Chapter 12: The Silence

I lay very still with my cheek on his chest.

His heartbeat had not changed.

His mind had.

It poured through my head now, after two weeks of silence.

She'll leave. She'll leave when she knows. Say it. Say it now before it's worse.

"Ronan," I said.

His whole body went rigid.

"I can hear you," I said.

I felt the silence fall in the room, and then I heard what was under it.

Fear. A great, old, bone-deep fear, worn smooth with use.

He sat up slowly and put his back against the headboard.

He did not touch me.

"The bond," he said. "It was closed on your side. Nothing could get through until you took it all the way."

"Closed because of what?"

"Because of what you said."

"I haven't said anything."

"No." His voice cracked. "Not this time."

I sat up too.

The moon was in the window, and the room was blue and silver.

"Tell me," I said.

He looked at the wall for a long time.

Then he looked at me.

"I remember the Rite," Ronan said. "The first one."

"I remember standing on that beach with my hands shaking, thinking the moon had finally given me something good."

I knew what was coming, and I wanted to look away.

"I remember you looking at me. And I remember what you said."

I could hear it in his head before he said it.

I'd rather be dead than belong to a Kestrel animal.

"I said that," I whispered.

"In front of four hundred people."

"Ronan..."

"I remember the pain. It tore something out of me."

He shut his eyes. "I lived. For five more years."

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