by Sara Wolf
“What was that thing you said?” I ask between breaks. “In beneather?”
He shrugs lightly, his eyes no longer glowing red. “It’s something the culling leaders customarily say to the valkerax that get away—the valkerax they can’t kill.”
“What does it mean?”
He breathes in. “‘The next time we meet will be a happier reunion.’”
19
The Memory
of a Blade
Before we leave the unconscious Evlorasin in the tunnel for Yorl and his celeon to retrieve, I go to the valkerax’s foot and pull out Father’s sword.
It’s broken.
The blade is warped back on itself, bent nearly flat and in half with the force of Evlorasin’s stamping, and when I pull, the rusted metal finally gives out. I hold the cracked hilt in my hand, the oil lamplight dancing on the sharp edges of the dagger end that is now the blade. It hurts to see it so broken after everything I did to keep it well—the sharpening, the constant whetting. It was there for me when I felt terrible in court; it was an anchor among all the sadness in Nightsinger’s woods. I fought Crav so many wonderful times with it, our laughter ringing in the forest. I scared off so many huntsmen with it, and I dueled Lucien with it.
Even if I have no memories of Father attached to it, I’ve made so many memories of my own, wrapping them around the hilt like ribbon. My old memories are in this sword, but new ones are wound about it, too. In a way, holding it now feels like seeing my heart again. My heart is full of old memories. But in my unheart, in the void in my chest, I’ve collected so many new ones—of Lucien, of Malachite and Fione, of Vetris and the whole new world I’ve been thrust into.
“That…” Malachite hobbles up to me. “That was your pa’s sword, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shuffle the hilt away and wipe my tears off my cheeks. He doesn’t say anything, and I’m thankful for it.
Yorl is so incredibly relieved to see us and the other celeon alive as we come out of the breach. He doesn’t show it, his green eyes placid behind his glasses, but after nearly a week with him, I can tell.
“Honey!” I smirk at him, flinging my arms out and approaching him with an insistent hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You didn’t have to wait up for me.”
This snaps Yorl out of his relief, and he pushes me off while glaring mightily, his whiskers twitching. “Who ever said I was worried? I knew you’d all get the job done. That’s why Varia pays you.”
“Wait a minute, you guys get paid for this?” Malachite feigns shock and looks back at the celeon, and a rumble of laughter runs through even the injured ones.
“I’ll have the polymaths repair the tear and a new team bring the valkerax back here,” Yorl says, his expression falling. “And we will bury our fallen well.”
I know that expression. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, it wasn’t your fault—”
He pushes me off abruptly. “I’ll say this only once, Zera, so listen carefully.” He clears his throat, starting and stopping a few times. “Thank you. For your help.”
“That’s what friends do.” I pause. “You’ve had friends before, right?”
“Of course I have,” he snaps, but it’s too quick, and I laugh, though I peter off quickly.
“So a witch did all the disrupting tonight? An emotional one?”
Yorl nods. “Undoubtedly. A strong one, too, if the ability to insulate the city from the quake subconsciously is any indication. I’d check with Varia’s contacts in the Crimson Lady and pore over the data with them, but they despise me.”
“Too smart for them, are you?” Malachite chirps.
“Too celeon.” Yorl says it like it’s been used as an insult against him more than once.
“Ah,” Malachite nods. “I know that feeling.”
“They might hold disdain for me, but they are not altogether hopeless at their jobs. With any luck, they’ll be able to pinpoint where the magic came from in a few days’ time. In the meantime, you—” He looks to me, then to Malachite. “You can take a day off while I settle everything back in its proper place.”
I get the message to not spill any details of what we’re doing down here in front of the prince’s bodyguard, but I can feel Malachite’s red eyes boring into the both of us. Malachite and I bid Yorl goodbye, leaving him to bandage his fellows more properly, and start up the steps. We walk slowly in the ashes of South Gate, Malachite’s wounds still affecting his gait, though his hands are positioned casually behind his head.
“I don’t know why he keeps trying,” Malachite admits up at the stars. “If I were him, I would’ve dumped you the second you tried to kill me.”
He. Lucien. I laugh, half despairing. The memory of the kiss tonight sends little flames licking at the underside of my belly, but I quash them angrily. “Yeah. I would’ve, too.”
“The king’s not too happy about it,” Malachite continues. “Back when Varia told him you were Heartless, he wanted to make some kinda formal announcement right away that you weren’t Lucien’s Spring Bride anymore, but Luc refused. He threw a fit, ruined the whole ‘happy family reunion’ and everything.”
I kick a pile of wood ash, black flaking away on the wind. “The last thing I want is for him to lose family over me. For him to lose anything over me.”
“You know,” Malachite says after a beat, “I’m actually inclined to believe you—you, the greatest con man Vetris has ever seen—this one time.”
“That’s a very impressive-sounding title for only having put on a few dresses and talking about potatoes,” I grumble. This ekes a laugh from him.
We trudge through the char and back to the more untouched streets, where people and carriages roam. The Red Twins are high in the sky, both of them crescent slits of rust. It’s almost curfew, which went into effect the same day the war was declared, and so people are hurrying to get home. A group of lawguards shouts at us to hurry home, too, but Malachite holds up one bloodied hand. There can’t be too many beneathers in Vetris who aren’t the prince’s bodyguards, and sure enough, they leave us alone after that.
