Bring Me Their Hearts(86)



“Remind me to add you to the list of ‘people I should definitely never piss off.’”

“I wasn’t on that list already?” Fione laughs, winding the crannequin for another shot. “I’m hurt.”

“Allow me to throw myself a momentary pity party,” I motion to my bandaged forearm and wrist. “You’re not as hurt as me.”

She laughs again. “True. Y’shennria said not to expect you well enough to stand for several days.”

“Auntie tends to underestimate my prodigious willpower,” I say. “Or as she likes to call it, my ‘pig-headed stubbornness.’”

My eyes catch Fione’s valkerax-head cane as it rests on a nearby railing. ShE’d be sLoW tO rUn, the hunger snarls, ravenous. CoNsuMe heR doWn to hEr preTTy cUrLs.

Fione smiles faintly as she aims and fires another arrow. This one lands even closer to the center of the target. A groundskeeper approaches and asks if I need anything, but she waves him away, and he retreats.

“You’d think they’d know by the giant crossbow in my arms that I want to be left alone,” Fione jokes.

“You’re a noble, they’re servants. It’s a bit difficult to leave someone alone when you know they hold your fate in the palm of their hand,” I drawl. Fione freezes, then nocks the next bolt in her bow, thinking on this. She fires again, the bolt missing the target entirely. She frowns prettily.

“I suppose I’ve never thought of it that way.”

She fires three more bolts, these all clustered together at the heart of the straw target. She’s got a keen eye, but she’s easily distracted by her own thoughts. The single missed bolt tells me that much.

“Did you get what you needed?” I ask quietly. Fione looks up at me and smiles.

“I might’ve opened a puzzle-locked safe in a certain office in the palace, and I might’ve seen the name of a tower in the noble quarter. Then again, I might’ve heard a lawguard coming down the hall and escaped before I could read everything thoroughly.”

“You have a funny way of saying yes.” I squint. She giggles, leaning on her hefty crossbow as she does her cane.

“Your…sacrifice, shall we call it? I assure you, it didn’t go to waste. What exactly made you faint? Are you bloodshy?”

I’m quiet, flicking through my mind for some excuse. Fione picks the crossbow back up, winding a bolt carefully.

“Prince Lucien says it was an infection. But I overheard my uncle thinking aloud to a royal polymath that no infection spreads that quickly.”

My mouth goes dry—the last thing I need is Gavik suspecting me more.

“I was—” I lean in to her. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“Your secret’s safe with me. We’re in this together, after all.”

I take in her wide, waiting blue eyes. She’s an expert at sniffing out information, secrets. I have to lie convincingly to hide the bigger lies beneath. I gnaw my lip for effect.

“I’m…fasting. The other Brides are so slender, and I—”

“Oh gods, not you, too.” Fione heaves a sigh. “Is that why you visited the bathroom so much during that banquet? I hate this godsdamned Avellish trend. Just eat, all right?”

“Thankfully, you aren’t my mother,” I say.

“I won’t have a half-starved thing helping me bring my uncle down,” she insists. “Eat, or I’m cutting you from the team, and you lose your time with the prince.”

WhiCh pArt shoUld wE eaT first? The hunger slithers around her, resting my eyes on her neck, her wrists—the most tender parts. YoUr soFt eyEs, or youR soFt hEart?

“For all your hatred of your uncle, you certainly threaten as well as he does,” I manage. Fione laughs and lets the bolt fly. It sinks into the center of the target with a wooden thud, and it’s not until the wind picks up that I see the two thin pieces of bolt dancing in the breeze. That shot cut another of her bolts in half in perfect overlap. I know nothing about archery, but a shot like that seems nearly impossible.

She turns and grins at me. If Gavik’s eyes are water, hers are sky.

“True. He and I are very similar. But so are you and your ‘aunt’. Even Lucien is a little like his father, no matter how he denies it. That’s the cruel thing about family, isn’t it? No matter how we feel about them, we will always look like them, act like them. We were raised by them, after all.”

Fione puts the crossbow down and picks up her cane.

“It’s not a question of whether or not the apple falls far from the tree, because of course it doesn’t.” Her eyes fix in the distance. “It’s whether or not the apple can grow taller than the tree.”





13


A Man Without

Mercy Must Fail



“Please leave us, if you would,” Fione asks the groundskeeper nearby. He bows and quickly shuffles off, his hound at his heels. When she’s sure he’s gone, Fione glances back to me. “I’m expecting guests.”

No sooner has she said this than two figures emerge from the tree line behind the shooting range—one dark-haired, the other gray, both tall and broad. Prince Lucien and Malachite. They stride across the grass, and every thief’s instinct in me screams they were waiting in the woods all along. Watching us.

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