by Sara Wolf
“I bet you’d look lovely in a dress.” My mouth fires out the jab faster than I can take it back. Something like a smirk quirks at his lips, but I must be imagining it, because it’s gone in the next blink. He’s giving me this one chance and I joke with it? What is wrong with me?
He wants a grand distraction? Fine. I’ll give him a grand distraction—so grand he’ll have to listen to my hours-long apology. I ignore the stabbing pain in my stomach from the few bites of banquet food and bunch up my hem to tear it—an easy enough feat, considering how fine and old the fabric is. Lucien watches me with deadpan boredom as I smear cobblestone dirt on my face, but when I start pinching and twisting my cheeks, he quirks one eyebrow.
“Not the dirty beggar act, then?” he asks.
“Nay.” I rummage in a nearby garbage pile for the glinting empty bottle I’d spotted there. I shake it at him slightly and smirk. “Something far better.”
Before he can ask, I stand up from our hiding place and start staggering wildly toward the men, a bawdy song I’d heard a drunkard singing last night from the carriage brewing in my throat.
“Seven men they caught the baker’s eye, and seven men they made her sigh, then seven men they came to play, and seven men ate pie that day—”
The barrel line goes quiet, pauses in its motion, and all the men look me up and down suspiciously. The lawguards descend, knitting around me in a tight circle.
“Whoa there, this area is off-limits!” one of them insists.
I squint up at him. “Whaddaya sayin’? This…” I gesture wildly at the house they’re going into. “This iz my house! You…you tin men are telling me I can’t go in muh own house?”
The lawguards give one another a look, the “better deal with this quick before our superiors hear about it” look. The men unloading the barrels are still, wary, as if they’re unsure they should keep working.
“Turn around now, miss, and leave,” another lawguard insists, his bushy mustache twitching as I lurch toward him.
“Miss? Miss? Do I look like a miss to ya?” I stagger into the lawguard on my left. He reflexively pushes me away, and I throw a sloppy punch with no power to it, nearly falling over with the momentum. The lawguards push me back, away from the house. “I’m a ma’am! I’m married…I’m married, you shiny bastards! To a pig of a man! An’ he’s in that house, waitin’ for his stew! He’s as big as a badger and as mean as a mountain, and if he doesn’t get his stew I’m gone for. A doner.” I sniff dramatically, blearing my eyes. “If he hits me, you’re his fault!”
Lucien’s dark outline appears from between the carriage railings, his eyes searching the barrel labels. The working men are beginning to get antsy.
“Ma’am.” The lawguard to my right looks thoroughly chastened. “You’re drunk, and you’ve got the wrong house—”
“What are ya talkin’ about?” I flail, two of the lawguards having to hold me back at this point. “That’s him!” I point at a random man in the line, a barrel clutched to his chest. “What in Kavar’s name are you doin’ out here workin’? What about the kids? You’re just gonna leave them to rot in there?”
The man’s face goes slack and white, his mouth gaping like a fish. “Wha— What are you—?”
I cling to the lawguard, the pain of the food twisting my insides. Kavar’s tit. I don’t have much time.
“Is this your wife?” one of the lawguards asks. The man starts to shake his head, and I lunge for his shirt.
“How could ya, ya oily sack of horse dung!” I scream. “How could ya leave them alone in there—?”
“I have no idea what she’s talking about!” the man protests. “I’ve never seen her in my—”
The pain is piercing now, drilling through my skull. I make a lurch and a gurgling noise not entirely within my control, and the man instantly tries to pull away. I keep my grip hard, and he flounders, the two of us sprawling backward into the line of working men. Barrels go flying, swears and limbs whizzing past my ear. The scrambling commotion bleeds chaos—enough chaos that I hope Lucien can steal what he needs to. There’s a moment where the lawguards try to drag me off toward the back of the carriage, but it’s that same moment my eyes tear up, hot with blood. I can’t let them see that, but I have to keep the distraction up.
