Everyone Had a Key but Me novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: What He Kept

Gabe's POV

Claire slept with one hand under her cheek, the bandage still white against the pillow.

I sat on the edge of her narrow bed at five in the morning and watched her do it.

For three years I had left before she woke.

On the windowsill, the two halves of her mother's face caught the grey light.

The bracelet had been ready the first week.

I had told her not yet, twice, because as long as I held something of hers, she had a reason to ask me for it.

I didn't deserve her sleeping in the same room.

She stirred and said something into the pillow.

"Go back to sleep," I whispered.

Her eyes opened a crack.

"What are you doing?"

"Asking you something." I held out my hand. "May I take the pieces to be mended? Not replaced. Mended. Freja told me yesterday there's a man in the old town who restores miniatures."

She was quiet.

"You'll bring them back?"

"Before the Table meets. I'll put them in your hand myself."

She looked at the windowsill for a long time.

"Take them," she said. "All of them. But you carry them yourself, Gabe. You don't hand them to anyone."

"I'll carry them."

She turned her face into the pillow.

I folded the napkin around the silver and the shards and the two halves of the portrait with more care than I had ever given anything I owned.

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