Jade Goldlight's Arc

Chapter 15 of 20

Jade reached the treehouse with the scroll under her arm and the dead man's smile still printed behind her eyes. She set the scroll on the table, but it was the loose pages in her pocket that she pulled out first — the torn sheets that had led her to him, edges jagged, ink shaking across old print. She smoothed them flat under her palm. Raihan watched from the doorway, quiet, letting her have it. She cut a strip of leather from the bridle scraps and bound the pages into a small, rough book. No title. No flag. Just a thing she made with her own hands, for the one fight no one would sing about. She slid it onto the shelf above her bed, where only she would see it, and finally sat down. The story was ended. The next one would start without Hal in it.