by Sara Wolf
Malachite meets my gaze over their shoulders, something like regret in his face. Fione whirls on her heel, holding the light higher as she picks her way through the valkerax’s skeleton and makes it to the other side of the pipe.
Malachite calls after her. “Wait! What about those booby traps?”
His voice peters out as he runs after her, leaving only Lucien and me behind.
ThIs iS iT, the hunger sneers. It’S fInaLLy tIme.
I can’t do it. The celeon guards…
YoU caN cUT tHeM doWn, the hunger insists. ThEy aRe onLy flEsh. He wiLL be yOurs. EvErythinG wiLL be yOurs—
“Varia told me once,” Lucien murmurs, shaking me out of my head, “that if she ever met a valkerax, she’d like to ask it some questions.” His midnight eyes rest on the last runes. “Killed in an act of mercy, hmm? Perhaps that was the price it asked for its knowledge.”
My hand tightens around my blade, and the prince laughs all of a sudden, a crippling sadness in his voice. I can’t see his face in the darkness, but I can hear every inch of agony, every day of waiting, regretting, hating.
“Even when she’s gone, I keep finding fragments of her.”
My hand goes lax, paralyzed by the pain in his words. His body heat is so close, and I tentatively reach a hand out to his shoulder. He’s trembling.
“Every fragment, every shadow of hers makes me hope again,” he mutters. “And that’s the worst part. Not that she’s dead. But that she won’t stay dead.”
He leans in to me only slightly. I put my other arm around him, and like a dam breaking, that one motion collapses him, his full weight pressed against me, his arms around my waist, and his cheek resting against mine. The hunger salivates and keens in equal parts—my fingers itching, my teeth growing. But his warmth against me, the way my locket shudders with every breath we share—I do the only thing I can; I breathe. I remember.
You are in the silence, Reginall’s voice. You are of the silence.
Slowly, achingly slowly, like a thorn being pulled from a wound, the hunger recedes. Not all the way, not even significantly, but enough that my head feels a little clearer, a little lighter, as I dare to stroke one hand comfortingly over Lucien’s raven hair.
It’s sick, and it’s wrong, but for one moment in this strange pipe, in this strange city, embracing this not-so-strange boy, this monster feels happiness.
Lucien and I eventually part, though he snakes his hand in mine with a crooked smile that nearly stops my heart locket cold. He leads me down the pipe wordlessly after Fione and Malachite, and I follow, relishing the feel of his strong fingers intertwined with mine, the way he pauses to make sure the bones don’t trip me. Care. Consideration. They etch his black eyes like streaks of fire, muted enough that I don’t feel the full burn, but still very warm.
Uncomfortably warm.
I’m going to kill him, after all, and resurrect him as a thrall of a witch. A prisoner of war.
With gargantuan effort, I pull my hand from his, and he stops. “Is something wrong, Zera?”
Zera. Just Zera. It sounds like honey to my ears. “I’m worried,” I force out. “If Lady Himintell sees us breaking decorum like this—”
“To the afterlife with decorum,” Lucien asserts, offering me his hand again. I hesitate too long, and he exhales gently. “Perhaps you’re right. You’re less of a target for the court if this remains secret.”
To the very end, caring about my well-being. Yet it doesn’t make me feel good in the slightest—it twists my unheart around in my chest, stabs molten regret through my gut.
Before I can say anything, a muffled explosion rocks the pipe, coming from the end of it. Lucien and I dash ahead, where a doorway tinted with Fione’s white light lies open, her frantic words echoing out.
“—you all right? Say something, Sir Malachite!”
There, sprawled on the floor between broken bookshelves and a flurry of torn paper fragments lies Malachite, motionless, his long leg twisted beneath his body. Lucien collapses at his side, shaking him by the shoulders.
“Malachite!” The prince rounds on Fione. “What happened to him?”
“I-I don’t know! I found the safe behind the bookshelf, and I asked him to move it for me, and then—oh gods.” She wrings her hands over each other. “I didn’t check it for a trap! I was so angry I— Sir Malachite, please; wake up!”