“How do I get him to move on?” I ask after we cross the bridge to the noble quarter. “He won’t give up.”
“That’s the problem with Luc. He’s as stubborn as a hunk of granite. He never gave up on Varia, either—reading her old papers all the time, chasing after that Tree she kept mentioning. Not until you came along. You helped.”
“Did I?” I whisper. “It feels like all I did was hurt.”
“Listen.” Malachite sighs. “I’m not the best at love. I had it once, when I was a half-sentient grub in the Dark Below, with some kid who ran around the mosspig pens with me. We rolled in the clay a lot. It wasn’t very romantic.” I catch his eye, and he clears his throat. “Just…do you like him?”
“Yes,” the hunger and I answer instantly as one, and it fades, leaving me to defend myself. “I like him. But someone returning that affection, when I’m like this”—I motion down to my dirty clothes, to my empty chest, to the murderer, to all of me—“It’s not fair to him. Or to me.”
Malachite laughs again, the most I’ve heard from him since the reveal of my betrayal. “Love isn’t fair at all, ever.”
“You’ve hurt people to protect him,” I press. “Killed people to protect him.”
Malachite nods.
“Then you know what it’s like,” I say. “What if someone who’d never killed wanted to love you? Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats? Someone who doesn’t know what it means to make a mistake they can never take back?” I breathe in, looking up at the stars. “Lucien deserves someone who doesn’t know these things. Someone like him. Innocent.”
The beneather is quiet, his eyes shining under the gentle caress of the moonlight.
“What if you were made fo
r war,” I continue, hot tears annoying the corners of my eyes, “and that war is now?”
I can see the blurry arm Malachite is extending to me, but just barely. “Zera—”
“I have to do something.” I dodge away, and my hands shake as I reach out for a passing flower on a bush, burying my face in its soft petals so Malachite doesn’t see me crying. “I have to do something he’ll hate so I can get my heart back. And when I do, I’ll have to piece together who I really am. I don’t even know—” I stop. “I don’t even know what I’ll want after that. The hunger will be gone. I’ll have nothing moving me forward anymore. I’ll have no immortality. I’ll have to be scared of death again. I thought that’s what I wanted, but… That’s why I’m special, isn’t it? That’s why Varia keeps me around. It’s the whole reason the witches sent me here, the whole reason I met Fione and Lucien and you. It’s why I could kill Gavik and protect Lucien. It’s what makes me strong. Otherwise, I’m just a girl with a sword.”
together, stronger than alone.
My laughter sounds cold and mad even to my ears.
“But when I get my heart back, I’ll be alone in my head. All alone. Weak.”
Moonskemp lights up only one part of the palace, the candlelight glowing softly through the high windows, the nest of luminescence perched above us on the hill.
I stare up at it longingly. “I’ve just been careening toward my heart all this time, I haven’t given any real thought to what comes after. And I’m terrified of it. I have all these vague, nebulous ideas of peace but—if Varia gets her way, the peace will be only temporary.”
Malachite freezes. “What do you mean?”
It’s too hard to tell him the truth—that Varia will die if she gets the Tree. It would drive Lucien to stop us, I know it would. And if he did, there’s a chance he could succeed.
I’m being forced to choose again. Between my heart and him. But this time…this time I’ll make the right choice.
I pat my eyes dry, picking up my pace. “I despise crying, don’t you?”
Malachite grabs my arm then, pulling me back. His face is more serious than ever, white brows furrowed. “Zera, c’mon. You have to tell me. Luc’s worried sick about what’s going on with Varia and you down there—he’s barely been sleeping with all his gallivanting around on the streets trying to figure out what it is. If he keeps going like this—”
That’s where all Lucien’s dark circles are coming from. I frown. “You’re his bodyguard, not his body…body-not-guard. Do something! Drug his water if you have to.”
“You think I haven’t tried?” Malachite insists. “We’ve been together for five years. He knows all my tricks. He’s not going to stop until he finds out what you and Varia are doing down there. If it’s something dangerous—”
“You can tell him exactly how dangerous it is,” I insist. “Tell him the truth—it’s a valkerax.”
“That won’t be enough for him, and you know it. It doesn’t make any sense,” Malachite argues. “What is Yorl doing to it? Why are you talking to it? I get it—you’re Heartless, so they’re using you. You drink its blood, and then you can understand it. But what are you talking to it about?”
I blink. Its blood?
Malachite sees my confusion and frowns. “Haven’t they told you? If you get enough valkerax blood in your digestive system, you can understand them. But it kills you almost immediately after you’ve ingested it.”
So that’s what the serum is based on. I had no idea valkerax blood could do that to someone.
“Thank you.” I offer him the flower. “For your wisdom.”
He bats the flower aside, the blossom hitting the cobblestones. “You can thank me by telling me what in the afterlife you’re talking to a valkerax about.”
I start to walk away, Malachite’s grip breaking as I finally wrench my wrist out of his grip.
