These Deathless Bones

by Cassandra Khaw

“I said I was sorry, ” he barks, as though that one word is a confessional to be stuffed full with his sins. As though that one word could absolve everything.

The court at large paid no mind to the little prince’s eccentricities, lauding them as portents of glories to come. In battle, the soothsayers exulted, he’d be a monster. Funny how they wouldn’t talk about how he was one already.

Bones do not lie. Even when they are broken and then mended, there are scars to say where a fracture once was. A woman might wear powders to disguise her age and a man might boast of his vigor, but if you know where to look, if you can read their teeth and the bends of their spines, you’ll know the truth each time.