Bring Me Their Hearts(8)
Because she can—a witch can give her Heartless back their hearts, and they return to their human bodies and lives. Their memories of their life before their Heartlessness come back. Except Nightsinger’s told me she needs us (me) here to defend her from the human world that’s hunting her. This doesn’t stop me from begging her to let us go. I’ve begged on my knees, bargained pieces of my soul away to her every whim, asked if there’s anything at all I can do to change her mind, but she simply, softly refuses.
And I get it. I might not be able to go outside the forest, but I hear the merchants and lesser nobles in their carriages talk before I rob them blind. I know the world hates witches. I know the Sunless War killed nearly all of them, and the survivors remain in woods, caves, isolated in dark places to hide from hunting human eyes.
But even if it’s impossible—even if it feels like it will never happen in this lifetime—I hold on to the tiny shard of hope that someday, I’ll own my life again, that it will be mine to do whatever I please with once more. I envy the celeon assassin, I blaze with jealousy at every human I watch pass on the Bone Road—wrapped up in their problems, yet still very much free to do whatever, go wherever they want. The world is theirs, if only they’d stop and realize it; they hold the greatest gift of all in their hands—their own destinies.
Mine was ripped from me the day I died, and I’ve been chasing it ever since. I’m a bit of a tragic figure that way.
I stick out my tongue, the taste of my own thoughts bitter and ridiculous. Tragic? Me? Impeccably fashionable and intensely witty are much better adjectives. With the added bonus of sounding far less self-pitying.
Crav always knows what I’m thinking. He’s got an uncanny ability to read faces—maybe it comes with the territory of being a Warprince, constantly compared to his dozens of brothers and sisters. He sits beside me, both of us watching the deer carcass.
“Nightsinger will clean it up with magic,” he says.
“Thank the Old God.” I sigh. “Can you imagine the stains?”
There’s a long silence, the sound of crickets echoing outside.
“Did you ask her yet?” Crav inquires softly. “About our hearts?”
I shoot him a sharp look. “How do you know about that? Have you been listening in?”
“She always leaves her door open,” he grumbles. “And you always ask around this time. I stay up and listen.”
“Well, you can’t,” I say sternly. “Starting now.”
“It’s my heart, too!” he protests. “I want to know when I’m getting it back.”
I thought I was the only one having my hopes crushed over and over. I asked Nightsinger when we were alone specifically so Crav and Peligli wouldn’t get their feelings pulverized, too. But my efforts were for nothing—he’s been listening all along.
“You should ask her again,” Crav insists. “I think this time she’ll really give them back—”
“She won’t!” I snap. “We’re never getting them back, okay? Not now, not ever.” Peligli squeaks at my tone. Crav flinches, his eyes suddenly welling with tears, and I regret everything instantly. “Crav—oh no. I’m sorry, I—”
He jumps to his feet and dashes out the door. I lurch a few steps after him, but Crav is the fastest of us—if he doesn’t want to be caught, he won’t easily be, and I don’t have the stamina to attempt a chase through the woods right now; that dagger wound drained me more than usual.
Peligli tugs at my hand, her own eyes tearful. “That…that’s a lie, right? We get them back…someday?”
She was turned willingly, but even her young mind’s been strained by the decades of Heartlessness. No matter how young, how willing, every Heartless gets tired. Tired of eating raw organs. Tired of seeing the same small circle of space over and over. Tired of listening to the hunger etch its toxic words into our brains. Tired of feeling empty, imperfect, unwhole. Tired of waking up and knowing all it takes is a few missed meals to become monsters. Tired of not remembering how we lived or who we loved.
I walk through the garden with her, rocking her back and forth, the swarm of fireflies lighting her tear-stained face as she sobs until she hiccups, until she exhausts her little body into the pale imitation of sleep we go through as Heartless. We don’t need sleep, what with our bodies always magically regenerating, but our human brains sometimes forget that and lapse into the old habit. I walk back into the cottage and place Peligli gently on the flax-stuffed sheepskin she calls her bed.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, tucking a blanket over her. “I’m sorry for being terrible.”
Terrible doesn’t begin to cut it, the hunger sneers faintly. Look at her—you broke her heart; human or Heartless, it doesn’t matter what you are, you’re still a hideous—
“The fire looks very nice tonight, doesn’t it?” I mutter to drown out the voice. “Very…hot. Full of…flames.” I pause, then say to no one in particular, “Remind me to never become a poet.”
I get up and wander over to the hearth, warming my palms on it. It’s strange fire—colored blue-black, like a bad bruise, but Nightsinger’s never clarified why, and I’ve never bothered to ask, because frankly her explanations of magical things tend to make no sense. My fingers flit to the iron cage set just above the fire. It’s sturdy, the bars thick, but not thick enough to hide the view of the three jars within and the three hearts beating inside. I asked Nightsinger once why she puts them above the fire, and she smiled and told me they need to be kept warm, either by spell or flame. There are dents on the iron cage from when I was younger—when the anger consumed me and I bashed it with my father’s sword until my hands bled and my legs gave out. I’d been trying to destroy my heart, to end it all. I learned later the books call that “shattering” a Heartless, and it’s the only way to kill us besides killing our witch.