by Sara Wolf
“The Glass Tree,” I manage to say. “It’s still around?”
“Yes. We’re standing here,” Gavik says, thumping his empty chest. “As unliving proof of its existence.”
“And the ‘Hymn of the Forest’ talks about all this?” I ask.
“Yes. The temple of Kavar has the only remaining copy that we know of. I was afraid people would find it, so I had them change the lyrics and seal the original in their library.”
“Why didn’t you want people knowing about it?”
He lets out a breath. “I didn’t want word spreading about it, and somehow finding its way to Varia. Muro told me the Bone Tree had chosen her to feed off, and he told me if it fed off her, she would control the valkerax in turn. I couldn’t have that.”
“So you tried to kill her, too,” I muse.
“Make no mistake,” he says shortly. “I hated her. I hated Lucien. I wanted Varia’s sword dearly, to arm my country appropriately against the witch threat. I wanted the witchblood d’Malvanes gone, because I knew they would ruin the country. And they will. Varia will succeed at it, if you help her get the Bone Tree.”
“It’s an army of valkerax under her control,” I argue. “And the Bone Tree will take all her magic and kill her eventually, and then the valkerax will just return underground. It’s not as much of a danger as you—”
“Think with that silk-and-lace-addled brain of yours,” Gavik spits. “The landscape of Cavanos isn’t the only thing that will change. A valkerax army will destabilize world politics as we know it. Cavanos will simultaneously become the world’s enemy and the world’s arbiter. The rest of the Mist Continent—the Pendronic emperor, the Helkyrisian sage-dukes, and the Avellish queen—will unite together for their own safety against us. And in other continents, alliances will form and fall around the world because of us. Every spear will be turned against Cavanos in self-defense.”
The sand in my throat turns to molten lead.
“Varia thinks she’s ready for that level of power,” I whisper.
“No one is ready for that level of power,” Gavik insists. “It is beyond all imagining.”
Suddenly, I spot something out of the corner of my eye—a shadow, lingering at the mouth of the alley behind a pile of discarded pig iron. They’re too close to us, and too hidden, to be doing anything but listening. Gavik starts to talk again, but I hold up one hand in his face, and he pauses. The pause is too long, and it spooks the shadow. Before I can blink, the shadow pivots and is gone, and I rush to the throat of the road just in time to see a scrap of darkness disappear around a corner.
I dash around it, and come face-to-face with the wall of West Gate, so high and tall that nothing could jump it, flanked on either side by similar brick walls, smooth and free of hiding places. The shadow is gone. But where? There are no places to duck into, no holes to disappear down. It’s like it simply…vanished.
Anyone could’ve followed me. But only one person would want to. Only one person knew I’d be going to talk to Gavik today.
“Lucien?” I whisper at the looming white wall.
But I get no answer.
When I return to Gavik, he tries to convince me, once again, to refuse to help Varia find the Bone Tree. But his pleas fall on ears long closed to him. I walk back to the palace, stopping in front of Y’shennria’s manor. The black rosebushes tug at my unheart as they wave beneath the immaculately blue summer sky, the fluffy white clouds so innocent and sweet.
Even under a sky that looks this peaceful, war is happening.
Varia has been throwing me at the valkerax. I’ve died over and over again, and no one has mourned. The witches throw their Heartless at the human army even now, but they won’t mourn them. War only means something because death does. Death only means something because life does.
Life—that tenuous, bright thing that humans take for granted. Each moment, a possibility. Each day, a new beginning.
All of that, stopped only by death.
The Old Vetrisians back then were right to be afraid of the Glass Tree. The real monster is not death. It is immortality. It is nothing changing, ever. It is that choking gray haze. It’s remaining the same for three years, trapped in a forest. It’s death being reduced to a joke. It is death meaning nothing, because then life, too, means nothing.
I want to be human.
I want to mean something again.
“Lady Zera?”
