Bring Me Their Hearts(95)

Beside me, Lucien goes stiff. Fione looks to him sharply.

“You know something, Your Highness.” The prince knits his lips. Fione strides up to him, apple-cheeked face deadly serious. “The Laughing Daughter? You know who that is, don’t you? Tell me.”

“It’s none of your concern,” Lucien says softly.

“Of course it’s my concern! Tell me!” Fione roars. All three of us step back at the tone of her voice, the fury echoing down the pipe. “It was Varia, wasn’t it? She did this. She knew about this thing down here, and she killed it. To what, anger my uncle?”

Lucien keeps his face pure granite, Fione snarling—her eyes full to the brim with tears.

“She’s dead, Lucien! I saw the pieces of her. You saw them. We buried her together. She’s never coming back. The fact she killed this thing doesn’t change that!”

“I’m aware,” the prince manages tersely.

“Then stop. Just stop,” Fione grits out, “with that hopeful look in your eyes.”

Malachite meets my gaze over their shoulders, something like regret in his face. Fione whirls on her heel, holding the light higher as she picks her way through the valkerax’s skeleton and makes it to the other side of the pipe.

Malachite calls after her. “Wait! What about those booby traps?”

His voice peters out as he runs after her, leaving only Lucien and me behind.

ThIs iS iT, the hunger sneers. It’S fInaLLy tIme.

I can’t do it. The celeon guards…

YoU caN cUT tHeM doWn, the hunger insists. ThEy aRe onLy flEsh. He wiLL be yOurs. EvErythinG wiLL be yOurs—

“Varia told me once,” Lucien murmurs, shaking me out of my head, “that if she ever met a valkerax, she’d like to ask it some questions.” His midnight eyes rest on the last runes. “Killed in an act of mercy, hmm? Perhaps that was the price it asked for its knowledge.”

My hand tightens around my blade, and the prince laughs all of a sudden, a crippling sadness in his voice. I can’t see his face in the darkness, but I can hear every inch of agony, every day of waiting, regretting, hating.

“Even when she’s gone, I keep finding fragments of her.”

My hand goes lax, paralyzed by the pain in his words. His body heat is so close, and I tentatively reach a hand out to his shoulder. He’s trembling.

“Every fragment, every shadow of hers makes me hope again,” he mutters. “And that’s the worst part. Not that she’s dead. But that she won’t stay dead.”

He leans in to me only slightly. I put my other arm around him, and like a dam breaking, that one motion collapses him, his full weight pressed against me, his arms around my waist, and his cheek resting against mine. The hunger salivates and keens in equal parts—my fingers itching, my teeth growing. But his warmth against me, the way my locket shudders with every breath we share—I do the only thing I can; I breathe. I remember.

You are in the silence, Reginall’s voice. You are of the silence.

Slowly, achingly slowly, like a thorn being pulled from a wound, the hunger recedes. Not all the way, not even significantly, but enough that my head feels a little clearer, a little lighter, as I dare to stroke one hand comfortingly over Lucien’s raven hair.

It’s sick, and it’s wrong, but for one moment in this strange pipe, in this strange city, embracing this not-so-strange boy, this monster feels happiness.



Lucien and I eventually part, though he snakes his hand in mine with a crooked smile that nearly stops my heart locket cold. He leads me down the pipe wordlessly after Fione and Malachite, and I follow, relishing the feel of his strong fingers intertwined with mine, the way he pauses to make sure the bones don’t trip me. Care. Consideration. They etch his black eyes like streaks of fire, muted enough that I don’t feel the full burn, but still very warm.

Uncomfortably warm.

I’m going to kill him, after all, and resurrect him as a thrall of a witch. A prisoner of war.

With gargantuan effort, I pull my hand from his, and he stops. “Is something wrong, Zera?”

Zera. Just Zera. It sounds like honey to my ears. “I’m worried,” I force out. “If Lady Himintell sees us breaking decorum like this—”

“To the afterlife with decorum,” Lucien asserts, offering me his hand again. I hesitate too long, and he exhales gently. “Perhaps you’re right. You’re less of a target for the court if this remains secret.”

To the very end, caring about my well-being. Yet it doesn’t make me feel good in the slightest—it twists my unheart around in my chest, stabs molten regret through my gut.

Before I can say anything, a muffled explosion rocks the pipe, coming from the end of it. Lucien and I dash ahead, where a doorway tinted with Fione’s white light lies open, her frantic words echoing out.

“—you all right? Say something, Sir Malachite!”

There, sprawled on the floor between broken bookshelves and a flurry of torn paper fragments lies Malachite, motionless, his long leg twisted beneath his body. Lucien collapses at his side, shaking him by the shoulders.

“Malachite!” The prince rounds on Fione. “What happened to him?”

“I-I don’t know! I found the safe behind the bookshelf, and I asked him to move it for me, and then—oh gods.” She wrings her hands over each other. “I didn’t check it for a trap! I was so angry I— Sir Malachite, please; wake up!”