by Sara Wolf
“Do you want your heart in your chest again or not?”
My own hackles raise. “Obviously.”
“Then why?” he asks carefully and softly. “Why are you asking these questions?”
I exhale, frustrated. “Because it’s important! Varia said she wants the Bone Tree to control the valkerax and stop the war, but what if the Tree is manipulating her instead?”
“And if it is?” Yorl argues. “No exchange in Old Vetris was unequal. Varia will get her valkerax army. And the Bone Tree will feed off her magic. She knows that.”
My flesh will feed its furnace.
“My grandfather knew that. He told the king and queen that, but they didn’t believe him. They didn’t want to believe him—that their daughter would hurt herself in her sleep every night until she was dead, or until some Old Vetrisian relic consumed her magic.”
A coldness seeps into my veins. Yorl pulls his claw back from my chest.
“The truth is just the truth, Zera. It affects nothing. What matters most is what Varia wants. If she gets it, then we get what we want, too. Focus on that. Center your mind on that.”
My unheart sinks. “If she gets the Tree, is she going to die?”
Yorl starts walking up the steps, his footpads soft, and I walk with him, feeling for the cold stone walls.
“I don’t know,” Yorl admits. “There isn’t much documentation on how the Tree feeds, only that it requires a strong source of magic every so often. But I’d hazard a guess that it doesn’t take all the magic at once from a witch—Old Vetrisian inventions are complex and often don’t work instantaneously. It most likely would siphon her magic from her slowly.”
“And kill her?” I ask.
Yorl is quiet, and then, “Yes. Eventually. By my grandfather’s calculations, a witch cannot survive having all their magic taken from them.”
I can’t bring myself to walk forward anymore. Varia will die. Lucien and Fione will lose their loved one all over again. Their pain will come back tenfold. And I’m helping that happen.
Lucien’s suspicions were right. And something else gnaws at me.
“If she dies, what happens to the valkerax? Are they just free to roam?” I ask.
“No,” Yorl says. “The Bone Tree will always default to forcing the valkerax into the Dark Below. If…when—” His voice catches. “When she dies, in theory all the valkerax will return beneath.”
I’m silent. So Varia’s doing all this just for temporary power. The conversation between Yorl and me dies and doesn’t resurrect until we reach the surface-level door.
“None of this concerns us, Zera,” he says, his pupils slits in the light. “Keep your mind on your own goal. Not hers. Not mine. Your own.”
I breathe in. Every fiber of my being knows his logic is sound. But I can’t help but think about Lucien’s face, how broken it will look when Varia dies again. And I will have helped her to her grave with my own two hands.
Nothing distracts me from my own thoughts better than a book. And I need distraction now more than ever. I need to read someone else’s words to clear my head of all the ones buzzing around in my skull.
My time at the Vetrisian court didn’t allow me to visit the library as much as I’d have liked. I had Y’shennria’s library, which served me well during the scarce few moments of rest time between trying to steal the prince’s heart, but I’d never set foot in the palace’s library. Most of my time here was piddled away on boring things like pretending to be interesting and making other people like me.
A waste, in the end.
A waste, always.
But now, a few weeks older and wiser, I step into the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. The windows are kept small and modest to keep sunlight from damaging the books. A brass globe in massive proportions hangs from the ceiling, suspended by cables and rotating slowly. Huge rosewood shelves tower over us, laden with every book I can imagine—from the sweeping epics to the children’s bedtime stories to the written history of every civilization on Arathess—it’s all here. The basics of polymathematics, the famous odes of a poet-general during the Helkyrisian War, the sweetest, most breathtaking romances ever written by a noblewoman with too much time on her hands and too little action in her bed—my hands can’t flicker through the pages fast enough.
But of course, there are no books left in the palace library about witches.
