by Sara Wolf
Reginall tidies my whetting mess, putting the bowl and rag aside. He’s quiet for a long while, the hunger eating away at me with every second that passes. Finally, he clears his throat.
“Some wounds never do. Not even with magic.”
He looks up at the lit window of Y’shennria’s room on the second floor, and I watch the light with him.
“I’m afraid,” I say. “Afraid of failing her. Failing myself.”
“I see.”
“But I’m more afraid of doing the wrong thing.”
I feel Reginall’s eyes on me, as if he’s trying to read my face. His voice is a bare murmur.
“I remember what it feels like, still—being weighed down by the enormous burden of taking others’ lives. Of being haunted by our every mistake, every doubt, every hunger, unable to forget. People love to say Heartless aren’t human.” He nods. “But to this day, I still wonder if they’re perhaps more human than the humans themselves.”
The moons watch us quietly as they chase the stars across the sky. Reginall stares at the Red Twins.
“No matter how bad the hunger gets, milady, you must remember it is a passenger in your body. It can feel oppressive, but it does not own you. You are very much still the you you were before you were turned.”
“I can’t remember who that was anymore.” I choke on my own voice.
“Then you must hold on for that day when you can remember again.”
The laugh that erupts from me is hysterical. “What if I fail? What if I’m shattered into pieces like a toy, what if I die without ever getting my heart, the memories in it—”
Reginall grips my shoulder, his wrinkled face set hard.
“Please, milady. Don’t lose faith in yourself. It is the only thing the hunger can’t take from you.”
“It’s stolen everything,” I snarl. “How am I supposed to hope, when it tries to steal even that from me?”
He takes my hands in his own, unafraid of who I am. What I am.
“Fight,” he insists, voice like fire, so different from his usual modest tenor. “Fight with everything you have, everything you are. Everything that is left of you—battle with it. Fight by the moonlight, the starlight, whatever faded hope you can find at any moment—cling to it. Embrace the smallest of lights, and never stop fighting.”
I go silent, and we watch the sunrise together. I’m the first to retreat into the house. I ascend the stairs, the pain begging me to stop moving, the hunger begging me to tear someone, anyone, apart. I stand in the middle of my room, fighting it. My body and mind are exhausted, assaulted on every side. If I take Lucien’s heart, I’ll be free. That rings in my head like a mantra, a prayer.
His heart. Freedom. His heart. Freedom.
I reach for a dress and my makeup.
When I walk into the dining room for breakfast, I’m perfectly outfitted in a blue velvet dress, perfectly primped in blush and blue lip tint and dark wax lines down my cheeks like banners of war. Y’shennria looks up from her book with a stunned expression.
“Y-You—” She stutters for the first time I’ve ever heard. “You shouldn’t be walking.”
I smile with my lady’s mask at her, and sit at the table. “That’s what they all say.”
It takes much convincing, but Y’shennria relents and allows me to meet Fione at the royal shooting range only when I can prove my coherency by reciting everything I know back to her. Firstbloods, Secondbloods, Goldbloods. The small spoons for cold soups, the large spoons for hot ones. Never take the hand of a man unless offered to you—a hundred questions, and a hundred answers I know by heart now. Y’shennria pauses after the last one.
“Something wrong?” I inquire. She frowns.
“You’ve learned well.”
“Then why do you look upset about it?”
“I’m not,” she corrects. “It’s just…so strange. To feel pride like this.”
“For a Heartless,” I finish for her. She meets my gaze with her own soft one.
“For anyone. After my family died I thought—” Her elegant, scarred throat bobs. “I thought I’d never feel this way again.”
She fixes her eyes on Lord Y’shennria’s painting. I look at him with her.
“If he were here, I’d bet he’d be proud of you, too,” I dare. Y’shennria tears her eyes from him, and I swear I see wetness there, but I must be wrong. Y’shennria doesn’t cry—not in front of me, not in front of anyone.
“He’d tell me I was a paranoid old woman,” she starts with a little laugh. “And I’d tell him to shut up.”
