by Sara Wolf
I throw the window open and watch the sun ooze across the sky. Unlike Nightsinger’s forest, Vetris moves, visibly and always. It changes with the sun—noon painting it a stark white, while the shadows of afternoon carve out deep crevices between buildings and roads, like dark veins. Sunset makes the city blush. Nobles in frilly clothes and crested hats stroll by, in pairs or alone, bowing to one another, smoking long cigarettes, checking their pocket sandwatches. The trees mute the bustle of the city, but the sound of the temple clock tower hitting high noon is a clear, powerful bellow, even here. Sunbirds and cranes swoop around one another, and I drink in their bright plumage. Not a crow in sight.
A knock on my door pulls me from the sunset. I open it to see a silver tray waiting, covered and faintly warm. I look for Reginall or Maeve, but the hall is empty. I pull the tray in and lift the lid—a hearty stew of beans and lamb, with a fluffy side of bread. The smell is incredible. There’s a small note next to the bowl: Practice makes perfect.
Y’shennria’s handwriting is flawless. I grip a silver spoon by the bowl. She’s right—if I have to eat human food for weeks, I’ll need a refresher course. I take one bite, the taste just like I remember, warm and tangy. It’s incredible—I shovel another spoonful in my mouth, and another. It’s almost delicious enough to justify what’s coming.
I last ten minutes, and then the pain grips me like hot iron. I cry. I cry blood like rivers, my Heartless body rejecting the slightest bit of normalcy, humanity. When the worst is over I lie on the cool wood floor, breathing through the residual spasms and counting the black diamonds again.
Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Whisper is a noble. A thief. An obsidian spark in my mind, shrouded in mystery.
Thirty, thirty-one. I’m a noble now, too. I clutch my gold locket, open it, and watch the piece of my heart beat there, powerful and pitiful all at once. It’s so small. Incomplete. I’ve been incomplete for a long time. Thirty-two. Thirty-three.
Right here, right now, even if it hurts—I can pretend to be perfect, human, free. Whole.
I pick up my spoon again.
It turns out, even as an immortal magical thrall, staying awake for an entire night is the worst.
I suppose that’s partly why Heartless sleep—because there are precious few other ways to kill time, or turn off our brains. The day’s events parse through my mind in a messy jumble. Whisper—so full of himself, so broad in the shoulders and lean in the torso. Crav, Peligli. I hope they’re safe. I hope I’m safe. Gods, I hope this place doesn’t kill me. Or if it does I’d like a fair warning, at the very least. Something around a day—enough time to scamper off with all these pretty dresses Y’shennria just bought me, yet not nearly enough time to leave the guilt behind.
Dawn peeks through the windows and alerts me that I’ve wasted an entire night worrying. I sit up and watch the sunrise again, this one more glorious than yesterday’s. I’ll never get tired of these. How many do I have left, I wonder? How many will I get to see before my hunger drives me to kill someone? Before I make a single mistake in this place and die for it?
“Don’t be maudlin,” I murmur to my doubtful self. “You’ve done enough of that in the woods already.”
I’ll have a thousand sunrises. I’ll control my hunger, say all the right things, catch the prince’s eye and heart, and be done with this place.
I wait until I hear movement in the kitchens before I get out of bed. I dress in a cool white linen dress, tucking my locket beneath the collar. I venture downstairs, the rampantly delicious smell of buttery fresh bread greeting me. Gods—how long has it been since I smelled fresh-baked bread? Nightsinger never ate anything but vegetables and wheat cake.
The dining room has an impressive winged table at the center. Y’shennria sits on one end in a mauve dress with ruffles up to her chin, neck scars hidden, and she motions for me to sit on the other. It’s so large, and our bodies so distant, I can’t help but burst out laughing.
“Something funny?” Y’shennria inquires with one eyebrow arched.
“I’m just very tickled by the idea Vetrisians have to apparently scream across the table at one another.”
“They don’t,” Y’shennria says coldly. “I simply don’t feel the need to sit close in order to instruct you.”
