by Sara Wolf
“I’m fine,” I assure her, and she looks me over warily, picking at my dress like she’s trying to make sure. I feel a familiar brooding presence to my left and look over to see Crav standing there. Still frowning. Still Crav, as ever, and it makes me laugh.
“Hello, Crav.”
“Hello,” he mumbles, and then, “You could’ve sent a letter.”
“Yeah. My bad.” My eyes well up, everything blurry as I reach for him. The words are simple between us, but I know he means so much more, and I know he doesn’t want to hear it from me. Softness in words isn’t his style—but the way he gives when I pull him in to me speaks volumes. The way he wraps his hands around my shoulders and clings speaks books and books, whole trilogies unfolding in his emotions. In mine. In all three of ours.
Lucien and Malachite and Fione leave me to cry and laugh and everything in between. Peligli won’t stop asking where I’ve been, and when I tell her the city, she frowns and says it’s a bad place. Of course she’d say that—she spent all of her young human life there, on the streets. I’m surprised she even remembers it was bad; Heartless lose their memories the moment they lose their hearts. But maybe it really was that bad for her, leaving lingering scars. Scars that, one day, when this war is over, I hope she never remembers. I glance over at Lucien, talking with Fione. Lucien’s made friends with so many of the urchins in Vetris. Urchins like Peligli used to be.
Urchins who might be dead now.
I clutch Peligli closer to me, and she lays her head on my neck.
“Is that your father’s sword?” Crav points to the sheath on my belt. I uncurl and smile at him.
“No. Just the pieces of it. It broke, and Lucien was kind enough to reforge the blade for me.”
“Hrmph.” Crav sniffs. “A warrior should never journey without their sword.”
“You’re right.” I nod. “As soon as I find a proper blacksmith, I’ll have it remade. I promise.”
“Make sure they’re good,” he asserts. “And make sure they use a threaded bi-fold method to attach it, or it’ll come off the second someone tries to disarm you with a hilt twist.”
“Noted. Thanks, Crav.”
His blush is faint. “Whatever.”
Suddenly Y’shennria calls for us to come to the table, and we do, all three of us hand in hand.
“Crav’s teaching me sword stuff,” Perriot pipes up, cheek smeared with a bit of pheasant gravy.
“Oh!” I swallow a bite of the seasoned livers Maeve made for us Heartless. “Is he? That’s wonderful. He taught me to duel, you know.”
“Literally everything she knows is because of me,” Crav sniffs, pushing his liver around on his plate.
“Not bad, kid,” Malachite marvels.
“I’m not a kid,” Crav snaps. “I’m a Heartless.”
“Wait…really? You really taught her?” Perriot’s eyes go wide. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so expressive. He used to be so meek and quiet. He’s really grown, a few months older and away from Vetris. Crav and Peligli, on the other hand, have hardly changed at all. A symptom of being Heartless.
Do I change? Have I changed?
It’s the hardest question to ask oneself, and the hardest to answer.
“She’s pretty good at dueling, too.” Malachite smirks at me, his three mouth-scars I gave him stretching scabby-red. “Except when she faints.”
“That was one time,” I grumble. “And it was because of Lucien’s white mercury sword! Hardly something I could control.”
“I’m good at dool also!” Peligli announces, beating her legs back and forth under the table.
“More like drool,” Crav rolls his eyes.
“Would you—” Perriot swallows. “Can you show me, Lady Zera? A real duel?”
Malachite raises a brow at me. “You heard the whelp, Six-Eyes. Do you wanna?”
“Absolutely.” I smile. “Tomorrow you lose, then.”
“I’ll be referee,” Crav asserts, and I grin at him with a twinkle in my eye.
“I heard”—Y’shennria leans in over her sardine fry—“that there was a record number of girls clamoring for blademaster lessons from their fathers after your and His Highness’s duel.”
“Kavar bless me, for I have sinned,” I agree cheerily. “I’ve brought self-defense to the noblewomen.”
