The Bone Thief

by Breeana Shields

  “Now tell your Breaker to let Tessa go,” I say. Latham gives a small nod to Lars. I turn and wait for him to release her.

  But he doesn’t.

  He snaps her neck.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tessa’s eyes go wide. Startled.

  And then they go blank.

  Lars lets go, and Tessa slumps to the ground. I run to her. Her head is bent at an odd angle. I press a palm against her cheek and try to turn her face toward me. I lift my other arm, but then I drop it back to my side; I don’t have another hand to help her.

  Behind me, commotion erupts. Bones snapping, furniture toppling, the crash of broken glass. But I don’t take my eyes from Tessa.

  “Don’t die.” I say it over and over, like a prayer. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die. My father’s face flashes in my memory.

  My mother’s.

  Gran’s.

  I’ve lost too many people. I can’t lose Tessa, too. But her eyes are vacant.

  Jacey kneels beside me. Her breathing is ragged. She presses two fingers to Tessa’s neck. “She gone.”

  I shake my head. Wipe my nose with my sleeve. “No.”

  Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

  “Saskia, there’s nothing you can do.”

  But there must be.

  A yawning chasm of despair opens inside me. This is all my fault. Tessa didn’t want to come. She practically begged me to go to the Grand Council instead of handling this on our own, but I wouldn’t listen. And now she’s dead.

  What have I done?

  I look up, tears blurring my vision as I take in the scene of destruction. Shards of glass glitter at my feet. Gran’s broken bones are strewn across the floor.

  Suddenly I’m hit from behind. It knocks the wind out of me.

  Lars.

  He grabs me roughly around the waist and drags me forward. I try to struggle free, but he’s too strong, and I can’t land a blow. What is he doing? He doesn’t need to get close to me to end me. He could kill me from afar, snap my neck like he snapped Tessa’s.

  And then I see it. His bone pouch has come loose and is lying across the room. Bram’s pouch rests alongside it, and a handful of small bones are strewn across the floor between them.

  Lars is using me as a shield.

  “Put her down!” Bram shouts. But Lars doesn’t even acknowledge him. He handles me like I weigh no more than a rag doll. My head bounces up and down with each step.

  And then abruptly, he drops me. My hip hits the floor and I cry out. Lars sweeps both bone pouches into his fist, and races toward Bram. I try to crawl to my feet, but my leg throbs.

  A sickening crack splits the air. My throat closes.

  No. Bram. No.

  My gaze flies to him, my breath trapped at the base of my throat, terrified of what I’ll find.

  Bram stands over Lars, who lies in the corner in a heap. Dead. Bram’s face is a mask of rage. His eyes are bleak.

  “You did this?” I ask him.

  “I couldn’t let him kill you.” His voice his haunted.

  A sob rips from my throat. “Tessa is dead.”

  He scrubs a palm over his face. “I couldn’t let him kill you too.”

  I think of Declan standing in my house in Midwood, helping Latham until the end.

  Bram isn’t Declan. Latham used him, but he never meant to hurt me. I stand and press my hand against his cheek.

  “What are you doing?” Talon’s voice echoes off the walls like a blast. My gaze snaps to Latham, and my stomach plummets. His restraints are gone. They must have broken in one of the spells Lars and Bram were exchanging. And now Latham has crawled to the center of the room and gathered Gran’s bones in front of him. The bones from the jar—from my hand—are clutched in fingers, still wet. Skin still clinging to them.

  He’s trying to heal Gran’s bones to change the past. And my bones will give him the power to do it.

  I throw myself toward him, and try to wrestle the bones from his grip, but the spell has already started. The moment I make contact, a tug low in my belly yanks me into a vision with him. The paths feel like his paths always do. His familiar yearning for vengeance flares inside me—white-hot, insistent, all-consuming.

  But with a start I realize it’s not Latham’s path I’m seeing. It’s my own.

