The Binding

by Bridget Collins

“It’s a sacred calling, Emmett. To have another person’s memory entrusted to you . . . To take the deepest, darkest part away from them and keep it safe, forever. To honor it, to make it beautiful, even though no one will ever see it. To guard it with your own life . . .”

“May your darkness be quiet and the light come sooner than you need,” he said. It was the old, formal salutation at the Turning.

I MISSED LUCIAN so much it was like a wound. I could feel the outline of it, a desperate fiery ache that started under my sternum and ended somewhere in my groin. If I moved, or spoke, or inhaled too deeply, it hurt more. I’d never thought I could want to die: but it was like drowning over and over again, except that the final blackness never came.

It didn’t feel like crying; it felt like I was dissolving from the inside.