Jade Bones's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Jade walked away from the shrine with the dead man's compass shaking in her palm. The cracked needle stopped spinning. It locked east. Her vines yanked north. Two pulls. Two directions. Her arms burned where the iridescent vines tightened against her skin. She followed both as far as she could, until the forest split at a small cottage ringed by a low fence. Glowing flowers spilled over its window boxes. The compass needle stabbed hard toward its door. The vines on her legs hauled the other way, into the dark trees beyond. Jade chose the compass. The dead man had carried it. He had earned that much. Inside the cottage, the air was warm and wrong. No sorcerer. Only a notebook open on a small table, its cover wrapped in carved vines. Beside it sat another compass, this one alive, twisting roots curled around brass. The needle pulsed and pointed back at her own arms. A tracker. Not Vael. A trinket meant to find people like her. She read one line in the open notebook. Her name. Her cousins' names. A list, ticked off in fresh ink, four marks deep. The handwriting was patient. The last line read, Come north. The cottage was a lure, and she had stepped inside it. Jade slammed the notebook shut and shoved the broken compass into her belt. She walked out the door and turned north, where the vines had been pulling her all along. He had wanted her to waste the hour. She had given it to him. Now she owed him that hour back, in blood.