by Sara Wolf
Nightsinger has to be safe. Y’shennria has to be safe. Crav, Peligli. Safe. They have to be. That’s the only thought that lets me move forward.
“No corpses fell down,” Malachite offers during our water break. “That’s a good sign, yeah?”
Fione jabs at his ribs with the handle of her cane, and he lets out a disgruntled yelp.
My laugh is small. “It’s okay, Fione. I’m okay.”
Her face softens. “The fact the island is still in the air is a good sign. They must’ve fought off the attack with those measures the High Witches spoke of.”
“Glass Tree roots, I’m willing to bet,” Malachite mumbles.
“And the hundreds of Heartless eclipseguard might’ve helped, too,” Lucien adds.
The comfort of their words only lasts so long. We pass a trading caravan, and my unheart skips a beat when I realize it’s completely covered in blood. The wagon leather, the wheels, the seat—all of it stained bright red. Fresh red.
“Gods,” Lucien swears under his breath. The caravaner tries to go past us without saying anything, but Lucien speaks up. “You there. What business have you looking thus?”
The caravaner glances at the prince the barest hint from under his hat. He sizes him up, and then whips his mule faster.
Malachite scoffs. “Should I get after him, Luc?”
Lucien’s dark eyes are focused on the horizon, far down the road, like he can see something I can’t. “No. Let him go.”
Malachite doesn’t question the decision, but I do.
“Why—”
“You’ll see,” Lucien asserts. “Soon.”
It’s a few minutes of twisting confusion until the grim reality comes into sight. White. White and red, long and broken open. Feathers, fur. A valkerax.
The corpse of one.
I dash toward it—Evlorasin? It can’t be. It’s splayed not far from the road, obliterated in the places where its body meets the ground. I hear Fione faintly say “it fell,” but I’m too riveted by the sheer lake of blood surrounding it. The cacophony of a murder rings down, a cloud of black crows circling, picking at the edges of the body. They can eat the blood, maybe. But sentient mortals are another story, according to Yorl.
“Careful,” I hear myself saying woodenly. “Don’t ingest the blood. It’ll kill you.”
“Good to know.” Malachite kicks a piece of unmentionable viscera down the road like a rock. “Except I already knew.”
“Indeed,” Lucien agrees. “You’re the resident valkerax expert, Mal. What’s the diagnosis?”
Malachite’s ruby eyes flash over to Fione and offers her his hand elegantly. “Shall we, milady?”
“Don’t try to do polite etiquette,” the archduchess requests. “It’s unsightly.”
The two of them circle the corpse, mirroring the crows as they look for signs, openings. I do my own investigation at the front—inspecting its wolflike maw, its six glassy eyes. No empty scar on the sixth socket. I knew it wasn’t Evlorasin in my gut, but the possibility was still there. But not-Evlorasin means one of Varia’s.
“Its mane is almost completely singed off,” Fione muses.
“They use those to fly,” Malachite asserts. “I saw Six-Eyes’s friend doing it like that.”
“It has a name, you know,” I press. “Evlorasin.”
“The day I use a valkerax’s true name in casual conversation is the day I cut my own ears off,” he grunts. “But thanks.”
“So the mane was burned off?” Fione frowns.
“That’s not fatal, though,” Malachite interjects. “Looks like the fall killed it, not the witches. But what do I know? Magic can get inside where you can’t see.”
“There’s no magic inside it,” Lucien confirms. “Only the outside. Fione’s right—on the mane. Witchfire, I think.”
“So the witches burned this one’s mane, and it fell,” Malachite muses.
“That’s the soundest hypothesis.” Fione nods.
“That caravaner must’ve poached some of the parts,” Lucien says.
“They sell pretty well,” Malachite agrees. “But that shit’s highly regulated by the ancestor council. Anything that doesn’t come from beneather kills is tagged as a ‘monetary threat’ to Pala Amna. He’ll be lucky if he can sell half of ’em before getting arrested.”
“Do we just…leave it here?” I ask. I can’t look away from the six glassy eyes staring into my soul.
