by Sara Wolf
“You had no right to watch, Mal,” Lucien insists.
“Luc, I spent nine years watching you be boring. The least you could do is let me watch when you decide to be interesting.”
“You can’t lurk forever.” I slap Malachite’s shoulder playfully.
“Watch me,” he shoots back. “Just kidding. You can’t. Because I’m very good at hiding.”
“You’re going to get very good at jail shortly,” Lucien mutters.
“Throw me in if you have to.” Malachite sighs. “But know I can expertly digest most forms of substratum stone.”
“Sky jail,” Lucien adds. “Where you can’t eat your way out.”
“Well,” Malachite faux huffs. “That seems a little excessive.”
My laugh scares nightdoves off a nearby tower, all of them flooding into the sky on indigo wings, their white breasts flashing in the first starlight. A real laugh. Gods, how long has it been since I laughed without a weight on my chest? Years, it feels like.
…
Dinner is, of course, also a tad bit different for me than it is for everyone else.
My plate on the long oakwood table of the old sage’s house-tower dining room is piled high with the fattiest livers I’ve ever seen, garnished with a gooey pool of grapefruit-red pig blood. Everyone else has perfectly seared pheasant with gleaming sugar-roasted yams and vivid green wyrmfruit compote. Absolutely grotesque.
Helkyris and Cavanos share few things, but one of them is the stuffy meal seating tradition. Lucien sits at the first right, as is custom for the highest-ranking guest, and Malachite tries to lean on the wall, but the sage won’t have any of it, guiding him to sit next to Lucien and offering him a beneather spirit of some sort. I smirk and take a seat across from the prince, but one seat down. The chair next to mine is Fione’s. The old sage finally sits at the head of the table. Y’shennria’s teachings whisper I’m supposed to refer to him as “Elder.” And here I thought her lessons on Helkyrisian titles were utterly pointless. I’ll have to apologize, next I see her.
if we ever see her alive again.
I put my napkin in my lap. No ifs. Only whens.
Fione is the last to join us, nose and apple-cheeks red from the cold as she rushes in, shaking snow off her velvet covering and her mouse-colored curls. Her eyes catch mine, and for a second it’s hard to breathe. The pain on her face is so raw. It bleeds out from the corners of her pursed lips, her cornflower-blue eyes. Eyes that should be happy. Smiling. Not weary, and certainly not dusted with the thick, dull fallout of loss.
She looks away first. I stand up quickly and intercept her cane as she hands it over to the guard.
“I’ve been awful lately.” I smile, setting the cane gingerly against the wall. She bites down on a wince, keeping her neck Duchess-Himintell-long.
“You’re here now,” she says woodenly. “That’s all that matters.”
“Please, ladies.” The sage motions to our chairs. “Sit and partake. You must be starving.”
“Some of us more than others.” Malachite nods to me. I’d make a playfully rude gesture, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it might send the ancient sage into heart failure, so I settle on a winsome smile instead. But it doesn’t last long, Fione’s human scent pulling me back. Lilacs and skin.
I pivot and gulp down whatever’s left of my reservation.
“I’m sorry—”
“You didn’t make her choose the Bone Tree.” She cuts me off smoothly.
“Fione—”
“It’s not like you could’ve chosen otherwise. You were her Heartless. Lucien’s explained to me how that all works.”
“Fione, let me apologize properly. Please?”
Her eyes rivet to the floor, and the dining room goes silent, the sputter of white mercury lamps and distant clang of the kitchen the only sounds. I reach slowly, oh so slowly, for her hand—her small, elegant hand with all her perfect fingers. Fingers that made her crossbow cane, that made the jeweled dagger of her and Varia’s relationship into a white-mercury bladed thing, capable of giving me back the ability to Weep.
She sacrificed that dagger, their dagger, for me.
Her skin is so cold, frail as porcelain, and there’s a heartbeat where I think she’s going to pull away, but she doesn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “For everything. For not trusting you. For turning my back on you and giving her the Tree. You deserve a better friend.”