I do the only thing I excel at—make believe. I make a lurching gulp and then the wettest, most convincing retching noises anyone’s ever heard. I’ll be the first to admit—not my most elegant moment, but perhaps my most successful, because the lawguards recoil in disgust even though nothing’s there, bouncing off one another as they try to avoid what they think is potential vomit. The man I accused of being my husband—Kavar bless his heart—is a sensitive thing, and starts vomiting for real, right onto the nearest lawguard. His friends try to console him, the lawguards try to get to their own feet again without touching him unduly, and I take the moment and slip back out of the alley as fast as my bleeding eyes allow.
Five streets, four squares—I run until I’m out of breath, until they’d have to sprint to find me, and duck behind a hefty cluster of dye vats. The smell is horrible, like aged mulch and rot. No one will come looking for me here.
“I asked for a distraction, not a mistake.”
I look up at the terse voice, only to see Lucien standing there. Did he follow me? His gaze parses over my face, my blood tears. Old God’s gaping mouth—now’s not the time to remind him I’m a Heartless. It will never be the time.
I wipe at my cheeks frantically with my sleeves. “Mistake?” I start. “So you didn’t get the medicine, then?”
“Do you have any idea how many people could’ve seen those blood tears?” In one fell swoop he’s kneeling beside me, voice burning. “My people are fearful, but they aren’t dense. Everyone inside this godsdamn wall knows what it means to cry blood! The temple warns about it, the children sing about it, and you just did it! In front of who knows how many!”
concern for a relic of the past is unbecoming of you, sir prince, the hunger taunts. The hunger is right. I’m his past. Not his future.
I throw my hair back over my shoulder, gold on blue. “Did you get the medicine or not?”
His brows carve deep against the cowl. “They could know what you are! They could be marching lawguards all over the city looking for you right now!”
I breathe deep. I have to take his focus off me. He’s moving backward, when he needs to face the truth and move forward. I am a traitor. Closure will help him, and apologies are a good place to start. I need to apologize while I still have the chance. In a blink he could be gone, entrenched in the court again. Beyond my reach.
“I’m sorry, Lucien.” I meet his gaze squarely. “I’m sorry for not telling you what I—”
“Save your apologies,” he snarls, his hand darting out and enveloping my own. His fingers are so incredibly warm. “We have to go. If they know what you are…”
He stands, pulling me up with him, but before he can start off, I rip out of his grip. That one movement takes everything in me—to move away from his concern instead of toward it, like every inch of my skin desires.
“If—” I steady my voice. “If the people of Vetris discover a Heartless in their midst, if they tie her up, if they burn her alive—it would not do for the prince of Cavanos to care about it.”
I pray to both gods he understands. There’s a beat. And then…
“It would not do,” he agrees, his fury muting to something low and soft.
My breath punctures out of me like a pierced bubble. Of course he understands. It’s obvious to anyone with two whits of court knowledge the prince should not care for a traitor.
“But I wouldn’t be able to help it,” he adds.
My head snaps up. “What?”
The sound of approaching lawguards rings loud in my ears, clanking metal and shouted orders, and in a blink Lucien pulls me in t
o him, into the shadows behind the dye vats and away from the light. The world fades; I forget the smell of the vats, the blood trails that must be on my cheeks. His every ridge is pressed against mine—our hips digging into each other’s, our chests flush and breathing hard. I look up, our faces so close I could count the dark eyelashes around his strangely amused gaze.
“I can’t help but pity you, Lady Zera.”
It feels like the cobblestones fall away from my feet. A sick coldness rises up in their place.
“I pitied you when we met at the Welcoming,” he says lightly, a sigh on the end. “An Y’shennria, without status or parents, being offered as a plaything. Someone as sharp as you didn’t deserve to be made a pawn of the marriage game.”
If he pities me, why is he holding me so close? Why was he so worried about people seeing my blood tears not moments before?