  I watch myself convincing Niklas to steal climbing equipment from the Mason training room, pressuring Jacey to use unbound magic to make a potion to drug Rasmus, and then doing nothing when his reputation is destroyed. All because making Latham suffer was more important than anything else.

  A sharp moment of clarity steals the breath from my lungs.

  I’ve been making the same mistakes as Latham. His whole life was consumed by a burning desire for revenge. He had something lovely with Avalina, but he let his bitterness become more important than anything else. He was willing to let happiness slip through his fingers in pursuit of making those who had wronged him suffer.

  And I just sacrificed Tessa chasing my own retribution.

  I struggle to break free from the bones and push Latham out of the way, but his magic is too strong. He’s going to win. He’s going to change the past into something horrific.

  Unless … an idea circles at the edges of my mind. It could work, but it means giving up the only thing I’ve wanted since the moment my mother died.

  Once, when I was a little girl, I told my parents a rumor I’d heard about a boy who had bitten another child, and then when his tutor reprimanded him, he bit her too. My father asked the boy’s name, and when I told him, his eyes went soft with sympathy.

  “No one gives grief like the grieving,” he said. Later I asked my mother what it meant.

  “It means sometimes when people are sad, they do things that make other people sad too.”

  “Maybe they want someone to be sad with them so they won’t be so lonesome,” I said. I still remember how her face changed, as if I’d said something profound.

  “Yes,” my mother said, “that’s exactly right.”

  I can choose which bone heals, but I’ll need Latham’s cooperation to do it. I won’t be able give him a life that makes him miserable. I’ll have to give him a past that makes him happy. A past I can tempt him to choose.

  The thought makes my throat raw. The wrongness of it—to reward him after my mother and Gran’s death, to allow him joy after what he did to Tessa—sets my teeth on edge. But I’m out of other options.

  I wish I had more time. More time to research mending. More time to learn how to pull magic from my own bones. More time to tell Bram I accept his apology. What if I succeed in changing the past, but he disappears from my life forever? What if we don’t find each other in a different future?

  But time is a luxury I don’t have.

  Instead of fighting Latham, I join my magic with his. I wander down the paths of Latham’s childhood. Find branch points that could shape him—a moment when his mother has the choice to offer a compliment instead of a criticism. A time when a friend could choose to betray a confidence, or exercise loyalty.

  I repeat the process again and again, giving Latham devoted friends, gentle correction, experiences that boost his confidence and enlarge his empathy. When I get to Avalina showing up in Kastelia City, I’m especially careful. The paths where his parents are accepting of the match are dimly lit and challenging to isolate.

  But they exist. In some version of reality, Latham’s parents cared about his happiness more than his prestige, and those are the paths I choose.

  Now I need to knit them together so they heal. I need the power from my own body. I focus on feeling the bones inside me—the curve of my ribs, the jutting knobs of my knuckles, the flat surface of my shoulder blades. I pull the power from deep within and push it toward the bone beneath my fingers.

  Latham resists. And he’s not just drawing on the magic in my severed hand. He uses what he learned from Bram to access the power in my body too. I feel it draining from me as he ya
nks me toward a different path. Toward the future.

  A sharp stab of grief goes through me as I see my mother. Latham is choosing the path where she lives. She walks through an orchard, plucking ripe blush-red apples from the trees and placing them in the basket tucked beneath her arm. She hums softly as she works. Her face is serene.

  She turns to someone and smiles. My breath catches when I see myself smiling back.

  “Would I be an irresponsible mother if I made pie for dinner?”

  I laugh. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  A weight presses against my chest. An ache so fierce, I can hardly breathe. I could bring my mother back. All the small things I’ve missed about her could be mine again: the comforting weight of her hands on my head as she brushes my hair, the cadence of her voice as she lectures me about the future, the way her laugh sounds like music. I sink into the vision. Luxuriate in all the ordinary things I used to take for granted.

  It would be easy. Effortless. And I wouldn’t be an orphan anymore.

  I give in to Latham. I feel the bone starting to mend beneath my fingers.