I squeeze softly, trying to work some warmth back into her. She has every right to be blazingly furious. To walk away, right now, and ignore me like I don’t exist. I didn’t make Varia choose the Bone Tree over her, but I’m the whole reason Varia found it. The whole reason she left Fione and Lucien all over again.
“And you.” Her voice comes out small, eyes on the floor, catching with the sparkle of tears. “You deserve to be free. Like everyone else.”
I can’t stop my own tears at the sight of hers. At her words that mean more than she’ll ever know.
“I am.” I laugh, moving to wipe her face for her. “Thanks to you.”
“I didn’t do anyth—”
“You made a white mercury blade. You made me Weep when I thought it was impossible. You’re brilliant. You did what your uncle, what every single pus-headed polymath in Vetris couldn’t do. For decades. You’re incredible, Fione. You’re the smartest person I know. And with your brain, and my balls, we’re going to find her.” I clasp both her hands in mine, trying to peer into her eyes. “Do you hear me? We’re going to find her, and stop her, and bring her home. To you. I promise you.”
She finally, finally looks up, eyes streaming. “Alive?”
I catch Lucien’s stare, and Malachite just looks away. Neither of them knows. We don’t even know how to stop her. We don’t even have a plan yet. Or, at least, I don’t. But I know the easiest way would be death. It’s an unwritten rule, hanging in the air like a low white crow.
I look back at Fione. “Death stops someone forever,” I say. “It’s the simple way. The easy way.”
Fione’s eyes crack at the edges, the light dimming from them as she looks at the floor again.
“But you know me,” I chirp. “I’ve never taken the easy way in my entire unlife. And I’m not about to start now.”
Her head snaps up, pure, unfiltered hope blazing out of her gaze. Malachite leans back in his chair with a little smirk. Even the old sage looks faintly pleased. But Lucien’s face doesn’t change at all. Stony. Unconvinced.
Is he ready to kill Varia?
No.
I know firsthand no one’s ever ready to kill—their own sister least of all.
Fione’s expression is flush with hope. Hard with it. Making it armor when it doesn’t need to be—or maybe it has to be. Maybe that’s the only way she can hold on to it—not as a blade but as a shield. Her body’s still, calculating. Always calculating with that immaculate mind of hers—to believe in me, in what I’m saying, or not? To believe in the more logical thing, the more likely thing—Varia’s death, or to take an impossible gamble on believing in her life? A happy ending, even when the world inside her bleeds misery?
“I know promises aren’t possible to keep for some people.” I hold her gaze, steady. “But I’m not some people. I promise you, Fione; I’ll bring her back. Alive.”
Fione’s smile breaks her rigor, and before I know it, her arms are pressed around my waist, squeezing tight.
A hug.
From her, to a Heartless she was so afraid of.
“Thank you,” she murmurs into my shoulder. “Thank you, Zera.”
We part with shy smiles, and the two of us slide into our seats at the table, and dinner begins. I try to ignore Lucien’s stony gaze as I cut pieces of the fatty pig livers off and eat—slowly, behind your napkin, Y’shennria’s voice in my head insists. And make sure yo
u wipe the blood off your chin, for Old God’s sake. The sage asks me polite questions about Heartlessness, and it’s strange to have someone asking these out of curiosity, not malice. Not suspicion or hatred. It almost makes me feel sort of…accepted. Or at the very least less chased out of town with fire and sharp stones.
Fione chimes in with her own observations. “It’s remarkable the range-extending magic on your necklace has lasted this long,” she says. “Most powerful relics like that are functional for only a few weeks, at most.”
“Yes, well.” I smile at her. “I’m special. And so is my jewelry.”
My eyes flicker to Lucien, ready to play, and for a split second, his granite expression fractures, twin tugs at the corners of his broad lips. All right, so. It’s not a whole smile. Not anywhere near as beautiful as the ones he was giving me during our walk this afternoon. But we’ll get there eventually.
“There’s no need to worry over the necklace.” The prince stares at me. “She and I won’t be parted again.”