I start, and look up at the voice to see Lady Tarroux peeking her round face out of a decadent passing carriage draped on the sides with gold-plated eyes of Kavar. A long caravan precedes her, each bed bursting to the brim with trunks and bags and furniture. Guards flank the procession, their swords ready and their faces grim. There must be fifty of them—their ranks bolstered by heavily armored mercenaries.
“Good afternoon, Lady Tarroux.” I smile. “Where are you off to with all your things?”
Her eyes are downcast. “Helkyris. Father couldn’t wait a day longer to leave.”
My lungs deflate. “I see.” There’s a pause, and then, “Do you want me to kidnap you? I’m very good at crime.”
The worry in her gaze falters with her soft laugh. “That would be so lovely. But I’m afraid Father would miss me if I were gone.”
“Isn’t he worried about attacks on the road?” I ask. “The war is in full swing.”
She motions all around her to the mercenaries. “Father’s spared no expense. We’ll be fine, I think.”
“Surely,” I agree with a small laugh. “By the looks of it, he’s hired a small army.”
She laughs, too, though it sounds sad. “I’m sorry, Lady Zera. I feel as if we’ve just become friends, and I’m abandoning you.”
I smile brightly at her. “You’ll be back. The war might be over sooner than you think, and you’ll come right back here and marry Lucien.”
It doesn’t hurt to say it as much anymore. Maybe I’m getting used to the idea. Finally.
“How—” she squeaks, her cheeks going red. “How do you know that?”
“Call it a…vision.” I smile. “Sent to me from the New God.”
Her blush fades, and then her face lights up. “Oh! I just remembered.”
I watch her rummage around inside her carriage for something, before she leans out the window and hands it to me. “Here. Please give this to Prince Lucien. He was asking after it, and I’d hate to leave without giving it to him.”
I look down at my palm to see a carefully folded paper. “Do you mind?”
Tarroux shakes her head. “Not at all.”
I unfold it and read: it’s a picture-guide to a certain sewing technique. I quirk a brow up at her. “What’s this?”
“Oh, well.” Tarroux goes red again. “The prince asked me to teach him to sew.”
I blink. “Sewing? He asked you to teach him?”
Her blush fades only marginally as she looks up. “Yes. He said he wanted to make a gift for someone, and so I obliged.” She suddenly bows her head, bobbed hair sweeping over her shoulder as she blurts, “I’m sorry, Lady Zera! I know you are his Spring Bride! I didn’t mean to have such feelings while there is a connection between you and His Highness!”
I’m struck again by how straightforward and kind she is. Silly girl, I think. Don’t be sorry. You’re doing exactly what I need you to do.
I reach up and clasp her small hand in mine over the carriage windowsill and grin wider. “Can I let you in on a secret?” I ask. She nods, wide-eyed. “I’ll be gone soon. The court is no place for me, I’ve decided.”
Her eyes get even larger, and I fight back the hot haze behind my own that threatens tears. She can’t see me cry, see me show any emotion other than glibness. I must look sincere, deathly so. The words come easily, even if my expression doesn’t.
“He can be very prickly,” I say. “And stubborn. And he’s convinced—�
� I laugh. “He’s convinced he’s the only one who can save anyone. Maybe that’s why we got along at all in the first place—him with his savior complex and me with my martyr complex.”
“Lady Zera—” Tarroux starts gently, but I cut her off.
“Speak your mind whenever you can—he hates platitudes most of all. Don’t try to get him to drink. Oh, and he likes the city much more than he likes the palace.”
My hands start to shake as everything runs through my mind—every time I’ve seen him, touched him, laughed with him. Only two weeks. It was only two weeks, so I really have no right to be this sad. Two weeks is nothing. A flimsy infatuation—lust and lust only. Two weeks means nothing.
I let Tarroux’s hand go so as not to betray myself, my words spilling out faster.
“Please, Lady Tarroux. When you come back to Vetris, please watch over him. Protect your prince as I cannot anymore.”
