“My gran always said she thought I would have an aptitude for charming,” I say. And then after a pause: “Before she died.”
Kyra’s eyes fill with sympathy. Her fingertip trails along the edge of the velvet cloth as if she might find an explanation in the bones themselves.
Finally her gaze meets mine and she smiles. “It seems your gran was right. You must be exceptionally gifted. Perhaps it won’t take you as long to catch up as we feared.”
Despite all my worry, the statement gives me a little stab of satisfaction. The more talent and training I have, the better my chances of finding Latham and getting my mother’s bones back. And then I’ll make him pay for what he’s done.
“Shall we try something more challenging?”
“Sure.”
She taps her bottom lip with her index finger and stares off into the distance. “Can you divine the weather …” My heart does a little leap because weather is easy. But then Kyra continues: “In Midwood?”
Until Master Kyra lit the incense, I had actually managed not to think about my mother for a few hours. But the moment she entered my mind again, it was like ripping open a barely healed wound. Focusing on home right now would be unbearable.
I swallow. “Does it have to be Midwood?”
Kyra’s head tilts to one side. “Anywhere else would be impossible for you to see.” My expression must reveal my confusion, because she explains further. “Our homes leave an indelible imprint in our memories. Your connection to Midwood will make it far less challenging than trying to read something in a town or village you’re unfamiliar with. Even so, with such limited training, you’re unlikely to be able to reach that far.” She smiles gently. “Despite being gifted.”
It’s as if she’s presented me with two poisoned goblets and asked me to choose. If I pretend to fail, Kyra will go back to easier tasks and I’ll lose an opportunity to stretch my abilities. But if I succeed, she’ll suspect that I’ve trained before. Starting an apprenticeship in the middle of the year is already unusual, and the last thing I need is to draw even more attention to myself. Under the table, I curl my fingers into my palms. Either choice is a risk, but only one of them will get me closer to my goal.
And I’m still shaken by the worry that my recurring nightmare was actually a bone reading. But even if it wasn’t, I still know the truth: One way or another, Latham is going to kill me. If I have any chance of changing my fate—of besting him and making him suffer—I need to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible.
I cover the bones with my palms and close my eyes. A tug low in my stomach pulls me into a vision and I’m suddenly in my house in Midwood. I had intended only to see the town square. To get a quick look at the sky. Instead I’m standing next to my mother’s favorite rocking chair, staring out the window. Rain patters softly against the glass. It’s the kind of day when we would have a fire burning in the hearth. A pot of stew bubbling on the stove. But the house is cold. Empty. A body without a soul.
I will never be able to escape this sorrow. It will follow me everywhere. Haunt my nightmares and darken my days.
I yank my hands away from the bones. “It’s raining,” I tell Kyra without meeting her eyes, “and chilly.”
“Well done,” Master Kyra says softly. Her voice has a quality that draws my gaze upward. She looks unsettled, and her hands tremble as she gathers the bones and deposits them into a small bag. “I can see why Latham—” She suddenly stops talking and presses the back of her hand to her mouth as if the words escaped without her permission.
“Why he wants me dead?”
She sighs, her eyes full of regret. “Why he thinks your bones would be especially powerful.” She touches my shoulder gently. “But please don’t worry. We’re close to finding him, and he can’t hurt you. Not here.”
I think of Rasmus ready to accompany me if I leave the grounds. Of Norah’s promise to keep me safe. Of the earnest expression on Master Kyra’s face. And for the first time since Latham killed my mother, a tiny seed of hope sprouts in my heart.
Maybe I don’t have to do this alone.
Maybe I really will be safe here.
Both Bram and Tessa are waiting for me when I leave the training wing.
“Our new room is ready,” Tessa says brightly, threading her arm through mine. “And Bram wants to see if it’s better than his. Right, Bram?”
Bram gives a half smile that suggests he said no such thing.
