Bring Me Their Hearts(96)
Malachite doesn’t stir, eyelids unmoving. I swallow the hard, toxic lump in my throat. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this, ever. I wasn’t supposed to care about anyone—not the prince, not his bodyguard. No one. This was all supposed to be faked. And yet here I am, my stomach roiling with very real dread.
Lucien slaps Malachite’s face, hard. “Wake up, godsdamn you!”
Nothing. Lucien snarls, desperation edging his voice.
“You can’t leave me here alone. You promised you’d be by my side until I took the throne. You promised!”
I kneel at Malachite’s body, listening for a heartbeat in his chest. It’s there, but very faint, his breathing shallow and ragged. I’ve died enough times to know a ragged breath is the worst sign—the sign your body is about to give out beneath you.
“We have to get him help.” I look up. “Fione, is there an exit?”
She nods and points to the ceiling, where an iron trapdoor hangs. If we can get him out of here, just far away enough from the tower, finding a royal polymath to tend to him…
“Get up!” Lucien shouts. I put a hand on his arm, but he rips away, slamming his own hands on Malachite’s chest. “I said get up!”
It happens in a blink—Malachite sits up instantly, pulling in air in a single massive gasp. The glow of his eyes flutters as his eyelashes do—he looks around at all of us blearily.
“What did I miss?” he manages. Lucien’s posture eases, Fione going still.
“I’m sorry, Sir Malachite!” she blurts. “It was my fault—I didn’t check the bookshelf for a trap before you—”
“Vachiayis!” Malachite snarls as he shifts, clutching at his leg. “What in the Dark Below happened to me?”
“You might be resistant to fire, but it turns out you’re not immune to explosions,” I joke softly. Malachite shoots me a pained smirk.
“Well that’s good to know.” He tries to stand, Lucien helping him up. “Sorry if I worried you, Luc. Sometimes a guy just has to take a dirt nap, you know?”
A torn laugh escapes Lucien’s mouth, and even Fione lets out a small, strangled giggle. Relief is a heady drug, and it calms the humans down quickly. Malachite insists he’s fine, and Fione points out the explosion was probably linked to an alert system, and that we need to move. With Lucien’s help, she carefully approaches the safe and begins to work on its puzzle-lock, leaving me to splint Malachite’s leg with shards of the broken bookshelf.
“You always carry around gauze?” Malachite asks as I procure the roll from my pouch.
“Only when I know the most idiotic Beneather is tagging along,” I quip. He snorts.
“In my defense, I was just trying to hurry things up. Hanging around those valkerax bones wasn’t doing Lucien any favors. Or Fione.”
“Memories are dangerous things,” I murmur.
“They keep you prisoner sometimes,” he agrees. “But just having them, being able to remember them, revisit them, live in them when life gets too rough—I think it’s worth it.”
We wOuLdn’T kNow. The hunger curls its lip. We’Ve leFt thOse wEaK hUmaN meMoRies behiNd.
I laugh, because I can do nothing else, and it’s then I realize most of my laughter here in Vetris has been laced with utter despair.
Fione finds what she’s looking for in the safe—a single aged parchment roll—and we all manage to pile out through the trapdoor just as the footsteps of the celeon guards echo down the pipe. I’m so glad to see triple moonlight again, smell the crisp night air. We shed our robes as we hike quickly away, eager to get out of the East River Tower’s long shadow. Malachite struggles, and Fione and Lucien look exhausted, Fione leaning heavily on her cane. I’m perfectly fine, and I motion to a secluded bench, overgrown and hidden from the road by thick, red Avellish trees. Even Fione relents at the idea of rest, and we settle on the bench. “Just to catch our breath,” she insists.
There’s a peace before the storm, I’ve learned, and this is it. Fione speaks first.
“I read it; it’s detailed notes on Varia’s sword, in my uncle’s handwriting, dated a day before the court got the news she was killed. I was…I was right. This whole time, I was right.”
Lucien’s fists clench, and Fione presses on.
“I’m on a time limit now. He’ll notice it’s missing and start searching. I’ve got two days at most before he figures out it was me.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask. She smiles faintly at the parchment roll in her hand.
“Turn it in to the king. And then run. Hide somewhere my uncle can’t find me, until he’s behind bars and stripped of his power.”
“The day after tomorrow is the Hunt.” Lucien wipes sweat from his brow. “You can hide there, wait it out.”
Fione flashes him an exhausted smile. “I’d appreciate that.”
There’s an awkward silence, the first gentle sprays of the golden sunrise breaking over the horizon, over the four faces of a very strange group of young things.
“I’m sorry, Lucien,” Fione murmurs. “For yelling.”
Lucien stares at her, eyes roving up and down her tired frame. He puts his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and says, “It’s all right. I’m sorry for not believing you sooner about Gavik.”