Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,109

by fear. “EMPTY! PROMISES!”

The force of her scream feels like it’s tearing me apart, tearing my skin off my body as the valkerax ascend rapidly, hurtling up through the water, the pressure becoming less but the burning becoming more, and the explosion of water as they surface, and right before us is an island.

An island of volcanic black rock.

I jolt awake so hard, my brain feels like it ricochets in my skull, my gasp so loud it sounds more like tearing cloth than breathing.

“Zera!” Lucien’s voice faintly rings through my panic, close. “What’s wrong?”

I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on him. Six eyes. I freeze. Varia made me transform. Not just in the dream. But in reality, too.

I’m not in control.

And she’s here.

“We have to go!” I shriek. “Now!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Malachite hefts off the wall. “Go where? What’s going on?”

Fione moves like a cat, collapsing at my side with a hurried hiss. “Did you dream with her again?”

I nod, hair sticking to my cold-sweat forehead. “She’s here. Hundreds of them. We have to go. You have to—you have to tie me up. Knock me out. Something. Hurry!”

Yorl stands, hurrying over to me. “Is it Varia?”

I nod. “I can see her in my dreams. Through the Bone Tree. Look at my eyes—she did this. Not me. Her. She can…I can feel her. Inside me.”

“Shit,” Malachite hisses, lightly punching the wall next to him. “Shit, shit, shit! I told you!”

“Now’s not the time, Mal,” Lucien says, voice eerily calm.

“He’s right.” Fione looks at Yorl. “We need a sedative for her.”

“It’s not gonna be strong…enough,” I manage. “She’s… Together she and the Tree are so strong.” My eyes flicker to Lucien. “You have to command me.”

His onyx gaze hardens in an instant. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Luc.” I wince as a deep pain clenches around my unheart. “She’s trying to. You have to combat it, or—”

“I promised you.” His face burns golden, every determined ridge hot as the sun. “I made a promise. I may have your heart, but I’ll never have your free will, Zera. That’s yours, and yours alone.”

“Well, she’ll kill us, then!” Malachite snarls. But Lucien doesn’t budge an inch. He means it, down to the last syllable. Even if it means I hurt him, he won’t command me. And in some sick, twisted way, I feel tears of happiness prick at my eyes.

He won’t strip me of my freedom like the others.

He’s not like them.

you’re not one of us, the hunger sneers at me. you never were. a traitor to the very end.

Fione is a clear voice of reason through the haze. “Either way, we need to tell the polymaths the valkerax are—”

From outside the shuttered window, the cold call of a bell starts to reverberate. Just one, and then two, and then ten, and then the island erupts with frantic warning rings and frenzied shouts. Malachite throws the window open, peering out and then back in, his face even more paper-white and grim.

“Too late.”

My throat feels like it’s in my mouth, Lucien’s hand squeezing mine barely legible through my mounting panic. I thought I had it under control. I thought I was free of her, of everyone, free to make my own choices, but now she’s reaching me—

“Zera, look at me,” Lucien says, gently capturing my face with his palms. “It’ll be all right. I can put you under.”

“But—” I look out the window. “You need me. You need me to fight. You need me to help you escape—ah!”

A lance of white-hot agony rips through my chest, up to my teeth. All my Heartless teeth sprout in an instant, longer than I’ve ever felt them, and far sharper. So deadly sharp, my lips bleeding as I clench them shut, refusing to bite, refusing to give myself the slightest opportunity. It’s not just human teeth—I can feel rows of teeth behind those teeth, spiraling all the way down and into my throat.

Like valkerax.

She’s changing me. Calling out to the blood promise in me. She’s forcing me to obey, like every other valkerax must obey her, obey the Bone Tree.

you betrayed them, and now you betray us.

“A sedative it is, then,” Yorl says after a single glance at my mouth. He whirls to a bag on the wall, rummaging in it before coming up with a vial of blue liquid. “This is enough to keep you under for a quarter-half. He doesn’t have to command you, but if he can slide a magic suggestion that you sleep—” The celeon looks up