Page 141 of The Blood Rites

She picks up a quill and a piece of parchment—a gift, I think, from the Mother Shard—and writes:

You came.

I nod. “I wanted to see how you were.”

She writes, slower this time, every stroke careful:

It is strange to survive after so much hurt. My body feels like it should fall apart.

“You were brave,” I say immediately, because I don’t know what else to offer her.

She shakes her head, writing:

I wasn’t anything. Callen protected me, but he died for nothing. My time will still come.

I bite my tongue. There is nothing I can say that will make this better.

She continues:

I remember the sword. I remember his arms around me. I could feel his heartbeat as it faded.

She stops writing, her hand trembling. She takes a deep breath and forces herself still. She writes:

He learned some signs you know.

I look at her, startled. I didn’t know.

She keeps writing, shaky and uneven now:

That’s the painful part. He tried so hard to speak to me. To learn my language.

She hesitates, then writes, smaller:

I’ve never been afraid before.

The sentence sits between us, alive and terrible.

She breaks. Not loudly, but fully—her face crumpling, the tears streaming straight down. She covers her mouth with one hand, the other curled around the quill in a tight fist. I don’t know what to do, so I slide around the table and put my arm around her. It’s awkward, but I am as gentle as I can manage.

She shakes and shakes, then quiets.

She leans into me, small and rigid, almost brittle, and we stay like that for a minute.

When she looks up, her eyes are wrong—too wide, the irises rolled back, the whites a cloudy grey like swirling mist.

She reaches for the dinner knife, and I tense, but she doesn’t attack me. She presses the blade into her palm, drawing a clean, deep cut. Blood gushes to the surface as she slams her hand on the table.

The blood moves, wriggling like worms across the table, forming words:

THE DEEP CALLS

A FRACTURE COMES AGAIN

SEEK TRUTH

COME TO THE SHADOW

The words sear my brain.