  But then my mother’s face rises in my memory. Her head tilted to one side, her lips pressed together in a disappointed frown. She wouldn’t want to be alive in a world ruled by Latham.

  As tempting as it is, I can’t choose my own happiness over hers. I won’t abandon my friends to a version of the future where they aren’t free. I push Latham’s magic away and take it back for myself. Then I use every last bit of my strength to yank him down a path of my choosing. I force him to explore all his potential in the past—paths where he laughs and cries, and no heartache is bigger than the love at home waiting to soothe it.

  I feel him sinking into the past like I sank into the future. The images I show him wear down his resistance. They soften him.

  Outside the vision, his hand brushes against mine. Magic pulses between us where my skin touches his, and I can feel the exchange of energy like we’re playing a game of catch—tossing a stick back and forth between us so quickly that it blurs as it sails through the air and I can’t tell anymore if he threw it last or if I did.

  Power gathers inside me—bright and glimmering, but also dangerous. The way fire is both life-giving and deadly.

  Bram’s voice is gentle near my ear. Don’t fall forward. Draw power out of your bones. Reel it in. Gather the magic in your center. I don’t know if he’s speaking now, or if I’m remembering what he said earlier. Past or present? Either way, I concentrate on the contours of my bones, and feel tendrils of power lifting inside me, reaching out for something to hold on to.

  Bone charming magic tugs me forward again, and I push back, afraid that if I’m swept into a reading, I’ll lose focus and Latham will retake control. That the wrong bones will heal. But the pull is overwhelming. Irresistible. I can feel the bones mending beneath my palm, joining together in one giant misshapen mass connected in odd places. Images rush past.

  Latham as a dimple-cheeked baby. As a toddler, serious and slow to smile. As a young boy, anxious to please. I see his mother raise her hand to strike him. Watch his brow crease in fear. Power flows from my fingertips and the vision hiccups. Time flows backward. Latham’s mother lowers her hand. Lifts it again and brushes the hair from her son’s forehead instead. Latham’s brow smooths, like a tranquil crystal-clear lake the moment before a tossed stone breaks the surface. But the stone never comes. Not anymore. Latham’s life speeds by me. I try to see into his future—to give him the power he needs to change the Grand Council without the past that made him into a monster. But I don’t know if it’s possible. I see him argue his ideas to his colleagues, hear the passion in his voice as he tries to convince them he’s right. I try to lead him toward a path where he chooses persuasion instead of force. But the magic is slipping. I’m losing control.

  I lose track of Latham. Other images fly past. My father bouncing me on his lap. Gran humming to herself as she prunes a rosebush. Bram biting into a ripe peach, laughing as the juices dribble down his chin. Talon. Niklas. Tessa. Jacey. I try to keep them all with me. Preserve a future where they’re still part of my life.

  The vision spins faster and faster. People blur together then break apart, disintegrating before my eyes. My stomach lurches. Something is wrong. I try to pull back, but the magic has too strong a grip on me. And yet I feel weightless. Detached from my body, as if I only exist in a memory.

  I wiggle my fingers, searching for Latham, but I can’t find him. It’s like he vanished. Maybe we both have.

  Behind my closed eyelids, I see a sudden flash of light so intense that it cracks through my skull—blinding and painful. And then utter darkness.

  I’m not sure if we remade the past, or if we destroyed it.

  Chapter Thirty

  Dust motes dance lazily in the air above my head.

  I blink once. Twice.

  My memories come back sluggish and confused, turning slow circles in my mind as if they’re lost children. I sit up, and my head screams in protest. A tight fist of fear clenches in my stomach. Where am I? Sunlight pours through narrow windows, illuminating shelves of boxes. Nearby, someone groans.

  Tessa. Her dark curls are tangled around her face. She rubs her forehead.

  “Saskia? What happened?”

  Competing memories war in my mind like two people arguing—I can hear them both shouting over each other but I can’t make out the details of either one. Tessa and I were just in the library studying a bone map for an upcoming exam.

