by Sara Wolf
“One of them!” Varia snarls in her unvoice. “You’re one of them. You want to hurt us again! Split us again!”
“No,” I try. “No, I promise, I don’t—”
“EMPTY!” the Bone Tree screams, bubbles streaming out of her mouth and her working black eye darting madly around in its socket, wildly, like a berserk animal in a panic, as if it’s trying to escape its lid, driven to the final edge by fear. “EMPTY! PROMISES!”
The force of her scream feels like it’s tearing me apart, tearing my skin off my body as the valkerax ascend rapidly, hurtling up through the water, the pressure becoming less but the burning becoming more, and the explosion of water as they surface, and right before us is an island.
An island of volcanic black rock.
I jolt awake so hard, my brain feels like it ricochets in my skull, my gasp so loud it sounds more like tearing cloth than breathing.
“Zera!” Lucien’s voice faintly rings through my panic, close. “What’s wrong?”
I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on him. Six eyes. I freeze. Varia made me transform. Not just in the dream. But in reality, too.
I’m not in control.
And she’s here.
“We have to go!” I shriek. “Now!”
“Whoa, whoa,” Malachite hefts off the wall. “Go where? What’s going on?”
Fione moves like a cat, collapsing at my side with a hurried hiss. “Did you dream with her again?”
I nod, hair sticking to my cold-sweat forehead. “She’s here. Hundreds of them. We have to go. You have to—you have to tie me up. Knock me out. Something. Hurry!”
Yorl stands, hurrying over to me. “Is it Varia?”
I nod. “I can see her in my dreams. Through the Bone Tree. Look at my eyes—she did this. Not me. Her. She can…I can feel her. Inside me.”
“Shit,” Malachite hisses, lightly punching the wall next to him. “Shit, shit, shit! I told you!”
“Now’s not the time, Mal,” Lucien says, voice eerily calm.
“He’s right.” Fione looks at Yorl. “We need a sedative for her.”
“It’s not gonna be strong…enough,” I manage. “She’s… Together she and the Tree are so strong.” My eyes flicker to Lucien. “You have to command me.”
His onyx gaze hardens in an instant. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Luc.” I wince as a deep pain clenches around my unheart. “She’s trying to. You have to combat it, or—”
“I promised you.” His face burns golden, every determined ridge hot as the sun. “I made a promise. I may have your heart, but I’ll never have your free will, Zera. That’s yours, and yours alone.”
“Well, she’ll kill us, then!” Malachite snarls. But Lucien doesn’t budge an inch. He means it, down to the last syllable. Even if it means I hurt him, he won’t command me. And in some sick, twisted way, I feel tears of happiness prick at my eyes.
He won’t strip me of my freedom like the others.
He’s not like them.
you’re not one of us, the hunger sneers at me. you never were. a traitor to the very end.
Fione is a clear voice of reason through the haze. “Either way, we need to tell the polymaths the valkerax are—”
From outside the shuttered window, the cold call of a bell starts to reverberate. Just one, and then two, and then ten, and then the island erupts with frantic warning rings and frenzied shouts. Malachite throws the window open, peering out and then back in, his face even more paper-white and grim.
“Too late.”
My throat feels like it’s in my mouth, Lucien’s hand squeezing mine barely legible through my mounting panic. I thought I had it under control. I thought I was free of her, of everyone, free to make my own choices, but now she’s reaching me—
“Zera, look at me,” Lucien says, gently capturing my face with his palms. “It’ll be all right. I can put you under.”
“But—” I look out the window. “You need me. You need me to fight. You need me to help you escape—ah!”
A lance of white-hot agony rips through my chest, up to my teeth. All my Heartless teeth sprout in an instant, longer than I’ve ever felt them, and far sharper. So deadly sharp, my lips bleeding as I clench them shut, refusing to bite, refusing to give myself the slightest opportunity. It’s not just human teeth—I can feel rows of teeth behind those teeth, spiraling all the way down and into my throat.
Like valkerax.
