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I used a napkin to wipe my face. “Yeah,” I said. “You can talk to me.”
He nodded. He was sweating. It made me nervous.
He took me into the trees. Birds called. The leaves twisted on the branches. Pinecones littered the ground around us.
He didn’t speak for a long time.
Then, “I have a present for you.”
“Okay.”
He turned to look at me. His eyes went from ice to orange, then back again. “It’s not the one I want to give you.”
I waited.
“Do you understand?”
I shook my head slowly.
He looked frustrated. “Dad says I have to wait before—I just want you to be my—argh. One day I’m going to give you another present, okay? It’s going to be the best thing I could ever give you. And I hope you’ll like it. More than anything.”
“Why can’t you give it to me now?”
He scowled. “Because apparently it’s not the right time. Thomas could do it, and he—” Mark shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. One day. I promise.”
I wondered at them sometimes. Thomas and Mark. If Mark was jealous. If he ever wanted what Thomas would become. If he had wanted to be Thomas’s second instead of Richard Collins. Mark’s mother had died giving birth to him. One moment everything was fine, and the next she was just… gone. Only he remained.
Sometimes I thought it was a fair trade. I wanted him here. I had never known her.
I never told anyone that. It felt wrong to say the words out loud.
Mark said, “I brought this for you instead.”
In his hand was a little piece of wood. It had been carved by a clumsy hand. It took a moment for me to see what it had been shaped into.
The left wing was smaller than the one on the right. The beak was squarer than anything else. The bird had talons, but they were blocky.
A raven.
He’d carved me a raven.
It looked nothing like the one on my arm. My father had been meticulous, his magic being forced into my skin, burning its way underneath and into my blood. It had been the last thing and had hurt the worst. I had screamed until my voice broke, Abel holding my shoulders down, his eyes on fire.
Somehow, I thought this meant more.
I reached out and traced a finger along a wing. “You made this.”
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
I said “yes” and “how” and “why, why, why would you do this for me?”
He said, “Because I couldn’t give you what I wanted. Not yet. So I want you to have this in its place.”
I picked it up, and how Mark smiled.
“WHERE ARE we going?” I asked Mom again as we passed a sign that said YOU’RE LEAVING GREEN CREEK PLEASE COME BACK SOON! ?
??I have to—”