She laughs and laughs. Somehow, in this moment, she seems so much younger. I ball my fists.
“I promise you, Lady Y’shennria—I promise you I’ll prevent this war.”
Y’shennria calms at this, wiping her eyes with her kerchief softly. “You little fool—of course you will.”
An insult to anyone else, from anyone else. But from her, her confidence in me, her certainty—it’s as near to a compliment as I can imagine. And I hold it close as I get in the carriage, as I watch the Y’shennria manor grow smaller and smaller behind me.
The royal shooting range is little more than a perfectly manicured lawn on the outskirts of Vetris with a few straw targets and weary groundskeepers with green mantles wandering about. No other nobles are present, which leads me to believe archery isn’t very popular in Vetris. Either that, or someone got a stray arrow lodged in their arse here very recently.
“Lady Zera!” Fione waves me over to the only occupied lane—a hefty crossbow cradled in her thin arms. “I was wondering if you’d show!”
I trot to her, her target in the distance riddled with bolts. She aims and shoots, the steel-tipped wood cleanly sinking near the center. I whistle, impressed.
“Remind me to add you to the list of ‘people I should definitely never piss off.’”
“I wasn’t on that list already?” Fione laughs, winding the crannequin for another shot. “I’m hurt.”
“Allow me to throw myself a momentary pity party,” I motion to my bandaged forearm and wrist. “You’re not as hurt as me.”
She laughs again. “True. Y’shennria said not to expect you well enough to stand for several days.”
“Auntie tends to underestimate my prodigious willpower,” I say. “Or as she likes to call it, my ‘pig-headed stubbornness.’”
My eyes catch Fione’s valkerax-head cane as it rests on a nearby railing. ShE’d be sLoW tO rUn, the hunger snarls, ravenous. CoNsuMe heR doWn to hEr preTTy cUrLs.
Fione smiles faintly as she aims and fires another arrow. This one lands even closer to the center of the target. A groundskeeper approaches and asks if I need anything, but she waves him away, and he retreats.
“You’d think they’d know by the giant crossbow in my arms that I want to be left alone,” Fione jokes.
“You’re a noble, they’re servants. It’s a bit difficult to leave someone alone when you know they hold your fate in the palm of their hand,” I drawl. Fione freezes, then nocks the next bolt in her bow, thinking on this. She fires again, the bolt missing the target entirely. She frowns prettily.
“I suppose I’ve never thought of it that way.”
She fires three more bolts, these all clustered together at the heart of the straw target. She’s got a keen eye, but she’s easily distracted by her own thoughts. The single missed bolt tells me that much.
“Did you get what you needed?” I ask quietly. Fione looks up at me and smiles.
“I might’ve opened a puzzle-locked safe in a certain office in the palace, and I might’ve seen the name of a tower in the noble quarter. Then again, I might’ve heard a lawguard coming down the hall and escaped before I could read everything thoroughly.”
“You have a funny way of saying yes.” I squint. She giggles, leaning on her hefty crossbow as she does her cane.
“Your…sacrifice, shall we call it? I assure you, it didn’t go to waste. What exactly made you faint? Are you bloodshy?”
<
br /> I’m quiet, flicking through my mind for some excuse. Fione picks the crossbow back up, winding a bolt carefully.
“Prince Lucien says it was an infection. But I overheard my uncle thinking aloud to a royal polymath that no infection spreads that quickly.”
My mouth goes dry—the last thing I need is Gavik suspecting me more.
“I was—” I lean in to her. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“Your secret’s safe with me. We’re in this together, after all.”
I take in her wide, waiting blue eyes. She’s an expert at sniffing out information, secrets. I have to lie convincingly to hide the bigger lies beneath. I gnaw my lip for effect.
“I’m…fasting. The other Brides are so slender, and I—”
“Oh gods, not you, too.” Fione heaves a sigh. “Is that why you visited the bathroom so much during that banquet? I hate this godsdamned Avellish trend. Just eat, all right?”
“Thankfully, you aren’t my mother,” I say.
