Bring Me Their Hearts(89)

Sin

and Shadow



It’s been only two weeks and Y’shennria can already tell when I’m up to something. That’s the double-bladed peril of getting to know someone—you learn them, but they learn you.

Y’shennria narrows her eyes at me. “You’re preparing for something.”

“Is it that obvious?” I chirp, throwing steel hairpins into the belt pouch on my bed. When she doesn’t say anything, I add in some medical gauze, travel rations, and emergency gold coins.

“Yes,” she deadpans. “Did Lady Himintell forget to tell me about whatever illegal scheme she’s borrowed you for this time?”

“Scheme?” I gasp. “Auntie, please. It’s just a night of innocent drinking among terribly rich and bored young adults.”

She raises a fine eyebrow at the steel hairpins hanging out of the pouch. I clear my throat.

“All right, you got me—there may be some mild breaking and entering. But that’s it.” She stares pointedly at me. I add, “Unless you count smooching as an illegal scheme. Which, just between you and me, I think it should be.”

“Zera.” She sweeps over and upends the pouch on the bed. “You must tell me what’s going on.”

“If I do, you’ll try to stop me.”

“I’m stopping you regardless—we are so close to the Hunt. I won’t have you ruin everything we’ve been working for on one night of crusading for Lady Himintell’s cause.”

“I thought you liked her,” I say. “Weren’t you the one who asked me to get along with her? You said she’d help me.”

“That was before I—” Y’shennria swallows. “That was before I realized what a clean opportunity the Hunt is. It’s the ideal setting.”

“For you,” I fire back. “I was fine with it, too, for a while. But then the hunger—it just keeps getting worse and worse.”

“Zera…” Her eyes soften.

“I can barely hear myself think anymore,” I interject. “Eating helps, but for only a few minutes. Every time I look at you, or Maeve, or anyone with human blood in them, the hunger shows me perfect images of ripping them to shreds. It’s gotten so loud. It’s loud right now, screaming at me to kill you.”

—teaR tHe sKIn frOm hEr faCe and dRink yOur fiLL—

Y’shennria’s dark complexion pales, tingeing greenish. “Zera, you mustn’t—”

“I know I mustn’t. I’ve always known. But ever since Lucien’s sword cut me, it’s been unending hunger. Do you know what it’s like? To want to rip the world to shreds?”

The Red Twins peek through the windows, over the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains in the distance, like two crimson eyes watching us unblinkingly. Finally, Y’shennria nods.

“I do. And it’s an awful thing.”

She slides one hand toward my own on the bed. She hesitates, pulling back once before forcing herself the rest of the way. Her hand over mine is cool, slender.

“You must not put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

“That’s the whole reason I’m here,” I argue.

“No,” she says, stone in her voice. “Danger, certainly. But not unnecessary danger. If you’re caught, it’s over. For you and for me. For many witches.”

“We can’t bank all our hopes on the Hunt,” I snap. “If an opportunity presents itself, I want to be there—”

“As do I,” she interrupts, voice inching louder. “To make sure I can get you back to the manor without being seen. To ensure you aren’t wounded by the prince’s bodyguard, or worse.”

I start to laugh, the sound despairing. “None of those are the fiercely logical Y’shennria reasons I’ve grown to know and love. It sounds almost like you…” My throat swells up, unable to form the next few sounds. Y’shennria takes her hand from mine, staring at her palms with a pained gaze.

“I don’t want another painting in my hall, Zera.”

A painting. She means like Lord Y’shennria’s—a portrait of the dead. She clears her throat and turns her head to me, fluffy hair catching the red moonlight.

“It began as make believe,” she says. “As pretend. Playing house, with a new niece. Buying her things, teaching her things, watching her improve as a lady before my very eyes. I had hoped, a long time ago, to do such things with my own daughters. When they were taken from me, I—” Her scarred throat bobs. “I made myself give it all up. Locked the very thought of it away behind steel and glass.”

Her eyes catch mine, and she smiles twistedly.

“But the Old God loves to test us,” she presses on. “He loves to send us people who change our lives in great and terrible ways.”

“When I become human again,” I start, “then you can care about me. Not now. Not when I’m like this.”

Y’shennria laughs. “You don’t get to tell me when to care about you, Zera. That’s not how being an auntie works.”

My unheart clenches in my locket, so hard and sudden I skip a breath. Y’shennria recovers quicker than I do, always—she stands and makes her way to the door.

“You will not go tonight,” she says, clipped. “I’ll be ordering Reginall to lock all your windows from the outside, and he will be guarding your door for the rest of the night. If you leave, I will know.”