Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,105
for anyone to know but me. And I can keep a secret—I’m just not sure I want to.
I watch the beneather’s broad chainmail back walking ahead of me. Malachite’s devoted his whole life to protecting Lucien. He’s tortured people, killed people for him. He deserves to know about Lucien’s state more than anyone. Malachite, of all people, would unite with me if I told him Lucien’s self-sacrificing strategy. I’d feel better having someone on my side, someone other than me guard-dogging Lucien’s willingness to throw himself away for his sister.
If Lucien dies, what will Malachite do?
What will any of us do?
I don’t want to think about it. I can’t. It yawns like an open valkerax mouth, thousands of teeth and all of them promising mind-bending pain. Not right now. I raise my head and grip the warm clay jar for any shred of comfort as I walk.
Thankfully, Malachite is much better at navigating tight, dark corridors than we are. He leads us to the same door we left Yorl and Fione in yesterday, and knocks his pale knuckles against the wood. The sounds echoes, and we wait anxiously for one beat, two, before the door creaks open. One periwinkle-blue eye peers out from the dimness inside, the skin around it ashen. Fione.
“Oh,” she croaks, voice hoarse. “It’s you.”
“Pardon the insult, Your Grace,” I push into the room before she can shut us out. “But you look like shit. How about some warm tea?”
I take one step forward, my shoes crinkling paper. It’s so dim, but I squint to see the floor entirely covered in parchment—some crumpled, some flat, layered on top of each other like thousands of nonsense-scribbled cream leaves. They’ve closed the shutters, blocking out the daytime light so that a single white mercury lamp on the table is the only thing struggling to illuminate the room. And the table—Yorl’s bent over it, yellow mane peeking out from behind towering piles of books and scrolls, the sunny color the one bright thing in the pale-washed room.
His ears are drooping, tail not so much as twitching—a clear sign he’s tired. I bite my tongue to stop from bombarding him with the fact I saw his beloved grandfather roaming around last night. Not now. Not when he looks so haggard.
“Gods,” Lucien breathes into his sleeve. “It smells terrible in here.”
“Acid-wash,” Fione blinks, gratefully gulping the bowl of tea I pour her. “To remove the lacquer decomp on the book’s untreated pages. We couldn’t see the letters through the stains.” She looks at Lucien. “The phrases you gave me on the ship helped immensely, by the way. Thank you.”
“Anytime.” The prince tries a smile. “Zera’s right, though. You look exhausted.”
“Almost done,” she insists with as few words as possible and shoves the bowl back at me before walking to the table and sitting down again. She looks over at Yorl. “The four-point remedy?”
“Close,” he says back, voice even rougher than usual. “Need a second adjudicator on the sentence structure.” I pour another bowl of tea and offer it over his shoulder, but he waves it off. “No. Can’t risk the papers getting wet.”
“Oh, c’mon. One little drop won’t hurt ’em,” I insist. “But one drop could do wonders for you, Sir Large Brain.”
He glares up at me with emerald slits, then down at my boots. Those are Muro’s eyes, through and through. No wonder everyone can tell he’s Farspear-Ashwalker by just looking at him.
“Move. You’re standing on Willem dal-Braal’s verb-transfer theorem.”
“Well, Willem dal-Braal will have to wait for a bit, then, won’t he?” I shove the tea bowl under his broad nose. “Go on. The price for me moving is three sips.”
Yorl’s glower is far worse than any valkerax’s. His ears lay flat as he snatches the bowl with his claws and barely puts his muzzle to it.
“Big sips, mind you,” I singsong.
He makes a snarl and chugs, shoving the empty bowl back at me. “Begone, you irritating mother hen.”
“He’s proud of you, you know.”
His eyes snap up to mine, confusion there for just a moment before he realizes who I must mean. His grandfather. Message sent, Muro.
I smile cheerily and hop off the parchment. Yorl unfreezes and shakes his head, deciding I’m talking nonsense again. He leans over in his seat to scoop the paper up, comparing it to the book page under his paw and muttering quietly to himself. I shoot an exasperated eye roll at Lucien, and he smiles with the bare corner of his lips back at me.