“I won’t have a half-starved thing helping me bring my uncle down,” she insists. “Eat, or I’m cutting you from the team, and you lose your time with the prince.”
WhiCh pArt shoUld wE eaT first? The hunger slithers around her, resting my eyes on her neck, her wrists—the most tender parts. YoUr soFt eyEs, or youR soFt hEart?
“For all your hatred of your uncle, you certainly threaten as well as he does,” I manage. Fione laughs and lets the bolt fly. It sinks into the center of the target with a wooden thud, and it’s not until the wind picks up that I see the two thin pieces of bolt dancing in the breeze. That shot cut another of her bolts in half in perfect overlap. I know nothing about archery, but a shot like that seems nearly impossible.
She turns and grins at me. If Gavik’s eyes are water, hers are sky.
“True. He and I are very similar. But so are you and your ‘aunt’. Even Lucien is a little like his father, no matter how he denies it. That’s the cruel thing about family, isn’t it? No matter how we feel about them, we will always look like them, act like them. We were raised by them, after all.”
Fione puts the crossbow down and picks up her cane.
“It’s not a question of whether or not the apple falls far from the tree, because of course it doesn’t.” Her eyes fix in the distance. “It’s whether or not the apple can grow taller than the tree.”
13
A Man Without
Mercy Must Fail
“Please leave us, if you would,” Fione asks the groundskeeper nearby. He bows and quickly shuffles off, his hound at his heels. When she’s sure he’s gone, Fione glances back to me. “I’m expecting guests.”
No sooner has she said this than two figures emerge from the tree line behind the shooting range—one dark-haired, the other gray, both tall and broad. Prince Lucien and Malachite. They stride across the grass, and every thief’s instinct in me screams they were waiting in the woods all along. Watching us.
When they approach close enough, I ask, “Do you enjoy staring at people for extended periods of time without their knowledge, Your Highness?”
“I’m no decorum expert,” Malachite retorts. “But shouldn’t you at least curtsy before you start throwing around accusations?”
Fione bobs into a curtsy, and I begrudgingly do the same. Lucien bows ever so slightly to us, as befitting a Firstblood to two others. Malachite watches it all, highly amused. Lucien’s dark-iron eyes fix on me as he straightens.
“Surely your wounds haven’t healed yet. Are you in pain?”
CoNsTantLy, the hunger snarls.
His concern is too soft. Too unguarded. Seeing it is like a starving wolf watching a lamb struggle. Tempting, and borderline pathetic. I counted him warier than this. I counted him smart. Maybe I misjudged him. Or maybe, despite his scars, his heart hasn’t learned to stop yearning. I’ve warned him again and again. And still he worries for me. Still he looks at me gently.
WhAt a fOoL.
“It’s nothing a little polymath medicine can’t fix,” I assure him. Malachite laughs.
“It was all I could do to keep him from rushing to you the second he saw you. But when he realized you could stand and breathe as well as the rest of us, he evened out.”
“Mal,” Lucien warns, a flush working up his neck. “Silence.”
Malachite waves a hand at him. “Fine, fine. The usual then—I’ll just shut up and watch.”
Fione chimes in. “If the prince agrees to my proposition, you’ll be doing much more than that, Sir Malachite.”
This captures all of our attentions, our eyes riveting to her apple-cheeked smile. Sensing she has the floor, she places two bolts carefully on the nearby railing, standing them up to point at the sky. She touches the tip of one.
“This is the Crimson Lady, at the edge of the common district.” She touches the other. “This is the East River Tower, on the edge of the noble district.”
“Just the geography lesson I needed,” I drawl. Fione smiles at me, forced.
“I’ve learned that the East River Tower holds the evidence I’ve previously spoken to you all about.”
“The East River Tower is a granary storage,” Malachite says. “It has no exits or entrances.”
“No windows, either,” Lucien agrees. “If Gavik buried that evidence in ten tons of grain somehow, you’ll have to blow through the stone to get it.” He looks to me. “Do you know how to make a bomb by any chance, Lady Zera?”