Y’shennria’s smile is short-lived, because she and I both realize it across the table. The whole of the dinner realizes it—Lucien most of all. Vetris is gone. The nobility, the common people—who knows how many of them are still alive. If any lived through the attack. We could be talking about the dead, for all we know.
Even the kids recognize the tension and go quiet, Peligli’s legs stilling. The atmosphere strains against itself until the prince breaks it.
“Lady Y’shennria,” Lucien starts. “I’m going to destroy the Bone Tree. It’s the only way to stop my sister.”
My unheart clenches. Destroy? I thought—I thought we were only going to weaken it, its spell over the valkerax. But one look in Lucien’s eyes and I know plans have changed—if the High Witches won’t help us interfere with it, then…then there’s only one thing we can do.
The scrape of silverware across dishes is the sole sound. Y’shennria’s hazel eyes glint keenly through the witchfire candles on the table.
“Forgive the extreme disrespect my words are about to incur, Your Highness,” she says. “But I know you value honesty. Would it not be easier to kill Her Highness? The Bone Tree is an Old Vetrisian artifact; there is no guarantee it can be destroyed, let alone—”
“No,” Fione says. “We’re destroying the tree.”
t’would be so much easier to rip out the throat of the Laughing Daughter, the hunger sneers.
Y’shennria’s knowing gaze flickers, and she looks at me as if for confirmation we’re truly taking the most difficult way. I nod at her. The only way.
“The High Witches will not offer us aid,” Lucien continues. “But we require knowledge. Of magic, of Old Vetris, of how precisely the Bone Tree works. They wouldn’t give us the spell—if there is any—to weaken the valkerax’s connection to the Bone Tree and subsequently turn them away from my sister. Which means only one path is left to us now. To destroy it.”
He doesn’t come out and say it. He doesn’t say, would you know where to find such knowledge in Windonhigh? but it doesn’t need to be said. Y’shennria thinks for a long moment and then looks up with a covering sort of smile. The kind she used to change subjects among nobles flawlessly back in the Vetrisian court.
“Reginall, I think we’re ready for dessert.”
She doesn’t answer the prince’s unspoken question. I expect Lucien to ask it again, or more clearly, but that’s not how Vetrisian nobles work. So when Reginall comes out with a massive hazelnut delight—the little towers of cream in ceramic boats dotted with four ripe cherries—I don’t know what I’m expecting. But I certainly didn’t expect Y’shennria to take the warm pot of butter-syrup and stand, going around the table and pouring some on the delights herself. A task usually reserved for servants.
“There we are, Your Highness.” Her voice is smooth. “I anticipated this dish just for you. I remember you being quite fond of it as a child.”
“I was,” he agrees, and for some reason his gaze won’t leave his delight. He traces the fall of the syrup with his eyes with an intensity completely unwarranted for a simple dessert.
“He really loved sweet shit when he was little,” Malachite agrees, shooting a glance over at the kids at the table. “Uh. Sweet stuff.”
Crav gives him a withering look. “I know what ‘shit’ is.”
“Shid!” Peligli chimes happily, beating her fork against the table. “Shid shid shid!”
Perriot, perhaps the most polite of the three, panics and tries to distract her with a cherry, which Peligli joy
fully accepts, her mouth staining deep fruit-red. She’ll bleed it out from her eyes later, as Heartless do with all human food, but her temporary joy is worth it. And the temporary silence.
Y’shennria pours syrup only on Lucien’s and then lets Reginall pour it for the rest of us, sitting back down in her emerald skirts elegantly. It’s so bizarre, but Lucien and Y’shennria just go on to talk spiritedly about the precise height, in miles, of Windonhigh, and Fione joins in with equations eagerly. Malachite looks a little sick when they settle on a massive number, but I’m still stuck on the syrup. Have I lost my courtly edge? I know there’s something to read between the lines in what Y’shennria did, but why would she—
I’m staring down at my own delight when it hits me. The spire of fluffy cream off-center, the four cherries situated around it evenly, as if demarcating quarters.