Malachite doesn’t stir, eyelids unmoving. I swallow the hard, toxic lump in my throat. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this, ever. I wasn’t supposed to care about anyone—not the prince, not his bodyguard. No one. This was all supposed to be faked. And yet here I am, my stomach roiling with very real dread.
Lucien slaps Malachite’s face, hard. “Wake up, godsdamn you!”
Nothing. Lucien snarls, desperation edging his voice.
“You can’t leave me here alone. You promised you’d be by my side until I took the throne. You promised!”
I kneel at Malachite’s body, listening for a heartbeat in his chest. It’s there, but very faint, his breathing shallow and ragged. I’ve died enough times to know a ragged breath is the worst sign—the sign your body is about to give out beneath you.
“We have to get him help.” I look up. “Fione, is there an exit?”
She nods and points to the ceiling, where an iron trapdoor hangs. If we can get him out of here, just far away enough from the tower, finding a royal polymath to tend to him…
“Get up!” Lucien shouts. I put a hand on his arm, but he rips away, slamming his own hands on Malachite’s chest. “I said get up!”
It happens in a blink—Malachite sits up instantly, pulling in air in a single massive gasp. The glow of his eyes flutters as his eyelashes do—he looks around at all of us blearily.
“What did I miss?” he manages. Lucien’s posture eases, Fione going still.
“I’m sorry, Sir Malachite!” she blurts. “It was my fault—I didn’t check the bookshelf for a trap before you—”
“Vachiayis!” Malachite snarls as he shifts, clutching at his leg. “What in the Dark Below happened to me?”
“You might be resistant to fire, but it turns out you’re not immune to explosions,” I joke softly. Malachite shoots me a pained smirk.
“Well that’s good to know.” He tries to stand, Lucien helping him up. “Sorry if I worried you, Luc. Sometimes a guy just has to take a dirt nap, you know?”
A torn laugh escapes Lucien’s mouth, and even Fione lets out a small, strangled giggle. Relief is a heady drug, and it calms the humans down quickly. Malachite insists he’s fine, and Fione points out the explosion was probably linked to an alert system, and that we need to move. With Lucien’s help, she carefully approaches the safe and begins to work on its puzzle-lock, leaving me to splint Malachite’s leg with shards of the broken bookshelf.
“You always carry around gauze?” Malachite asks as I procure the roll from my pouch.
“Only when I know the most idiotic Beneather is tagging along,” I quip. He snorts.
“In my defense, I was just trying to hurry things up. Hanging around those valkerax bones wasn’t doing Lucien any favors. Or Fione.”
“Memories are dangerous things,” I murmur.
“They keep you prisoner sometimes,” he agrees. “But just having them, being able to remember them, revisit them, live in them when life gets too rough—I think it’s worth it.”
We wOuLdn’T kNow. The hunger curls its lip. We’Ve leFt thOse wEaK hUmaN meMoRies behiNd.
I laugh, because I can do nothing else, and it’s then I realize most of my laughter here in Vetris has been laced with utter despair.
Fione finds what she’s looking for in the safe—a single aged parchment roll—and we all manage to pile out through the trapdoor just as the footsteps of the celeon guards echo down the pipe. I’m so glad to see triple moonlight again, smell the crisp night air. We shed our robes as we hike quickly away, eager to get out of the East River Tower’s long shadow. Malachite struggles, and Fione
and Lucien look exhausted, Fione leaning heavily on her cane. I’m perfectly fine, and I motion to a secluded bench, overgrown and hidden from the road by thick, red Avellish trees. Even Fione relents at the idea of rest, and we settle on the bench. “Just to catch our breath,” she insists.
There’s a peace before the storm, I’ve learned, and this is it. Fione speaks first.
“I read it; it’s detailed notes on Varia’s sword, in my uncle’s handwriting, dated a day before the court got the news she was killed. I was…I was right. This whole time, I was right.”
Lucien’s fists clench, and Fione presses on.
“I’m on a time limit now. He’ll notice it’s missing and start searching. I’ve got two days at most before he figures out it was me.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask. She smiles faintly at the parchment roll in her hand.
“Turn it in to the king. And then run. Hide somewhere my uncle can’t find me, until he’s behind bars and stripped of his power.”
