cover for her lapse. “She smells books before she reads them. Every time. It’s strange, I know. And she buys a lot of used books.”
“What about your quirks? You have any?”
“Plenty, I’m sure, but that’s a story for Cat and Harper to tell.”
He crossed his arms. “But they’re not here, and you are.”
She knew the first quirk her sisters would immediately blurt out because it made them shiver. “I like spiders,” she answered as she sat on a fallen trunk, “and I give them names so my sisters won’t smash them with a shoe. It’s much harder to kill something once you know its name. Howard was the last one I saved.” She told him that it became her unofficial job to retrieve and take spiders outside if one got in the house. “Both of my sisters are terrified of them, but they’ve always fascinated me. Spiders are loners and artists, and they work so diligently weaving their webs. Did you know their silk is five times stronger than steel? Can you imagine a sword made from it?” She glanced sideways at him, her brows arched. “Just saying. Something you might want to look into. And the shrouds they create for their victims—there’s something elegant and respectful about it. Killing isn’t a thoughtless act for them; it’s a well-conceived process.”
Tyghan sat down beside her. “Or calculating.”
“Completely,” she said with admiration.
“Does the moth caught in the web also think the killing is elegant and respectful?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. But it’s better than getting plastered on the grille of a truck.”
“Dead is dead,” he answered. “There’s nothing elegant about it.”
His expression grew hard and distant, and she wondered if they were still talking about spiders.
It was only a few seconds later that he said he had to go.
She didn’t see him again for two days.
CHAPTER 40
Tyghan scanned the shadows. He hated this silent, dark forest. It breathed. It watched. It was deadly still. Even the horse’s steps were silenced on the soft loamy trail. There were no speeding truck grilles here, or spiders lying in wait, only a hundred other ways to die unexpectedly and painfully.
Only Melizan didn’t seem bothered by the gloom. “Any news from the outliers?” she asked, riding up alongside him after tiring of Quin’s company on the trail.
Tyghan shook his head. “No news that was helpful. The others knew as little about Willow as the sheriff did, and no one’s seen her since the day we took Bristol.”
“What about Princess Georgina? She was always a nosy one, in everyone’s business.”
“She refused to meet. Too busy.”
A wry smile twisted Melizan’s lips. “I suppose you can’t force a princess, can you?”
