Bring Me Their Hearts(109)

Lucien. They’re going to kill Lucien! As my vision threatens to go dark once and for all I force my eyes open. No—not like this.

Weak, the hunger chortles, tiredly—as if it, too, is dying. You were weak, and this is what you get. He dies because of you. You die because of him. How romantic.

I can feel it; through even the darkness of death, I can feel the hunger still in me. It’s stronger than anything that’s left inside—any emotion, any energy. It’s all I have. It’s all I am, here, at death’s door.

I’ve died a dozen times, and yet getting up now is the most pain I’ve ever felt. Blankets of needles beneath my skin, acid in my veins instead of blood—I can barely blink without spasms running through me. My knees buckle, my very fingernails throb in agony. My vision is just a blur of colors—of movements. A ring of silver, a figure of white, and a figure of raven’s-wing black.

But there, on the wind, I smell it.

Human, the hunger rasps. Fear!

For the second time in my life, I give in to the hunger.

The world is darkness, but all of a sudden I can taste heat, see colors—my limbs give aching creaks, elongating until I’m much taller, much thinner. I feel my teeth extending beyond my lips, claws breaking through my fingertips. No thoughts—only desperation. Desperation to get at the source of the delicious heat surrounding me; I move like wind, like water, in leaps and bounds, only two steps needed to catch up with the screaming, shining humans in armor. They’re so difficult to open, but they have soft spots between their armor—soft spots that bleed the sweetest honey. They stab at me, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurts anymore.

There’s screaming, shouting, but it dies away as the silver humans dwindle to nothing more than piles of bone and flesh. The bleached yew tree is red now. Only one other thing is unsullied white —Gavik, so very afraid. He’s pissed himself, the smell acrid. I reach for him, stabbing deep with my claws into his chest and ripping him from navel to throat. Like the bandits did to me. What bandits? I can’t remember anymore—there’s only the man’s agonized cries as I devour him, some other part of me delighting in his death as more than just a way to satisfy this hunger. I throw his body away when I’m done, like a doll’s carcass.

There’s one last blazing heat source behind me, and I whirl around, claws at the ready. He’s dark, eyes and hair like midnight, his face a hawk’s face, his sword stance a hawk’s stance.

Not him.

HIM, the hunger keens a low, desperate cry. I reach for him with my claws, but the sharp pain in my head staggers me. Not him. Nothimnothim!

I’m so empty inside. I can feel it, aching there in my chest. The wound remains, but the void where my heart should be bleeds more. It aches so badly—everything aches. I become small again, my claws retracting, my teeth growing inward. The hunger fights it, rakes itself across the coals of my mind in a last, desperate attempt to regain control.

You are in the silence. You are of the silence. Reginall’s words. Place your hand over your unheart. And you’ll find it there.

Find what there? I put my hand over my unheart, listening. Waiting for the illusion within a lie. Nothing will beat inside my chest. Nothing has, not for three whole years.

Not him. Not him. Not Lucien.

There! A heartbeat! It thuds against my rib cage, so strong I can’t deny it even as an illusion. How? How is this possible? Lucien, I think. The name shines, a light in the bloodstained darkness. Lucien. My unheart—no, my heart thumps again. And again. Every time I think of his name, of what that name means to me, it beats. Lucien, who hates me now. Lucien, who kissed me. Lucien, who stands there with nothing but fear in his eyes for me.

Lucien, who makes my heart beat again.

The pain floods back in, deafening everything around me, but it’s completely silent in my head. The hunger doesn’t so much as stir inside me. My body feels lighter than it ever has, lighter than I can remember since I was first turned. I’m air, silk, and yet the cold void of my unheart is heavier than ever. There’s a weight there—comforting and warm.

Two drips of something cascading down my face, something that splats red onto the leaves. Tears of blood. I’m weeping—weeping like Reginall described. Weeping, because in this moment, I’m free.

Around me is a red landscape, lumpy and scattered with metal, and in the midst of it all stands Lucien, his face blood-flecked and utterly hollow. I stop weeping when I realize bodies surround me. The light feeling fades, replaced only by horror. Human bodies, ripped to pieces. Lawguards—how many of them? I can’t tell—every part of them is scattered, serrated, Archduke Gavik’s white hair the only thing standing out, soaking up his own blood slowly.

“No—” I choke. “No, no, no! Not again!” I whirl to Lucien, pleading. “Please, Lucien—”

I’m met with Varia’s blade pointed right at me, square and firm, though trembling ever so slightly as Lucien’s hand quavers. His dark eyes gleam empty, with something cold and all-consuming in the very pits of them.

Utter fear.

“Stay away from me,” he says softly, with a deadly edge to it that strikes at my very core. I can see it in his eyes—he no longer faces down the girl he embraced mere hours ago.

He faces down a monster.

“Please—”

“If you move one more step…” Lucien grits his teeth. “I’ll cut you down where you stand.”