Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,110
at Lucien, and they nod at each other. “There’s a good chance not even the Bone Tree would be able to wake you.”
I let out a strangled cry-laugh through my gritted teeth. It’s a sweet attempt at putting my fears to rest, and I want to trust it. I want to trust him, and Lucien, but I’ve felt the Bone Tree. It’s doing unimaginable things to me—things it’s not supposed to be able to.
“Sleep? It’s feeding off Varia,” I pant. “Getting stronger. Don’t—don’t put me to sleep. She’ll see me again, control me. The dreams…dreams are how they talk—”
“How who talks?” Malachite frowns.
“If we put you under strongly enough, you won’t dream,” Fione assures me.
“But—”
“Hush,” Lucien murmurs into my hair, lips pressed to my head in a kiss. “You’ve done your part. Rest now.”
Yorl holds the vial to my chapped lips, and I can’t think. My teeth are so many, my claws growing strange and white and long. I have to down it. It’s this or rampage as a valkerax, with the valkerax. It’s this or hurt the people in this room, maybe.
And I promised I’d never do that again.
I promised I’d never lose control and hurt someone again.
you were meant to hurt, the hunger laughs gleefully. you were born to hurt others.
The fourteen graves, bells and ribbon swaying in the mountaintop breeze—
I gulp greedily and a wave of magic slides through me, the warmth of the sedative harmonizing with it to weave a deep, dark, utterly inescapable slumber. The panic still buzzes to the last—they need me. They need me to fight with them. They’re mortal. I’m not. I’m going to be nothing but dead weight, unable to help like I want to, like I have to. I’m the only one who can survive if I die. I’m the only one who can protect them, protect him, Lucien—
“Lucien,” I whisper. His blurry smile beams down at me, golden and soft, his murmur slowed and drawn-out by the looming sleep.
“Let us protect you, this time.”
The sedative is strong—of course it’s strong. It’s Yorl’s. The magic, too, is strong.
Of course it is; it’s Lucien’s.
Their attempts to put me under are so strong. But the Bone Tree is strong, too. Varia is weaker, but the Tree has only grown. It flutters my eyes open in momentary bursts, sound and light and sensation coming through. Someone carrying me in their arms—the smell of honey. Lucien. The swhick sounds of Fione’s crossbow cane firing heavy bolts, Malachite’s ferocious battle cries, and the air-shredding bellows of valkerax in return. The sound of stone crumbling, the feel of wet droplets on my face, half of them salted sweat and the other half metallic blood.
There’s a terrifying moment when my six eyes open fully and I see a copper giant—a matronic—swinging massive fists into the scaled serpent body of a valkerax. A silver robe is perched inside each matronic, a polymath sitting inside it and maneuvering it like a suit of armor a dozen times their size. That’s why, my human brain chimes. That’s why the Black Archives made them—not to bring them up to bookshelves, but to fight.
The valkerax try to bite down on the copper titans, to rip and tear like they would flesh, but the matronic is metal, harder, and my own new teeth chatter with the urge to bite, to help, to destroy.
DESTROY.
DESTROY IT ALL.
Above me, I hear Lucien shout something, but my mind’s battle between sleep and wakefulness is too chaotic. I can’t understand. I can’t understand any of it—why me? Why me, of all people? Why am I the valkerax-Heartless?
Why, Trees? Why give your lonely dream to me?
Why am I the wolf at the end of the world, and not someone else?
someone braver, someone better, the hunger slithers. Lucien, Fione, Malachite—any of them would’ve been better.
why are they friends with you?
Why are they friends with me?
Why am I still asking this when I know the answer?
I have to trust them. They’re friends with me because I’m worth it. Because, despite all the flaming horseshit I’ve put them through, I’m worth it to them. I’m worth it, period.
My friends chose me because they believe in me.
The Trees, maybe, chose me because they believe in me.
I can’t give in. Even as the Bone Tree beckons me to battle, keens for me to pick up my claws and tear the one holding me apart, to tear this whole world apart, I fight it.
DESTROY. DESTROY. DESTROY.
Fight it. Fight with everything in you. Fight by the