Page 50 of Crow’s Shadow

Everyone looks at me.

I think about the girl who sat on the bottom stair stealing scraps of talk through a locked door. I think about all the years I spent being furniture, the one nobody sent away and nobody claimed. I think about my mother in the ground, who spent her last breath making sure I’d be loved, and who asked me, through a dead man’s gift and a cleaner’s mouth, to let myself be happy.

“I keep the book,” I say. “But not in a hole in the floor anymore. It comes up. It’s not a leash you hand a girl and forget. It’s ours, all of ours, and I’ll teach it, so it never again lives or dies with one scared person in a locked room.” I look at the women along the wall, my coven, my blood. “And they’re done hiding. I’m not asking. Hiding handed us to men like Renner one at a time. We find each other now. Out loud.”

Nobody argues. Ariea’s hand finds mine along the wall. Ember’s takes hers, Nova’s takes mine and the power moves through all four of us. I watch the men feel it move through the room, and for once nobody is afraid of it.

“One more thing,” I say, because I am done leaving things unsaid. “I never had a name. Everyone here knows it, the girl from nowhere. I had one the whole time.” My voice does not shake. “My mother was Maren. I’m her daughter. And I’m keeping her name in this club out loud, because she’s the reason every one of you is standing here, and nobody’s going to forget her again.”

Crow finds me in the chapel after church. He’s leaning against the doorway, watching me close the book.

“You claimed the whole fucking club back there,” he says. “In front of God and everybody.”

“Somebody taught me how.”

He crosses the room. He doesn’t stop at the careful distance anymore. He never will again.

“I’ve got something for you,” he says, and nervous is not a thing I have ever seen on Crow, but there it is, a tightness in his jaw. He sets it on the table. A patch. Not a property patch, nothing to brand a woman as somebody’s property. The stitching isn’t perfect, Crow made it himself.

It doesn’t say Property of Crow. It says Shadow in thread. The name I chose for myself before I knew I had my mother’s.

“You are not property,” he says, low. “I meant it on the mountain and I mean it now. But you’re a Prowler, Shadow. You have been. I’m not asking to own you.” His jaw tightens. “I’m asking you to claim me back.”

I take the patch. I run my thumb over my name and stare at it until my vision blurs.

“You already know you’re mine,” I tell him. “The whole club knows. The dead know. My mother tied the knot herself and neither of us got a say.” I step into him, close, closer, until the bond hums between us. “Say it back to me anyway. Out loud. The way you made me say it to a room.”

“You’re mine,” he says, forehead to mine, both hands in my hair. “Obsessively. For the rest of my life and whatever the fuck comes after it. And I’m yours. There’s no version of me left that isn’t.”

Then he kisses me and I grab the front of his cut and kiss him right back. Mine. Ours. The fire in me and the dark in him wrap around each other and hold.

“You keeping the patch?”

I look down at it. “Maybe?”

“Shadow.”

I grin. “Yeah, I’m keeping the fucking patch.”

There’s one thing left, and I do it at dusk, alone, though Crow walks me to the tree line and waits where the ground goes soft.

I’ve spent my whole life not knowing where my mother was. Now I know to the inch. Crow marked it for me the day after the mountain, a small flat stone he cut and carved himself, no false name on it this time, no county lie.

MAREN. Her name. And under it, in his careful hand: SHE GOT THE GIRL OUT.

I sit down in the soft grass and run my fingers over her name.

“Hi, Mom.” It’s the first time I’ve ever said it. “I don’t know if you can hear me. Crow says the dead don’t always stick around. I hope you didn’t. I hope you’re finally resting.” I pull my knees up and put my hand on the grass. “But I got your message. All of it. Every word.” The grass moves. “I’m going to let myself be happy,” I tell her. “I’ve got a whole coven of sisters who quit hiding. I’ve got a place at a table where I used to be invisible. I’ve got a man you picked out for me when I was five years old, and you have good taste, for the record, even if he’s a lot.” A laugh cracks out of me. “I’m not the girl from nowhere anymore. I’m from you. You’re where I’m from.” My hand flattens on the cool grass over her. “Thank you for spending your last breath on me. You got me out, Mom. I’m going to live.”

I stand up. Crow is waiting at the tree line.

“You okay?” he asks when I reach him.

“Yeah.” I look back at my mother’s grave.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I take his hand. “Really.”