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A shiver runs through me. Would I return to save Lorcan, if I felt him fading?

Never, Keeper. I’d Silence myself before I let you walk that path again.

His voice is a dagger, a sharp contrast to the needle of Tahrik’s entreaty. I’m pulled back to myself when Tahrik’s hand spasms along the column of my throat.

“Something has changed you, has been changing in you. Even before we left — if we can get you back to yourself — I will help guide you, Wren. I promise. Back to the time before everything went wrong. Before the Traders, and what you did to Nickolas….I know that wasn’t you.

You wouldn’t have done that. But it happened. It happened.” His arms are shaking.

“The world is better for it,” I snap, no regret flavoring my words.

“Do you not remember what you did to him?”

“I would do it again.” My words are flat, and he chokes, rubbing a trembling hand over his face. “He had a child , Tahrik! ”

His answer is too loud, too close to my face, the type of strangled scream you make when you are trying to be silent but cannot.

“ He was not our concern! ” He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and tries to calm down.

“Was it worth a piece of your soul to save Marrin? Was it worth what you did to that poor man? Even had the child gone to Offering, you would have Guided him to bone. And Nickolas would have been dealt with by the Father and the Council.”

“You have too much faith in a poisoned system, Tahrik. Does it not matter that it would have taken a piece of my soul had I not done something! What if it was your sister? What would you have me do then?”

“Not that, Wren. Never that. And it will be never that again if I have anything to say about it.”

“Well. You don’t have anything to say about it. My life is not yours to decide.”

He makes a low humming sound in his throat, and turns away from me. “It’s this place…we need to get you back to the village.”

“It is not this place! You know what life was for me there. You can’t possibly want me to return to that. The Council…” My words drift away. I can’t continue the sentence, cold chills rippling my skin with tiny bumps. He turns back and rubs my arms gently, his hands belying his tone and words.

“I will protect you from the Council. You have my word.” A bark of bitter laughter bursts from my mouth, and his lips tighten in a thin line. The serpent is back. “You think I can’t? You think so little of me that you don’t believe I can protect you?”

“Even the Father couldn’t protect me, Tahrik.

If I return, they’ll kill me. Or worse.” Death would not be the worst option.

Even now, far away, I wake in the silence of the night, gagging on fear and horror at the memory of clawing fingers on my skin.

Sometimes I think I can feel the ridges of prints left behind, ghost light, staining me with their whorls and curves.

I’ve scrubbed myself to bleeding to rid my body of the memory of hands.

The sound of Nickolas’ bones ripping through flesh is a comfort for me, a lullabye that soothes me back to sleep, not a horror. How can Tahrik not understand that ?

I have missed something, being lost in my thoughts.

His voice is hushed and biting, anger dripping like venom from his words.

“I would not let them hurt you again, Wren. But you are losing yourself here. You are…you are different. Louder. Less gentle. Less…appropriate for your station. All of the things that made you you are being stripped away. You don’t…

you don’t carry yourself as you should.”

“And how is that, Tahrik?” There is poison in my own words, but perhaps he cannot taste it; he is too far gone, and grabs my hands earnestly, looking into my eyes.

“You were a touch of sweetness, a song for my ears alone. The way you’d blush when I said your name, or look away if we locked eyes too long…

. You wouldn’t argue with me, just share sugared secrets beneath the shadow of the bones.

It was just you and I, with no one else.

Where has that gone? I don’t wish this world to make you hard, Wren.

You are not of it. You should be away from the toils of life.

I can’t stand by the side and watch you drift from yourself.

” Iron enters his voice. “I won’t stand by the side.

The Council was right in some ways. You should be protected. For your own good.”

For your own good. For your own good. The words echo in my mind, and I shake my head violently, as if that will rid me of them.

“I am not a child to be wrapped in wool and coddled, Tahrik. I am my own person, and I am telling you I will not go back.” Trembling, I try to steady my voice, to find the words that will pull him from the madness that seeped into him.

This is not Tahrik. Something has slipped into him through the cracks formed when we left the village; if only I can find him, I know I can bring him back to me.