“You never know!” I tease him. “The gods might have something to say about that.”
“The gods”—Lucien lifts his chin, onyx eyes catching light—“will have to wait their turn.”
Suddenly, holding his gaze is like trying to hold on to water, to quicksand, to an ember cupped in my hands. I can’t. I look anywhere but him, my face hotter than the fire in the hearth. Fione slyly pokes at her greens, and Malachite’s smirk is so blatantly knowing, I get the overwhelming urge to fight him. Politely. With many knuckles.
It feels surreal to be able to sit down and eat a dinner at all. With friends. Friends. I thought I’d lost them forever. But nothing’s lost forever, is it? That’s not the nature of nature—absolutes aren’t true or real. Absolutes are human inventions, because the tide isn’t always high. The moons aren’t always full. The grass isn’t always green, and the sky isn’t always blue. Even the sun isn’t always in the sky. Feelings don’t change easily, Lucien said once.
“But that doesn’t mean they don’t change at all,” I whisper into my wine. A month ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed of this moment, warm and content and laughing over food. I’d given them up in my mind; Fione and Malachite and Lucien most of all. I almost start to cry again, happily.
uselessly.
I swallow more liver to shut the hunger up. But, however faint and however irritating, it has a point. This isn’t the time for tears. Not for me, anyway. There’s work to be done.
I open my mouth to say something about Varia, asking the table to start formulating a plan for her, for our next move. But I catch Fione’s smile as she talks and Lucien’s scoff. Not tonight. Tonight, for one night, they should rest. I’ve been fighting the hunger, fighting for my heart for so long, that I almost forgot about rest, about the concept of it. Everyone needs a moment to breathe. Tonight’s for mourning, for recuperating, before the fight begins all over again.
I rake my eyes over Lucien’s face.
I could do with a rest, maybe. Just for one night.
After spiced cake and aged tea, the old sage offers us his assistance tomorrow, and we agree to meet in the morning at his tower.
“To make plans,” Lucien asserts, half of his words hanging unsaid. To fight Varia.
We walk back through the night and to the inn together, the Blue Giant above swollen and full with azure moonlight. It shades the pure banks of snow on the ridge a deep blue, everything radiating melancholy and a faint feeling of being underwater. Fione hurries into the inn first, Malachite lingering in the door.
“You two comin’?” he asks. Lucien looks over to me, and me up to him. It’s the sort of look full of knowing, sore and heavy with it, and it makes my unheart curl at the edges like burning parchment.
“In a bit,” Lucien assures him. Malachite makes a shrug.
“A walk it is. I’ll get my sword, then.”
“You won’t be following,” Lucien continues. Malachite pivots back with a quirked brow, the open doorway spilling fire heat and the smell of mulled mead.
“Oh?”
“Malachite, dearest.” I reach up and softly yank on his long ear tip. “Don’t make me duel you to get some peace and quiet.”
“You already did.” He motions at the three distinct scratches on his face. “And I’d say you won.”
Guilt needles through my chest, but the beneather takes my falling hand in his long-fingered one. His skin is cooler—much cooler than a human’s.
“You could ask Lucien to heal those,” I say. “With magic.”
“I’d do it, too.” Lucien nods. “Or at least I’d try.”
“S’not the beneather way.” Malachite shrugs. “In the time it takes to heal a wound, you’re supposed to train to defeat whoever gave it to you.”
“Which means?” I ask.
He squeezes my fingers. “You and I will have to duel. A lot. Whenever’s best for your busy schedule, of course.” His words are an easy joke, but his ruby eyes are the most serious I’ve ever seen them, almost clear violet in the blue moonlight. “It’s not just me anymore, you know.”
“What?” I blink.
“Caring about Lucien. We’re in this together now. Right?”
He’s asking if I’m staying. If I plan to stay, after every time I’ve run, shrugged Lucien off. He’s asking if my feelings are true. If I’m not just a Heartless of Lucien’s, obligated to protect him. He’s asking if I’ll leave again or if I’m here to stay. Forever.
