Bring Me Their Hearts(46)
“Please, Your Highness. If they know I told you, they’d have me run out of the city! Or worse!”
“The Crown Prince can just as easily run you out if you don’t tell him,” I say lightly. “You’re in the pits either way.”
The man flinches. Lucien flickers his gaze up at me, then back down to the man.
“If you tell me, I promise you it will never get back to your superiors.”
“It will!” the man insists. “It always does!”
He’s too fearful—it binds him like iron shackles. I hold my sword higher, inspecting the rusty blade. This could be the perfect way to gain a bit of the prince’s favor. The man needs more pressure, and I’m in a perfect position to act dangerous, in the same way I always did to scare off Nightsinger’s hunters.
“In my experience, Your Highness, cutting someone usually makes them sing the sweetest songs. Say the word, and I’ll try to make it only slightly painful.”
The man’s eyes go wide, and he scrabbles back from me.
“No,” Lucien suddenly thunders, obsidian eyes tearing into me. “You will not touch one of my citizens as long as I draw breath.”
The full force of his shadows press inexorably on me, and for a moment I feel paralyzed in the same way as when I stumbled into a starving bear in the woods. His protection is fierce, instant. I may not be facing one ton of muscle and claws this time, but it certainly feels like it. I back down quickly.
“As you wish.”
Lucien relents, pulling his gaze from mine. He kneels so he’s eye level with the man and fishes a gold pouch from his belt, handing it to him. His eyes—so furious before—are now oddly soft, the same softness he had with the little girl. He keeps it so well hidden from the court, but here in the streets with the common people, he lets it shine.
“With this, you can leave the city—the country—before they find you. Now tell me—who are you so afraid of?”
The man swallows, clutching at the purse like it’s a lifeline. “The royal polymaths, Your Highness. They—they gave me this powder.” He holds up an empty pouch, a bit of green-tinted dust spilling from it. “They told me to come here before dawn, told me to sprinkle it around the temple in a ring, and then to set it ablaze once I heard Kavar’s songs!”
“And what were you to get in exchange for this?” Prince Lucien asks. “No—don’t tell me. A full position as a royal polymath.”
The apprentice nods frantically. “The money, the experiments I could do with their equipment, the prestige—it seemed such a huge reward for as small a thing as starting a fire.”
Lucien dips a fingertip into the green powdery remnants on the ground, bringing it to his nose. He recoils violently at the smell.
“Gods, what is this stuff?”
“I don’t know—they wouldn’t tell me. But it smells like bearingbud to me, Your Highness, thrice-refined with copper and tar. Though I’ve never seen bearingbud produce such dark flames.”
“Dark flames,” Lucien mutters to himself, then stands. “Go. While you have a head start. The caravans leave from the west gate around this time. You can still catch one if you’re lucky.”
The man staggers to his feet and bows a dozen clumsy times before tearing through the streets. Soon it’s just a thoughtful prince and me, the sound of the roaring flames distant.
“It seems I was right,” I drawl, never sheathing my sword. Now would be the perfect time to run him through. “You have a heart after all.”
But not for long, the hunger cackles. I can’t let him know what I’m planning, so I make my posture relaxed, my steps light as I near him. So close. Just a bit more, and I’ll be within striking distance.
“He was simply a tool being used by someone else,” Lucien says, dusting his hands free of the green powder. “A tool is blameless. Your eagerness to break him was unfounded.”
“There’s a handy little something called a bluff, Your Highness.” I flush, feeling somehow chastised.
“There’s also a handy little something called empathy,” he fires back.
“I-I was trying to help.”
“That man feared for his life. You told me yourself that sometimes the choices are made for us.”
I’m struck silent for once, not a single joke or comeback on my lips. Lucien fixes me with every piercing arrow in his gaze.
“If I ever see you threatening my people again, I will show you no mercy.”
“That man started a fire,” I insist. “He could’ve killed people—”
“He was a tool. You break the wielder, not the tool itself.”
I freeze in place, all thoughts of taking his heart momentarily blown out of my head. Break the wielder, not the tool? A tool. I’ve felt like Nightsinger’s tool more than once. I’ve felt like a thing to be used ever since my heart was taken. Even now, dressed in these silks and lying my way through the day, I’m her tool. A tool is blameless. Is it? Is it truly blameless, when it will take a human’s heart just to secure its own freedom? Is it truly blameless, even when it took pleasure in killing five men?
“Regardless of your missteps, I owe you, Lady Zera,” Lucien interrupts my rigor. “That polymath was on the cusp of getting away before you stopped him.”