She’s changing me. Calling out to the blood promise in me. She’s forcing me to obey, like every other valkerax must obey her, obey the Bone Tree.
you betrayed them, and now you betray us.
“A sedative it is, then,” Yorl says after a single glance at my mouth. He whirls to a bag on the wall, rummaging in it before coming up with a vial of blue liquid. “This is enough to keep you under for a quarter-half. He doesn’t have to command you, but if he can slide a magic suggestion that you sleep—” The celeon looks up at Lucien, and they nod at each other. “There’s a good chance not even the Bone Tree would be able to wake you.”
I let out a strangled cry-laugh through my gritted teeth. It’s a sweet attempt at putting my fears to rest, and I want to trust it. I want to trust him, and Lucien, but I’ve felt the Bone Tree. It’s doing unimaginable things to me—things it’s not supposed to be able to.
“Sleep? It’s feeding off Varia,” I pant. “Getting stronger. Don’t—don’t put me to sleep. She’ll see me again, control me. The dreams…dreams are how they talk—”
“How who talks?” Malachite frowns.
“If we put you under strongly enough, you won’t dream,” Fione assures me.
“But—”
“Hush,” Lucien murmurs into my hair, lips pressed to my head in a kiss. “You’ve done your part. Rest now.”
Yorl holds the vial to my chapped lips, and I can’t think. My teeth are so many, my claws growing strange and white and long. I have to down it. It’s this or rampage as a valkerax, with the valkerax. It’s this or hurt the people in this room, maybe.
And I promised I’d never do that again.
I promised I’d never lose control and hurt someone again.
you were meant to hurt, the hunger laughs gleefully. you were born to hurt others.
The fourteen graves, bells and ribbon swaying in the mountaintop breeze—
I gulp greedily and a wave of magic slides through me, the warmth of the sedative harmonizing with it to weave a deep, dark, utterly inescapable slumber. The panic still buzzes to the last—they need me. They need me to fight with them. They’re mortal. I’m not. I’m going to be nothing but dead weight, unable to help like I want to, like I have to. I’m the only one who can survive if I die. I’m the only one who can protect them, protect him, Lucien—
“Lucien,” I whisper. His blurry smile beams down at me, golden and soft, his murmur slowed and drawn-out by the looming sleep.
“Let us protect you, this time.”
The sedative is strong—of course it’s strong. It’s Yorl’s. The magic, too, is strong.
Of course it is; it’s Lucien’s.
Their attempts to put me under are so strong. But the Bone Tree is strong, too. Varia is weaker, but the Tree has only grown. It flutters my eyes open in momentary bursts, sound and light and sensation coming through. Someone carrying me in their arms—the smell of honey. Lucien. The swhick sounds of Fione’s crossbow cane firing heavy bolts, Malachite’s ferocious battle cries, and the air-shredding bellows of valkerax in return. The sound of stone crumbling, the feel of wet droplets on my face, half of them salted sweat and the other half metallic blood.
There’s a terrifying moment when my six eyes open fully and I see a copper giant—a matronic—swinging massive fists into the scaled serpent body of a valkerax. A silver robe is perched inside each matronic, a polymath sitting i
nside it and maneuvering it like a suit of armor a dozen times their size. That’s why, my human brain chimes. That’s why the Black Archives made them—not to bring them up to bookshelves, but to fight.
The valkerax try to bite down on the copper titans, to rip and tear like they would flesh, but the matronic is metal, harder, and my own new teeth chatter with the urge to bite, to help, to destroy.
DESTROY.
DESTROY IT ALL.
Above me, I hear Lucien shout something, but my mind’s battle between sleep and wakefulness is too chaotic. I can’t understand. I can’t understand any of it—why me? Why me, of all people? Why am I the valkerax-Heartless?
Why, Trees? Why give your lonely dream to me?
Why am I the wolf at the end of the world, and not someone else?
someone braver, someone better, the hunger slithers. Lucien, Fione, Malachite—any of them would’ve been better.
why are they friends with you?
Why are they friends with me?
Why am I still asking this when I know the answer?
