Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,135
enough for you to creep down to Pala Orias.”
“And when we came back, you’d be beheaded,” Lucien finishes. “Like Vachiayis I was going to let that happen.”
“It’s too bad only humans can be Heartless,” I mourn, batting my eyelashes at Malachite. “We’d do well suffering together, I think.”
“Well?” Malachite arches a brow.
“Stylish, at the very least,” I insist. “By far the most important thing.”
Yorl’s claws click across the stone floor of the reception hall as he paces. What looks to be an entire valkerax skeleton encased in gold is suspended from the ceiling above us, vertebrae countless and serrated jaw dozens of feet in the air and yet still too close. Beneather guards walk the perimeter of the room, keeping careful ruby eyes on Malachite all the while.
Lucien puts his hand to my forehead. “You must be exhausted.”
“Just a little.” I smile at him.
“With any luck, you can sleep soon,” he says. “And lure Varia to Pala Orias.”
“If she isn’t on her way here already,” Yorl murmurs. “The Bone Tree having her cunning brain at its disposal is a terrifying thought.”
“‘Cunning’ coming from someone like you truly means something,” Lucien interjects. Yorl looks over at him with massive, terse green eyes.
“Don’t feign innocence, Your Highness. You d’Malvanes have cunning in excess. It’s how you’ve held on to power for all these generations.”
“So we did,” Lucien agrees softly. Past tense. The King and Queen are dead, for all we know. If Varia dies, that means he’s the last d’Malvane. “And for what purpose?” he continues. “To lose the faith of our people? To tax them into starvation? To decide only the nobility worthy of care and respect? We were a family of a thousand years who did nothing but rot from the inside, who drove our people to kill one another in fearful wars of religious difference.” His laugh is drill. “No—that won’t be our lasting legacy. I’ll see to it.”
“Lucien—” I start. He straightens, sword clinking at his hip.
“I’ll be a better king than any of them were—by being no king at all.”
His words strike hard in the vaulted ceiling, in the bones of the valkerax. My unheart swells with that sweet pride, and Malachite looks at him with nothing but admiration.
“I’ll help, Luc,” he says.
Lucien’s rigor softens, and he grins at his near-brother, all-friend. “Who else will motivate me with their constant harping?”
The stone slab doors slide open then, soundless save for the triple tapping of shoes and a cane. Fione walks to us slowly, gaze fixed to the ceiling and the valkerax there. Lucien’s the first to run up to her, Yorl’s tail swishing as I follow.
“So?” Yorl presses.
“Malachite’s sentence? Is he free? Did they agree to help us?” Lucien asks. Fione’s eyes move down to me, and then flicker away to Luc. I pray the prince didn’t catch it.
“Yes,” she says. “They’re sending two battalions to escort us to Pala Orias.”
“Just two?” Malachite grunts.
“It’s all they could spare,” she says.
“And Malachite’s life—”
“His outcast status will be revoked,” Fione cuts Lucien off. “On the condition we stop Varia.”
And put the Trees back together, thus freeing the valkerax to roam upworld, and simultaneously freeing the beneathers from the spiral. She doesn’t say it, but it lingers between us and only us. She promised them freedom, and it worked. She managed to convince the council. Of course she did—she’s Fione. And the beneathers have been fighting in the spiral for so long—they no doubt jumped at the chance to shuffle the valkerax responsibility equally onto the rest of the world, where it belongs.
“Revoked?” Malachite’s pale jaw goes slack. “That’s never—that’s never happened in the history of—of ever.” He pauses, thinking. “What exactly did you say to them, Fi? We ain’t getting rid of all the valkerax—we’re just putting ’em back where they belong.”
I tame my frown, unsure if it’s my rational human thought or my valkerax blood making me bristle at his words.
“What does it matter?” I ask. “We have forces enough to make a stand at Pala Orias. Let’s focus on preparing for the impending bloody confrontation, shall we?”
Fione doesn’t sneak looks at me anymore. Probably for the best—Yorl and Lucien don’t need more fodder to doubt.
“She’s right,” Fione backs me up. “The council gave us a stipend—we’re to take it to the quartermaster in this building.”
“Fine. When do we depart?” Malachite sniffs.
“By the tenth-half. They said the battalions will meet us at the River Gate.”
“Spirits,” the beneather swears. “We better hurry, then. River’s across town.”