Of course she doesn’t. What human in her right mind would want to eat next to a Heartless? No matter how composed and regal she is, no matter how good her ladylike mask, she’s still afraid. It goes unsaid, but I hear it clear as day.
Maeve comes in and ladles spoonfuls of warm corn porridge into my bowl, shaved chocolate and berries presented prettily on top. Y’shennria places a handkerchief next to me and says until I finish that bowl, I can’t leave the table. My tongue tingles, eager for the delightful taste of human food again, and yet my body screams dissent. I spoon sweet, thin porridge into my mouth, knowing every bite will only inflict more pain. I try to find the smallest scrap of pleasure in the way it tastes, but almost immediately the gnawing begins. My hunger begs for something raw, something flesh, but I force it silent and spoon every last bit into my mouth, my stomach aching.
I clutch at my chair, desperate for some outlet, Y’shennria grilling me on noble family names, dancing etiquette, the history of the d’Malvane rule. The grilling gives my agonized brain something else to focus on, but my attention wavers between the pulses of pain. This is the most human food I’ve ever eaten at once, and my body despises me for it. I can’t let Maeve see me cry—Y’shennria keeps her around as some sort of test, as if daring me to let the pain overwhelm me and reveal my true, hideous nature to her. Maeve asks me what’s wrong, kindly, but Y’shennria makes some excuse of sickness for me.
Finally, Y’shennria orders Maeve to leave, and when she closes the door behind her I gasp and reach for the handkerchief, desperately wiping at my face, the inferno of pain siphoning off slowly with my tears.
“Seven minutes,” Y’shennria announces, looking at the sandclock in the corner of the room. “Tomorrow, we aim for ten. The longer you can hold it before you must excuse yourself, the less suspicious you become. Your mask slips too often—you will learn to endure the pain without nearly so much squirming.”
“If there’s one thing I love, it’s repeated agony,” I drawl, and hold up the vibrantly red handkerchief. “I hope you’ve got a good excuse about this for whoever does the laundry.”
We go to the sitting room, where she has Reginall move all the furniture so I can practice bowing in thin-heeled boots and curtsying (one for men, one for women, and a special version for greeting both at once). I bend until my knees ache, bow until my back cries out, practice the simplest of motions—turning doorknobs silently with only two fingers, walking up stairs with skirts, holding myself high enough to keep two decorative crystal orbs nestled firmly on my shoulders—until the sun kisses the drawing room windows good-bye. Reginall passes by as he cleans the house, always careful not to meet my eyes but watching us nonetheless. When it’s dark out, he raps on the wood of the doorframe. At the sudden noise I slip carrying the crystal orbs, and both of them fall to the floor with heavy thunks.
“Not again!” Y’shennria exclaims. “Pick them up and start from the beginning of the room.”
“These shoes are awful,” I pant. “And my shoulder—”
“Again,” she insists harder, then turns to Reginall. “What is it?”
“Pardon my intrusion, milady, but it’s been thirteen hours by the sand. Perhaps a break for the young miss is in order.”
Y’shennria looks to me, then to my chest, her eyes lingering on the space where my heart should be.
“No,” Y’shennria finally says. “She will continue.”
“Milady—”
“Please assist Maeve in preparing dinner, Reginall.” Y’shennria’s words are clipped. He bows and leaves.
“Auntie dearest,” I grit out. “I need to stop for a second—”
“Lady Y’shennria. And there’s no time.” She ushers
me forward, signaling me to walk. “You’ve barely scratched the surface of what you need to know, and poorly, might I add. You have no inherent grace, and your sense of balance is nonexistent. Add on the fact you seem to have never walked a straight line in your life, and—”
My legs quaver violently. I manage three steps before I slip and collapse.
“Why is this so difficult for you?” she barks. “It’s a simple matter of walking correctly.”
Rip her throat out, the hunger lashes against my thoughts. I can feel all my teeth growing sharp and jagged into my lips—exhaustion isn’t a good look on me. I need to eat. Y’shennria’s throat looks too appetizing.
“Believe it or not,” I pant, “monsters get tired, too.”
