Bring Me Their Hearts(30)

He bows. “Of course, miss. I could discern that by the way you upended your entire closet onto your bed this morning.”

I laugh, the tight knot in my chest undoing itself bit by bit. He and I are quiet, the triplet moons outside the window all but dwarfed by the haze of Vetris’s lights, each window a square of gold burning bright. For all their hate and suspicion, the humans are so very good at making beautiful things.

I can feel my flesh mending, my shoulders and the razor cuts there bared for Reginall to see. Panic grabs me by the throat, but I do my best to make my voice even.

“Could you fetch me a shawl, Reginall?”

He obliges, returning with a silken one. I wrap it around my shoulders, and he smiles.

“It looks lovely on you,” he says. I squirm on the settee.

“Is it weird that when people say I’m lovely, or pretty, I get itchy?”

“We all get a little uncomfortable when our value is reduced to our physical appearance,” he says patiently.

“Clever,” I admire.

“I’m afraid not, miss. I’m simply old.”

The same tiredness as Y’shennria’s works its way into his eyes. How much has he seen? He must’ve been alive during the Sunless War, too.

“Where were you, Reginall,” I ask, “during the war?”

“Fighting, miss.”

“On whose side?”

Wordlessly, he peels down a portion of his suit collar. Tendrils of a flowerlike scar on his chest crawl up his neck. I recognize it—how could I not? I’d seen it only once before, on another witch’s Heartless. Former Heartless. That flowerlike scar blooms over our chests when our hearts are returned to us and we’re made human again. That’s the shape I’ve longed to see over my own chest for so many years now.

“You’re a—”

“I was.” His gaze is steady. “Thirty years ago, I was human, and then I was not. So I fought. And at the end of it all, when the graves outnumbered the children in the streets, my witch gave me back my heart as she said she would, and then took her own life.”

It’s hard to breathe all of a sudden. “Why?”

“I’m not sure, miss. But she killed many during the war, and it ate at her, until the only release she could find was in death.”

My own guilt flares. Five men. One young, one old— I shake it off quickly, before it can burrow. “I’m Heartless, too.”

“I know.” He smiles. “Lady Y’shennria told me, and none of the others.”

“Why did she hire you, if you were Heartless? She hates us.”

He thins his lips, speaking carefully. “I believe she’s been trying these past thirty years to understand the things that killed her family. Trying to find meaning in it, meaning in the war. When one loses much, one tries desperately to understand why.”

I’m quiet, the ticking of the sandclock hollow between us, until: “So you’re free. You could go anywhere—why stay here? They hate witches in Vetris. If you’re found out—”

“Have you ever killed a human, miss?”

The bandits’ silent screams pierce my ears. I can’t move. Reginall just smiles, kinder now.

“You have. So then you must know the horror of it. You know the hunger reveled in the blood, and the carnage, and the light in their eyes as it faded.”

My memories are sudden and blinding; blood slick on my hands, I licked it off, laughing, a skull beneath my palm, a hard rock I slammed it into, shards of stone and bone—

Reginall puts a hand on my shoulder, pulling me out of the darkness.

“And you must know, too, that the hunger isn’t you. You must never confuse its evil for your own thoughts and feelings. I remember vividly that was the worst part of being Heartless—thinking that shadow was part of my own soul.”

“What is it?” I ask quickly. “The hunger.”

“I don’t know. We spoke of it together, in the war. Some of us thought it the magic’s curse. Others thought it man’s darkest instincts made undeniable. I can’t say for sure what it is—only that it exists, and is cruel.” He moves to the mantelpiece, absently dusting the sandclock there. “I will aid Y’shennria in preventing this looming war, down to my last breath. That is all I can do to make up for what I’ve done—that is why I’m here. Why are you here, miss?”

“For my heart.”

“And?”

“To stop a war.”

“Is that all?” He smiles, and I can tell he knows. He knows my words are half truth, and only saying them just now do I realize that, too. I want my heart, my friends’ hearts, and freedom. I want all those things. But none of them will be enough. None of them will fill the emptiness, the gaping chasm, the cold void of the girl I used to be. A happy girl, an innocent girl. A girl with family. A girl who believed in the goodness of the world, once.

A girl with love.

Reginall moves to leave, bowing at the threshold of the room. “I do hope you find what you’re looking for, miss.”





6


The Serpent’s

Nest



Three days isn’t enough.

But Y’shennria tries her hardest to ensure it is.

We train throughout the night—Y’shennria sacrificing sleep to stay up with me. As I practice with the razor orb, I injure myself less and less. One day I come away without any cuts at all, giving a fist pump she calls “unladylike” even as she smiles. Y’shennria keeps my hunger fed, so it’s a bare murmur as she teaches me dancing—too nervous to touch me, instead having Reginall be my partner. She sits at the key harp, playing beautiful melodies I have to learn every twist and turn to. I’d be lying if I said I’m graceful, but I am fairly good at moving my body in a rhythm—one upside of doing nothing in the forest but practicing swordplay with Crav—which means I can string the moves together, but they have no charm or fluidity to them. Like watching an oak tree flail in a storm, Y’shennria snorts.