“Pity?” My voice shakes. Memories of our dance in the street parade, our faces so close in the tavern beneath his cloak, his hand in mine and his head on my shoulder as he shed tears for his lost sister. “Not all of it was pity.”
“Of course not.” The prince chuckles, the sound so at odds with my coldly burning body. “Only most of it.”
The coldness hardens in my stomach like a pit of ice.
“After a few days of deep introspection, I’ve come to realize: I was infatuated with you because I pitied you. You tried so hard to make me love you, and I pitied you for your efforts. I pitied how alone you were in court, how ignorant you were, how terribly everyone thought of you because you were an Y’shennria. Somewhere along the way, it became affection. But an affection based in a sickly soil can never bloom into a true flower; it can never bloom into true love.”
I swallow what feels like metal shavings, scraping my throat on the way down.
“Oh.” He laughs softly, hollowly, keeping his mouth by my ear. “Don’t look so troubled, Lady Zera. You and I both know it’s true. It was only two weeks. What sort of love is ever true after only two weeks? We were infatuated, and nothing more.”
His thoughts mirror mine, the truth like needles piercing any joy I held secretly.
“And yet,” he says, “emotions aren’t convenient pieces of jewelry you can put on and take off whenever you want to.”
What does that even mean? That the things we shared can’t be removed from memory?
’twould be easy enough to reach around and take his eyes out, the hunger offers, salivating. that will make him despise you, for certain.
Varia had a fresh raw pig liver waiting for me, sequestered beneath the banquet dress in her room, but still the hunger keens. I try to remind it his death doesn’t mean our heart anymore, but the darkness unfurls whenever our skin brushes together, like it’s been trained to react with violent thoughts to his scent, his feel. The sound of the lawguards approaching crescendos beyond our hiding place, and I feel Lucien’s arms tighten around me, his mouth just near my ear. The feel of his breath on my skin chokes me more than the muggy summer air, making my whole body tremble.
“You’re shaking.” His tone is low, despondent. “How could you be so good at fooling the court yet so terrible at hiding your own feelings?”
He’s acting so incredibly different—so light, and amused, and unaffected. I’d seen him do this once before, to the other Spring Brides, the ones he treated kindly just for show, just to keep the court off his back. The farce is lifted, gone. He’s supposed to return to his life before me, before my facade. He’s never truly happy when he looks at me, and he deserves to be happy.
The red moonlight blazes off the lawguards’ armor as they pass us—clanking so incredibly loudly—and then disappear, fading behind a street corner. I arch my back against Lucien’s chest in a bid to make space between us.
“What feelings?” I ask.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” He releases me just enough that I can turn in his arms, and I spin to face him. “You never answered me in the clearing.”
“I told you—you’re naive,” I bark. “I deceived you—”
“Everyone I’ve ever met has deceived me,” he interrupts me. “That is what it means to be a d’Malvane. You deceived me. And I pitied you. In the end, I’d call that a draw, wouldn’t you?”
“We kissed,” I blurt, my mouth running by itself. “You and I—that kiss in the tent. Did that mean nothing to you?”
He leans in suddenly, smiling, a shadow filled with heat and draped in leather, his hands slipping onto either side of my face. It’s a farce. He treats people well only when he despises them; the Spring Brides proved that. I swear there’s a blink of genuine feeling in his eyes, but then it disappears.
“How can something that was a lie mean anything at all?”
Not like this. I want the real Lucien. Not this one.
“Don’t you dare treat me like everyone else,” I demand. Lucien’s obsidian eyes flicker, the pleasant facade of his nearly crumbling. He drops his hands slowly, reaching into his pocket and procuring a kerchief in his palm, dark blue with red rose embroidery. To clean my face of blood? His black eyes are hard and set with determination as they were the first time we met—him as Whisper, the two of us in an alley not much different from this one.
“Why not?” He tilts his head, a smile carving an impression beneath his cowl. “After all, you treated me like a job.”
