Bring Me Their Hearts(71)

“What—”

“He doesn’t hunt witches, you silly girl,” Fione interrupts me. “He pretends to. It’s a cover.”

“For what?”

Her eyes dart around. “Not now. Wait until we have four walls to hide us.”

I squirm impatiently the whole walk to Y’shennria’s manor. Reginall lets us in, offering Fione a glass of warm goat milk and hazelnut sweetrounds, but she declines both politely. When he gets the hint and leaves, she turns to me.

“Since Y’shennria obviously hasn’t considered it important enough to tell you, I will.” She inhales once, hugely, like what she’s about to say takes strength from her very core. “I told you I grew up with Lucien. But I grew up with Varia, too. The three of us—” She swallows. “We were very close. Varia hated the witch-human tension, especially the aftermath the Sunless War caused. When she could escape the palace she’d head into the town, offering her labor to shelters, to the polymaths, to the veterans and the widows. To anyone who needed help. That’s just the kind of person she was.”

Fione looks around, going over to the drawing room door and closing it. She turns back to me, leaning against the door tiredly.

“I looked up to her more than anyone. But my uncle hated her more than anyone. She argued with him. Foiled his machinations where she could. She even turned King Sref against him, sometimes. She was a constant headache for him. If only I’d realized just how much of a headache, perhaps I could’ve saved her.”

I dread what’s coming next. Fione steadies herself, one hand against the back of a settee.

“Varia went off when she was sixteen to tour the country, meet the people she was going to rule. She’d always wanted to leave Vetris. King Sref couldn’t stop her. We found out later he didn’t stop her, because Gavik wanted her to go. Convinced him to let her go.”

“You mean—”

Fione blurts out the next words, like they’ve been packed inside her for a long time. “I heard my uncle talk about it. Laugh about it. The courier came to him with the news, and he laughed and laughed. Drank half a bottle of Avellish brandy by himself in celebration. She’s dead, he kept saying to the fireplace.” She meets my eyes with her blue ones, sadness darkening them to gray sleet. “That was the night before her entourage returned to Vetris with her remains.”

The night before. That means—

“Archduke Gavik killed Princess Varia?” I croak. Fione flinches but finds her voice.

“With mercenaries, I think. Or assassins. I’ve been trying to track down which branch but haven’t found anything solid—” She stops herself. “Regardless, I told Lucien. I tried to tell the king, but my uncle got to him first. He blamed it on the Heartless.”

“That…that unctuous bastard!” I grit my teeth. “How do you stand living with such a man?”

“I tell him I’m going to bed early a lot.” She laughs, though it has a despairing edge to it. “And then sneak out to investigate, or do business with the people who might have information or proof of what he did.”

“And he doesn’t catch you?”

Fione taps her leg. “He thinks me incapable of anything but hobbling about and saying ‘yes, uncle dearest.’ I’ve spent my whole life since Varia died building that particular illusion.”

Amazed at her grit, I struggle with my response. “I still don’t get why Lucien hunts.”

“I sneak out and investigate, probe the underbelly of Vetris for my uncle’s rare mistakes. But Lucien takes a different route. It’s a Vetrisian tradition to let an unmarried Crown Prince go on yearly hunts, which used to be just for simple fox or deer. But Prince Lucien requested from his father that he hunt witches, claiming he wanted revenge for Varia. He’s using those hunts to scour the woodlands where she died.”

“For what?”

Fione shakes her head. “I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”

“I thought you two grew up together.”

She exhales, a single curl flapping in her breath. “At first, Lucien and I worked together to bring my uncle down, but…our grief eventually tore us apart. It does that to people. He wanted to chase some imaginary tree, and I wanted concrete evidence against my uncle.”

“Wait—what tree?”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s what he’s said over the past few years whenever I ask him what he’s doing on his hunts: ‘Looking for a tree.’ It’s a terrible joke, if you ask me.”

My mind flashes with an image of Y’shennria’s rosary. “Old God worship involves a tree.”

“I know that. But that’s all it is—a symbol. It’s no more real than the gods are.”

I quirk a brow. “I don’t know if I should be impressed that you talk like you know everything, or worried.”

“You think the gods are real, then?” she fires back, and it catches me off guard. Where’s the sweet, pink-clad thing that simpered at me in this very room not two days ago? Is this the real her?

I prefer this version—it’s much harder to be jealous of.

“I’m not as certain as you are about anything,” I say. “If they are real, then they’re cruel, and if they aren’t real, all this carnage and hate is for the sake of a lie. Either way, it’s depressing. But have you ever stopped to consider why Lucien would be looking for a tree?”