Font Size:  

She was silent for a moment—a silence for the child whose bones we had gathered. She took my hand in both of hers and spoke deliberately.

“Helen, I don’t think that the dark soul is devouring these girls. I think that it was linked to them, like it’s linked to you. You heard what the dark soul keeps saying.They scatter us. This must be what they mean. They take the bones and scatter them, and it makes the dark soul weak. Makes it broken.”

“And because I’m still linked, scattering these bones—it hurt me?” I asked. I shuddered. “This is why Leopold brought me here. To murder me and cut me up and bury my bones in the woods. And Eli or Iris are in on it, and—”

She turned her body toward me, putting her hand against my cheek. Her palm was warm, gritty with soil. I leaned into it, desperate for her touch. “Rabbit. We’re not going to let that happen.”

“But—”

She cut off my panicked words with a kiss, a fierce press of her cool lips against mine, and all thought and worry and fear vanished—for a moment, a breath, a heartbeat. There was only Bryony and the taste of her like spring rain, and her fingers in my hair and her body against mine. Surprise melted into desire, into the need for her, for her touch. I kissed her back, and it didn’t matter that I’d never kissed anyone before, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d kissed a hundred girls—because there was nothing like kissing Bryony Locke.

I didn’t want it to stop, for my uncertain reality to snatch us back from this place of utter certainty—this place where I wasHelen and she was Bryony, and nothing mattered but her fingertips against my jaw and the curve of her hip beneath my hand and her soft lips and the wild scent of her. I wanted this. I wantedher.

Her hand around the back of my neck, she pressed her brow to mine. “I won’t let them hurt you,” she told me, like it was a fact, a truth of the universe that could never be altered.

“What do we do?” I asked her. Fear still coiled around me, snagging at my wrists, my throat, my stuttering heart, but if Bryony was here, I could bear it.

“There’s nothing more to do tonight,” Bryony said. “Worry in the daylight. Tonight, stay with me. In the morning, we’ll face Harrow again.”

“You won’t make me do this alone, will you?” I asked.

“Of course not. I’m the Harrow Witch. I’m not going anywhere,” Bryony said, and kissed me again, tender and soft. “Now hush, Rabbit. Sleep.”

She pulled me close, pulled me down, until we lay on the floor with my head on her arm and her fingers combing gently through my hair. She sang about a girl in the woods and bells ringing, and I slept—slept, and did not dream of Harrow, but of black stars that felt like home.

23

I WOKE WITHsoft light across my lids and the faint patter of rain outside. Bryony was awake already, sitting in a chair with her back to me and humming the song she’d sung the night before. Her hands moved in the steady rhythm of sewing.

“Good morning, Rabbit,” she said as I sat up, rolling my neck to work out the kinks. “Here, I made you something.” She set down her needle and showed me.

It was a soft leather bag, about eight inches wide, with a strap to go over the shoulder. She’d embroidered the flap with a pattern of brambles and black stars. The toggle to shut it was carved from a deer antler. “You made this? It must have taken you all night,” I said.

“It was mostly done. I made it months ago, but I just realized what it was for,” she said.

I opened it and sucked in a quick breath. She’d wrapped the bones—jaw, hand, vertebrae—in soft, clean cloth and nestled them inside. I put the bag over my shoulder, and it settled on my hip. It felt right, having them close to me. I could still hear the bone-song, strange and sorrowful, but it felt as if it were filling a place inside of me I hadn’t realized was empty.

“Thank you,” I whispered. It was all the sound I could manage.

“It was always yours. Now let’s get you back to the house before they send out a search and rescue for you.” She stepped in close, smoothing the strap across my chest, then picked a stray leaf from my hair. “You look awful. And you’ve got a nasty gash on your forehead.”

She touched my temple, and I winced away at the pain. “You look amazing, and you’re like five times messier than me. It’s not fair,” I complained.

“I’m a witch. Twigs in the hair is part of the aesthetic,” she informed me. She twined her fingers with mine, and we walked together into the rain-shrouded woods. The water pattered around us, pleasantly blanketing out all other sound—until we heard voices in the distance. People were shouting my name.

“So much for beating search and rescue,” I said. Mom must be frantic. The voices were still a ways off. I picked up my pace.

Bryony’s hand tugged against mine. She’d stopped dead in the middle of the path, her mouth half-open, breathing in frantic little pants of air. Her eyes were fixed on something above us. Dreading what I would see, I followed her gaze.

Roman hung in the trees.

The shadows had taken him apart like a puzzle box. Joints severed, bones extracted, tendons left tangled like string among the branches.

Some dark corner of me recognized the playfulness of the strange positioning of his shattered limbs and rent body. They’d destroyed him out of anger, but the way he hung in the trees, that wasn’t rage or hatred or even hunger. It was curiosity—at how he was made and how they might remake him.

“The shadows,” Bryony said. “I—but they don’t—”

My jaw tensed. “He doesn’t have Vaughan blood. He wasn’t protected,” I said. “They’re monsters, Bryony. Made by a monster. This is what they do if they aren’t controlled.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like