Page 30
Story: The BoneKeeper’s Daughter (The Blade and Bone Trilogy #1)
In so many ways, it is just the two of us.
Wren and Tahrik, and no one else exists in the world when we are together.
I have my life in the village, surrounded by the everyday, the comfort of dirt and hay, smoke and sweet grass.
And then I have the stolen moments with Wren, separate from all of that, above the pull of the ordinary.
She is luminous, like the full moon on a cloudless night, so bright that even stars dim to nothingness beside her. And, in the brief moments we share together, she lets me step into the sky with her, makes me into something more than a miller’s son.
I know her as no one else does. She is mine as no one else is. And I am hers, blood, flesh, and bone. Her heartbeat is mine in another body. So I do not even have to turn when I hear footsteps approach; I would recognize her in any lifetime.
“BoneKeeper.” I am cautious in my greeting until I know we are alone. Every BoneKeeper before her has been allowed a life outside the dead, but something shifted with her birth, and neither of us knows what would happen if we were discovered.
“Tahrik. I heard you singing.”
And the world narrows to the sound of my name on her breath.
“Wren.” I can’t help the way my voice caresses the word, curls around it like a cat.
Ever since I gave her the nickname, it has been the only one she uses.
Ceridwen is someone else, from a different time she tries to bury deep in the earth where she doesn’t have to look at it.
Wren is who she is now, at least, when it is just her and I, and the bones.
She steps beside me, facing the wall with me, and reaches out her hand, caressing familiar friends she finds there.
Since I saw her this morning, she has removed her Keeper’s Crown, but her bone blade is still fastened at her waist. Tiny cuts line her forehead, raw and red.
Her sigils are still bright on her skin, pale eyes shining inside kohl black lines, and she looks like the TriGoddess returned, so much more than a human woman.
“Your sigils are beautiful, Wren. They suit you.” It is as much as I can risk in the moment.
“Do they?” she asks, a curious note in her voice, and I nod, quick to reassure her.
“You are the Goddess incarnate with them.”
Sighing, she turns from me to the bone. “Ah.” It is an answer and not an answer .
I want to reach out, caress her face, pull her to me, comfort her, but it isn’t safe. I can only murmur, “You are done with the Scavenger Hunt then?”
She nods. “They’re setting up for the dinner. But I’m tired. It was…a long day.”
The silence between us is comfortable, welcoming, stretching into a space that is filled by only us. “I’ve missed you.” It is as much as we ever say to each other; a single stone only to prevent a rockslide which would bury us.
“I do nothing but miss you,” Wren whispers in reply, then sighs, and changes the subject.
“Do you know teeth aren’t exposed bone?” she asks me, and her voice is liquid running through me.
I love hearing her. It’s such a rare treat that I drink it in like a man dying of thirst, and it pours through me, cool and quenching.
Her voice is musical, little trills and unexpectedly low murmurs.
“Not exactly. They’re similar but not identical.
If they are connected to bone they will work the same for me, but teeth on their own can’t hold a whole soul.
” She frowns slightly, and nods, which usually means she’s speaking with either Lorcan or the Hunter.
Judging by the very slight rolling of her eyes, it’s Lorcan.
“Is he chiding you for giving away your secrets?” I ask, startling her, and, instead of answering, she takes my hand, guiding it along the wall until she finds a little hole in the surface, almost impossible to see. She moves my hand inside it, cool fingers squeezing mine gently in the hidden dark.
“There she is,” Wren says affectionately.
“How you can never find her I don’t know.
She sings so loudly!” Her voice is warm, as it always is when we visit my little sister.
Cara doesn’t mind being part of the deception — she loves tricks, and never liked the Council, so I knew her bones would be the same.
Remembering her as she was, mischievous face crinkling into a gap toothed smile, I feel suddenly and overwhelmingly lost.
“I wish I could hear her as you do,” I murmur, fingers resting gently on the familiar curves.
Wren squeezes my hand again in sympathy, slowly, so slowly I almost can’t tell that she’s moving at first, leans her head until it rests lightly on my shoulder; I freeze, motionless, barely breathing.
All other thought flees my head; Wren has never done this — leaned against me, rested her skin against mine.
