Bring Me Their Hearts(42)

“Could you?” he asks. “Forgive me, milady—I simply find it so very hard to imagine. Never once was I able to live peacefully as a Heartless.”

His words aren’t a salve over my open wound, but they’re a splash of cool water. Of reality. Of the difference between him and me—one a former soldier in a long-ago bloody war, the other a spy in a bloodless court. He makes a little bow and leaves me with my food and my note. I read it once I’m full, once the hunger is muffled.

There, in sharp, curled handwriting and rich ink reads a sentence: What is your price?

Prince Lucien sent this, no doubt. Insistent, isn’t he? I go to my desk and begin writing with a quill, only to see blood smearing across the paper. Red on white. White like the bandits’ skin stained with their own blood, like Mother’s neck as she gasped for air, her torn lungs never giving it to her.

My hands are still dirty from the livers. Cursing my clumsiness and my memory that insists on keeping only the nightmarish things, I wash in the basin nearby and return to the desk with fresh hands.

Fresh as they can be, anyway, when I’ve killed five men.

But as I write this letter, I’m not a murderer. I’m a human girl. That’s what Prince Lucien thinks I am. No matter how fleeting, I can pretend for a moment I haven’t done terrible things. I can pretend, in so many delightfully illusory steps, that I’m a coy lady writing a letter to the object of her affection and nothing more. It’s easier to be her than it is to be me.

I ink my response on a new sheet of paper.

Time. I want your time, Your Highness, and nothing more.

I think back to today. I told him the honest truth. I told him I wanted his heart. He said he warned me about the court.

But I warned him, too.





7


Fire For

Their Thralls



I send the letter out in the morning, before breakfast training. Reginall takes it with a smile and assures me he’ll deliver it to the watertell. I’m positive Y’shennria knows the prince sent me a letter, and that I sent one back, but she doesn’t mention it at the long table over our plates of perfectly poached eggs and seared ham hock. Unlike my first time eating human breakfast, I can hold my tears in for a good twenty minutes before the pain becomes unbearable. It’s a new milestone. But Y’shennria doesn’t comment on it, strangely quiet as she sips her tea and I wipe the blood from my face.

“We’re going to court, aren’t we?” I ask.

“Not today,” she finally says.

“But—”

“Today is for blessing,” Y’shennria clarifies, getting up from the table. “Be sure to wear white and keep the makeup simple.”

She’s acting strange, but before I can comment on it she disappears upstairs. Was it what I said yesterday? Feeling somehow responsible, I return to my room and riffle through my wardrobe. I find the pure white dress, modest and yet achingly delicate in its lace hem and ruffled collar. I’d wondered what this was for—it stuck out like a sore thumb among so many gold-threaded, complicated court garments.

Blessing. How long has it been since I’ve gone? Four years? Five? My gap-filled memory insists Father and Mother and I used to go, to get our yearly blessing for Father’s trading business. Was it yearly? Or biannually? I can’t remember. But I do recall that before I was turned into an Old God’s servant, I was just as faithful as anyone else.

I prayed as hard as anyone else.

Did Kavar know my fate? When I knelt in His temples and listened to His priest’s songs, did He know that little girl was doomed to become a monster? Did He know my parents were going to be murdered?

If He did, He never told me. And I hate Him all the more for it.

In the carriage to the temple, I study Y’shennria. She’s in a similar white dress, though hers covers her entire neck and the scars there.

“Are we going because Gavik threatened you yesterday?” I ask. Y’shennria straightens but doesn’t say anything. In her right hand, half hidden by her sleeve, she carries a rosary of some sort—made of wood, a pendant shaped like a naked tree hanging from it. She rubs the tree over and over, almost nervously. Going to the temple like this means she’s being forced to worship a god she doesn’t believe in, just to keep up appearances.

To keep Gavik off her scent.

“Why are we trying so hard to please Gavik?” I ask.

“I’ve told you time and time again—he’s the most powerful man in Vetris,” Y’shennria snaps, then falls quiet. “And he hates me very much.”

“Why?”

She doesn’t say anything more. Noble carriages gather at the steps of the intimidating stone temple. The faint strumming of a dozen key harps wafts out of the main doors. Nobles filter in, all wearing varying shades of white, with only modest jewelry. Some—the more devout, I imagine—carry an iron eye of Kavar clutched in their hands, Gavik included. He ushers people through the doors, greeting them all warmly, or as warmly as an ice-eyed man can. When it comes to Y’shennria and me, though, he doesn’t bother hiding his disdain.

“There you are, Lady Y’shennria. I was beginning to think you’d never show.”

Next to me, in a motion too small for anyone but me to see, Y’shennria grips her rosary as if for strength, her whole hand covering it easily. She bows to Gavik and walks in without a word and I do the same, hurrying after her. I half expect to be smote by some bolt of god-light the second I walk over the threshold, but nothing happens. Perhaps Kavar’s taken pity on me.