  And yet …

  I was also just on the floor of Latham’s workshop, attempting to heal Gran’s broken bones. In a fight with Latham for who would control the past. And Tessa was lying at my feet, dead.

  It’s like waking up from a particularly vivid dream—daylight washing away an invented life in favor of the real one.

  Except I’m not sure which memories belong to the dream and which don’t.

  “Tessa? Is it really you?”

  Her brows pinch together. And then I watch her face transform. “A Breaker grabbed me,” she says. “I almost …”

  I jump to my feet and throw my arms around her. “You’re alive,” I say. “Oh, thank the bones. You’re alive.”

  A bright glimmer of hope lights inside me. Could my mother and Gran be alive too? But there are no competing memories of them. The pain of their deaths is still a raw wound inside me. Did I only change one thing, then? Did I manage to bring Tessa back, but nothing else? And what does that mean for Latham?

  A throat clears behind me, and I turn. “Did it work?” Talon. “Did you change the past or did Latham?” His ginger hair sticks up in all directions and his pale cheeks are colored with splotches of bright red.

  “I’m not sure,” I say, distracted.

  My gaze sweeps over the rest of the room. Jacey is lifting herself from the floor, and behind her, Niklas brushes the dust from his pants.

  “Where’s Bram?” I can’t help the panic that seeps into my voice.

  Talon’s brows pull together. “Who?”

  I make a strangled sound. My heart seizes in my chest, and then shatters into sharp, jagged pieces.

  Talon takes in my expression and his face goes instantly repentant. “Saskia, I’m only teasing.” He dips his head to the side. “He’s fine.”

  I have to crane my neck to see Bram, but finally my eyes find his, and I choke back a sob. I run to him and fling myself into his arms. My whole body trembles. A tear trails down my cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb. He holds me close and his breath is a soft sigh against my neck.

  “I’m here,” he says, stroking my hair. “I’m right here.”

  The words radiate through me, melting into my relief and setting something else ablaze. Bram traces the long line of my clavicle from one shoulder to the other. His thumb rests in the hollow of my throat. Our lips are only inches apart. And then his mouth is on mine, gentle and sweet at first and then urgent and demanding.

  I feel my p
ulse everywhere. In my neck. My stomach. The tips of my fingers.

  Talon groans. “Give it a rest, you two.”

  I pull away from Bram and spin toward Talon. I jab a finger in his chest. “You don’t get to say anything. If I weren’t so relieved, I’d kill you.”

  He gives me a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No?”

  His expression—all wide-eyed innocence, while the little quirk of his mouth hints at mischief—is both infuriating and endearing. Memories of three different paths jostle in my mind—Talon lying in the grass underneath a tree, his head cradled in his palms, quizzing me on the uses of amphibian bones; Talon trying to cheer me up after a long day by pulling silly faces from all the way across the workshop; Talon pretending to sing off-key to make us all laugh, even though his voice is pitch-perfect. And before I know it, I’m laughing and crying at the same time. I’m hollowed out, exhausted, and limp with relief. I’m not sure if we succeeded, but at least we’re all here.

  “I should wring your neck,” I say, lifting my arms to mime the action, “but I won’t.”

  His eyes go wide. “Saskia, your hand.”

  My hand. Conflicting memories nudge against one another, and the pieces click into place. I look down. I have two hands again, but one is streaked with five black tattoos that run from each fingertip to the red line around my wrist, as if tracing the bones beneath my skin. Echoes from another path.

  It’s enough to finally convince me.

  “It worked,” I say, in awe. “We changed the past.”

  We woke in some kind of storage area. Shelves laden with boxes fill the center of the room. High, narrow windows on one end overlook a door on the other. We search the entire room for the bones I healed, but we can’t find them. They seem to have vanished along with the past we left behind. And Gran’s bone has disappeared from my pocket too. I feel the loss like a hole in my heart. My access to my other paths—both of them—now lives only in my memory.

  Bram threads his fingers through mine. “It’s probably a good sign that we can’t find them, right? Maybe it means Latham never stole the bones at all.”