The path to the girls’ dormitory—just as everything else in Ivory Hall—looks vaguely familiar. Like something out of a dream. Candelabras made from deer antlers are spaced at regular intervals and bathe the white walls in a gentle light. The flames flicker as we pass, but bone magic keeps them from snuffing out. Beneath our feet is a plush rug with swirling patterns of green and gold, and I know the exact spot where it’s grown threadbare—a detail plucked from my memory, even though I can’t locate the source.
Tessa stops halfway down the corridor, at a door in the center of the block of rooms.
“Let me,” Bram says, reaching for the knob. But it won’t open. He wiggles it and tries again. “It’s locked.”
“That’s strange.” Tessa reaches for the knob, and at her touch, it turns easily and the door swings open wide.
“Whoa, where’d you get a Mason-crafted lock?” All three of us startle at the voice. We turn to find an apprentice in an orange cloak studying the knob with an expression of naked admiration. He takes in our confused faces and dips his head toward the door. “It will only open for the room’s occupants.”
Tessa’s eyes go wide. “That’s amazing”—she leans toward me and lowers her voice—“and a little terrifying that it’s necessary.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The room is much larger than where I slept last night. Two beds are situated on either side of a big window, with a bureau and desk for each of us pressed against the opposite wall. A neatly folded stack of linens sits at the foot of each bed. And on one of the pillows is a gift, wrapped in brown paper with delicate designs stamped across the surface in red ink. Tessa fingers the tag. “Saskia, it’s for you.”
I take a step forward and see my name written in delicate script.
“No one gave me a gift when I started training,” Bram teases. “It hardly seems fair.”
Tessa hands me the package. “Open it,” she says, flopping on one of the beds. “Let’s see what it is.”
I sit on the floor and work a finger under one seam until the paper rips. Inside is a leather-bound book.
Tessa props herself up on one elbow. “Wow. Kyra must have a lot of faith in you. I didn’t get a spell book until I’d been here for months.”
I can’t help but feel a swell of pride and anticipation. Maybe I actually managed to impress Master Kyra instead of arousing her suspicion. The thought wraps around me like a warm blanket.
And then I turn the book over and my blood runs cold. I drop it as if it were on fire.
“What’s wrong?” Bram says, kneeling beside me. “Saskia, what is it?” Blood pounds so loudly in my ears that it sounds like his voice is coming from the bottom of a pit.
“This isn’t from Kyra.” I press a hand over my mouth.
For just a moment before the binding ceremony, I’d foolishly hoped the Grand Council had things under control. That maybe they really could find Latham. Punish him. Return my mother’s bones to me.
But they can’t. If I want to survive, I’ll have to save myself.
Because the spell book is covered in markings I would know anywhere. My mother’s mastery tattoo—a vertical oval inside a larger horizontal one, both framed by thick, arching lines on the top and the bottom. The small butterfly tattoo that appeared above her heart on the day I was born. The jagged scar on her collarbone that my father’s death left behind.
Acid-laced terror pushes up my throat. Latham was in this room. It didn’t matter that the door was protected by bone magic. Or that Norah has hired a bodyguard. Lath
am wants me to know he can get to me anytime. Anywhere.
This is a spell book made of my mother’s skin.
Chapter Five
Bram and Tessa stare at me in openmouthed horror as I explain what the book is, what it means.
It’s as if the temperature in the room has plummeted.
“How?” Bram says. “Why?”
They’re the same panic-tinged questions that dart through my own mind. But I already have the answers. “Latham wants me to know I’m not safe. That I’ll never be safe.” I swallow. “And he wants to torture me before he kills me so that my bones will be more powerful.”
Tessa inhales sharply. “Isn’t Latham the instructor who went missing at the end of last term? Why would he want you dead? How does he even know you?”
I fill Tessa in on the details of how Latham killed my gran and my mother. As I talk, the color leeches from her cheeks. When I finish, she jumps to her feet. “I’ll get help.”
I put a hand out to stop her. “No. Wait.”
