Bring Me Their Hearts(88)
“You didn’t say it would be impossible, either,” Lucien snaps.
“Not to mention any locks we meet on the way,” I muse.
“I have all the keys we need for the Crimson Lady,” Fione insists. Malachite blinks rapidly.
“Do you, now? And how in your troublesome god’s name did you get those?”
“That’s none of your concern.” She frowns. “I just need to know if you three are willing to come with me.”
“I, personally, do not enjoy being killed for trespassing,” I admit.
“It’s not as if I don’t have a plan,” she insists. “Lucien—is it possible for you to borrow four polymath robes from the Star Hall in the palace?”
The prince thinks for a moment. “Yes. But they’d be missed in less than an hour.”
“We won’t need more time than that, if all goes well.”
“And if it doesn’t?” he asks. She meets his gaze squarely.
“Then we never discover the truth of who killed your sister. And my uncle’s reign of terror continues, until your citizens are driven into the arms of war.”
Fione’s words ring powerfully in the echoing moment of quiet between us. The prince has already made up his mind—I can see it. Malachite can see it, too.
“Ugh.” The Beneather sighs. “Fine. But if we get caught, I’m ratting you all out so my remains get sent back to Pala Amna, at the very least.”
Lucien nods to Fione. “I’ll do it.”
They all look to me. A laugh tears through me—at the absurdity of it all, at the determination of these noble children, of their dedication to the memory of a princess long dead. I can’t imagine being loved so well. Or ever. Jealousy rises in me again—a snake that adores emerging whenever the humans do wonderful and stupid things with their mortal lives.
They can risk so much, because they have so much. Their hearts. Futures. Freedoms.
And here I am, begging for their scraps. Begging for an opening to take what I want and run.
I smile. “When do we get started?”
Fione tells each of us what to bring and where to meet tonight. She is a mastermind—she already has four polymath tool belts, each distinct and each used as a badge of passage within the Crimson Lady. How she got them I can only guess at—but I’m willing to bet it involves blackmail and abusing much of her uncle’s connections. Lucien will provide the robes, and as long as we keep our hoods up, no one should be any the wiser. Malachite is the muscle, and I’m—according to Fione—the excuse.
“If something goes wrong and we get caught,” she’d said, “you are to pretend you were curious about the Crimson Lady, and begged Prince Lucien to bring you here. He will say he agreed because he ‘loves you so,’ begging the guard’s silence and forgiveness.”
At that Lucien had gone stock-still, his proud jaw tightening, and Malachite chortled to himself like a choking snowhyena.
“You don’t think that’ll actually work?” I’d managed through my dry throat. Fione grinned at me—not falsely saccharine, but wide and confident.
“He’s their prince. Their future king. My uncle might not hesitate to punish the prince, but everyone else in Vetris surely will.”
As I ride home in the carriage, Fisher leading us slowly through a spate of traffic in the market, I realize with blinding clarity that Fione is using us. Lucien agrees to it out of his need to know his sister’s true fate, Malachite agrees for Lucien, and I agree for my own heart. A pipe system, shadows, edges of the noble quarter, splitting up to cover ground—all things that could line up perfectly to take his heart.
A spasm of ravenous hunger runs through me, stabbing between my every breath. I clutch at my chest, praying for the pain to stop. My wounded forearm begins to ooze blood, the bandages crimson all at once.
All of Fione’s smiles, all her insistences on getting us together—it’s not to be friendly, or to get to know us as people. It’s to use us, like pawns in a game. I suppose when you want something badly enough, when you lose the thing most precious to you, people just become toys, puppets to move around to achieve your goals.
I’m using Lucien the same way Fione is. He’s just a puppet to me. A stepping stone.
LiAr, the hunger shrieks with a thousand glass-crash voices. YoU’rE a tErriBle liAr.
Shouts tear me out of my own head. I watch outside the carriage window as the market crowd points at something in the sky—no, something settled on a building high up. Crows. Their shiny black feathers catch the sunlight, all except one. One crow, stark white.
“A witch!”
“Someone get the lawguards!”
“Shoot it down!”
A fruit merchant with a small crossbow does the honors. He shakes as he lines up the shot, but when the bird hits the ground the market erupts into cheers. The lawguards quickly congregate and take the bird’s body away, and I watch them pass my carriage window. Blood drips from between the lawguard’s hands. White feathers work free of the bird’s lifeless body, swirling in the crowd’s wake. The glassy pink eyes watch me, unblinking. Not a witch—witch-crows have no color at all on them. An animal. An albino.
A beautiful thing born in the wrong era.
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