My Mate's Last Message Wasn't for Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Funeral Doll
On her birthday, in front of the whole dorm, Seren hands back the stuffed wolf and the scarf, then walks into the dance hall where the heir turns and says: where have you been?
On my twenty-first birthday, in front of half the dorm, I handed Niles back his gift.
It was a stuffed wolf with a lace bow tied around its neck.
Margot had grabbed me at the dorm door the second I stepped out, laughing, her red braid swinging.
"Open it! Niles and I picked it out together. We looked everywhere."
Niles stood behind her on the steps with his hands in his pockets, smiling at the two of us.
Students had stopped on the path to watch. It was a birthday, and people like to watch a present.
I knew what was in the box before I touched the ribbon.
In my first life I had opened it with a bright face and felt my stomach turn to ice.
Wolves do not make dolls in the shape of wolves.
We make them for one reason, which is to burn them beside a grave.
Back then I told myself they hadn't known.
I lifted the lid anyway and held the doll up so the whole path could see it.
"Do you like it?" Margot said. "It looks exactly like you."
"It's a funeral doll," I said.
Her smile stayed where it was, but nothing behind it moved.
"Seren, don't be dramatic. It's a toy."
"It's what we burn for the dead. Everyone here was raised on that."
A boy on the path said, "She's right," and someone near him laughed.
Niles took his hand out of his pocket. "Seren. Not here."
His voice was gentle, the voice he used when I was being difficult.
I had heard it a thousand times and I had always said sorry.
"You picked it out for me," I said. "Both of you. You can burn it yourselves."
I put the doll in his hands.
He took it because I had left him no choice.
I had lived a long time with that voice, in a life that ended with a mountain falling on him at the north border.
He sent three messages before it did.
The first was a survey report, and the second was an apology to his parents.
The third said: "Margot, you are my Frostmoon seam."
I had been his mate for three years, and I had to read that on a screen in a lab hallway.
Then Margot died too, and I spent the rest of my life wishing I had walked away at twenty-one.
Now it was twenty-one again, and I was not going to wait for a mountain.
Last night I had pulled my transfer papers out of the registrar's slot, the ones that would have sent me to the moon-vein lab for good.
Then I had left the group chat while the two of them talked over my message about dinner.
Niles had called to scold me. I had let it ring out.
He stepped closer now and lowered his voice.
"You left the group and made Margot cry. Do you see how that looks?"
"I see how it looks," I said.
He pulled the grey scarf from his own neck and wound it twice around mine.
It was wool, heavy and warm, and it smelled like his soap.
"Put this on. Your scent is too loud for the lab, and we have a full day."
He did it every moon night, and every morning before a long lab day.
For three years I had thanked him.
I unwound the scarf and folded it in half.
"I'm not going to the lab," I said.
"Seren."
"I don't need it, Niles."
I laid the scarf over the doll in his arms.
Margot's mouth opened, and for once nothing came out of it.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To dance."
Niles laughed, the short laugh he used when he thought I was joking. "You dropped dance. You said you were too slow."
"I was slow," I said. "I'm still slow."
"Then what are you doing?"
"Something I'm not sorry for."
I took my bag off the step and walked down through the students.
Nobody stopped me. Somebody near the back started clapping and then thought better of it.
My legs felt unsteady at first, and then the trembling passed.
The Moon Ritual Dance hall stood at the end of the east path, a long wooden building with tall windows.
I had not pushed that door in a year.
Music was already playing inside, one low drum.
I pulled the door open, and the drum stopped.
A dozen dancers turned to look at me.
At the far window, with his back to the glass, stood a tall man in a dark coat who did not belong in a class.
I knew him from the Rite posters, and from a name carved on a seat in the Hall.
Cormick Vaux, the Greywater heir.
He took one breath through his nose and went completely still.
Then he crossed the floor in three strides, stopped in front of me and said, low, so only I could hear:
"Where have you been?"
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