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SECRETS AND STARDUST

KADEN

W e’re not moving quickly enough, but it’s impossible to speed up with the Miller right now, even though he’s slowly regaining his strength.

I honestly thought he wouldn’t make it when they first came from the cave mouth like skeletons lurching from a tomb.

I don’t know how Rannoch carried him as far as he did; the man’s willpower scares and impresses me.

Sea and Sky know he didn’t have anything pushing him on but a pair of moon-white eyes; the relief on his face when he saw me running toward him was almost painful.

“Trader?” He could barely speak, eyes sunk so deep in their sockets he looked hollow.

“Councilman?” I’m sure I sounded stunned, but he’d appeared from almost nowhere.

The land he stumbled up bowed down to a natural arch of stone covered by long, sweeping grasses.

Nothing about it drew attention, nothing looked like a place a man would walk out of.

Especially not one who should be weeks behind me, not steps in front of me.

I recognized him from our last day in the village; he’d been one of the few to try and preserve the Trade the day everything had fallen to pieces. “What?”

Without responding, he dropped a man at my feet, muscles trembling with effort, then turned, went back to the almost non-existent opening in the ground, and disappeared briefly. A moment later he emerged again, this time leading my Flame by the hand.

All oxygen left the world the moment I saw her, bones sharp as knives over cavernous shadows where the curves of her cheeks used to be.

“Kaden?” Her voice was stronger than his, but if she was a phantom before, she was a wraith now, almost translucent.

He led her to me, staying in front of her as though to protect her.

She’d lifted a small, shaking hand to his shoulder, light as a fallen leaf; he turned to her as though she had weighed him down with armor. “Rann. He’s safe.”

Turning back to me, he inhaled slowly before speaking. “Are you?” It was obvious it was all he could manage, but even then one hand was at the blade on his belt, the other held protectively in front of Wren.

“I am,” I replied seriously, locking eyes with him. “I’ll take the watch now. You have my word.”

And on the exhale, his eyes rolled in the back of his head, and he collapsed next to the other lying stone still on the ground. A short scream of sound burst from Wren, a kind of panicked keening, before she cut it off, swallowing it down. The memory of it still crawls on my skin at night.

Trying to be surreptitious, I glance over to where Wren is walking quietly next to Tahrik.

She’s been very careful with him since he woke, fluttering over him like a mother hen, and he’s tolerated it with a sort of amused patience.

They have a strange way with each other, all at once comfortable and awkward, and it’s an odd thing to see.

There’s no denying Wren gravitates toward him, and I can tell it irks Rannoch as much as it bothers me.

It shouldn’t …I shouldn’t let it. It’s not the way of our people to let that sort of thing be a hindrance.

We are more focused on the whole than the individual, on group harmony and a kind of collective cooperation.

It’s a far cry from the People of the Bone.

We’re governed by different laws. If a Carving shows a future that diverges from your present, well…

There is no arguing with it. So families are as changeable as the tides in my home; some are small pools, some branched rivers, some oceans.

But if Wren opened her cottage door to Rannoch and myself and invited us both to stay, it wouldn’t be unusual .

There’s little chance of that happening though, at least, not any time soon.

I don’t know what I was thinking would happen if I saw her again, maybe that she’d fall into my arms and we’d pick up where we’d left off, begin the dance we’d started when the night played its own music for us, but too much road has been traveled in too short a time, and stronger blooms have been killed by weaker Storms. The first night we were together again, when the two men were laying still as corpses near the roaring fire, I’d sat as close to her as I dared, but her shoulders were curved in with exhaustion, her face grey, unable to even turn her head towards me.

And I knew, knew it before that really, that the tiny glimpses I’d been gifted of a teasing, tripping girl were sparks from banked embers.

That it would take breathing space, and restraint, and care to tend that hearth.

Too quick and the coals would snuff out.

I fail at many, many things. Too many to count really.

But I am a patient man. A very patient man.

And I’m good at building lasting fires.

So, we wait. And take the quiet moments, the brief flickers from the coals, the hints of glowing heat within.