Quarters.
The spire in the center is the High Witch building in Bear. And the four cherries are the four quarters—Bear, Fox, Deer, and Crow.
I look over at Lucien’s dessert, untouched.
The syrup Y’shennria poured pools on the edge of Crow.
If Y’shennria had to resort to visual representations in whipped cream instead of telling Lucien the information she wanted to out loud, it means several things, all of them troubling.
One, we might be being listened to.
Two, if we’re being listened to, it means someone views us as a potential threat.
And three, whatever Y’shennria’s pointing us to is likely heavily secret, and therefore, heavily guarded. Heavily important.
There’s a fourth, of course. And it’s that Y’shennria is giving us this information at great risk to herself. Once again, it’s Vetris all over—Y’shennria putting her life and the lives of her household on the line to help me. Not the witches this time, but me.
I watch her smile at me through the candlelight over my teacup—cinnamon and dread wafting into my senses.
She’s doing this for me.
And this time, if the witches catch wind of it, she has nowhere else to run. Windonhigh is the last sanctuary for an Old God family like hers. If they don’t kill her, they’ll chase her out to the ground, to Cavanos, to a Cavanos being ravaged by the valkerax. A Cavanos where no one is safe anymore.
Peligli passing out on the couch, drooling, is the first indication that the night’s grown too long. The second is Crav succumbing, too, Peligli’s little head on his lap and his book slipping from his fingers. I catch it just in time, moving to put it back on the shelf when Crav’s stunning turquoise eyes flutter half open.
“You’re not leaving again, are you?” he mumbles sleepily. I smile, but it’s the sort of brittle effort that breaks my unheart in two.
“I might have to.”
He thinks on this, eyelids too heavy to keep open for long. Emotional exhaustion is a more powerful narcoleptic for Heartless than anything, and the three of us reuniting was no easy thing.
“Will you come back?” he finally decides to ask, and I can’t help my laugh. I drape a nearby sheepskin throw over him, the fluff obscuring his chin.
“You still don’t pull any punches, do you?”
“Answer me.” He frowns over the fluff.
“I don’t know, Crav,” I admit. “I have to go do something pretty dangerous. I might not come back.”
“You’re Heartless,” he argues. “We always come back. Unless…” He swallows. “Unless your witch dies. That prince guy.”
This punch is more of a slam directly to my solar plexus, nearly winding me. But I manage a soft “yeah.”
“If he dies, you die together,” Crav mumbles.
“Yeah.”
A pause, the black fire crackling in the fireplace, and then, “He’s like the High Witches, isn’t he?”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
“They’re missing parts. He’s missing an eye. And his hand.”
“How do you—”
“I’m a prince, too. Of the Endless Bog. I notice things.” Crav’s scoff is almost swallowed up by the sheepskin. “Things about parts used for battle most of all—you either notice or you die. Nightsinger took us to the High Witches when we first came here. And that prince guy feels the same as them.”
Lucien? The same as the High Witches? What does that even mean? Crav shifts under the sheepskin, getting more comfortable.
“They get eaten,” he mutters, sounding more exhausted than ever.
“What?”
“That’s what Nightsinger told Peligli and me,” he continues. “When we asked why the High Witches look like that. She told us they’re getting eaten, slowly.”
“Eaten by who?”
Crav slumps, and I lean in and shake his shoulder softly.
“Crav, eaten by who?”
He jolts awake and then falls into tiredness all over again, mumbling as he goes.
“…Some tree.”
All that raw glass, sprouting up from the ground, encasing the High Witches. The glass splinter in my heart bag Varia showed me. Archduke Gavik told me the witches made the Glass Tree to keep their loved ones alive. And thus the Heartless were born. The Bone Tree chose Varia to eat her power.
But that means…the Glass Tree has to eat, too.
11
THE GLASS TREE
Saying goodnight, tonight, is like saying goodbye.