“The day after tomorrow is the Hunt.” Lucien wipes sweat from his brow. “You can hide there, wait it out.”
Fione flashes him an exhausted smile. “I’d appreciate that.”
There’s an awkward silence, the first gentle sprays of the golden sunrise breaking over the horizon, over the four faces of a very strange group of young things.
“I’m sorry, Lucien,” Fione murmurs. “For yelling.”
Lucien stares at her, eyes roving up and down her tired frame. He puts his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and says, “It’s all right. I’m sorry for not believing you sooner about Gavik.”
“Consider me officially heart-warmed,” Malachite drawls. I nudge his not-broken leg with my own.
“Shut up.”
He chuckles, Lucien rolling his eyes and Fione shaking her head minutely. The sunrise begins bleeding the night sky dry with vermilion wounds. Lawguards move toward the East River Tower, first in drops, then in trickles, then a steady stream. Their voices carry through the trees, though they don’t see us.
“—Crimson Lady reported magic in this vicinity.”
“—you sure the eggheads got the readings right?”
“The polymaths aren’t idiots; of course the readings are right.”
“—a huge surge of magic belowground—”
The four of us share a look. Malachite mutters first.
“It wasn’t the runes. Those go inert when the valkerax dies.”
“And the explosion was a white mercury trap,” Fione clarifies. “Not magic.”
“Then what was it?” Lucien frowns. I bite back the urge to tell them Malachite was well and truly on the verge of death. A simple chest-thumping from Lucien wouldn’t have even been close enough to bring Malachite back. The way Malachite sat up so suddenly, so awake and cognizant again all at once, the way Lucien’s dark eyes seemed to get even darker in that second…
It was like magic.
As we go our separate ways—the influx of lawguards forcing us to be careful and leave one at a time—I watch Lucien’s back. The d’Malvanes are a witch family. Witches can be turned Heartless, but the books in Nightsinger’s hut always read like it was the worst thing you could do to a witch, short of killing them. A shameful punishment. A torturous punishment.
Lucien looks back once at me, his smile reaching his midnight eyes.
A pUniShmEnt wE mUst inFlicT.
16
The Hunt
When I make it back to the Y’shennria manor, she’s waiting for me on the front steps, drinking tea and reading. She puts her book down and stands with a ramrod-straight posture as I approach, her eyes sharper than any sword.
“You went,” she says, cutting into me with just those two words.
“I had to try.” I return her gaze unblinkingly. Readying myself for whatever consequences I’ve earned.
There’s a beat, a lingering moment. The sunbirds cry to one another, and the noble children from the manor over scream as they play in the yard. The swords in Y’shennria’s eyes slide back into their scabbards, and she reaches a hand out to me.
“I know,” she finally says, soft and even, and for a second I swear an I’m just glad you’re back lingers behind them. I take her warm hand slowly, hesitantly, but she never pulls away. We share a pot of tea together in the drawing room, wordlessly, the sort of comforting wordlessness that fills the gaps like goose down—gentle and easy.
We’ve decided, Y’shennria and I, to make peace with each other. Like a family might.
The Crown Prince, too, has decided.
Later that day, he sends me what Y’shennria calls “a traditional invitation to the Hunt”—a luxurious white fur cape. I finger the fox tail at the end of it, my mind whirlpooling.
Did he realize it, too, after that night in the parade, or during our duel? Or maybe it was our darkened embrace in the tunnel. Does his mind drown in memories of our moments together like mine does, still fresh and new and warm to the touch? I should be happy he’s called me to the Hunt, chosen me. It means he’ll pull me aside, privately, and ask me that question every Spring Bride has longed to hear. It means I’ll have the perfect moment to slice his chest open and rip his heart from his ribs.
The thought of taking his heart—it used to fill me with determination. But now? The idea of losing him to the witches, the idea of betraying him by making him into the thing I hate most makes me ill. Why is this so sudden? Why can’t I just be the girl I used to be—bent on earning my freedom back, regardless of the cost?
Why can’t I just be the monster?
BeCausE it hUrts, the hunger screams.