His words stab right through my tender parts, and my lungs instinctually suck in a bracing breath of air. He ignores it, still that placid, unreal smile on his face as he offers his handkerchief.
“You were the only one who managed to get beneath my armor. I’d ask you to be gentle with me, until I can construct a new set,” he says, dropping the kerchief around my hand. “But I know you despise obeying your crown prince.”
I barely catch the kerchief before it hits the ground, and when I manage to look up again, he’s gone.
My body aches with the aftermath of the blood tears and the blunt force of Lucien’s emotional stabbing. I wipe my face carefully with the kerchief. He was right to be so brutal. Emotions aren’t jewelry, he’d said. But they are. I’d put some very convincing jewels on to deceive him—rubies of love, emeralds of affection. What remained when I took them off, that night in the clearing?
Me. Just me.
The monster, the girl, the killer, and the liar in her bare flesh.
undeserving of life, let alone love.
He held me so close. He touched me so tenderly. But he did it because I’m like everyone else in his eyes. I deceived him, like everyone else in the court does.
I am nothing special to him any longer.
Faintly, I hear another commotion start in the street—the lawguards shouting about a “fugitive thief” in “dark leather.” They barrel past my hiding place and to the next square over. Lucien’s lingered in the streets of Vetris for years—he knows better than to get caught. So why would he purposely flaunt himself in front of lawguards now?
My thief brain hands me the answer neatly; with the guards gone, it’s a clear shot from where I am to the noble-quarter bridge. My Heartless brain answers me painfully:
He pities me.
6
The
Wyrm’s Song
I’m sure of only two things in my unlife: that I have royally fucked up (pun intended, thank you very much) and that Lucien deserves someone far better than me.
I inform Malachite of this the following morning. When I got back to the palace last night, Varia’s servant told me I could sleep in her quarters, as she wasn’t coming back that evening. The guards let me through. I glared at the princess’s perfumed bed and pulled a blanket from the linen closet and slept on the floor instead. It did wonders for my pride and nothing for my back.
“Lucien deserves far better than me,” I say to Malachite, cracking my back by holding a banister and twisting my entire spine in the othe
r direction while I wait for my carriage to the valkerax—Varia’s servant also informed me of that this morning. The noise of my cracking vertebrae makes a passing noble couple shudder uncontrollably. I hold up a hand and smile at them in a “you’re welcome” way.
Malachite, now out of his fancy armor and dressed in his usual modest chainmail shirt and breeches, rolls his red eyes. “Are nobles always late to the obvious, or just the ones pretending to be nobles?”
“Both?” I offer. “All? Humans are, historically, fools.”
“And liars,” he fires back, holding his pale, spidery hand out to me like I’m a perfect example.
“And that,” I murmur an agreement. “Sometimes. Out of necessity.”
“Sorry.” Malachite blinks. “What part of attempting to kill a prince and revive him as a witch’s servant is necessity again?”
“The point is,” I say very loudly, “I tricked Lucien into his feelings. I ruined his view on love. So it’s only fair I try to make amends for that.”
Pain fractures through my body like ice the moment the words form in the air. My face moves in a numb mask, making a show of winking at Malachite.
“Which means, of course, I’m going to have to find him someone else.”
Malachite’s quiet, opting instead to stare out of the grand oak doors of the palace entrance. At last, he asks, “Someone else?”
“You know.” I shrug, my simple green linen tunic shrugging with me. “He told me he pities me, when the reality is, actually, that I pity him. He’s all but rejected every noble girl for marriage. He treats none of them with any gravitas. He’ll never find a wife at this rate! As his best friend”—I point to Malachite—“and his best enemy,” I say, pointing to myself, “it’s up to us to find him a sweeter girl. Harmless, not Heartless. A girl without razor-sharp teeth or a dark hunger whispering constantly to tear his lungs out.”
If Malachite could go any whiter, I’m sure he would, but instead his thin lips just purse. “The hunger says that?”
