Chapter 10: Palm Writing

Bryn's POV

My father took the lantern with him when he left, and the cellar went black.

Elias locked me back in the middle cell with the key from his pocket and sat down on his stool in the corridor.

I could not see my own hand.

"Elias," I said into the dark.

He did not answer, because he could not hear it and could not see my mouth.

I sat on the cot with my heart going hard and my father's words still in my ears.

My daughter pays for it.

Something touched my fingers through the bars.

It was his hand, warm, with the calluses I already knew.

He turned my palm up and drew a line across it with one fingertip.

Then another.

It tickled, and then it did not.

He was writing on me.

W. A. I. T.

I closed my fingers on his, and he drew a gentle line down the inside of my wrist to tell me to open them again.

H. E. L. I. S. T. E. N. S.

"My father?" I whispered.

I felt him go still, because he had not heard me.

I reached through the bars in the black and found his jaw.

My fingers touched stubble and the corner of a mouth.

I felt him stop breathing.

I kept my hand where it was, along his jaw, with my thumb at the edge of his lip.

"Father," I said slowly. "Listens?"

His jaw moved under my hand as he shaped the answer, and I felt each word land on my fingertips.

"Maybe."

His breath was hot on my wrist.

I had never been touched like that, to be understood.

Everyone in my life had listened to me with half an ear.

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