But when the bone shrikes screamed before the marrow prince and his poet, their enchantment happened in reverse. It was the bone shrikes’ secrets that spilled. The shock and shame of losing their own secrets caused their own words to devour them whole.
Andrew wore the Sharpie tip ragged on the rough bark, but as soon as he finished and turned to watch Thomas take another swing with his hatchet, the story began to come true.
The bone shrikes’ jaws creaked open, but their screams unwound before they started and punctured backward into the shrikes’ chests. They swayed with the force of it.
“Don’t attack,” Andrew said. “I swear it’ll be okay, Thomas. J-just don’t attack.”
Panic twisted Thomas’s face—it was clearly taking everything he had to stand still. But Andrew wanted to hear the shrikes’ secrets. He didn’t know how they’d speak from skeleton throats, but he let them come closer, closer, and the rattling of their bones filled the forest.
One loomed over Andrew, its horns gleaming like daggers in the moonlight and its arms stretching out like endless tree limbs. It ran fingers through Andrew’s hair, and he bit his tongue so hard copper blossomed in his mouth.
Don’t fight. Don’t run. Don’t fight.
“Tell me your secret,” Andrew whispered.
It opened its mouth and clumps of dirt and worms tumbled out. Fungi grew on its jaw hinge. It dragged a finger down Andrew’s face, toward his eye, and he squeezed them shut as an agonizing, bone-deep cold filled him.
“Why are you doing this?” Andrew’s mouth barely moved. “What do you want?”
… sacrificeeeeee…
every good story ends with a wishbone snapped…
a bloodied kiss—
the prince’s sacrifice.
—cut out a heart—
and bury it in the woods.
but you already
knew that, prince.
The bone shrike drew back as one of its own kind came up behind and broke pieces off its skull and began to eat them. They all stood there, devouring each other, while Andrew watched in horrified awe as his story came true.
He backed up and knelt beside Thomas, who sat trembling in the leaves, hands clasped around his legs and knees up to his chin.
“Did they say something to you?” Andrew said.
Thomas shook his head, but his face was white, and an unnatural frost coated his cheeks. Maybe he was lying, but it didn’t matter. Andrew had the answers he wanted. He dragged Thomas to his feet.
When there was nothing left of the shrikes but their jawsstill working on the ground, trying to chew themselves to death, Andrew and Thomas escaped back to the school.
Neither could get warm. Secrets apparently stole all the heat from your body. Andrew put on another sweater over his flannel pajamas and crawled into bed. He flicked off the lights so they could steal those slim dawn hours for sleep, but before he could close his eyes, his mattress depressed at the edge. He could feel more than see Thomas hovering, one knee already on the comforter, questioning.
Andrew rolled over, and Thomas folded himself into the bed.
They couldn’t pretend it was an accident this time, so they said nothing, just curled into each other until they stopped shivering.
“You can control them,” Thomas said. “All this time and you could’ve saved our asses with your stories. Can we stop them now? Forever?”
Andrew pressed his face into Thomas’s curls and thought of princes with their hearts cut out. “I don’t know.”
Liar. But he’d always been one.
Instead, he whispered, “Would you die for me?”