Y’shennria picks up the crystal orb from the carpet. She turns to a shelf, where seven orbs are lined up, the first of plain glass, the second of stone, the third of copper and embedded with little needleheads. One orb for each level of posture training for noble children, she’d told me. She reaches for the orb on the very end—black iron, razor-sharp ridges adorning its surface.
She places the orb next to me.
“No—no more. I need to eat,” I manage through my gritted teeth. “Now.”
“And I will feed you,” she agrees. “After you walk without dropping this orb.”
The razor edges of the orb glint maliciously back at me.
“I’m fairly certain I told you in the carriage,” I pant. “That I become…unmanageable if I’m not fed.”
Fear glances briefly behind her eyes, but she straightens her spine. “And I told you—there will be times you are forced to go without for a little longer. You must endure.”
And you must die, the hunger retorts at her, flaring like a tongue of flame against oil-soaked wood. I fight the sudden urge to lunge at her. My eyes blur—her skin all I can see, the heat beneath it a siren song to my gnawing insides. The hunger can smell her fear, her flesh.
“You are a Heartless second, Zera,” Y’shennria says. I hear her voice as if she’s far away, underwater. “You are a lady first. Put those fangs away.”
“I…can’t…”
“You can,” she asserts. “Prove to me you are more than your hunger. Prove to me an ounce of human still remains in your bones.”
I’ve clutched at my humanity—kept what little was left of it safe and dry beneath my skirts, behind my jokes. I kept hope, but there’s a deep, yawning pit in me where the hunger resides. And it laughs at the thought of hope.
You are nothing, it whispers. Nothing but an animal consumed by hunger. You can never escape what you’ve done.
Father’s sword digs into my side. I can barely remember his face, Mother’s face. I can’t recall their voices anymore. What’s the point of becoming human again, if I have nothing left in the world but scant memories?
Wherever they are in the afterlife, they must hate you for causing their deaths.
“Zera!” Y’shennria barks. “You are my niece. I expect you to oblige my requests.”
Through the fog of my hunger, my unheart gives a pang. Niece. Family. She isn’t my true family, but she’s willing to pretend. She’s willing to call me her family, even if I’m the thing that destroyed it. Three years of suffering is nothing compared to her decades. Compared to Y’shennria, I’m so weak. She’s counting on me. Crav, Peligli. Nightsinger. All of them, counting on me.
My own heart, counting on me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, and with a great internal wrench I force the hunger back inside, my jagged teeth filing into human stubs, the hunger’s voice dwindling.
I throw myself to my feet and pick up the orb gently to avoid the razors, nestling it in the crook of my shoulder. I’m a human. I’m an Y’shennria. The razors bite down, just hard enough. One misstep, a single stumble, and they’ll pierce through my skin. Carefully, I walk ten steps. Eleven, twelve—my ankles protest, wavering, and the orb’s razors gnaw at me. Warm blood oozes down my skin. It’s not the pain that’s the worst part—it’s my mind. It’s exhausted, crammed full of gestures and rules. I haven’t eaten. My thoughts swim like a heat haze in summer. Every step must be perfect. Still the hunger claws at my insides, like the bars of a cage.
Thirteen steps. Fourteen. The razors eat away at me, every instinct screaming to shuck the orb off once and for all. I’m almost to the end of the room. Sixteen. Sixteen years of my humanity, forgotten, lost. Eighteen, nineteen—I let out a gasp as the razors press down deeper. I should be nineteen years old. One last step.
Twenty.
My twentieth year of life, spent free. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
I reach for the bookshelf, clutching at the lip of it to stabilize myself. My knees shake so hard I can barely keep standing. The sound of Y’shennria’s footsteps resounds, and then the bite of the razors subsides as someone pulls them out of my skin. She looks me over, the bloodied iron orb in her hand. Her eyes hold the barest wisp of softness.
“Well done, Zera.”
Coming from her after hours of relentless not good enoughs, the words are sweeter than clover honey. I drink them in greedily, forcing what’s left of my energy into a grin. She leaves to bring me food, and I collapse on a nearby settee to nurse my aches. Reginall comes in then, a duster in one hand.
