“This isn’t bone-made,” he says. “And it’s also too dull. You’ll be here all night.”

I shrug. “It’s all I had.”

He slides the leather satchel from around his neck and digs through it, producing a small bone-handled folding knife. He opens the blade and inclines his head toward the tree. “May I?”

I nod and step aside. Bram holds the knife perpendicular to the ground and carves my mother’s name in deft, confident strokes. My gaze wanders to the muscles in his arm, flexing as he works.

When he finishes, he turns toward me. “How is that?”

He’s engraved my mother’s name—DELLA HOLTE—in neat block letters, along with her death date.

Warmth spreads through my chest. “Perfect,” I say, my voice catching a little. “Thank you.”

My fingers twitch—longing to reach for him—but I shove them into my pockets. We’re about to spend weeks together on a ship to Ivory Hall. And after seeing a glimpse of what we could have been together, it will be so hard not to rely on Bram for comfort. Not to feel his hand fold around mine like a promise to double my joy and divide my pain. But I have to try.

My life depends on it.

Ami and I wander arm in arm through the streets of Midwood. The sun sits low on the horizon and the sky is awash in shades of pink and gold. We’ve been trying to say goodbye for hours, but neither of us can seem to find the words. So we keep walking, keep chatting about mundane things, as if we’ll be together forever. As if I won’t sail away tomorrow and Ami will stay here and for the first time in our lives we won’t see each other every day.

As much as I want to pretend things are normal, I can’t.

Everywhere I turn, I see the ghosts of my family—my mother coming out of the Marrow, a stone basin tucked beneath her arm like it weighs no more than a feather; Gran heading into the Sweet Tooth to buy the lemon-flavored candies she favored; my father fishing on the banks of the Shard, a contented smile on his face. The memories fill me with bittersweet longing.

But other images crowd in too—Declan threading his fingers through mine, making promises he had no intention of keeping; standing beside my mother in the bone house, gazing into the empty box where Papa’s remains should have been; walking into my own home, what had always been a cocoon of safety and love, to see Latham with a blade at my mother’s throat.

Midwood won’t ever be the same. I can’t imagine staying. And yet I can’t bear the thought of leaving, either.