Bring Me Their Hearts(94)

“I’m not exactly an expert on your uncle’s traps,” he points out. Fione shakes her head.

“You have the best reflexes of us.”

Lucien’s snort is loud. “No—that would be me.”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of fighting Malachite yet,” I chime in. “But the prince speaks truth—he’s very quick on his feet.”

“Don’t be stupid, Lucien,” Malachite insists. “I’ll go first.”

“You told me that’s what being young is all about,” Lucien walks in front of us with all the careful calculation of the thief Whisper. “Being stupid, taking chances.”

“Not when you’re the last heir to the throne! Move behind me,” Malachite barks, trying to shoulder him aside.

“You move behind me!” Lucien insists, doubling his speed. Malachite easily catches up with him, and Fione and I desperately try to keep up with this war of pride.

“Slow down!” I call. “You’re going to set something off—”

If they do, and Lucien dies to such a trap…

YoU couLd stEaL hIs hEarT aNd vAniSh inTo thE daRk whiLe thEse pAthetiC moRtalS mOurn, the hunger cackles even as my heart locket squeezes at the thought of Lucien dead, of his handsome face lifeless…

There’s a crunch beneath Malachite’s boots, and the two boys look down slowly. Bones—the ground before them is littered with old, yellowed bones. Lucien bends and inspects them.

“I think these are cow,” he announces. “Deer. Some dogs.”

I swallow, hard. This is a familiar sight, something I’d seen in the woods near bear caves or wolf nests. “This—this is a den.”

“Den?” Fione purses her lips at me. “What do you mean?”

“There!” Lucien points. Fione holds her crystal light up higher, and Malachite says something in Beneather none of us know, but all of us intrinsically understand. A swear. A prayer. There, in the pale white light are the massive, moss-chewed bones of a serpentlike creature curled around itself, crowding the tunnel. Each rib bone is bigger than an entire ox, each claw taller than me, each tooth the width of my thigh. It throws eerie, bladed shadows on the pipe’s walls. It’s wolflike skull lies on its crossed forearms, as if it put its head down to rest in its final moments.

“Valkerax,” Malachite breathes.





15


Bones

Like Memories



My mouth goes drought-dry, my hands shaking. A valkerax, here of all places?

“I’m not a religious person,” Malachite confesses, his voice on the border of panic. “But what in Kavar’s bleeding eye is your uncle doing with a valkerax skeleton?”

“It lived here, clearly.” Fione swallows, jolting into motion. “Someone…fed it.”

“Someone like your uncle?” I ask.

“The bones are old,” Lucien muses, approaching it without a single ounce of fear. “Five—maybe six years? And the marks here—” He rests his hands on the ribs, where ragged indents carve through the bone. “Someone killed it with something sharp to the heart. A stab from a sword or a halberd.”

He takes Varia’s sword out experimentally and thrusts it into the grooves. To our surprise, the blade fits perfectly. Lucien sheathes his blade and retreats to me. I point at the skull.

“What’s that, there?” In the bone of the forehead is carved a very distinct symbol—not accidentally done in the least. Malachite narrows his glowing blood-eyes.

“That’s— But that’s impossible.”

“What is it?” Lucien barks.

“That’s the Beneather method of marking a valkerax kill. Someone knew of our traditions, or a Beneather was here.” He breathes, then begins looking around the walls of the pipe wildly, digging at the moss layer. “There have to be runes around here somewhere.”

“Runes for what?” I ask. Lucien is so close, and Malachite is frenzied, distracted. My hand fondles my blade’s hilt. I could do it now—dO iT nOw—carve out the prince’s heart and retreat into the darkness before either Fione or Malachite could react. Follow the west wall out, quickly and quietly, the celeon guards be damned. No—they’d find me. It’s too risky. I need to locate a better exit first.

“The runes hold the valkerax in—like a cage. They’re the only things that can,” Malachite insists, his scratching revealing jagged carvings in the metal pipe’s walls. “Here! ‘Torvanusin, first of his name, charged with guarding the valuables of the Man Without Mercy’…there!” Malachite pulls more moss away, voice rapid, excited. “The runes begin incomplete, and etch themselves in with the cause of the valkerax’s death when they die.”

“That sounds like magic,” I muse. Malachite nods.

“Old Vetrisian magic—from a thousand years ago, when humans and witches still worked together to seal the valkerax away.” He points at the last few etchings. “There’s his death; ‘he was killed in an act of mercy by the Laughing Daughter.’”

“Laughing Daughter?” I whisper. “Man Without Mercy? What are these odd names?”

“The valkerax aren’t like us,” Malachite insists. “They’re old, older than anything else in the world. They can see a living thing’s true self, and they call us by our true self names. It’s….a hard concept to explain to an upworlder.”