She pauses, and then as the silence stretches between us, her brow furrows in confusion. “We have to tell Norah. She’ll know what to do.”
But something inside me has gone very still. I feel as if I’ve been both hollowed out and made of stone. “It won’t do any good. Norah can’t protect me. No one can.”
Tessa’s eyes go wide. “You can’t just not tell her.” She throws a panicked look at Bram, as if pleading for support, but his gaze is fixed on the book.
He lays a palm on my arm. “Do you want me to get rid of it?”
“Yes,” I say, and then I shake my head. “No.”
The book is an abomination. An evil I can’t quite force my mind to accept.
And yet.
It’s the only thing I have left of my mother. I can’t bear to keep it and I can’t bear to let it go.
Bram studies my face, then gingerly picks up the book and wraps it in the brown paper. “I’ll put it in a safe place,” he says, “until you decide what you want to do.”
Relief sags from me as Bram slips out the door with the book. Tessa stands and paces back and forth along the length of the room. Her shoulders are curved and she chews her thumbnail as she walks. Several times she pauses, opens her mouth, and then seems to change her mind.
“Just say it,” I tell her finally.
She spins to face me. “Say what?”
“Whatever it is you’ve almost said a dozen times.”
“I …” She hesitates. “I don’t want our relationship to start out on the wrong foot.”
I nearly laugh. For me, meeting Tessa feels like thumbing through a book only to realize that I’ve already read the first few chapters. It doesn’t seem like starting so much as remembering. But her pained expression pulls me up short. It’s something more than worry about the book Latham left.
Tessa’s fingers wander to her hair, wrapping tightly around one of her curls and tugging as she stares off into the distance. She grimaces, as if unaware she’s causing her own pain. And suddenly I recognize her expression: guilt. Does Tessa know more than she’s letting on?
I sit up straighter. “What are you hiding, Tessa?”
Her eyes narrow and her expression grows fierce. “I’m not hiding anything. I’m trying to keep you from doing something stupid.”
The way she’s looking at me—like I’m a stranger who just insulted her—makes my insides go cold. I’m nobody to Tessa. I’m just a girl she met yesterday who is already asking her to keep a secret. I’m not sure which is worse—to know for certain you’re all alone or to see a glimpse of what could have been, of people who might have loved you, but to be on your own just the same.
“I’m not doing something stupid,” I tell her, my voice flat. Something in her expression changes. She sinks to the floor and rests her back against her mattress.
“But what’s the harm in getting Norah’s advice? Not telling her is reckless. Don’t you trust her?”
“I do trust her,” I say. “But involving her will just give Latham more power.”
Tessa purses her lips. “Saskia, I don’t think—”
“If we tell Norah, she’ll just wrap me in a thousand layers of protection, and the only effect will be to hold me down so Latham can kill me more easily.” Tessa opens her mouth to argue, but I keep talking. “He’s a spider. I’m a fly. And Norah’s attempts to help will be the web that pins me in place to be devoured. But she won’t realize until it’s too late.”
I can see Tessa weighing this image against everything she knows about Norah. Everything she doesn’t yet know about me. Still, I can tell she wants to believe me. She just needs a little push.
I sit next to her, press my shoulder against hers. “We were friends once,” I say. “In another life.”
She looks at me as if I’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. “What are you talking about?”
It’s a risk to tell her the truth, one I may come to regret. But if I’m going to have any chance of stopping Latham, I need allies. And everything I know about Tessa makes trusting her feel like the right answer. Ami’s words drift through my mind: Trust your gut.
I tell Tessa about Gran’s broken bone. About the path that didn’t survive. About the friendship we almost had, but didn’t.
“It’s how I knew you were an oldest child,” I tell her. “It’s how I know a lot of things about you that I shouldn’t.”
Her expression is unreadable, and my chest constricts. What if this was a terrible mistake?
“Did I ever tell you that my father is imprisoned on Fang Island?”
The statement hits my ears like shattering glass, startling me so much that every other thought flies out of my head. I half expect to look over and see that Tessa is reading from a letter or a book.