Cavanos hates them, after all. No doubt their libraries have been purged of all literature pertaining to magic and witches. The only indication witches even exist are the children’s books, in which (witch, I am terribly clever) a Heartless or three hunt and eat the parents of the hero-child, their long limbs and gnashing teeth puncturing through the page and directly into my unheart.
I tilt one such children’s book as I look at a picture. “They got the knees all wrong. And is that— No!” I hiss softly. “We do not have furry underbellies!”
In utter disgust, I put the book back on the shelf, the old wood thing wobbling angrily as I do.
“There, there.” I pat it to still it. “I know. These humans never get history quite right, do they?”
“Except when someone wrongs us.” I look up at the voice at the end of the aisle and see Fione standing there. I pretend not to notice the way her hand grips her valkerax-headed cane as if her life depended on it, or the way her head is held a little too high. The hunger can smell her fear even through her riding coat, and I tamp it down with extra fervor. Her noble mask is otherwise perfect, impassive as she walks a mere one step closer. I try to make myself small, unthreatening.
“Lovely weather we’re having.” I start with something harmless and trace my finger over the spine of a book. A fine cloud of gray particles spins up into the air. “A little dusty, though.”
“I gave you my uncle’s diary. So—your end of the bargain. What is Varia having you do?” Fione isn’t distracted in the slightest, her voice strong.
I wipe my finger on my simple flax dress and smile. “You really care deeply about her.”
I watch Fione draw herself up to her full archduchess height, her mouse-curls gleaming in the library’s sun. It hurts my unheart to see her so protective of Varia, so determined to figure out what’s going on.
“Answer me,” she demands.
I hear no warmth in her words at all. Why should I? I’m helping her lover kill herself.
“You’re right.” I sigh. “I suppose I don’t deserve pleasantries.”
I must hallucinate it, but something like pain runs through Fione’s composure. And then, between the swirling dust, she says softly, “I need to know. That’s all.”
“I’ve been trying this thing lately called ‘getting wiser,’ and I’ve decided there’s a difference between enlightening people and hurting them with knowledge.”
“Zera!” Fione’s voice is firm. “I beg of you; in the name of the friendship we once had, in the name of the friendship we can still have, please—tell me what Varia is having you do.”
I startle, deep down in my soul. The friendship we can still have?
lies, the hunger sneers. all of it. lying to manipulate you like she was born to do, lying because she fears you…
I knit my lips. I burn to tell her the truth—that Varia is planning to force a ceasefire by controlling every valkerax in the Dark Below. But what girl wants to hear her lover is on the verge of effectively becoming the most powerful—and most feared—person in the entire world? Fione’s illusion of happiness would be shattered. I could tell her the truth. But isn’t it better to let her live out her happy dream with Varia for as long as she can, the one she wanted all these five hard years?
Isn’t it kinder, in the end, to be cruel?
So I laugh. “I’m sorry. But you’re just not convincing enough.”
Her mask slips. She blinks a dozen times, wounded. “Our friends
hip isn’t convincing enough?”
“Not particularly.” I stroke the spine of another book. “All I did was lie to you for two weeks, and all you did was use me for two weeks to get the information you needed from your uncle.”
“We were more than that,” Fione insists. “I felt like I could be myself with you.”
I nearly smile and agree with her. So did I.
But I’m helping to kill the person she loves the most. And I won’t stop. I’ll keep doing it—all for my heart.
I really am the monster.
“Oh dear.” I smile at Fione. “You fell for my lie just like Lucien did.”
She makes a sudden staggering motion, flinging out her hand to catch herself on the nearest bookshelf. The wobbly one. It groans and creaks, and in one horrifying moment I realize exactly what’s going to happen.
if you touch her, there will be pain—
The hunger’s voice is too late—the bookshelf tips backward and then comes hurtling forward, a frozen Fione poised with deer-wide eyes between it and the ground. My hand catches her shoulder first, and I shove her as hard as I can in the other direction.
The shelf looms, inches away, and I brace myself against the impact, against the command’s rising demand that wrenches control from my body, leaving me numb.