I kiss sleeping Crav and Peligli on the foreheads and tuck the blanket around Perriot tighter. Reginall and I embrace, for what feels like the first and last time all over again. Maeve waves me off when I try to kiss her ancient cheek. Fione and Lucien give Y’shennria the proper bows, and even Malachite makes a motion of politeness, which Y’shennria raises her eyebrow at disbelievingly.
“Thanks, ma’am,” the beneather says. “For looking after our Six-Eyes.”
Lucien nods at his side. “You have my gratitude for it, Lady Y’shennria.”
She makes a modest half bow, rubies glinting in her high hair. “I’ve done very little, Your Highness. She took care of herself, if anything.”
“And you taught her how,” Lucien presses. Y’shennria seems taken aback at this, and looks to me as if for confirmation. I give her a nod, and the brightest smile I can manage.
“It’s true, you know. I am where I am because of you.”
Y’shennria’s scoff is light, and Lucien and Malachite back up to give us space as I move in to her. I reach out my hands, holding her ring-encrusted ones lightly.
“You still have no idea how to hold a fork,” she starts, and I can hear the strain in her voice.
“Which is why I’ll be coming back. For remedial lessons.”
“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t come back. You have no friends here.”
“Except for you.”
Her steady gaze quavers, hazel on my blue, sadness on my sadness.
“I am not a friend,” she corrects. “I am a home.” Her words are arrows, the warm sort, and I let them pierce me, one after the wonderful other. Her grip intensifies. “You will always have a home with me, Zera.”
I start to cry but hold it back just on the edge. “Thank you. Thank you, for everything—”
“There is no need for such final gratitude. We will see each other again.”
Her expression is solid, unwavering. I pull myself together as a noble lady might. As she taught me, and teaches me, always. It wouldn’t do to be weak now. Not when things are just beginning, when the battle is just beginning. Head high, shoulders back, thoughts clear.
“We will.”
Her edges dissolve at my agreement, and her hands move up to my face, cradling it with pride shining in her eyes.
“Alyserat,” she says. Alyserat: her baby girl’s name. She told me her baby girl’s name, the night I left for the Hunt. And she’s telling me it now, aga
in. An Old Vetrisian name, and they liked to name their children after songs. Proverbs. Poems. Warnings.
Alyserat means “Fear the past, not the future.” A reminder. A good luck charm. A blessing. Her blessing. And it means even more now. I won’t fear my past ever again.
I won’t repeat the past. Ever again.
“Alyserat.” I smile back at her.
…
Tonight, walking away from a door feels like walking over the edge of a cliff.
Lucien feels it, too, somehow, and he laces our fingers together the whole way back to our guest apartments. Not saying anything, just holding. Just being here. Existing with me, beside me. And that’s all I need. But it’s not all I want.
I tell him what Crav said about the Glass Tree, the High Witches being eaten, and his face doesn’t move for a long while. Malachite and Fione walk ahead of us, until his bodyguard looks back.
“Something went on, Luc. At the dinner. You gonna tell me what it is, or do I gotta guess?”
Lucien looks up, dark eyes pointed. “It’s not safe to say.”
“Ooookay,” the beneather leads. “Then what’s the plan?”
“We dress for easy movement,” he says. “And you follow me.”
“Tonight?” Fione asks. “It has to be tonight?”
“The sooner the better,” the prince says. “Time is against us here.”
“You mean the High Witches are against us,” I say, and he nods.
“They’re tightening defenses as we speak, closing ranks. Against the valkerax, against anyone. Us included.”
“Infiltration it is.” Malachite opens the door to the guest apartments, and we all shuffle in. “My favorite. Miles better than torturing.”
“A night of rest sure would be nice,” I mourn. “We’ve been on the go since the airship. And you mortals tend to need sleep.”
I look pointedly at Lucien but he ignores me, packing a pouch full of medicinal herbs instead.
“And you immortal Heartless tend to underestimate us.” Fione’s eyes flash determined. “We do what must be done. Tonight.”