It’s easy for now; she’s too tired for anything other than putting one foot in front of the other.

Glancing back at her again, I can’t help but sigh seeing Tahrik stumble over his feet for the third time in as many minutes.

It’s time to break. Again. Forcing myself to remember that the reason he is so weak is because he gave everything for Wren to survive, I slow our pace more; the anxiety riding my back, urging me forward, isn’t the Miller’s fault, and it would be unfair to blame him for my own disquiet.

Rannoch told me the second night, when he’d finally woken from a near comatose sleep with a start, surging to his feet, dagger out, calling for Wren.

It was only when he saw her face that his breathing slowed, that the wildness drained from it, and he collapsed back next to the fire.

“I thought…” he said, desperation and desolation clear in his voice. “I thought…”

“I know.”

Even as exhausted as he was, the panic wouldn’t let him sleep, so we’d sat through a long, deep night together, the inky black around us pulling secrets from his soul that he would never have let slip at any other time.

The choice to leave the village behind him.

The feel of the damp stone beneath his aching feet.

The sounds of the tunnels breathing as though alive.

The moment Tahrik fell. How he didn’t think he could take another step.

When they ran out of food. Worse still, when they ran out of water.

The only word he didn’t breathe was Wren’s name, and I knew better, even then, than to ask.

It’s strange the friendships that are forged in the darkest hours.

“Rann—” I call out, and he whips around immediately, tense and alert. Jerking my head once toward the two lagging behind me, I point to a small copse of trees. He nods in understanding, changing his path.

Wren glances up when Rannoch walks to the woods, trailing his movements.

And Tahrik watches her, studying her blank face, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

It’s the way things have been the past few days.

Every time Wren looks at Rannoch or me, she puts on her masque, emptying her expression to a sort of placid nothingness.

I’m not sure who she’s trying to protect — Tahrik or herself.

Checking the height of the sun in the sky, I debate if we have enough time in the day for a little more travel, or if we should just stay here.

Tahrik is trembling, but to his credit, hasn’t complained, or made any sort of indication he had to stop.

As long as Wren is beside him, he trudges forward.

I need to be more generous in my thoughts.

It’s not his fault I’m so far off course, not his fault I’m still on the Corpse Bridge, a week or more out from the border of my lands.

Less if I just left them and rode ahead, though my horse’s hoof is still tender and won’t hold up to hard or long riding.

Even Tahrik can only be on its back for an hour or two a day before it starts limping again.

It would be impossible anyway. Wren’s drinking from a flask now, and the smooth, white column of her throat is a siren’s call. I left her once; I can’t imagine anything short of death would pull me from her a second time, and even then there would be some debate.

BoneKeeper.

“Should we stop here for the night?” I ask as I approach the weary group.

Surprisingly, it’s Tahrik who answers ruefully. “I know it’s for me, Trader. I can go a bit further. You mentioned wanting to get as far as the low boulders in front of the mountains. How far on is that?”

Grimacing, I shake my head. “Too far, Tahrik, but we’ve made better time today. It does no one any good to walk your feet to stumps.”

“A bit further, then, anyway,” he replies, a tired smile on his face. “I’m stronger than I seem.”

For the first time, Wren looks discomforted, as though she’s about to say something, putting me instantly on alert.

“What? What’s wrong?” My words come in strange echo; I can’t help but shoot a quick grin at Rannoch whose voice overlapped mine.

“Mirror mirror!” I don’t mean to say it, but the patterns of childhood run deep sometimes.

He cocks his head, looking confused. “What?”

“It’s a children’s game in our land.” I’m strangely embarrassed suddenly, rubbing the back of my neck with a hand. “It, ah, when you say a thing at the same time, whoever calls out ‘mirror, mirror’ first wins. The other doesn’t get to speak until you say their name.”

Wren’s lips twitch, her masque slipping, and then fully smiles, dawn breaking across her face in such exquisite light it’s impossible to look anywhere else. “Rannoch can’t…can’t speak now? Until you say his name?”

Nodding, I rely as somberly as I’m able, willing to do anything to keep the curl of her mouth. “He can’t. Those are the rules.”