Casting my voice low, I implore him. “I was unhappy there, can’t you see that?

I was scared, and lonely, and miserable. ”

He shakes his head in disappointment “You are important to the village, Wren. How do you think all of those people will feel without you there? Especially now! They need you! All of the children who can no longer speak to their parents or grandparents, the husbands who can’t hear from their wives, the mothers from their sons?

” His voice hardens; there is a new judgment in it.

“Do not be selfish, BoneKeeper. It does not become you. ”

Tahrik has never called me BoneKeeper in this way, this way that makes me an “Other”. It is the tone of the Council, a pursed, sneering sound that only parodies respect.

“What has driven you to this madness? Where has my friend gone?” I whisper, a quiet plea in the darkening light.

Tahrik sits back on his heels and cocks his head, meeting my eyes with his clear, empty brown ones.

“I will have you bend, or I will have you break. But we are going home where you belong either way. And you will have me to keep you safe, and I will bring you all the birds of the forest to fill your room with song, and I will scour the earth to bring you sweets to tempt your tongue. You will never be away from me, or me from you, and you will remember yourself once you are there.” His words are a chilling promise.

“The Council will claim me. Does that mean nothing to you?”

He shakes his head. “They will not want you.”

I do not know the meaning of his words, not the way he says them, but whatever is behind them is cold and fathoms deep.

“I will stop you if I have to, Tahrik.”

He smirks, an unfamiliar look on the face I thought I knew so well. The face that filled so many of my dreams, that got me through days of empty, empty life.

“You will not, Wren. I know you too well. I know what you are made of. Would you pull my bones from me, like you did to Nickolas? Would you see me ripped apart in front of you by your doing? I am saving you from yourself! You will understand that. You will understand…” His words fade, and he stares at me, a hunger entering his appraising look.

“The Council wants you because they think of you as otherworldly. You are an untouched vessel of the Gods. Nickolas thought, and Raek believes, if he is the first to your fire, he will gain some access to that power.”

A small, distressed noise escapes my throat, and he croons to me quietly.

“You are safe, Wren, you are safe. Raek will not want you if you have been claimed by another. He will see that there is no power to be gained, and will not want you as a man wants a woman. Would it not be better…” he swallows audibly, a sickening honeyed beseechment in his words, “to be with someone you care about?” It’s taking me too long to understand him; he leans close enough to me that we exchange breath, and I pull my head back as much as I am able.

“I will be gentle,” he whispers. “I will touch you with a lover’s hands and not harm you.

You must trust me. I will lay your body down on a bed of river grass and crown you with a ring of flowers.

You will be my Goddess and I will worship at your altar, BoneKeeper. ”

His candied words turn bitter at my title.

I don’t want a supplicant, don’t want to be a Goddess.

I want…I want..a small home on the water’s edge, far from the mountain peak, with a grass green roof and a small yard full of fruit trees.

I want dust covered, calloused hands that smell of bread and cinnamon, worn furniture, an open door where people visit without ceremony, and a space where laughter is not a rare flower but a common weed.

I do not wish to be worshiped. Just loved.

And the two are as far from each other as the sun from the moon.

He leans forward slowly, so far that I cannot move away, and softly presses warm lips against my own.

Everything in me curls away from him, from his cautious tongue tracing my mouth, from the low moan emerging from his own.

“Wren,” he murmurs, such reverence in his voice that it sickens me, and the small, secret part of my heart that held our story dries and crumbles like a winter’s leaf.

With less than an exhale, it is lost to the wind.

“ No .” The word is torn from me, like tendons yanked through flesh. “ No! ”

Rocking back from me, his face creases in unutterable sorrow.

“No? I…Wren. We have dreamed of this together…if we bind ourselves before we return, they cannot turn back time. They will have to let us — we will be as husband and wife. I would never take from you what you don’t offer, Wren, but— There is no one here to stop us finally.

Just the world we will build together.” His hands caress my arms, and I shiver back from him, pushing him away.

“Wren?”