Bring Me Their Hearts(48)
“You’re choosing to spend time with Luc,” Malachite says. “I wouldn’t exactly call it impeccable.”
Lucien shoots him a sardonic glare. Malachite ushers us back to the crowd on the temple steps, the queen running to Lucien and looking him up and down for any sign of a wound. She sees a scrape on the back of his hand, flustering over it. Lucien insists he’s fine, and a guilty blush rises in me when I realize that scrape is on the same hand that cradled my head against the fall. Malachite gives me a sly wink, the cocky bastard. Did he see what happened? He clearly has no sense of decorum—he calls the prince by just “Luc” and talks to him as if they were equals, rather than bodyguard and royal. And strangely, some deep part of me envies him for that, envies how easy it is for him to be around the prince when my every move is calculated and overthought.
If it were that easy for me, I’d have his heart a dozen times over by now.
“The witch’s evil has been contained!” Gavik exclaims, only to receive thunderous applause from the very impressed nobles. Gavik motions to the royal polymaths, who take generous bows. “A round of applause for these brave men of the mind.”
I retreat to Y’shennria, who’s tucked away in a corner near the door of the temple, looking glad to be out. The carriages start coming around one by one, the nobles departing with relieved looks on their faces. Y’shennria and I get into Fisher’s carriage, silent and weary after our separate trials. I watch the misery outside the window—merchants peeking from their houses only to see their barrels of goods burned, their stalls ruined. They mourn with stiff hands of shock and faces of utter loss. We pass a pair arguing over an open barrel of charred spices, one of the men nearly in tears.
“—do we do, Marix? The taxes—we promised to pay the taxes this month! They’ll put us on the street—”
“I’ll find something,” the other man replies. “I promise you, I’ll do anything I can to keep this roof over our heads—”
Our carriage passes, their words petering off. We pass other carriages—the nobles leaving the scene of the fire without a scratch. But the people of Vetris? They’re the ones who’re going to suffer the most from this little stunt. If Gavik is responsible for this fire, I hate him all the more for it. The color slowly comes back to Y’shennria’s stern, graceful face. She openly fidgets with her rosary, stroking the tree pendant’s every branch, though her motions are calmer now. She fixes me with her hazel gaze and says only one thing: “I think it’s time you met my spy.”
8
The Laughing
Daughter
I’ve learned by now that Y’shennria doesn’t answer any questions she doesn’t want to until she’s good and ready. I’d call it a lesson in patience from her, but she looks entirely too drained to even consider lessons at the moment. When we’re finally inside the sitting room of her manor, sipping on lavender tea and in much more colorful clothes, I dare to say: “Either you’re a witch who read the future with magic, or someone told you the black fire was going to happen.”
“And which do you consider more likely?” She sips her tea calmly.
“The witch.”
“Your manners might be getting better, but your jokes are getting worse.”
I laugh, and it catches me by surprise. I didn’t realize how good it would be to see her back to her usual exacting, critical self.
“I have a spy inside Archduke Gavik’s home,” she clarifies. “She joined me of her own volition a year ago. She’s quick, quiet, efficient, and most importantly she knows where the archduke keeps his important documents. In fact, I’d be confident saying she knows the archduke best out of anyone in Vetris.”
“Do I ever get to meet this girl, or are we going to praise her into eternity?”
“In a few minutes.”
We wait, both of us paging through the volumes on the sitting room’s massive bookshelves. I leaf through a tome on rare animals—the inked fangs of a mighty valkerax gaping open at me. Its long, sinewy body is drawn next to a human —the human barely bigger than one of its claws. I’ve read about them in Nightsinger’s books, but those never had sketches. They resemble snakes, if snakes also had manes of fur and powerful lionlike legs. Their heads are like a wolf’s—feral and yet dignified, with a mouth entirely crowded with razor-sharp fangs. Fangs that almost look like my own in the throes of hunger—jagged and pervasive. They have six eyes, each below the next, and each white as snow. Are they blind, maybe? Seeing this sketch, I’m glad they remain underground, kept there by the Beneathers. They’re beautiful but fearsome.
“Miladies.” Reginall bows in the entryway, someone on his heels. “Lady Himintell.”
A girl in a rose-pink dress and overly curled, mousy brown hair walks in. Her gait is uneven, a limp to her left leg, yet despite that she practically flounces as she walks. She carries a cane made of some sort of ivory, a six-eyed creature’s head I recognize now carved into the handle—a valkerax. She flashes a bright smile at Y’shennria and curtsies, then curtsies to me. We curtsy back, and Y’shennria motions for her to sit. Lady Himintell rests her cane against a table and sits right next to Y’shennria, gleefully clapping her hands at the sight of the honeycomb cookies on the tea tray. Their elbows nearly touch, the girl taking a cookie offered by Y’shennria.