You will find a secluded place and stab yourself three times in the stomach with something sharp—
The heavy pain of the shelf never comes. Something else hits me, something much less dense, something warm and that moves on its own. A person. They throw me to the floor, my head hitting the wood and my ears ringing, drowning out the sound of the bookshelf crashing to the ground.
Dark, disheveled hair, dark eyes peering down at me fiercely. Lucien.
Dust swirls between us in the aftermath, his face close to mine. A shaft of sun enamels him in white-gold light, one dark eye molten gold, red strands illuminating his otherwise midnight hair. Vaguely, through the command’s numbness, I feel his arm around my shoulders, as if he’d tried to cushion my fall.
lovestruck fool.
If I could stay in this moment, looking up at his stern expression, his arms around me, I would. The girl in the other timeline has, many times already, savored his presence in ways I’ll never be able to.
I smile to myself and up at him. She’s so very lucky, I think.
“That’s the second time you’ve pushed me out of the way of imminent danger,” I chirp, and I’m sure my eyes are sparkling deviously. “But at least this time I don’t have to pretend to be impressed by it.”
Faintly, behind him, I see the outline of someone else—someone with milk-blond hair and a hand over her delicate mouth. Lady Tarroux. Were they walking in the library? Gods, I ruined their time together, didn’t I? She’s frozen, and before Lucien can speak, the real world pierces the moment. The command demands, and I push him off and rise to my feet. I can hear Fione scrabbling to stand up, Lucien, too, and Lady Tarroux calling out after me, but my command-rigid gait is already halfway out of the library. By the time they’ve gotten their bearings, I’m down the hall, passing the guards who run toward the commotion of the shelf falling.
The command takes me into the sweltering kitchens, snatching a fruit knife from the table smoothly as I go. The chef and her many assistants embroiled in broiling don’t even notice it’s gone as I slide out of the kitchen and into the darker, cooler wine cellar.
The command is terrifyingly smart, efficient. It places me behind a row of barrels, over one of the drains they use to flush out old, bad wine. The blood will not be noticed.
Nothing ruptures this time. The jabs are clean and quick. I gnaw the inside of my mouth, cold sweat beading my forehead and my legs grinding against the floor in some attempt at relieving the agony. Shouting or groaning isn’t an option anymore, not when I can’t afford to be seen, to be caught. I can’t show anyone how I really feel.
Perhaps I never could, in this city.
I wait for the wounds to heal with Varia’s magic, the blood seeping into my bodice, over my stomach, and slinking down the already darkly stained drain.
it wasn’t worth it, the hunger snarls.
As the cuts mend, I laugh softly. “What would you know…?” I wince as I sit up. “About what people are worth?”
The sound of creaking wood makes me stagger to my groggy feet. A human? Gods forbid a human sees this—Varia will have a time of covering it up. But it’s not just any ignorant human. There, from between the barrels, steps Lucien, his handsome face strict and pale, as if he’s watching the world end. How much has he seen? The stabbing? The talking to myself?
I clutch my stomach in some vain attempt to hide the massive bloodstain there, my voice nervous as I motion around with my other hand. “And here I thought the place where they hide all the merrymaking liquids would look a little cheerier.”
His gaze doesn’t waver, his posture stock-still. “Fione said Varia has ordered you to stab yourself if you touch her. Is that true?”
I shrug one shoulder as lightly as I can. “It’s for Fione’s peace of mind—”
“Is. That. True?” he repeats, harder. One last grain of truth, then. One last shard of truth, if he wants it so badly. He’s so serious, so drastically different from the irreverent thief who offered me the black rose in the ruined house.
“Yes,” I murmur.
He’s there one moment and gone the next, and I follow the sound of his boots over the stone, into the kitchen. Where is he going? I pull a discarded apron off the dirty laundry pile, donning it to hide the bloodstains and dashing after him to catch up. He’s so far ahead of me I can only hear his footsteps, not see him, but they lead right to the Serpent’s Wing, and to the only apartments I’m allowed near—Varia’s. He’s dismissed the usual royal guards outside the room, the door left slightly ajar.