But she’s not.
Her fingers curl around her knees. Her eyes are distant, as if she’s deep in a painful memory.
“No,” I say carefully, “you didn’t.”
Is she testing how much I know about her? About how close we were on my other path? Worry snakes through my stomach.
Tessa exhales—a ragged sound filled with emotion. “He loved to gamble. Cards, horses, kenning results.” She worries the edge of her thumbnail with her teeth. “But his ambition outmatched his supply of coin.”
“You can get sent to Fang Island for gambling?” I ask. The prison is remote, heavily guarded, and reserved for the worst criminals in Kastelia.
Tessa gives a harsh laugh. “No. But you can get sent there when you try to numb your stress with too much ale, and then hurt your family because you’re drunk.”
“Oh, Tessa …” I cover her hand with mine. “I’m sorry.” We sit like that for a few moments, as questions bubble inside me. Why would she suddenly share something so personal? Is she trying to tell me that I’m gambling away my life? That she doesn’t tolerate people who break the rules?
“May I ask …?” I pause, unsure how to put my thoughts into words without offending her. Finally I give up and just finish the question. “Why are you telling me this now?”
Her eyes meet mine. “Because someone hurt my mother once too, and for years I’d counted myself lucky that he didn’t do worse. I can’t imagine the pain if I’d actually lost her.” She flips her hand over and threads her fingers through mine. “I’m telling you so that you know I’m on your side.”
The door opens, and Bram slips back into the room. The spell book is gone. His gaze roams over my face, searching, and then falls to my hand, intertwined with Tessa’s. His expression darkens with something I can’t quite read. Worry? Fear?
“I took care of …” His voice fades away, as if he’s not sure what to call such a thing. He pulls at the nape of his neck. “If you ever want it back, just let me know.”
“Thank you.”
His eyes soften. “You’re welcome.”
A spark lights in my chest. And then I remember he’s here out of obligation to Norah. She asked him to come back to Midwood to trav
el with me, invited him to my binding ceremony. And the idea of us together made him laugh out loud. The memory slides under my skin like a sliver. A painful reminder of all I’ve lost.
Inwardly, I wince. I haven’t lost Bram—we were never together. If I can manage to ignore the feelings from my other path, they’ll eventually disappear. And I need to be focused on Latham.
Revenge is a jealous master, Gran used to say. She meant it as a warning—a plea to always seek forgiveness instead of vengeance. But that was before Latham killed her. Before he killed my mother.
Now I’ve given my entire body—heart and soul—to my plan for revenge. I’m the handmaiden of vengeance.
There’s no time for love.
The spell book changes everything.
I had planned to be cautious in my training with Master Kyra. To hold back at least a little and find a delicate balance, making steady progress without improving so quickly that it becomes obvious I’ve trained before.
But Latham is coming at me with everything he has. I can’t afford to move slowly.
During our next session, Master Kyra presents me with a set of bones from the vertebral column of a jackal. “I’d like to test your range today.”
“My range?” I can’t quite keep the disappointment from seeping into my voice. I reached all the way to Midwood during our last session. Does she really think I need to work on my range?
“Not distance,” she clarifies, as if hearing my thoughts. “Time. I’d like to know how far into the past and the future you can reach.” A little thrill of anticipation goes through me, followed almost immediately by panic. I have all three Sights. How can I possibly allow her to test my range without giving myself away?
My mind scrambles for a way to avoid the task. So far, I’ve never been able to tell which Sight I was using—I’ve thought I was seeing the present when I was actually reading the past, or the future when I was attempting to see the present. What if I try to see later today and end up reading next week instead? Is that too far in the future to be believable?
If I get expelled from Ivory Hall, I’ll never hone my skills enough to stop Latham. I’ll never find my mother’s and Gran’s missing bones. Blood roars in my ears. The room feels far too warm, and I shrug the heavy training cloak from my shoulders.
The Bone Thief Page 4