I have to trust them. They’re friends with me because I’m worth it. Because, despite all the flaming horseshit I’ve put them through, I’m worth it to them. I’m worth it, period.
My friends chose me because they believe in me.
The Trees, maybe, chose me because they believe in me.
I can’t give in. Even as the Bone Tree beckons me to battle, keens for me to pick up my claws and tear the one holding me apart, to tear this whole world apart, I fight it.
DESTROY. DESTROY. DESTROY.
Fight it. Fight with everything in you. Fight by the light of the moon, of the sun, whatever faint light you can find.
I battle the urge to destroy with every memory I’ve gathered—Fione’s apple-cheeked smile, her gentle hands. Malachite’s smirk, ruffling my hair. Lucien kissing me, the hollow of my throat, the way he breathes when he holds me—all the memories stand like soldiers, like the soldiers once gathered outside Vetris’s walls, like the eclipseguard gathered in Windonhigh, like the valkerax gathered in the Dark Below obeying eternally the Bone Tree, like Crav and Peligli and I in Nightsinger’s forest, waiting to fight for her. To die for her. Over and over again.
Love. Not-Love.
TOGETHER, the Bone Tree’s demands go soft, for just one moment. together.
It wants to be together. Of course it does. Everybody wants to be together with the one they love. Fione wants to be with Varia. I want to be with Lucien, with all my friends. Malachite wants to be with us. Crav and Peligli want to be with me.
The Bone Tree wants to be with the Glass Tree, again.
Because it’s lonely out there, isn’t it? It’s a lonely world if you aren’t together. And the Trees have been lonely for a thousand years.
I’m sorry, I think. I’m so sorry you’re alone.
And then it lets me go.
For just one second, the magic and the sedative come roaring back against the Bone Tree’s suddenly weaker grip, and the darkness of sleep consumes me in one fell swallow.
I see it all.
In that one moment of the Bone Tree’s vulnerability, I see it all, like looking into a deep, clear, still pond. I see the Bone Tree, its roots tangling back into the roots of a bigger tree, so much bigger and standing alone. I see the Glass Tree in the distance, roots tangling into the same tree, the same massive tree, and the roots of that tree spiral outward, like millions of hairs connected to each and every one of us on Arathess—every human, every witch, every celeon, every beneather, every frog, every bird, every leaf, every berry. Everything. Everyone.
Not alone.
Muro stands under the great tree, smiling.
The great tree, connecting us all. Pulling us back in when it’s our time, and growing us back out, over and over again.
The Tree of Souls.
No one is ever really gone.
Muro reaches his paw out, six eyes smiling brighter. And above him, the Tree of Souls with two gaping wounds in its trunk, bleeding black. And like a conversation, like an embrace, I know it’s the source of everything. The destruction. The anger. The hunger. Yearning, wounded, alone. He was right. Muro was right. He’s there, waiting for me, and he’s right. I’ve felt both Trees’ pain. They’re alone. All alone, and hurting.
I know what I have to do. Because I know what it’s like to be alone.
I understand now.
I have to put the Trees back together.
24
WATER
RUNNING RED
Without me awake to perceive it, time moves rambunctiously. The sound of the waves reaches me first, grinding my worries smooth with that great gentle symphony. When my eyes flutter open again, I’m on a beach, the golden glow of a bonfire lighting the velvet-blue sands. And around me sit three figures, their backs to me as they look out at the sea moonlit by the half-full Red Twins.
I take a moment before I say anything to let them know I’m here. To just admire them, admire the fact they’re here for me when I wake up. That they’re still here at all, alive and well enough to sit on a beach even after a valkerax attack.
Brave Malachite, armor stained slightly red—bloodied and then tried to wash it off. He’ll be fine, won’t he? He’ll protect Lucien, no matter what. No matter how old they get or how much they argue—he’ll always be there for the prince. And I’ll never be able to thank him enough for it.
Sweet Fione—wrapped in a woven blanket and trembling, her mousy curls still frazzled with the chaos of battle. She’s stronger than even Lucien, than anyone I know. She’ll understand better than anyone that I did what I had to. She understands love. And she, too, understands what it’s like to be alone. She’ll do great things for Cavanos—whatever grand, fair Cavanos Lucien decides to build.
