Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,100

are difficult. But they’re much easier if you’re filling in the natural gaps of appearance, rather than altering it to something completely different.” He pauses. “It doesn’t take much magical effort, is what I’m saying. So don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” I blurt, and his wounded look turns into a sardonic one for a moment. “Okay. So maybe I am worrying. But gracefully, and with a shit ton of poise.”

“Varia did the same thing,” he continues. “Before she went missing all those years ago, she used a spell to kill her guards and make it look like a Heartless attack. But it was beyond her skill at the time. We found only a few parts: her leg, two index fingers. But when I met her again, she was missing far more fingers. No doubt they’d been—”

“Eaten,” I repeat, pressing down the rising panic. Lucien nods, the sunrise coming through the little window painting his profile in rainbow translucence.

“I felt it. When I met the High Witches. They willingly offer their bodies to be consumed by the Glass Tree. To power it. But if any witch attempts to use a spell beyond their control at the time, the Tree will consume them, too.”

“As punishment?” I ask.

“No.” He shakes his head. “The feeling I got when I used the spells was more like…repayment. Like I owed the Glass Tree something for reaching too far. Like my reaching hurt it, and so it took from me to stem the wound. It felt as if it was making some kind of exact equilibrium.”

“But the Tree of Souls gives you your magic, right?” I say. “Not the Glass Tree. The Glass Tree is only for Heartless. So why would the Glass Tree consume you?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps when the Tree of Souls was split, the Glass Tree became the arbiter of the magic flow on Arathess. Or maybe it’s simply how magic works; I don’t know. I’m not the one translating the book with all the potential answers right now.”

There’s a soft quiet. And then I reach my breaking point.

“You won’t do this again,” I say. “You won’t use magic you get consumed for.”

Lucien doesn’t say anything, and that sets my unheart on fire even more.

“Right?” I press. “Right?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Zera.” He sighs. “You chose to use your Heartlessness to fight her. I choose to use my magic. All of my magic, if it comes to that.”

Every inch of my skin feels as if it shrivels at once. “No. No, not all of it. You can’t. I’m not going to lose you.”

His dark eye seems so distant as he moves to stare out the window. He suddenly feels a million miles away, like a mirage through a heavy fog I can’t navigate.

“I’ve realized, lately, that you may have to.”

“But—” I leap up. “All our plans! You’re going to change Vetris, right? Cavanos? We’re going to rebuild together what it means to lead your country. I said I’d help you. I want to help you.” I scrabble for his other hand, but it feels cold as I press it to my cheek. “I can’t help you with it if you…if you aren’t here anymore.”

He finally looks down at me, his smile wan. “I know. I want to be here, after it’s over. You know I do. I want to be here with you. But she’s my sister, Zera. Family. Perhaps the only family I have left. I can’t let her destroy herself like this, not for one second more. If it comes to it, I’ll use all of myself to save her.”

“It won’t come to that.” I stick my chin out.

His laugh is gentle, sad in the sunrise. “You’re so stubborn.”

I crawl onto the cot again, shivering. There’s a moment where I’m afraid to approach him. Afraid to get closer, only to lose him.

he will leave you, like everyone else.

I squeeze my eyes shut and force my body to move, to curl up on his lap and hold him down, hold him here with my weight, with my everything. My murmur is small, unsure, fractured. “So are you, Your Highness.”

I say it because I want him to kiss me. And he knows. I feel a gentle hand lifting my chin, and the short, salt-scented curtain of his hair envelops my face, his lips on mine like a goodbye and the sunrise bathing both of us in its weak, fragile pearl light and I make a decision like a hammer stroke, then and