The Hidden Route Picked the Friend novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: Silk
Clem had given her the silk.
She had pressed it into Briony's hands that evening without a word, two long ribbons of ivory, cut from the sash of the green gown.
"For the hem," Clem had said.
They both knew it wasn't for any hem.
Now Briony sat on her bed in the dark with the ribbons coiled in her lap and listened for the window.
It lifted at midnight.
Sevrin came over the sill, shut it behind him, and stood in the candlelight with his hands empty.
He had come straight from the gate.
He smelled of cold stone and horse.
"Bolt the door," she said.
He bolted it.
"Coat."
He took it off and laid it over the chair.
"Shirt."
The shirt followed.
His body in the candle was lean and hard and marked everywhere with old white lines.
She had touched every one of them by now, and she still wanted to touch them again.
She stood and went to him with the ribbons trailing from her fingers.
"I've decided something," Briony said.
"Tell me."
"I'm going to say it once, and I'm not going to say it halfway."
He waited.
He had learned how to wait for her, and it was the most dangerous thing about him.
"I choose you," she said.
"Not the pages.
Not Clem's pages, not the game.
Nobody wrote me into this room.
I'm in it because I walked here."
His throat moved.
"You read me the page about the Knife today," Sevrin said.
"Wounded hand.
A scullery at midnight.
A kind girl who walks in."
"That was the heroine."
"It was supposed to be."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Hidden Route Picked the Friend are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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