The prince stares above our heads, leaving me to make my own decision. I swallow hard with my best determined face and nod.
“Yeah. Together.”
Malachite studies me, my expression, and then lets go of my hand, a massive grin on his pale face.
“You’re terrible at being serious,” he says.
“You’re nothing to quill home about yourself,” I scoff.
He reaches out and ruffles my hair with a chuckle. “Good to have you on board, Six-Eyes.”
And with that he turns, closing the inn door behind him. It’s not just a turn. It’s not just him leaving us alone. It’s him trusting me with Lucien. Handing over the reins he’s held tight for so long. A passing of a torch.
A warm tug at my hand. Lucien.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he says.
I make a wry smile as we start walking. “Underselling it a bit, aren’t you? It’s practically dreamy.”
“Indeed,” Lucien agrees, turning his long collar up against the wind. “Walking with you—it feels like a dream I’ve had countless times. I’m almost afraid I’ll wake at any moment, and you’ll…”
He trails off. The parchment curl of my unheart tightens, my fingers becoming hyperaware of his. The crunch of snow under our boots, the smell of coalsmoke from every tower chimney. The bridges we cross creak faintly in the frigid breeze but never shudder or sway. Sturdy, enduring. Predictable like I’ve never been. Reliable like I’ve never been. To him least of all.
I shiver, and the warmth is instant and all around me—Lucien draping his covering over my shoulders.
“Don’t.” I jump, shoving it off. “You’re going to freeze—”
“Am I?” he lilts. “Or am I a witch, with enough magic to warm myself?”
“How—how much magic do you have left?” I blurt. “That witchfire barrier you made, slowing our fall—those aren’t easy things.”
“No,” he agrees. “They aren’t.”
“If you use too much, doesn’t it hurt you?”
I know that from Nightsinger, from watching her try to work magic when she was sick with winter congestions. It’s dangerous, to go beyond your body’s threshold. And there may be “no coming back,” whatever that means. Nightsinger never did it, but she alluded to it.
Lucien stays quiet, the eeriness building nests in the void.
“Doesn’t it?�
�� I press. “Are you…did you get hurt?”
“That’s none of your concern,” he rumbles.
“You’re my witch now,” I insist. “It’s very, very much my concern.”
I lift my hand to touch his face, the right side, and he doesn’t move. With slow unease, I watch as he shrinks away only when my hand cuts across his left side.
“You—” I swallow, resting my hand on his glass-cut right cheekbone. “What happened to your eye?”
It’s the same dark shard of onyx. It moves with his gaze, but it’s then I realize this whole time it hasn’t tracked movement. Not once. I thought he was just recovering, reacting slowly from the exhaustion of everything that’d happened. But I was wrong. I walked on his right side, and he looked at me with his left.
His right eye isn’t working. He just moves it to whatever his left eye sees.
But the emotion isn’t gone from them. I can see the urge to pull away from me, to build his impenetrable walls and insist he’s fine. The princely shell, coming up like a tide.
“Please,” I say with as much softness as I can. “Please.”
The shell suddenly stops, the bricks coming down. He puts his hand over mine on his cheek.
“It’s gone,” he whispers. “The right one. I can’t see anything.”
“But—but it’ll get better. Right?”
He shakes his head. “I can feel it. I felt it…when it happened. The nerves are closed. Burned out. It’s never coming back.”
“You of all people have to be more careful—”
“I know. But I had to do it, to save us.”
“Then save your magic now,” I insist, thrusting the covering back at him. His laugh is light, even if his words are dark.
“I have to use it now. More than ever. Rather, practice is more important now than ever.”
It goes unspoken. He means Varia. Preparing to fight her.
“She has years on me,” he presses, lacing his warm fingers thoughtfully through mine one by one. “Once I awoke as a witch, I learned everything I know by watching her. Feeling her power around me, around the city, and how she wove it. She’s so incredibly powerful. Was. Even before the Bone Tree. But now that she has it, she’s ascended even further beyond me. Beyond any witch in this world.”