Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,141

in that it’s obvious; he’s in love, and Malachite in all his stone-headedness wouldn’t know what that means. It quickly becomes a sniping contest between the two of them, Lucien watching and chuckling at it all.

Fione sees me fiddling with the ring. She swallows her water, wiping her chin delicately before she speaks. “It’s his way of trying to persuade you to stay.”

I laugh under my breath, staring into the blue of the rose. “Am I being that obvious?”

“No. But he’s always had good instincts. For terrible things most of all.”

“It won’t be terrible,” I insist. “Just…different. New. I won’t pretend it’ll be easy, but. He’ll learn.”

Fione stares at a scarred canyon wall, at the black moss growing there. “No one wants to learn alone, Zera.”

“He won’t be alone.” I press down the clawing in my gut. “He’ll have all of you—Yorl, Malachite, you, Varia.”

At the last name, Fione closes her eyes, as if it’s caused her pain. Or maybe she’s imagining having Varia back. Longing.

“It’s not—” Her voice, trying so hard to be regal and composed, cracks. “It’s not a fair trade.”

Me, for Varia. My laugh comes again, softer. There’s a silence filled by the shuffling battalions opening their helmets to drink, opening their armguards to wipe off sweat, adjusting the metal of their swords and spears. Lucien’s laugh. Malachite’s grumbling. The hiss of the matronic letting off steam, Yorl’s faint busy purr as he scribbles observations about the canyon on a pad.

I brave the silence first. “I know it’s hard to believe. I know you don’t believe in the gods. You believe in polymathematics, in reality. But I’ve lived it and died it. No one’s ever really gone, Fione. We’re all connected. I know it. Maybe by the gods, or not by them at all. All I know is I’ve seen it, Muro’s seen it—the Tree of Souls connects us all, through our memories, and our love, and our feelings. That’s what a soul is: a root. It’s memories and love and feelings. And that can’t be destroyed. I promised you then and I promise you now—no one is ever really gone.”

She opens her mouth to say something, closes it. Opens it again, closes it. She stares out at the darkness, finally, the deep stretching thing with no end, and I watch her luminous periwinkle eyes fill with tears. Eyes I hope she gives her children. Eyes I hope see a new, peaceful world born.

And then, silently, she nods.

Pala Orias sits at the nexus where the five great-canyons merge, or so Lysulli says. Yorl looks thoughtfully around at the canyon wall, then murmurs to Lucien and me, “It stands to reason, then, that these five great-canyons were created when the Old Vetrisians split the Tree of Souls in two.”

“Probably,” Lucien agrees.

“These?” My eyes bug out. “But these canyons are huge!”

“So is the Tree of Souls’ power.” Yorl nods. “Or, so was the Tree of Souls’ power.”

I make a frown. “What’ll happen if we split it again, then? More canyons?”

Yorl and Lucien share a look. It’s a silent answer but a thorough one. No one knows. More destruction, maybe. Maybe the whole place will collapse in on us and kill us.

All hypotheticals that’ll never come to pass, if I have any say in it.

I’m so mentally exhausted that my boots start to drag on the stone. No sleep, no rest, my mind listless and everywhere and droopy. I’m not even sure what’s keeping me awake at this point—Lucien, probably. He leans in and offers me his shoulder, and I take it. His working hand smooths my hair, his murmur of “soon, heart” the only thing forcing my feet one after another.

And then they catch on something.

I stumble forward, Lucien gripping my arm and pulling me back to standing at the last second. A string caught me and snapped—no. Not a string. A vine. A root.

A flower.

It’s not a real flower—it can’t be. It wobbles and wavers like a heatwave, made of what looks like golden mist so faint it could be mistaken for a mirage, a water spray suspended overlong. But its root caught my shoe, so it must be real. Real enough to trip me.

There come more of them the farther we walk—dotting the canyon floor like hesitant golden dreams, bunching together and apart. The strangest bit is that they bob in some invisible wind, and it’s surely invisible because the air down here is deader than I technically am.

“Flowers,” Malachite laugh-marvels, “in the Dark Below. Gran was