But then the clatter of an iron lid lowering onto the basin pulls me from my reverie. My eyes snap open just in time to see my mother spill the blackened bones across the white carpet. As she studies them, a crease appears between her brows. Her eyes are shimmering when she lifts her head.
“You’ll be apprenticed at Ivory Hall,” she tells me, her voice flat and emotionless. “You’ll train as a Bone Charmer with the Second Sight.” She swallows and her gaze slides away from me. “Bram will be your mate.”
For a moment I’m too stunned to react. And then rage wells in my chest.
“Why would you do this?”
She doesn’t answer. I can hear my pulse roaring in my ears.
“Which one of Gran’s bones told you to ruin my life?” I ask, scooping a handful of them into my palm.
“Saskia.” Her voice is low and threatening. “Don’t.”
But what could she possibly do to me that is worse than this? I’ll be sent far from home to be trained to read bones—a fate I couldn’t be less suited for. And she’s paired me with a boy whose tattoos have made the whole town fear him, a boy who might have been my very last choice—if choice were actually a luxury that belonged to me. I’ll not only live a miserable life, but I’ll live it alone.
“Was it this one?” I ask, holding up a slender bone. When she doesn’t answer, I throw it aside and pick up another. “Or maybe this?”
My mother’s hand shoots out, her fingers roughly brushing mine as they close around the bone. Two bright splotches stain her cheeks and she has fire in her eyes. “Give it to me.” She tugs. But I tug harder.
And the bone snaps in two.
All the blood drains from my mother’s face. She sucks in a sharp breath and snatches the other half from me.
Broken bones are bad luck.
“What have you done?” Her voice is shrill, terrified.
But it should be me asking that question. She’s destroyed any chance I have of happiness. And these bones are worthless now anyway—they can only be used once. I climb to my feet and stalk toward the door.
“The answer to your question is no,” I say. “I don’t trust you.” But she doesn’t respond. And when I cast a final glance in her direction, she’s still staring at the fractured bone, one hand pressed against her mouth in silent horror.
I squint into the sunlight as I step outside the Marrow. The next girl in line is bouncing lightly on her toes. “So?” she asks brightly. “How did it go?”
I shake my head and brush past her. Suddenly the chatter in the square dies away and I feel the weight of a thousand stares fall on me. The townsfolk are watching me with expressions ranging from open curiosity to outright glee, as if scandal has a scent and they’ve just caught a whiff. But I refuse to give them the satisfaction of becoming a topic for their gossip, so I force a smile onto my face. I walk confidently toward the other side of the Marrow, where the boys are waiting.
Declan gives me a sheepish grin as I approach, and my heart twists in my chest as I pass him.
I stop in front of Bram. I don’t know if I can find the courage to do this. But what choice do I have? No one ever rejects a bone match on the kenning day. I take a deep breath and hold out my hand. My fingers tremble. Bram’s dark eyes widen and he retreats a step or two behind the other boys.
He actually backs away from me.
Heat climbs up my neck, floods my cheeks. I stand there with my hand outstretched for a beat.
Two.
Three.
Finally he rakes his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions. He gives his head a little shake of resignation and slides his hand in mine. Each of his knuckles is tattooed with a small black triangle. His palms are rough. It’s been years since I’ve been this close to Bram. Touching him stirs up memories I’ve fought long and hard to suppress, and I force myself not to pull away.
We walk toward the bonfire, and slowly the low hum of conversation starts up again. We sit on a large, flat rock and a small girl thrusts a fluffy white blanket into my arms. “Congratulations on your pairing,” she says. From the corner of my eye, I see Bram flinch. I want to tell her thank you, but the words feel stuck in my throat. Instead I just nod, which seems to satisfy her, because she smiles and scampers away.
I unfurl the blanket and settle it over both of our laps. As soon as our hands are hidden, Bram lets go of me.
I feel as if I’ve been slapped. After the sting fades, an older ache surfaces like a bruise I thought had healed long ago but is still tender when probed.
“You weren’t my first choice either,” I tell him.
His eyebrows pull together. “What?”
“I obviously wasn’t your first choice,” I say. “And I just want you to know that you weren’t mine either.”
He doesn’t say anything for several long seconds, but when he speaks, his voice is dry, almost bored. “Duly noted.”
We sit together in tense silence and I wonder what my father would think of this pairing. He and my mother were bone-matched, but he claimed he already loved her by the time she held out her hand to him on the kenning day.
“You most certainly did not.” My mother scoffed when he told me the story.
Father’s palm covered his heart. “Della, my darling, I’m wounded. Just because you didn’t love me yet doesn’t mean I didn’t love you.”
“I don’t remember seeing a red tattoo around your wrist,” she said lightly. “We’d hardly spoken before the kenning day. When exactly did you have time to fall for me?”
A grin spilled over his face then. “The day Kyle Dennis challenged you to race him to the top of the Poulsens’ huge oak tree, and you beat him by five minutes.”
She shook her head, but her eyes were dancing. “How did that make you love me?”
“How could it not? If your gumption didn’t win me over, your tiny little legs dangling from the branches as you hummed all three verses of ‘Meet Me in the Treetops’ would have.”
The story earned a laugh from me and an amused gasp from Gran. “Della, you didn’t!” The song is about two young lovers who have to keep their relationship a secret because they haven’t had their kenning yet. Each night the boy climbs a tree to reach the bedroom window of the girl he adores to give her a midnight kiss. My mother humming that song was a taunt to the boy who challenged her. Not only did he lose, she announced to the gathered crowd that he was fond of her.
“To be fair,” my father said, “half the town was head over heels for your mother. I was just lucky the bones chose to smile on me.”
But I guess I didn’t get my father’s luck.
Gran’s bones have paired me with someone who couldn’t be more opposite from my father. Someone who is marked with tattoos that hint of a dark past. Someone who has been matched as a soldier in the Ivory Guard.
And my apprenticeship … for the first time since I stormed out of the Marrow, it sinks in that I was matched with Second Sight. I always assumed, if I became a Bone Charmer, I would have First Sight like Gran or Third Sight like my mother. But the ability to see things in the present never occurred to me. It certainly sounds safer than the other Sights—finding misplaced objects, helping people make decisions, assisting Healers in diagnosing pain for patients who can’t speak for themselves. But then I remember that Second Sight Bone Charmers are sometimes used to question accused criminals, and I feel queasy.