Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(81)
Author: Alexandra Bracken

 

“Good,” she said primly, and, with one last squeeze, released me. “As penance, you’ll have to bear more of these tender moments with me, and accept that you are my friend.”

 

“Have mercy,” I begged. “Can’t I just steal something else for you to take back to the Council of Sistren and we can call it even? Maybe one of the creepy bone statues will impress them—”

 

“Tamsin!” She threw her quill at me. “Absolutely not.”

 

“Why?” I asked. “I’ve never been caught. Well, except for that one time, and it was only because a parrot ratted me out.”

 

“Listen,” she said. “I know you’re worried . . .”

 

Neve trailed off, seeming to struggle for her next words.

 

“You want to know about the parrot, don’t you?” I asked.

 

“Yes,” she said sheepishly. “I can’t help it. Tell me everything.”

 

“His name was Carrot, and he lived in an antiques shop in Prague,” I said. “And he was a handsome traitor.”

 

Neve closed her eyes, sighing happily. “Carrot the Parrot. It’s perfect.”

 

“Offer still stands,” I said, crossing my arms as I leaned back against the chair.

 

“Answer is still no,” Neve said. “But I appreciate you offering up your services as a Hollower—” She caught herself too late. “I mean, not that I think Hollowers are thieves, exactly, it’s just . . . you know . . .”

 

“Hollowers are thieves,” I said. “We just gave ourselves a different name to feel better about it.”

 

Neve shook her head, returning her attention to the book she opened in front of her.

 

“Can I ask you something?” I began.

 

“Not if it’s about leaving Avalon before we find a way to help them,” she said blithely, turning the page.

 

“Why do you want to be accepted by the Council of Sistren so badly?” I asked. “I understand wanting to further your education—believe me, I respect that ambition—but you’ve been so successful at teaching yourself, and now you have the Nine helping you. From what I know about the Council, I’m just afraid they’d try to crush all of the creativity and kindness out of you. I know you’re not afraid to go your own way, so why does their approval matter?”

 

“It’s not that simple,” Neve said, her fingers tightening almost imperceptibly around the book. “In that world—our world—I’ll be no one.”

 

“You’ll never be no one,” I said sharply. “You don’t need their draconian rules and outdated spells.”

 

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Neve said. “I’ll really be no one.”

 

I leaned back against my chair, letting the words settle in my mind, trying to understand them. Instead of elaborating, Neve reached into the bodice of her dress, lifting the chain over her head, revealing what she’d managed to keep hidden all these days.

 

A pendant.

 

She set it down between us, eyeing it like an asp. A simple silver setting held an oval white stone at its center. No—not white, but opalescent, a rainbow of colors hidden in the depths of its smooth surface.

 

“The stone’s called a Goddess Eye,” Neve said, her voice faint.

 

My memory helpfully supplied the rest. “An incredibly rare stone capable of amplifying magic.”

 

I had to fight the urge to pick it up from the table and study it more closely.

 

“It was my mother’s,” Neve said. “I found it while I was cleaning the attic with my auntie—and I knew, I knew by the look on her face that I wasn’t supposed to find it, just like I wasn’t ever supposed to learn what I was.”

 

Shock barreled through me. “She hid the fact that you were a sorceress?”

 

“Not exactly. I was left on her doorstep as a baby—that old cliché.” Neve shook her head. She was smiling, but it was undercut by the obvious hurt in her eyes. “Auntie claimed she had no idea who left me, or even who my mother was. She could tell I had magic, but she wasn’t sure if I would manifest full powers. I could have just as easily been one of the Cunningfolk, like her.”

 

“But then you turned thirteen,” I said softly.

 

She nodded. “It’s hard to explain what happens to you—you wake up one morning suddenly feeling like you’ve been electrified. If that magic isn’t tamed or directed into spellwork, it can explode out of you. Fires. Blown-out glass. Cursing someone you hate with a pox.”

 

“You said that last one very casually.” I gave a nervous laugh. Neve didn’t join in.

 

“My auntie basically thought . . . I don’t know what she thought,” Neve continued. “That if I ignored it, the power would disappear? But even after I put the pendant back, it called to me. It felt like it was supposed to be mine. I swear I could hear it whispering to me through the walls.”

 

I said nothing, waiting for her to continue when she was ready.

 

“I didn’t want to upset Auntie in any way, and I resisted it for a year, telling myself I didn’t need it or want it. But one day, when Auntie went to work, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. I went back up into the attic to get it. And I didn’t just find it again. I also found some of my mother’s old books and her wand.”

 

She didn’t have to say it for me to know. It was the wand Caitriona had taken that first night we were here.

 

“And I realized Auntie had lied to me,” Neve said, her voice growing smaller. “Not only did she know who my mother was, they were friends. I found letters she had sent, including one explaining my father had died, but she hadn’t signed them with a name, only the letter C. It was the last in the pile that made me sure they had come from her.”

 

My eyebrows rose. “What did it say?”

 

“Her name is Neve. Don’t let them take her. ‘Them’ could have been anyone—my father’s family, whoever they are, the Sistren, the State of South Carolina . . . All I knew was that Auntie had kept all of it from me, and it was mine,” Neve said. “So when she left for work, I would work, too. I went through my mother’s books, trying to learn more about her, trying the spells she’d known. The pendant made it all so much easier.”

 

“Do you think it might have played a role in the protective spell you cast when we first got here?”