I thought I’d seen the worst of Rasmus’s temper when Bram and I snuck away, but I was mistaken. When he sees my arm in the sling, and finds out what happened, he screams at the Watcher who locked us in the Fortress until I’m stunned he has any voice left at all.

“How could you let this happen?” he shouts. “They are children, not soldiers.” He punches a fist in the air. “It’s grotesque, what you’ve done, and I promise you haven’t heard the end of it.”

Somehow his rage is a balm to my wounded soul. His words flow over me like a lullaby, making me feel treasured and protected.

“Look at her,” the Watcher says, unfazed. “She’s fine.”

Rasmus’s face goes bright red. “She’s fine? She’s fine? Her arm was just broken.”

The Watcher shrugs. “Not for long. No permanent damage.”

I think of Latham striding toward me with a knife in his hand. Of Jacey’s panicked cries as she struggled inside the dark belly of a burlap death bag. Of Bram watching a fire consume someone he couldn’t help.

And I wonder if the Watcher knows she’s lying.

Just because no one can see it, doesn’t mean there isn’t any permanent damage.

Chapter Nineteen

The trip back to Ivory Hall feels completely different from the trip to Leiden. Less worried, but more somber. It’s only been a few days since we were on the ship, but it feels like years. The impressions we had of one another when we left the capital have shattered, the broken pieces rearranging into a more complex, more broken picture.

But a more beautiful one too.

We sit on the deck of the ship, our shoulders hunched against the icy wind.

“Do you ever think it might not be worth it?” Niklas asks. “Bone magic, I mean.”

Jacey pulls her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. “I wonder that all the time. Especially lately.”

“Maybe that’s the point of the bone games,” Tessa says thoughtfully. “To see who really wants it and who doesn’t.”

“So which are you?” Talon asks.

Tessa shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

Talon indicates the space between me and Bram. “How about you two?”

The way he asks the question—like we’d both have the same answer—makes me realize we never corrected the impression among the group that we aren’t a real couple. I wait for Bram to say something, but he doesn’t.

I find a loose string on the hem of my cloak sleeve and wrap it tightly around my finger. “I don’t think either of us knows what we want yet.”

Bram turns toward me, his face limned by the setting sun, his eyes liquid. “Don’t we?”