Bring Me Their Hearts(16)
“I hope you realize how much is at stake,” Y’shennria insists. “If you fail, war is inevitable. If you get caught and die, I have no doubt the humans will find some way to twist your infiltration into an aggressive gesture on the witches’ behalf, and declare war.”
“I think war will be the least of my concerns if I’m dead.”
“Typical Heartless, thinking of yourself.” She scoffs. “If you fail, every man, woman, and child in Cavanos will be plunged into—”
“I get it,” I interrupt her. “I get that people will die, all right? I know this is important. The only reason I joke about it at least once a minute is because if I don’t, I might start puking.”
She says nothing to that, but the silence doesn’t last. It’s a half-day’s ride to Vetris from Nightsinger’s forest, and in that time she has me memorize the Secondblood and Firstblood families (Himentell, d’Malvane, Y’shennria, d’Goliev, Steelrun, Priseless), how to greet them as a peer (a half bow, not too deep, with only one hand behind my back instead of two). She gives me stock phrases to use when I’m unsure of what to say—things that are harmless and polite. She asks how my digestion works, though she clearly hates every word of my explanation: Alcohol and water are digestible, though anything other than that has to come out. When Heartless consume something that isn’t raw flesh, it’s digested instantly and painfully by the magic inside us, and our bodies purge the contamination the only way they know how—with tears of blood. The first time it happened to me was very soon after I was turned; so sick of deer, I tried eating one of Nightsinger’s wheat cakes. The agony was blinding, but the tears—my fingers reaching up to touch them and coming away bloody—were far worse.
Y’shennria assures me most of my “meals” will be for show, but I’ll have to eat publicly (and discreetly visit the restroom when it becomes too much to bear) at the banquet the king puts on for select nobles. Banquets are a way of maintaining loyalty, Y’shennria explains. Feed them and they’ll have little time to plot rebellion, and even less inclination to do so when their bellies are full of cream and honey. It makes a twisted sort of sense. Even one’s clothes, Y’shennria explains, are picked for hidden reasons—a gaudy belt or low bodice, for example, take the eye away from the face. The more distracted people are by what you wear, the less they notice what you do or say. The more impressed they are by your clothes, the less they question you. She points out that I never once asked if she was Lady Y’shennria—I discerned it unconsciously from the way she’s dressed. And she’s right. Until that moment, I never realized how much power clothing had, and it’s terrifying.
Vetris sounds completely different from the relative simplicity of my life in the woods. I ate, I talked, I practiced the sword. In Vetris I’ll do all that, but in silks, and with a dozen variations for each action depending on who’s around and how high their rank is. I absorb as much information as I can, repeating Y’shennria’s every word after she says it. It’s impossible. It’s impossible to learn all of this in four days, before the Spring Welcoming. But I’ll do it, and I’ll do it perfectly.
Because if I don’t, my freedom slips from me like sand through my fingers.
I’m so bent on learning I don’t notice the sun rising until it shafts directly into my face through the carriage window. I flinch, adjusting to the gorgeous melon-greens and blush-pinks of the sky. The sun is a golden disc peeking over the horizon, incandescent in its shy beauty.
“—as for the prince, our goal is clear. The girls of the Spring Welcoming are called Spring Brides, and they…” Y’shennria’s voice grows cross. “Are you listening?”
“S-Sorry.” I tear my eyes away. “I’ve— This is the first time I’ve seen the sunrise since I was turned.” The sun rises in the south, and that direction was always impossible to see through the dense trees of Nightsinger’s forest. Y’shennria doesn’t demand I ignore it like I expect her to.
“How long ago was that?” she asks.
“Three years.” The sunrays blossoming through the clouds hypnotize me again, my voice hoarse. “How did I ever forget how beautiful it is?”
There’s a long silence. Finally, she asks, “How old would you be this year, if you were human?”
“Nineteen.”
“You were sixteen, then, when it happened?”
Memory clouds my awe of the sunrise. I stare at the carriage floor, working my fingers in a knot of fabric on the seat. I haven’t told anyone what happened. It’s been a dark shadow of a secret, threaded between only Nightsinger and me. But Y’shennria offered her own painful past. The least I can do is be honest in return.
“It was bandits,” I say slowly. “My mother and father were traders. We were poor, but happy. We traveled all over—Cavanos, Avel, even the desolate peaks of Helkyris. Or at least, I think we did. Becoming Heartless takes away your human memories—”
“And they reside in your heart,” she finishes for me. I don’t ask how she knows that. I just wade on through the cold, bitter waters of my past.
“There was a boy on the road. He was crying out in pain, begging for help. Father tried to go around. He was suspicious, but I made him stop. The bandits were hiding in the woods nearby.”