Malachite looks around. “Didn’t die belowground, where it belongs. So all the old traditions go out the window. No rune carvings needed.”
“It feels wrong, though, to leave it without doing anything.”
The barest of Malachite’s glares flashes over at me. “It’s a valkerax. Don’t tell me you’re on their side now?”
“There are no sides,” I blurt. “It was a living thing, and now it’s dead. I’m just trying to be respectful.”
“Why?” He snorts. “S’not like you die.”
“Mal,” Lucien says, a sting to it. “Drop it.”
“I can’t, Luc.” He throws his pale hand out at me. “I trust her as much as you do. But she sees Varia in her dreams, right? She’s got valkerax blood in her now, right? What if Varia can—what if she can control Zera? Just like she controls the other valkerax?”
Lucien’s laugh is chilly enough to shatter the air. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Malachite doesn’t budge from his stance, and all my organs settle in the bottom of me like iron ingots. Lucien gives up on him and looks over at Fione, her frown grim.
“Fione?” the prince asks, as if begging her to contradict his bodyguard.
She lets out a sigh. “I can’t lie to you, Lucien. It’s a possibility.”
Lucien’s dark eyes snap to me, and I try a smile. The memory of the dream, that ominous fear I had of Varia’s touch—
“They’re right, Lucien. It’s…it might be a thing. And if it is, then I’m a threat to you—”
“You’re not,” he argues instantly. “You never will be.”
“I’ve always been,” I say softly.
“I know—” He clenches his working fist, reflection warbling in the valkerax blood puddle he stands in. “I know you’d never hurt me. Magic or not, you’re strong. Stronger than anything or anyone I know. You’d never succumb to something like that. Gods—you made Weeping real. You did it all on your own. If that isn’t—if that isn’t proof…”
I walk hesitantly up to his side, taking his limp hand in mine. His whole body’s shaking enough to vibrate his inactive fingers, to make the bones and tendons move when they clearly can’t anymore. The old pain comes welling up like ink, like mud. I’m a threat.
we are his death in the night.
The possibility is there, even if my mind is unwilling to consider it. Even if my mind isn’t willing to turn on my friends, the hunger is. I’ve felt firsthand how strong the Bone Tree is. I’ve seen it—dug deep in the marrow of Evlorasin’s very being. I won’t have a choice.
I’m not a valkerax. But I have six eyes when I Weep. I can see Varia in my dreams. I can see through her eyes, like we’re one. Because she has the Bone Tree in her. And the only creatures in Arathess tied to that tree are the valkerax. I don’t know what I am, anymore. But I know—sadly—that it’s not human. It’s maybe not even pure Heartless. Fione’s words at the fire the other night ring in my empty chest.
Whatever I am, however I’m shaped, whatever parts of me are here or not here, I’m still me.
“Whatever I am, Lucien,” I start softly. “Whatever strength I have, I’m going to use it to stop Varia.”
His onyx eyes flash—not quite betrayed, but something deeper than that. His hand darts to his breast pocket, pulling out the sack stitched with the word Heart. My real heart.
“Hold still,” he says, terse. “I’
m going to put it back.”
“Luc—” Malachite starts.
“Lucien, no.” I stagger back. “That’s not how—that’s not what I want.”
“I’m not going to let my sister use you anymore,” the prince barks. “I won’t let anyone use you. Not her, not the Bone Tree. You’re not a tool, you don’t have to live like one—”
“Stop.”
My voice goes hard, and Lucien’s fades. The quiet is overwhelming, my words spilling out in neat, too-perfect rows. Rows that have had time to organize themselves. Nothing but time.
“These things you’re saying.” I look him dead in the eyes. “I know them now. All of them. But it wasn’t easy. I had to meet you to really get it. And you—” I look to Fione, Malachite. “And you. The road I had to walk to get here, to who I am now—it was long. But it’s not over. Not in the godsdamn slightest.”
Lucien straightens, his gaze sparking. I reach out and rest my palm against the bag, against his hand, against my heart, feeling the organ contract softly. All my memories of my human life. All my burning desires to be whole again.