“Zera, please!” He grabs my shoulder, and I see something I’ve never seen in his eyes before. Fear. “Lucien is…going through it right now. Please just make his life easier this once.”
Why is he scared? What is he scared of? Lucien himself? They’re like brothers. Why would he fear Lucien?
“Sorry, Mal.” I force a grin. “I can’t.”
“He and Fione are never going to give up!”
“Then that makes three of us,” I say. He’s quiet, letting me go slowly, a hardness materializing on his face.
What is a Heartless, with their heart returned? A human? No—not entirely. They’ve tasted the hunger. They can still remember what it feels like to die, to be cut up, to be burned.
A Heartless with their heart is a human who’s been injured and has injured in return. And though the wounds have been healed magically, the memories still remain, stabbing and slicing better than the instruments of pain.
Heartless are an instrument of pain.
Who will I be, when my heart is returned? I consider it as I eat a lamb’s lung and sip a mug of chocolate drink to cover the repugnant taste in the dawn, on Varia’s enclosed balcony.
a murderer, a liar.
I’ll be a girl who can’t do anything but wave a sword around and quip emptily. A girl who has no idea what it means to be mortal anymore. A girl who has no idea what it’s like to be alone in her own head. The next time she throws herself in front of valkerax fire for ten celeon guards, she will not live to tell the tale.
The hunger has made me miserable. But it’s made me bold, too. It’s made me irreverent and brave. It let me protect others and myself. Even in my lowest moments, it’s given me a twisted sort of confidence, in that I always knew I’d live no matter what happened. No matter what happened, I could always rely on the hunger being there. Steady. Constant.
everything you are is my doing.
I am not the hunger. But it has made me in its own image.
If I leave it behind, what is there left to lean on?
20
The Splinter
When Varia returns from the Moonskemp, I tell her what happened with the valkerax before her maids come in. The crown princess is utterly silent for a good half. She peels off all her jewelry, placing it carefully on her armoire, before she finally speaks.
“Lucien has asked for your presence at his breakfast.”
“I’m not going,” I retort automatically.
“You misheard me, Lady Y’shennria.” She refers to me with my family name intentionally. “His Royal Highness Lucien d’Malvane has requested your presence at his breakfast.”
It’s a not-so-subtle flaunting of the royal family’s power over the other noble families. The prince is calling. And so, if I am still intent on being an Y’shennria, I must go. She calls for the maids, and they swarm in through the door. She stands from the armoire, going over to her closet and pulling out a simple peach muslin dress. She presses it to my dirt-smeared chest.
“He knows,” I say. “Malachite must have told him by now. Lucien knows I’m talking to—” I dart my eyes over to the maids. “To Evlorasin.”
“But he doesn’t know why,” Varia says coolly. She nods to the maids, and they take the cue instantly, undressing me with quick, sure fingers. I squirm out of the dirty dress, only half offended when they gently urge me into a silver tub of steaming herb-laced water in the bathroom and scrub me clean.
Varia picks up the letter from Yorl I’d left on the table, reading it as she speaks. “You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”
I open my mouth, but she interrupts too quickly.
“I saw it last night. The entire noble court saw it.” She pauses, dropping the letter and instead picking up a brush. She patiently combs through her own dark hair, the strands shining like polished onyx. “I’ll give you a word of warning—he’s not who you think he is.”
The warm bathwater on my skin burns like acid. What does she mean? He’s Lucien. He’s
Lucien d’Malvane, Prince of Cavanos and the Higher Reach. I dunk my head under the water, scrubbing my hair free of soap. I come up wiping water from my eyes.
“Be wary, Zera. My brother loves me,” Varia says. “And he desires you. But there is something he values more than either of us. And that is his people.”
The crown princess lets that linger, like a cut in the fabric of reality. Of course he values his people more than anything else. I’ve seen that countless times. He worked himself to exhaustion during the witchfire. I stand, gesturing for a maid to give me a towel. She obliges, and slowly I dry off and pull on the soft muslin dress, much softer than the world waiting outside.
“How much does he know?” I ask.
“Not enough,” Varia says. “And yet more than enough.”
“He’s going to get in the way, isn’t he?” I ask, the thought of Lucien standing between my heart and me tearing me apart at the edges.
“Not if we move quickly. Yorl has informed me there will be no visits today,” Varia answers. “But tomorrow, I expect your best effort. Especially considering Lucien is aware of such efforts now.”
The meaning isn’t lost on me. She’s gone from confident he wouldn’t be able to do anything about her getting the Bone Tree to wary. Something has changed, and not in our favor. Did it have to do with the valkerax’s escape maybe? Or is she finally realizing just how determined her brother has become in her years away from the court?
“You,” I start, then lose my courage. But it comes back around. “You’re going to die, aren’t you?”
Varia’s eyes flash in my direction, and I press on.
“The Bone Tree. It’s going to feed on your magic and kill you.”
Varia’s still, and then she throws her hair over her shoulder. “Yes. But I told you that at the very beginning.”
She did. The passage she recited from one of her favorite books, The Midnight Gifter. My flesh will feed its furnace. I didn’t know just how true to life those words were. But now I do, with the full, cold impact.