“Why ask me, Your Highness?” I quirk a brow.
“You know how to duel, how to thieve, and how to sniff me out despite every hiding place I can think of,” he says. “I thought you might have an explosive trick up your sleeve as well.”
“If only.” I sigh. “Maybe then those banquets wouldn’t be so boring.”
Malachite lets out a horrified gasp. “Don’t you even think of detonating my favorite salmon cream puffs!”
Fione clears her throat. “All of you are terrible at staying on track.”
“I’d try to stay on track if you weren’t talking nonsense,” Lucien grumbles. “Your evidence is in the East River Tower—and what? It’s a sealed tower. No one can get in there.”
“I don’t want to get in there,” she asserts. “I want to get below there.”
Lucien and I exchange a look. Fione taps her nails on the railing connecting the two upright crossbow bolts.
“I think my uncle cleared out an old watertell pipe and is using it as a tunnel between the Crimson Lady, where he does most of his work with the polymaths, and the East River Tower, where I believe he keeps his sensitive research material.”
“A watertell pipe?” Lucien wrinkles his nose. “I have a hard time imagining Gavik squeezing himself down such a tiny thing every time he wants to access research.”
“You’re right, Your Highness,” Fione says cheerily. “The new ones, installed in the last decade, are very small. But the old ones—the prototype builds? They’re huge, and they remain beneath the city.”
“How can you be so sure?” I ask.
“I’ve seen the old maps—one of them goes directly from the Crimson Lady to the East River Tower.”
“And you think he keeps the information lying around in the pipe below it?” I cock my head.
“I don’t know, but all the evidence points below that tower. If we can get beneath it, I’m certain we’ll find enough to incriminate him to the king.”
Malachite holds up a hand like a patient schoolchild, and Fione nods to him.
“So you want the four of us to infiltrate the most powerful anti-witch weapon in the country—in the world—to find this pipe?”
There’s a silence even Fione doesn’t have an answer for. Malachite presses on.
“The Crimson Lady is guarded around the sandclock, in eight shifts of ten men apiece. The pipe’s probably in the basement levels, where all the delicate water pumps are that keep the damned thing running. Which, of course, is guarded by two independent patrols made up of the largest and st
rongest celeon guards Vetris has to offer. And you want us to get in there without being seen.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Fione says slowly.
“You didn’t say it would be impossible, either,” Lucien snaps.
“Not to mention any locks we meet on the way,” I muse.
“I have all the keys we need for the Crimson Lady,” Fione insists. Malachite blinks rapidly.
“Do you, now? And how in your troublesome god’s name did you get those?”
“That’s none of your concern.” She frowns. “I just need to know if you three are willing to come with me.”
“I, personally, do not enjoy being killed for trespassing,” I admit.
“It’s not as if I don’t have a plan,” she insists. “Lucien—is it possible for you to borrow four polymath robes from the Star Hall in the palace?”
The prince thinks for a moment. “Yes. But they’d be missed in less than an hour.”
“We won’t need more time than that, if all goes well.”
“And if it doesn’t?” he asks. She meets his gaze squarely.
“Then we never discover the truth of who killed your sister. And my uncle’s reign of terror continues, until your citizens are driven into the arms of war.”
Fione’s words ring powerfully in the echoing moment of quiet between us. The prince has already made up his mind—I can see it. Malachite can see it, too.
“Ugh.” The Beneather sighs. “Fine. But if we get caught, I’m ratting you all out so my remains get sent back to Pala Amna, at the very least.”
Lucien nods to Fione. “I’ll do it.”
They all look to me. A laugh tears through me—at the absurdity of it all, at the determination of these noble children, of their dedication to the memory of a princess long dead. I can’t imagine being loved so well. Or ever. Jealousy rises in me again—a snake that adores emerging whenever the humans do wonderful and stupid things with their mortal lives.
They can risk so much, because they have so much. Their hearts. Futures. Freedoms.
And here I am, begging for their scraps. Begging for an opening to take what I want and run.