Bring Me Their Hearts(68)
Gavik frowns at the Beneather word, his confusion buying enough time for another celeon citizen to slip to the exit. Suddenly he raises his hand, and the archers point not at me but at the people fleeing behind me.
“Stop where you are!” he bellows. “By order of the Vetrisian lawguards, you are under arrest!”
The running crowd freezes. My body moves before my mind does, standing between them and the archers, throwing my arms out to make myself as big as possible.
What are you doing, you pathetic worm? The hunger snarls at me. What in the gods’ name do you think you’re doing? If I get riddled with arrows, I’ll be “dead,” unable to show my face at court anymore. But I can’t stand by again and watch Gavik kill people like he killed that boy at the purge. I’d never be able to live with myself if I sacrificed this whole crowd for my freedom.
“Kill them with impunity, Archduke,” I shout. “But kill me, and you’ll have killed a Firstblood. And the king’s favored Bride.”
“You are nothing. You are expendable.” Gavik looks down his nose at me, staring, his six icy words ricocheting.
They will try to tell you that you aren’t good enough. Y’shennria’s words ring in my head. This is a lie. You are an Y’shennria. You have always been good enough.
I hold my head a little higher. “Then expend me. But do it quick. I get bored easily.”
“Lady Zera!” Lucien shouts—I’m surely imagining the ragged worry in his voice. “Stand down!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Your Highness,” I say without tearing my eyes from Gavik’s unblinking glare.
Gavik mutters something as he looks at me, the crowd nearly too loud to hear him. Lucien takes a step toward me, but the lawguard circle around him tightens, and Gavik sighs as he suddenly turns his attentions to the prince.
“Don’t you want to see these witches dead, Your Highness? They killed your beloved Varia, after all. What if one of those escapees was the one who controlled the Heartless that did it? You can’t let them flee from their long-overdue justice.”
Lucien narrows his eyes to hard, midnight slits. “The justice is mine to dole, not yours. And not with innocents as victims. My father might be all right with such causalities, but rest assured—I am not. And my father’s reign is more than half over. Mine will be long, and longer of memory.”
It’s a not-so-subtle threat. Gavik’s eyes dart from Lucien to me, and then he laughs.
“Very well. You may play folk hero this time, Your Highness. But I’d like to remind you that the people of Vetris don’t know how to wield swords. They don’t know how to kill Heartless. They don’t know how to drown witches. They don’t own a single scrap of white mercury or the machines that make it. But I do. I do many times over.”
His own threat lingering, Gavik turns and leaves through the arch behind him, every lawguard following suit until all that remains are terrified, bleeding people and their darkly furious prince.
Gavik’s words linger in my head. Not the angry ones, not the snide ones. But those words I could barely hear, an assertion of my character, his eyes narrowing as he uttered them.
He’d said, You’re not afraid of death.
It takes a good hour to clean up the bodies and bandage the wounded. In the crowd I spot the little girl Lucien gave the gold watch to, but she fell during the stampede, her left eye ground into a sharp corner. The bandage over her eye quickly stains completely red. Some aren’t so lucky—arms broken by reaching for a weapon to defend themselves, a leg or two crushed beneath the panicking stampede. But the people who are untouched come together in a way I’ve never seen before—fast, prepared. The vendors pitch in their wares—herbs to disinfect, thread for gaping injuries, blankets to rest on. Kettles of hot water are warmed over fires, fresh gauze and blood-soaking wool produced from nowhere. Those good with stitching close wounds, others move bodies dead and alive into quiet, restful places. Young children sing the younger ones to sleep, and I’m hit with an overpowering wave of nostalgia as I’m reminded of the nights I used to sing Peligli to sleep. Celeon hold down those who thrash in pain as tourniquets are applied, passing around flasks of strong celeon liquor to ease nerves.
It’s nothing like a purge, nothing like the barbarity I’d come to expect from the people of Vetris.
A celeon woman with a flowing turquoise mane hands me a clay flask, smiling.
“For you, in gratitude. The finest yolshil this side of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains. Very delicious, very strong.”
I sip at the flask—the taste of something like ginger and rose apples warming my insides. “Thank you. But I did hardly anything.”
“You risked much by putting yourself between the archduke’s wrath and us.”
“It was no great feat.”
The celeon chuckles, though her face is too weary to move with it. “We have a saying: Modesty kills as a drought does—slowly and from within.”
“I’ll keep that cheery thought in mind,” I croak. The celeon pats me on the back with one clawed paw and drifts off, passing out more clay flasks. A figure in leather-clad armor parts the crowd—Prince Lucien. When he sees me he hurries over, lowering his hood and squatting at my side.
“Lady Zera, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He’s winded. Two shards of me fight—one of them happy he’s concerned for me, the other dreading it, dreading what it means, what it stirs in me.