I push the bag away.
“No matter what, from now on, every choice I make is mine. I choose to fight Varia. I choose to continue. I choose whether or not I’m Heartless.”
I put my hand on my unheart and look up at him. At all of them.
“I choose.”
15
THE OCEAN
My words make Fione smile and Malachite shake his head and exhale wearily. They make Lucien watch me intently until, finally, he nods.
“I understand.”
Just those two words. Simple, but far from easy, and said with steel pride. In me, in my convictions. He believes in me, and I hear it in every inch of his voice.
Malachite’s the first to start walking, and we trail behind him. We leave the valkerax corpse behind and come across more. Dozens of them. I glance up every so often, the floating landmass waning away behind and above our heads, and then one more glance, and it’s gone. No sign of the smoke, or the blackened edges, or the roots hanging from the bottom. All of it. Gone. I close my eyes and mutter one last prayer to Y’shennria.
“They’ve reinstated the cloaking magic,” Lucien says, glancing behind him.
“So fast,” Fione marvels.
“It’s impressive,” he agrees. “Considering how big the island is. But having met them, I know it’s more or less child’s play to the High Witches. All seven of them, incredibly strong and working together. There isn’t much they can’t do.”
“Except get out of those glass prisons, apparently,” Malachite grumbles.
The road opens up over the course of the day, gradually melting from grassland to coastline. The smell of salt wafts stronger, the grasses fading yellower and rooted in much drier, sandier soil. The birds turn from crows and sunbirds to gulls and seafalcons nesting in the rocky cliffs that’ve started to poke through the horizon. Fione consults a map briefly at a crossroads, pointing us to the southwest, to where the port town Dolyer—and hopefully our passage to the island of the Black Archives—awaits.
“Do we even have money?” Malachite asks during a water break.
“We can pawn something if we must,” Fione insists, then looks to Lucien. “I could’ve sworn the Breych sage gave you a pouch of coin.”
“Graciously,” the prince agrees. “The majority of it went to the villagers we rescued, but we have enough for a charitable boat.”
“A shitter, you mean,” Malachite sighs.
“A local charmer,” Lucien corrects.
Camp that night is quiet, all of us exhausted after three days walking on the road. It’s a bone-deep exhaustion, plagued with cold and wet all because Malachite saw a few very large and very fresh valkerax tracks in the silty mud and deemed a fire unsafe. Lucien offers to warm us with magic internally, but Fione and I won’t have it, insisting he keep up his energy.
“‘Warming internally?’” Malachite scoffs. “Please, heartbreaker. Save the innuendo for your girl.”
Lucien and I go rigid in our seats, neither of us looking at each other.
“Malachite-whatever-your-family-name-is!” I half shriek, half hiss. “Shut. Up!”
“Save it for the giant squids, rather,” Fione chimes in and saves the day. “It’s spawning season, and they oft mistake the underside of boats for other squid.”
And that settles that, raunchy rib forgotten as we all chew our jerky in disgusted-expression tandem and imagine a squid trying to mate with the underside of a boat.
Thanks and no thanks to Malachite’s comment, Lucien’s and my shared covering-slash-bedroll tonight is more awkward than usual. Every part of him burns like a brand, too close, too radiating. At some point in the night he sits up, both of us still wide awake.
“I can sleep somewhere else.”
“Don’t—” I reach for his shirt and tug him back down. “Don’t be silly.”
“I can’t help it around you.” I can’t see his smirk in the dark, but I hear it. It’s strange. Neither of us smells very good—mud and acidic valkerax blood and the layered sweat of travel—but my body doesn’t care about any of that. It wants to touch him, forever, always, no matter what. Now most of all.
“You know now,” I say.
“Know what?” he murmurs against the shell of my ear.
“My choice. What I’ll choose, always.”
“To help me?” he asks.
“To be with you,” I say. “In death or undeath.”
His arms finally dare to snake around my waist, pulling me close to his chest.
“So dramatic. What do you think about talking less about death, hmm? How about you be with me in life?”
My laugh is small, but the bloom in my chest is sweet. “I can give it a shot.”
