Bring Me Their Hearts(29)

“Why is this so difficult for you?” she barks. “It’s a simple matter of walking correctly.”

Rip her throat out, the hunger lashes against my thoughts. I can feel all my teeth growing sharp and jagged into my lips—exhaustion isn’t a good look on me. I need to eat. Y’shennria’s throat looks too appetizing.

“Believe it or not,” I pant, “monsters get tired, too.”

Y’shennria picks up the crystal orb from the carpet. She turns to a shelf, where seven orbs are lined up, the first of plain glass, the second of stone, the third of copper and embedded with little needleheads. One orb for each level of posture training for noble children, she’d told me. She reaches for the orb on the very end—black iron, razor-sharp ridges adorning its surface.

She places the orb next to me.

“No—no more. I need to eat,” I manage through my gritted teeth. “Now.”

“And I will feed you,” she agrees. “After you walk without dropping this orb.”

The razor edges of the orb glint maliciously back at me.

“I’m fairly certain I told you in the carriage,” I pant. “That I become…unmanageable if I’m not fed.”

Fear glances briefly behind her eyes, but she straightens her spine. “And I told you—there will be times you are forced to go without for a little longer. You must endure.”

And you must die, the hunger retorts at her, flaring like a tongue of flame against oil-soaked wood. I fight the sudden urge to lunge at her. My eyes blur—her skin all I can see, the heat beneath it a siren song to my gnawing insides. The hunger can smell her fear, her flesh.

“You are a Heartless second, Zera,” Y’shennria says. I hear her voice as if she’s far away, underwater. “You are a lady first. Put those fangs away.”

“I…can’t…”

“You can,” she asserts. “Prove to me you are more than your hunger. Prove to me an ounce of human still remains in your bones.”

I’ve clutched at my humanity—kept what little was left of it safe and dry beneath my skirts, behind my jokes. I kept hope, but there’s a deep, yawning pit in me where the hunger resides. And it laughs at the thought of hope.

You are nothing, it whispers. Nothing but an animal consumed by hunger. You can never escape what you’ve done.

Father’s sword digs into my side. I can barely remember his face, Mother’s face. I can’t recall their voices anymore. What’s the point of becoming human again, if I have nothing left in the world but scant memories?

Wherever they are in the afterlife, they must hate you for causing their deaths.

“Zera!” Y’shennria barks. “You are my niece. I expect you to oblige my requests.”

Through the fog of my hunger, my unheart gives a pang. Niece. Family. She isn’t my true family, but she’s willing to pretend. She’s willing to call me her family, even if I’m the thing that destroyed it. Three years of suffering is nothing compared to her decades. Compared to Y’shennria, I’m so weak. She’s counting on me. Crav, Peligli. Nightsinger. All of them, counting on me.

My own heart, counting on me.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and with a great internal wrench I force the hunger back inside, my jagged teeth filing into human stubs, the hunger’s voice dwindling.

I throw myself to my feet and pick up the orb gently to avoid the razors, nestling it in the crook of my shoulder. I’m a human. I’m an Y’shennria. The razors bite down, just hard enough. One misstep, a single stumble, and they’ll pierce through my skin. Carefully, I walk ten steps. Eleven, twelve—my ankles protest, wavering, and the orb’s razors gnaw at me. Warm blood oozes down my skin. It’s not the pain that’s the worst part—it’s my mind. It’s exhausted, crammed full of gestures and rules. I haven’t eaten. My thoughts swim like a heat haze in summer. Every step must be perfect. Still the hunger claws at my insides, like the bars of a cage.

Thirteen steps. Fourteen. The razors eat away at me, every instinct screaming to shuck the orb off once and for all. I’m almost to the end of the room. Sixteen. Sixteen years of my humanity, forgotten, lost. Eighteen, nineteen—I let out a gasp as the razors press down deeper. I should be nineteen years old. One last step.

Twenty.

My twentieth year of life, spent free. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

I reach for the bookshelf, clutching at the lip of it to stabilize myself. My knees shake so hard I can barely keep standing. The sound of Y’shennria’s footsteps resounds, and then the bite of the razors subsides as someone pulls them out of my skin. She looks me over, the bloodied iron orb in her hand. Her eyes hold the barest wisp of softness.

“Well done, Zera.”

Coming from her after hours of relentless not good enoughs, the words are sweeter than clover honey. I drink them in greedily, forcing what’s left of my energy into a grin. She leaves to bring me food, and I collapse on a nearby settee to nurse my aches. Reginall comes in then, a duster in one hand.

“Perhaps a bit of bedrest is in order, miss?”

The hunger leers at him, eager to consume. Forcing my brain to order words and sentiments into coherent jokes makes it easier to ignore, but just barely.

“I-If I were the lazy, slovenly type, I might just take you up on that offer,” I manage weakly.