The day of the Hunt comes too soon. I stare at the fire-calendar as I wait for Fisher to drive the carriage to the front door of Y’shennria’s manor. This is the last day. A single day is all that’s left between Verdance Day and me. Between failure and me. I fidget with the white fox-fur cape.
“You have everything?” Y’shennria asks, and I could swear beneath her composed voice and flawless green silk dress, she’s nervous. “Your nightdress, your sword, your makeup—”
“I was thinking I’d ditch the lip tint and use blood, instead. You know, go for a bit of that ‘wild hunting’ look.”
“You’re a true jester,” she asserts.
“I prefer the term ‘fashion pioneer.’”
“Do you have the jar?” she presses.
I finger my shoulder bag for personal travel effects. Against the silk fabric I can feel the glass of Lucien’s heart jar, filled with sweets to avoid suspicion should any humans see it.
“Sword—check. Jar—check. Overwhelming fear of the unknown—check.” I brush my bangs out of my eyes and smile at Y’shennria. “Anything else I should bring?”
“A healthy dose of optimism,” she says. “We’re close. I have every faith in you.”
“Wrong move,” I singsong. “The last person to have faith in me was my mother, and look what happened to her.”
Y’shennria’s gaze wanders out a window overlooking the black rosebushes, now in full bloom with a storm of fragrant, midnight petals. “My daughter’s name was Alyserat.”
Her daughter—the one she lost. I’d never once heard her talk about her before.
“It’s Old Vetrisian,” Y’shennria continues. “They liked to name their children after sayings—pretty warnings. Hers was one that always haunted me: ‘Fear the past, not the future.’ In my youth, my naiveté, I used to think I understood it. If you feared the past, you were incapable of moving toward a future.”
She looks at me, not through me or around me as she used to, but right at me, the full force of her hazel eyes knocking the breath from me.
“If you fear the past, it becomes your future,” Y’shennria says finally. “You’re locked in the past, eternally, by your fear. There’s no way to escape it. I think some part of me knew that—that’s why I hired Reginall. That’s why I agreed to shelter and train you. Even if it caused me pain.”
I flinch. “I’m sorry, Y’shennria—”
DoN’t apoLogizE to tHe pReY, the hunger cries.
“No. There’s nothing to be sorry for. Because it was you, I learned to feel no fear.”
I go still, and her graceful lips curl into a smile.
“Because it was the girl I knew, the girl I trained, the girl I’d watched blossom from an ungainly thing into a fine young woman—because it was you, Zera, I feel no fear at all.”
Her smile shines with pride, and my unheart wrenches around violently in my chest. To think she could be proud of me after all the doubts I’ve had, all the mistakes. In this moment she feels like the mother I can’t remember having. Someone who cares.
Y’shennria and I have gone over what she’ll do after I take the prince’s heart on the Hunt. We’ve gone over every detail of how she’ll escape out to the woods, where the witches have promised her sanctuary. Reginall, Maeve, Fisher, her stableboy Perriot—all of them are coming with her. The instant I lash out at Lucien, they will be traitors to their people.
And I will be a traitor to the prince. To Fione and Malachite. A liar and a monster besides. A monster who made yet another monster, all for her own freedom.
“The carriage is here, Lady Y’shennria!” Reginall calls. I tamp the fear threatening to rampage up through my throat and smile at Y’shennria.
“It’s time.”
She nods and helps me into the carriage. “Be careful, Zera. There isn’t much I can do for you beyond the city limits.”
“Relax, Auntie.” I make one last effort to tease her. “You’ve done enough for me. It’s my turn to repay the favor.”
With one last order from her to Fisher to get me there safely, the horses trot off. She waves good-bye to me from the stairs until she’s nothing but a brilliantly green smudge on the horizon. Watching her shrink, watching the manor grow small, I start to miss her, miss the home she risked so much to give me.
My forearm wound has finally scabbed over for good—though it still aches. The bruise from escaping the bathroom via the tree throbs on my ribs. It’s a small comfort, but I realize this is what humans feel—constant pain from a healing injury. This is me, lingering in the cool shade of being human again after so many years of unrelenting sun.