…
Lady Tarroux never gets to answer me. Her caravan begins to move again, pulling her toward South Gate. I wave and wave, until her carriage is nothing more than a golden dot on the horizon. Then I drag myself back to Varia’s apartments at a slow crawl. I should be happy—what I wanted has coalesced. I’ve pushed Tarroux toward Lucien, and myself away.
She’s innocent. She’s free of blood. She’s human.
I coax my miserable self into Varia’s sitting room, surprised to find her already there. At this time of night she’d usually be out to dinner at Fione’s estate. But she sits on an ironwood couch in a grand feathered bathrobe, staring into a glass not of the imported brandy from Avel that’s so popular among the Vetrisian nobles but some clearer liquid. It’s strange, to see someone so in control relaxing for once.
She looks up with subdued eyes as I walk in and sees me staring at her cup. She waves it at me with a flourish. “Can’t stand the Avellish stuff.”
“What is it, then?” I ask, eagerly welcoming any change of discussion at all. “I would say bogwater, but I know you’re not that kind of witch.”
She gifts me a half-scathing, half-amused glance. “Yolshil. Celeon liquor. It’s got more burn but less bite.”
“Which makes it perfect for you, because you have enough teeth already.”
It’s a vague allusion to the valkerax, but even slightly buzzed she gets it, and to my surprise she throws back her head and laughs. When she calms down, she drinks the rest of the liquor.
“Father really did miss an opportunity to make you his laughing boy.”
“Why are you still up?” I ask warily.
The princess shrugs. “Sleeping is difficult for me, as you’ve seen.” In a bid to change the subject, she motions to a table next to her. “You’ve received gifts.”
I walk over to the table laden with two things: a letter and a long package wrapped in brown paper. I quirk a brow and approach suspiciously, peeling the letter open. It isn’t sealed with wax, which means it’s not a letter from a noble in Vetris. The handwriting strikes me as familiar, but I can’t quite place it.
Zera,
I hope this finds you well. Considering I am sending this letter to Vetris once I am finished, I would hope, too, that you are practicing and executing your manners within court sufficiently.
My unheart swells. It’s so much more than a chilly sentence. I know instantly who wrote this—Y’shennria. Suddenly the paper I’m clutching and each word on it become more precious than gold.
You should know that I and the others who came with me are safe, and we have been since our departure. I wish that you could be here with us, so that I wouldn’t waste what’s left of my life worrying into the night about you.
She’s worried about me? My chest feels like it’s glowing from within. Reginall, her driver Fisher, her cook Maeve, and her stableboy Pierrot—all of them are safe. All of the people who helped me immensely, who were kind to me in different ways. It’s a huge relief to know they’re out of harm’s way.
Our mutual friend who sent you to me originally has told me something precious to you now belongs to someone else in Vetris.
The sentence is vague intentionally, no mentions of witches or Heartless. She means Nightsinger, and my heart.
If you see a chance to depart from Vetris someday and find yourself alone, I will leave some direction for you at the place you have seen, where the birds fly.
Where the birds fly? Ravenshaunt—of course, her ancestral home that was all but destroyed by witchfire. She pointed it out to me when we first met, in the carriage to Vetris. A deep burden I didn’t know I was carrying suddenly lifts off my shoulders, and a true smile pulls at my face. She’s saying if I manage to get my heart back, I should head to the ruins of Ravenshaunt to find her.
I want that more than almost anything.
Finally, an anchor. A point on a map to walk toward.
The letter is too short.
What you have done took great strength. Know that I am proud of you.
I await, steadfast.
The smallest of her sentences rings with great impact in my head. Her words are a tiny glimmer of hope in the mire I’ve been wading through, and the urge to get my heart back explodes, brighter than ever. Crav and Peligli are waiting for me. And now a third person. I have somewhere to go out there beyond the walls, beyond the war. A home. A real home.
Varia’s watching me, but at some point she turns away to refill her glass. No doubt she’s already read it, but still I wait until she’s not paying attention to fold Y’shennria’s letter over the fragments of her wanted poster I keep in my chest pocket.
