Page 1 of Bone Year

Chapter One

“The Cycle has never broken. It only waits. And when it returns, it will demand a healer capable of choosing which lives deserve to be saved.”

— Excerpt from The Ashwell Academy Founding Chronicle

The first time I watched someone die, I didn’t scream. I listened.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment would change everything.

It’s strange what the mind chooses to remember. A breath, a final exhale, the creaking of bones. I should be past it by now, but sometimes the memory rises without warning, dragging me back.

Suddenly, I bolt upright in bed to the sound of pounding below me.

It’s not a memory this time. The knocking is real, sharp enough to rattle the floorboards, and it is far too early for the clinic to be open.

I hop out of bed and quickly pull on a sweater and pants, shoving my feet into boots. As I descend the stairs, I decide not to bother taming my long red hair and twist it into a ponytail instead.

I live with my mother and younger sister in the rooms above the village clinic, the one my father started before I was born. He was the best healer in all of Ironfen, often drawing people from other villages in the Woodlands, many traveled far and wide to see him. Once we even had a family from the Shorelands make the trek. It took them an entire month by horse to reach us.

My father died last year, and nothing has felt quite right since.

I jog across the clinic and unlock the front door, pulling it open to find Jace standing there. He holds a freshly baked sweet bun from his parents’ bakery, offering it to me. A smile spreads across his face as he brazenly looks me up and down.

I grab it, take a bite, and wave him inside.

“You don’t have to finish it all at once, Maelis,” he says.

“But it tastes like it was made by an angel,” I say through a mouthful of warm, sugary bread.

He laughs, shaking his head. He has the straight nose and full lower lip of someone who was clearly built to be looked at, and lately I’ve been catching myself doing it. I always tease him like that, because the thing about Jace is that he is an angel. An actual one.

His parents are angels too, the only magical bloodline living permanently in our village. We get the occasional fae passing through, and the crazy woman who runs the tavern at the edge of town swears has hosted vampires before, but I’ve never seen one myself. They may rule over all of Valen, but they like to keep to the Shadowlands.

Most magical bloodlines avoid human villages altogether. We don’t have much to offer them, and they probably find us unbearably boring.

Jace moved here about twelve years ago. We were kids then. His father had fallen gravely ill, and after seeing countless healers, they eventually found their way to our clinic. My father was finally able to heal him, and they’ve stayed ever since.

They opened a bakery and settled into the slow rhythm of our village, as if they had been searching for a place like Ironfen all along. My mother welcomed them with open arms. She had been an outsider before she settled in Ironfen, though she doesn’t like to talk about it.

“Are you doing hours with Briana today?” I ask as Jace drops onto one of the cots, already tearing into his pastry.

Briana is my little sister, though calling her little no longer feels right. She’s seventeen now, six years younger than me.

After my father passed, my mother and sister took on most of the clinic hours. Before that, I was his protégé. From the moment I could walk, I found my way into the clinic, trailing after him, watching, learning, helping wherever I could. Our family was never wealthy enough for us to attend one of the larger schools, but we had a tutor, along with lessons from our parents at home.

Every day after my studies, I worked in the clinic. Healing always came naturally to me, but since my father’s death, I haven’t been able to treat a single patient.

I freeze the moment someone needs me. The memories crash into me all at once. My hands shake, my chest tightens, and panic steals the air from my lungs. Jace used to be my right hand in the clinic. Now, he helps my sister and mother instead, filling the space I left behind.

“No, I’m off today,” he says, “but I thought you could use a run to clear your head.”

I brush the crumbs from my hands onto my pants, already knowing he won’t let it go.

After he witnessed my first panic attack, when we were trying to help a man that had been impaled by a fallen branch after slipping from his roof, Jace started dragging me outside whenever he could. Running. Hiking. Long walks through the forest. He swore it would help, that I would find my way back to the clinic in time.

But here we are, almost a year later, and I’m still broken.

I think the runs are just an excuse now, a way for him to stay close. I’ve always had the feeling Jace wants more than friendship, but I’ve never let it cross that line. Not because he isn’t attractive. At six feet tall with short silvery-blond hair and wings that catch the light like brushed silver, he is painfully so.