“—so why would you do it?” Lucien’s voice singes the air—not quite a shout but nowhere near low.
“I wanted to make sure Fione felt safe.” Varia sighs.
“And what about Zera?” he barks. “What about her safety?”
I hear Varia pause, and then she bursts out laughing incredulously. “Her safety? She’s a Heartless, Luc. She’s safe no matter what.”
“She’s not safe from pain,” he retorts. “She feels it just as much as we do! Why would you inflict that on her?”
“I told you.” Varia sighs deeper. “Because I care about Fione.”
“And you care nothing for Zera. Because she hurt me. That’s it, isn’t it? She lied to me, and so you’re exacting some kind of sick revenge on her for it.”
“She’s breaking your heart!” Varia’s voice suddenly pitches up, half hysterical. “And I’m watching her do it every day! I’m watching you let it happen!”
Lucien is quiet, and that quiet rings throughout the room. The longer it reverberates, the more I feel sick to my stomach.
“She’s a Heartless, Luc,” Varia repeats finally, softer. “She will always value her heart above yours.”
truth, the hunger laughs. truth from the Laughing Daughter, always—
“You’re wrong,” Lucien growls. My unheart sinks into the depths of the Twisted Ocean.
no, dear prince, she’s so very right—
“Am I?” Varia asks coolly.
“She saved me,” he says. “She could have let Gavik kill me in the clearing and taken my heart then and gotten her own for it. But she defended me. She killed those men to protect me.”
No. No, no, no. The wrongness crawls over me, pinching my skin as it goes. That memory is for me and me alone. That memory is for me to keep, forever, by myself, so that no one else can use it as some false proof that I’m worth saving. Just like he’s doing now.
one good deed does not forgive a lifetime of mistakes.
The royal siblings are silent, and then, “When she’
s human—” Lucien starts, voice ragged.
“When she’s finally human, she will leave,” Varia interrupts him smoothly. “Because that’s what any self-respecting person who’s been magically enthralled for years would do. You are trying to hold on to grains of sand, brother.”
Her rightness about me hurts worse than the three stabs—far worse, as if they’ve blown through my flesh and left gaping holes ten times their size. I will leave. I have to leave; there’s nothing for me here anymore, just people I’ve hurt and betrayed and left bleeding trust all over the floor.
But the crown prince of Cavanos has never known when to give up.
“What are you making her do?” he demands.
“Luc, I love you,” Varia says, and I can hear the swish of her stiff skirts as she stands. “But that’s between her and me.”
There’s a beat, and then Lucien says, “Undo her command about Fione.”
Varia laughs. “When did you get hard of hearing? Was it while I was away? You know as well as I that Fione is terrified of Heartless, and I’m going to do everything in my power to—”
“Undo her command about Fione,” Lucien says again, ironclad. “Or I will tell Father what you are.”
I feel my face go cold. He wouldn’t…for me? Varia might be his sister, but she’s still a witch, the most powerful witch I’ve ever met. He’s making an enemy out of her—his beloved sister—just for my sake! And I won’t have it.
I stumble through the doors. “New God’s bulging tit!” I brace myself from falling on the back of a couch and blink my eyes at Varia and Lucien. “Oh my! Is that an interrupted argument I smell, or did I step in something on the way back?”
As the d’Malvane siblings glare at each other—Varia sharp and Lucien fiery—I spot another decanter of wine and snatch it up gleefully.
“Princess Varia.” I sink onto the couch and tip a little wine into my mouth sloppily. Nothing like a slovenly drunk to defuse a situation. “I’m starting to run out of those dresses you gave me. Any chance I could get some new ones? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: covered in diamonds, made of the purest Avellish silk, and all black so I can bleed without panicking the entire palace.”
