Chapter 57. Return to Bone Choir

The wind knew her name now.

Not the name stolen by the Matrons, clipped and hollow. Not the one Serana had spat in poison and prophecy, serrated on her tongue. Not the howl-stitched titles the Thorn Pact draped over her in chants of allegiance and awe. The wind cared for no banners. It bore no rank. It remembered only rhythm—the steady pulse of a girl who had walked into the heart of a dying world and emerged still breathing.

It slipped around her ankles, grazing her skin with an unseen finger, and guided her steps without a sound.

Aeryn walked alone.

She had slipped from camp without a word, threading through the stunned hush that fell after Thorne’s death like a final curtain. She moved with the same precision one uses to peel a bandage from a healed scar—slow, deliberate, never faltering. Ryker watched her go, his dark eyes unreadable, knuckles pale against the shaft of the spear he no longer needed. Sera said nothing; she met Aeryn’s gaze just once before