It isn’t easy to peel myself out of Lucien’s arms in the morning. And, looking back at his peacefully sleeping face that cracks one eye open to find me and smile, I hope it never is.
Dolyer comes into view around lunchtime, and all four of us couldn’t be happier to see smokestacks, buildings, wells full with water, and an inn bustling with an open hearth. The idea of a bath might be the most distracting, but the docks are what’s most impressive about the town—sprawling and webbed over the water in pale gray salt-soaked and barnacle-encrusted wood. Everything in the village is made with gray—gray skies meeting furious gray sea, gray sands meeting gray grasses, gray buildings, and grayer horses.
But the gray only makes the splashes of color stand out more—the red of the fish gutting, the blue of the westbound ship sails and the maroon of the southbound sails, the jade green of Cavanos lawguard uniforms dotting the browns and golds of the sailors and merchants and stray dogs. The town moves and breathes in boxes—boxes being made by old men with chisels, boxes being loaded by women with arms as big as my thighs, boxes being moved by even bigger men, boxes clogging the docks of nearby ships only to vanish inside with much sweat and labor.
It’s a bit of relieving normality after lurking in so much destruction—that village on fire, Vetris turned to rubble, Windonhigh attacked.
“We don’t have time for the inn.” Lucien sees Fione’s longing look at the inn’s sign.
“Where else are we going to secure a boat?” Fione argues. “In the time it takes you to find a captain willing to take us for that paltry sum, I could take three baths.”
“If we don’t dry our shoes, the fungus is gonna start soon,” Malachite helpfully adds. Lucien looks to me to be the last bastion of reason, but I bat my lashes playfully at him.
“Just a half? Please?”
“Do you know where she is now?” he asks. She. Varia.
“No. But I could know. If, say, I lie down for a nap.”
The prince heaves a sigh. “Fine. The inn it is. But the moment we find a capta
in, we’re out the door.”
Malachite gives a little fist pump, and Fione and I make instantly through the gray grass to the swinging salt-spray sign of the inn. We’re greeted by the stench of old beer and fried bread—a perfectly familiar smell. As we’re wiping off our boots on the mat, it comes to me.
“I thought you of all people wouldn’t want to slow down,” I say to her. “Rescuing Varia is, theoretically, more important than a bath.”
Fione’s blue eyes catch on her glove as she takes it off finger by finger. Her other hand clutches the waterproof sack where she keeps the book we stole from Windonhigh.
“Your little speech made it clear to me,” she says over the inn’s din.
“Uh…it did?”
“My choice,” Fione murmurs. “Everything I’ve done until now, and everything I do going forward, is my choice. But from what you’ve told me, and what the High Witches added, Varia doesn’t have much of a choice anymore. The Bone Tree infects her. Consumes her.”
With a dim sadness, I follow her to the only free table. A gaggle of sailors starts a sea shanty, and Fione leans in so I can hear her better.
“We’re her only hope. And if there’s any scrap of the Varia I love left in her, she knows that, too. We’ll be together, always. She promised me that. And I choose to believe her.”
There’s a flash of iron behind her eyes—that determined iron that laced her every breath in Breych right after it all happened. But it doesn’t stay this time. This time, it lightens, evaporates, as she smiles small.
“Besides. Thinking strategically becomes rather difficult when one has to stop every ten minutes to sample their own reek.”
“Oh so true,” I agree sagely, motioning to the tavernkeep for service.
Fione takes her bath first, upstairs in a small room, and I decide to guard the door, what with all the drunken sailors about. I sit against it, the smell of steam and wild lavender eking out from the crack under the door, and I watch the sun spin silver in the sea clouds through the window.
Varia doesn’t have a choice.
She’s like me now. She’s maybe experiencing firsthand what she did to me as her Heartless. But I can’t be happy about any of it. There are witches all over Arathess, and plenty of them use Heartless. Plenty of them treat their Heartless well, but plenty others treat them badly. I know that now. I know, deep in the flesh of me, that it’s wrong. The hunger’s made that so crystal clear.