In all our time together we’ve had nothing but passing seconds of contact, where she guided my hand to bone or where I brushed against her as I passed by.
I’ve never known the surprising warmth of her body, never lingered against her, petal soft, pressed against me.
She feels…she feels like home .
I am locked in place, and if the bone wall in front of us were to crash down and break me to pieces in this moment, I would go to the earth a happy man.
“I wish many things…” she replies, just as softly, and my heart clenches.
I don’t know this version of Wren. She has been so strange lately; not in a bad way, but in a way where I am unsure of the next step with her, though I have never been so before.
“Like what?” I ask, only just daring to turn my cheek enough that it brushes the edge of her hair, and I close my eyes, inhaling the sweet, herb scent of her skin. We have never been this close for this long; never stood like this, as a man and a woman with no song between us.
“I don’t know.” Frustration bares sharpened teeth in her tone. “Do you ever… do you ever want something different than this, Tahrik? Something more ?”
“There is only one thing I want in this world, Wren. And I would give the sky and earth for it.”
“Would you?” She turns to me, pale eyes shining, full of hope and trepidation, and I’m suddenly scared to hear what she is about to say. Her voice drops to below a whisper. “Would you ever…leave the village, do you think? If it meant a quiet, peaceful life?”
The longing in her voice shatters me, but her question stuns me to silence.
Leave ? Our people? Our home? I want to answer, want to say “of course” without hesitation, but in the space between thought and word she has already pulled away, straightened, and removed her hand from mine in the wall.
She has withdrawn into herself, behind her bone armor, and I feel like I’ve failed a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“I would go anywhere for that dream, Wren,” I say as firmly as I’m able, trying to get her to look at me, but I don’t know if it was too little, too late, if I was too slow to respond.
She surprised me by suddenly jumping off the cliff where we have walked, carefully balanced, for years.
And it strikes me in a lightning flash that, if I don’t follow, I will be left on the ledge alone.
Turning fully to her, I take her hands in mine, not bothering to look if anyone else is near.
“If you say the word, I will build a cottage for us. We can fill it with children and laughter, and I will rub your feet by the fire at night. I would make you a soft nest of woolen blankets, and bake you sweet breads–”
It is working, and she unfurls, softening, and interrupts me, voice wistful. “I want chickens.”
“I will get you as many chickens as there are in the world,” I promise, voice shaking from laughter and emotion, and my reward is a single tear from her eyes. “Where it is safe for you. Here in the village, I will make you a home.”
Her brows knit together slightly, and she closes her eyes in response, but before I can ask her what’s wrong, her face changes, empties, as though she’s looking at a white void.
All emotion leaves it; there is nothing left but smooth marble in the cold lines of her lips.
Stepping away from me, she presses into the bones, letting go of my hand and fixing her lips into her practiced, BoneKeeper smile.
Ah , I think, and mimic her expression.
In the near distance, the steady clop of a pony’s hooves approaches.
Wren turns blankly toward the sound, body tense like an overly tight string.
I debate leaving — we try hard not to be seen together — but I am within my rights to visit my family, and I’m suddenly loath to abandon her.
Perhaps the rider isn’t coming here; perhaps they will pass a lane over, never seeing us, and we can resume building castles in the sky together.
Stay or go? Stay or go? Anxiety brushes my skin like blood moth wings.
As the sound gets closer, though, almost upon us, the wings change to teeth as her face softens into an unfamiliar expression.
A knot twists in my stomach. I’m not used to not being able to read her; usually I can hear every song in her heart.
At least I know she is not scared, so it cannot be Raek or Nickolas, but she is more Wren and less BoneKeeper in her response, and my shoulders tighten.
She has no friends here; I cannot think of who she would turn to greet with a face that gentled at his approach.
The answer feels like a blade to my throat.
Councilor Rannoch pulls up sharply in front of us, swinging from his mount, dropping the reins casually behind him.
As he approaches, her lips curve into the shadow of real happiness, and I know, I know he thinks it’s for him by the satisfied smirk on his face.
He doesn’t know that it is just her showing the memory of our few minutes together.
Table of Contents
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- Page 30 (Reading here)
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