I pick up the paper-wrapped package. It’s long and thin, and I open it quickly. My eagerness withers the moment I see what’s nestled in the wrapping.
A blade. The blade of a sword without a hilt. And not just any blade. I almost don’t recognize it because of the lack of rust until I see the blood gutter down the center leading to a distinctive sheaf of ivy carved into the bottom of it.
My father’s blade. A perfect replica, new and shining.
But who would—? Only a few people know my sword broke at all. Fewer know what it looks like up close. Malachite. Did he—?
Varia makes a disgruntled noise over my shoulder as she peers at the blade. “Fool.”
I look back at her. “Who?”
She downs more of her fresh yolshil, sighing tiredly. “Pendronic silvered steel. The same stuff the d’Malvane ceremonial swords are made of.”
d’Malvane. Does that mean…Lucien did this? He’d seen Father’s sword more than once, but I had no idea he’d paid that much attention to it. I pick up the blade, matching it hesitantly to Father’s rusted hilt. To see the sword whole again, to feel its exact weight in my hands—I run my thumbs over the hilt, the blade. It’s so familiar, comforting.
In this city where I am the enemy, the air suddenly doesn’t feel as cold anymore.
I tuck the blade and hilt into the box and turn to Varia.
“Tomorrow morning I’m teaching the valkerax again, right?”
She nods, tightening the belt of her grand feathered robe. “Obviously.”
I watch her beautiful face. I know she knows I went to see Gavik today. I might as well come clean.
“Do you know?” I ask. “About the ‘Hymn of the Forest’?”
Varia smiles wanly at the glass of jade-colored yolshil. “How do you think I found Gavik’s pet valkerax in the pipe below the East River Tower? I scoured every inch of this city before I faked my death, looking for ways out. Of course I know about the temple’s library and their little hymn.”
“He told me,” I press on. “About the Bone Tree and the Glass Tree.”
There’s a beat, and for a moment I swear the only noise is the sound of the three moons setting over the garden hedges outside her windows.
Finally, Varia looks to me, her smile gone, her eyes tired. “
Don’t bother with the past, Zera. The future is where you’ll find your freedom.”
With that, she stands, drains her glass, and disappears into her bedroom.
21
Goldblood
The morning sun isn’t forgiving, slatting through the high windows as I walk the palace halls to my carriage. Neither is the crowd gathered on the grand front steps.
With seeing Evlorasin on my mind, I have little care for the nobles and servants knotted around a marble step until I see a woman collapse, her great skirts billowing as she lets out a strangled cry into her handkerchief. Her friends gather around her, whispering comfort and helping her to her feet.
With her absence, I can see into the center of the crowd. There, standing in blackened, half-scorched clothes, stands a young boy. He trembles from head to toe, something clutched in his hand. The crowd offers him a blanket to cover his ruined clothes, water to quench his unmoving tongue and ease his sweat-stained exhaustion. The ruined black feather in his hat marks him as the stableboy of a noble family. The crowd’s whispers resound.
“It’s all right, young one. You’re safe now.”
“Did he really run all the way back from Hardetting? That’s nearly seventeen miles!”
“Someone get the guards!”
I knit my brows and look more closely at the boy—his eyes are so tired, they look deadened, filled with lead, as if he can’t hear the words or see the reality around him. The only time he makes a move of his own accord is when someone tries to touch him; he flinches back instantly, eyes flashing with pure terror.
A guard suddenly calls for room and pushes through the crowd, armor glimmering in the sun. The guard kneels, his voice low as he speaks to the boy, who simply stares at him with those dead eyes. After a long moment, the boy is persuaded to open his tightly closed fist. From his fingers cascades a golden symbol.
A gold-plated eye of Kavar.
My lungs collapse. The whispers are instant.
“Isn’t that one of those decorations on the Tarroux carriage?”
“Why has he brought it here? Did something happen?”