“Perhaps a bit of bedrest is in order, miss?”
The hunger leers at him, eager to consume. Forcing my brain to order words and sentiments into coherent jokes makes it easier to ignore, but just barely.
“I-If I were the lazy, slovenly type, I might just take you up on that offer,” I manage weakly.
He bows. “Of course, miss. I could discern that by the way you upended your entire closet onto your bed this morning.”
I laugh, the tight knot in my chest undoing itself bit by bit. He and I are quiet, the triplet moons outside the window all but dwarfed by the haze of Vetris’s lights, each window a square of gold burning bright. For all their hate and suspicion, the humans are so very good at making beautiful things.
I can feel my flesh mending, my shoulders and the razor cuts there bared for Reginall to see. Panic grabs me by the throat, but I do my best to make my voice even.
“Could you fetch me a shawl, Reginall?”
He obliges, returning with a silken one. I wrap it around my shoulders, and he smiles.
“It looks lovely on you,” he says. I squirm on the settee.
“Is it weird that when people say I’m lovely, or pretty, I get itchy?”
“We all get a little uncomfortable when our value is reduced to our physical appearance,” he says patiently.
“Clever,” I admire.
“I’m afraid not, miss. I’m simply old.”
The same tiredness as Y’shennria’s works its way into his eyes. How much has he seen? He must’ve been alive during the Sunless War, too.
“Where were you, Reginall,” I ask, “during the war?”
“Fighting, miss.”
“On whose side?”
Wordlessly, he peels down a portion of his suit collar. Tendrils of a flowerlike scar on his chest crawl up his neck. I recognize it—how could I not? I’d seen it only once before, on another witch’s Heartless. Former Heartless. That flowerlike scar blooms over our chests when our hearts are returned to us and we’re made human again. That’s the shape I’ve longed to see over my own chest for so many years now.
“You’re a—”
“I was.” His gaze is steady. “Thirty years ago, I was human, and then I was not. So I fought. And at the end of it all, when the graves outnumbered the children in the streets, my witch gave me back my heart as she said she would, and then took her own life.”
It’s hard to breathe all of a sudden. “Why?”
“I’m not sure, miss. But she killed many during the war, and it ate at her, until the only release she could find was in death.”
My own guilt flares. Five men. One young, one old— I shake it off quickly, before it can burrow. “I’m Heartless, too.”
“I know.” He smiles. “Lady Y’shennria told me, and none of the others.”
“Why did she hire you, if you were Heartless? She hates us.”
He thins his lips, speaking carefully. “I believe she’s been trying these past thirty years to understand the things that killed her family. Trying to find meaning in it, meaning in the war. When one loses much, one tries desperately to understand why.”
I’m quiet, the ticking of the sandclock hollow between us, until: “So you’re free. You could go anywhere—why stay here? They hate witches in Vetris. If you’re found out—”
“Have you ever killed a human, miss?”
The bandits’ silent screams pierce my ears. I can’t move. Reginall just smiles, kinder now.
“You have. So then you must know the horror of it. You know the hunger reveled in the blood, and the carnage, and the light in their eyes as it faded.”
My memories are sudden and blinding; blood slick on my hands, I licked it off, laughing, a skull beneath my palm, a hard rock I slammed it into, shards of stone and bone—
Reginall puts a hand on my shoulder, pulling me out of the darkness.
“And you must know, too, that the hunger isn’t you. You must never confuse its evil for your own thoughts and feelings. I remember vividly that was the worst part of being Heartless—thinking that shadow was part of my own soul.”
“What is it?” I ask quickly. “The hunger.”
“I don’t know. We spoke of it together, in the war. Some of us thought it the magic’s curse. Others thought it man’s darkest instincts made undeniable. I can’t say for sure what it is—only that it exists, and is cruel.” He moves to the mantelpiece, absently dusting the sandclock there. “I will aid Y’shennria in preventing this looming war, down to my last breath. That is all I can do to make up for what I’ve done—that is why I’m here. Why are you here, miss?”
“For my heart.”