Bring Me Their Hearts(44)

“I don’t recognize the language,” I whisper to Y’shennria. She tears her eyes from the altar.

“It’s Old Vetrisian,” she answers softly. “From when the first d’Malvane king ascended to the throne. With the help of the witches, of course.”

“Witches?”

Y’shennria lowers her voice, so much so it’s hard to hear her over the priests. “It’s Vetris’s best kept secret that the d’Malvanes are witches themselves.”

“But not anymore?”

“Surely you know how a witch becomes.”

And that’s all she says, turning back to pretend reverence at the high priest’s song. Of course I know—I read Nightsinger’s books. Witchblood is a requirement—passed down from parent to child. A witch baby grows but never comes into magic of their own accord. It must be given to them by something the books called “the Tree.” The same Tree Y’shennria clings to as a rosary even now, perhaps? But that’s where the books became hazy—never detailing exactly how a humble forest sapling could bestow magical power on a witch. It’s undoubtedly a metaphor for some sort of magical ceremony.

I watch Lucien, his dark eyes boring a hole into the altar he’s fixated on. If Y’shennria knows the d’Malvanes were a witch family once, then surely he knows. Surely King Sref knows, and yet still he sanctions Gavik’s purges of his own people.

The song surrounds me, and despite the atrocities Gavik promotes through Kavar, I find myself praying. Not to the New God, but to the dead. To my parents.

This city will kill me if I so much as show my teeth. If that happens, when I come to see you in the afterlife, I hope you can forgive me for what I did. To you. To those bandits. To even this twisted prince I have to drag into the darkness with me.

“Fire!”

The serenity inside the temple shatters. Shouts filter in through the open doors, panicked shouts of magic and fire. Gavik goes on point immediately, ordering several of his guards to come with him. When he’s gone, the nobles begin to titter nervously, King Sref the only one looking calm. Queen Kolissa seems utterly lost, as does Lucien. Y’shennria’s knuckles are white.

“It’s today? That bastard,” she murmurs.

“What’s today?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

Some of the nobles let curiosity win out over their fear, and they move toward the temple exit. Their exclamations of shock and horror only incite others to leave and see what’s going on, too, Prince Lucien included. I get up, but Y’shennria’s hand on my sleeve stops me.

“Be careful,” she manages.

I approach the crowd at the mouth of the temple, craning to see over their heads. I hear it before I see it—the roar of an enormous fire, guttural and furious. But these flames aren’t red; they’re a deep black, like shadow come to life. The dark fire consumes everything around the temple in a perfect ring—wagons of hay, abandoned food stalls, stocks of barrels and boxes. I start—it’s the same color of fire I saw in Nightsinger’s hearth every day for the past three years. Gavik and his lawguards are desperately trying to put out the flames with buckets of water from a nearby pump, but the blaze doesn’t diminish in the slightest.

The nobles mutter frantically:

“Black fire, immune to water? It can’t be—”

“—witchfire used in the war against us—”

“—the very same that scorched Ravenshaunt—”

Ravenshaunt. The ruined castle Y’shennria showed me on the way to Vetris: her ancestral home. Is that why she isn’t out here with me, because it’s too scarring to see these flames again? How in the afterlife did she know this black fire was going to happen?

Gavik raises his sword. “Fear not! I’ve called for the polymaths. Surely they will know how to put this cursed witchfire out!”

I glance around the crowd, only to find Prince Lucien missing. I see the tail end of a white suit flit around a cornerstone of the temple, and I start after it. Sure enough, Lucien’s there, searching for something in the western side of the ring of flames. His posture, usually so straight and perfect, is totally different away from the eyes of the court—limber and easy. Whisper’s posture. He spots me and glowers.

“Go back to the crowd.”

“Is that concern I hear in your voice?” I tease. He rolls the sleeves of his suit up, wrists strong, the slight tendon there rising against his skin beautiful in a way.

Delicious, in a way, the hunger hisses.

“You’re awfully cheery, considering we’re under attack by the witches.”

“We’re not. It’s not witchfire,” I say. Lucien quirks a brow.

“It’s black fire that can’t be extinguished. That’s the very definition of witchfire.”

I knit my lips. I can’t exactly tell him the witches themselves told me they aren’t able to get into Vetris, let alone spell a fire.

“It’s just—the Crimson Lady detects all magic, right? So no witch could’ve gotten through to do this.”

“The polymaths’ inventions are fallible,” Lucien insists. The Crimson Lady isn’t, but I still can’t say that. “A witch could’ve slipped through. Or five, according to Gavik.”

“Do you really trust the word of a man whose guts you hate?”