Bring Me Their Hearts(82)

I try to sit up, but the pain is excruciating. Lucien lunges for me, helping prop me up against the pillows.

“Go slow,” he murmurs. “Do you need water? Are you hungry?”

“It hurts,” I gasp. This isn’t right. Pain doesn’t linger for a Heartless—it comes and then it goes as quickly as it came. I keep hoping it’ll stop, heal magically, but it doesn’t abate in the slightest. “How long have I been out?”

“A day. The polymath Lady Y’shennria brought said it would hurt in the beginning,” Lucien agrees. “It’s an infection.”

“Polymath?” A tremor clings to my voice, and I desperately try to peek beneath my bandage—did I heal all the way? Did this polymath see me heal? Lucien shakes his head.

“Don’t worry—he’s the only one who’s looked at your wound. Gavik wanted to send his polymaths, but I refused him at Lady Y’shennria’s request.”

Relief spreads through me, tempered by wariness. Y’shennria let a polymath look at me? Why would she divulge my secret like that? And Gavik, sending his people to tend to me? He’d never do such a kind thing, unless there was something in it for him. Unless he suspected me of something. Did Fione even get what she was after, or was it all for nothing?

Unease adds to the pain, and I swallow.

“This polymath—what did he look like?”

“Tall, white mustache,” Malachite offers from his place tucked against the wall. “Very stick-up-the-butt air about him.”

Reginall. Without a doubt, that’s Reginall. Y’shennria had him pose as a polymath to visit me—clever.

“What else did he say?” I ask. Lucien motions for a lurking maid to fetch water, and she scurries off.

“He said you’d be better off resting at the Y’shennria manor,” the prince says. “I promised Lady Y’shennria we’d send you to her the moment you woke, and I intend to keep that promise. Malachite, call for her carriage.”

Malachite shoots me a wink and leaves the room. It’s only the prince and me, now, and the gentle breeze. It toys with his loose hair strands, and absently I reach for one, stroking it, the softness a welcome distraction from my pain.

“Like silk,” I manage. Lucien’s expression shadows.

“I was worried you’d never wake—” His voice breaks, and I break with it.

“You can’t.” I despise my pleading tone. “You can’t worry about me.”

“And you think I haven’t tried not to?” he asks. “I tried, gods I tried, but every time I saw you it got more and more difficult, until—” He reaches for my hand, encapsulating it in his own warm one. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

What’s left of me fragments in his hands. His words are a hammer in the center of a web of cracks on my surface I didn’t know I had. I look to Father’s sword; every night for weeks after their deaths I held that blade and cried for him, for Mother, cried for the gods to take me, too, to free me from my monstrosity and reunite me with them—it all surfaces in my memory, like a storm cloud overcoming the sun. I feel a tear slip down my cheek, and he sees it, wiping it away with a confused look on his face.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. “Is it the pain? I can get some brandy—”

“N-No. I-I’m sorry. It’s just—no one has ever said that to me before.”

I want nothing more than to stay in this moment, my hand in his. But that’s an impossibility. A weakness. I am a monster, and he’s a human. I want his heart, and I want his other heart. His affection, his blood. I want it all.

But if I take one, I can’t have the other.

Kill him, the hunger begs, its voice deafening and more distorted than I’m used to, like a thousand voices at once instead of just one. Eat him. Kill hIm. EAt him. KiLL—

Lucien gets up and leaves, returning with a glass of amber liquid. I greedily down it, ashamed he has to help me drink.

“This isn’t how I imagined our first date going,” I mutter. He laughs, the sound honey to my ears.

TaKe his hEaRt, now! The hunger is suddenly desperate, howling louder than a hurricane. Kill hiM! KILL HIM!

It blindsides me, the urge to rip his skin from his face rising like a tide, a moon, something inexorable and unstoppable. I know then, with a horrible pinpoint certainty, that if I don’t leave at this very moment, I’ll lash out and hurt him. The hunger is so much stronger—so much stronger than I’ve ever felt. It’s like I haven’t eaten for weeks, months, when I haven’t eaten for only a day. What’s wrong with me?

“Lady Zera? Is something the matter?”

—KiLL hiM—

“I-I’m fine.” I suppress the terrible hunger with all my combined years of experience, but it resists, tears through me anew like a bladed whirlwind. “I just need to get home.”

“Of course.” Lucien nods. Malachite comes back then, and it’s a blur of the hunger screaming at me as Lucien helps me out of bed. He insists on carrying me to the carriage, but when he reaches for me I thrust my hands out, pushing him away violently. Any closer and he’s dead. Any closer and I’ll reach into his chest and pull out that godsdamned vital organ of his. Lucien’s stunned look evaporates when Malachite steps in, hoisting me into his arms. I don’t protest, and Lucien follows us lamely with my sword, a look of helplessness on his face.