Serious Lucien. Lucien, in all his midnight glory, black hair and black eyes piercing out into the night. It hurts to think about him alone. But he won’t be. He’ll have Malachite and Fione, and someday, a girl who reminds him of me. A girl who can pierce that dour, sad look on his face, who sweetens the bitterness of his life. He’ll never be alone. He’ll have me, no matter where I am or what happens to me. I’ll be with him, always. I know that now. The Tree of Souls—that strange thing that’s kept calling to me, giving me dreams—it connects us all. And even if it didn’t, by magic or by my own sheer will—I’ll be with him until the very end.
Because I love him.
With a great wrench, I pull myself together. When Lucien touches me, he’ll read my thoughts. I can’t think about anything. And certainly not about what I have to do, what I saw in that locus of perfect understanding. He’ll try to stop me if he knows. They all will. This is my choice.
So how do I keep it mine?
A wolf to eat the world, Evlorasin’s words drip in.
That’s it. If I think about it like a poem, like Evlorasin and all valkerax do—it will sound like nonsense, and not a plan going against his concern for me. It’s not to put the Trees back together. It’s to eat the world. I am the wolf, and I eat the world. There. Nonsensical. Perfect. A perfect mantra.
Armed with it, I clear my throat. “Ahem. Why so pensive, children?”
All three black silhouettes on the sand round instantly, the bonfire melting gold across their tense, worried faces.
“You’re back!” Fione chimes, smile blooming in relief.
“And just two eyes,” Malachite adds with a smirk.
“Thank the gods,” I exhale. “Do I look like the sort of girl who has the time to put makeup on all six of them every morning?”
“Absolutely not,” Lucien agrees, swooping in to help me sit up with one arm around my shoulders. He anticipates the question in my half-open mouth. “We lost a dozen polymaths.”
I quirk a brow. “A dozen? I was expecting far more.”
&
nbsp; “The matronics are machines capable of terrifying power,” Fione says, looking me over for wounds with a polymath’s sharp eye. “But even they were being overwhelmed by the sheer number of valkerax. We would’ve lost the entire Archive if they hadn’t stopped.”
“‘Stopped’?” I blink. “What do you mean ‘stopped?’”
Malachite shrugs one shoulder. “Halfway through the battle, all the spiritsdamn valkerax just froze. Jaws open, tails thrashing, but no hostile movements. Varia was sitting pretty on a flying valkerax, circling the whole place, but Fione saw her freeze up, too.”
I glance at Fione, whose hand nervously moves to the brass seeing tube hanging from the chain around her neck.
“She was just…staring,” the archduchess murmurs. “Just staring at nothing, her jaw slack, like she was—”
“Seeing something. Hearing something we couldn’t,” Lucien finishes for her. “They all were. We seized the advantage, and by the time they came to again, we’d killed more than my sister could stand. She turned tail and left when she realized how depleted her forces were.”
If they froze…was it because of what I saw, too? What I felt? That moment of the Bone Tree’s softness…did that freeze them? For one second, did the bloodlust fade? But why? All I did was say sorry. All I did was apologize. Maybe the Trees have never heard a mortal apologize to them. For what we did. For the horrible way we split them a thousand years ago.
Maybe that was the first time the hunger—the song—has ever heard an apology.
I lean against Lucien’s strong arms, grateful for the support. My blurry eyes catch on the ocean water—red. Not deep blue. The waves lap pink foam on the shore. I follow the red water with my eyes far down the beach, to another stretch of sand where hundreds of polymaths in silver robes are gathered around a hulking mass of white serpent flesh. The mountain of carnage bleeds rivers down the beach, the sand and sea stained red in a ring around what seems to be the entire island. The mangrove trees rejoice, their long roots in the shallow water soaking up the blood. So many valkerax, dead. My stomach churns.
“What a waste. They were too easy,” Malachite scoffs. “Not even a challenge. Almost made me sick, killing ’em when they couldn’t fight back like that.”
