Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,142
right.”
“Our grandparents knew all along,” Yorl asserts, then turns to me. “They’d heard the stories. This is as far as I’ve been—Grandfather’s notes advised against getting any closer to the Pala.”
“Yeah, the place is a ruin—it could crumble at any time. But I’ve never—I’ve never seen these flowers in my life.” Lysulli frowns. “And I’ve patrolled here countless times. It’s…it’s usually just a crater.”
“The Tree of Souls is the source of all magic,” Lucien insists. “It disappeared physically, but its fingerprints still remain.”
“You talk like it’s alive.” They huff.
“It could be.” Lucien shrugs.
“Why would these flowers appear now, then?” I ask. “All of a sudden, when we come down here? Isn’t that too coincidental?”
“Coincidental indeed,” he muses, staring right at me.
I answer my own question wordlessly; it’s because the Tree of Souls wants me here. It gave me that dream ages ago, of the two tree pendants, and that overwhelming feeling of wrongness. It’s wanted me for at least that long—maybe even before that, Muro said. I try not to let the nerves overtake my thoughts. Lucien can’t know. He can’t. I can only be the poem-song, the mantra.
Finally the prince breaks his crushing gaze on me, and he inhales, exhales. “Gods above—I feel like I could do anything here.”
“What does that mean?” Fione inquires at his side.
“The magic’s unstable, but there’s so much of it. So much more than anywhere else, than even Windonhigh.” He marvels, dark eyes catching the faint golden glow of the flowers. “It’s like—like I’ve only ever stepped in puddles, and now I’m swimming in the sea.”
“So you’ve got full capability, is what you’re saying,” Malachite grunts.
“Which means Varia will, too,” Fione murmurs.
“We’re setting up the perimeter, regardless,” Lysulli interrupts. “I’m splitting the battalions into fourths and stationing them in a phalanx formation surrounding the centerline of the Pala. We’ll back ourselves against the north canyon wall.”
“Depending on the terrain, we can hide some of the archers for an ambush farther up,” Lucien says.
Lysulli looks at him, mildly approving. “Agreed. Clever move.”
“We can follow the centerline to the First Root,” Yorl says. “It should be there, at the axis of north and west.”
We soldier onward, the flowers becoming so thick under our feet, we can’t step without crushing some. They bounce back quickly though, bobbing cheerily and spraying an ethereal, half-real golden pollen of some sort. The canyon finally starts to narrow, but the flowers do the opposite, growing bigger and bigger until they’re waist-tall and thick enough to hide our legs entirely. Fione struggles with her shorter height until Malachite puts her on his shoulders without a word. The light of the collective flowers grows stronger, illuminating our faces with gold from below.
The first time I see Pala Orias, it feels like home.
It’s the valkerax blood promise in me, probably. A sweet, buttery feeling settles on the void in my chest the moment the golden flower-light reveals it—an old, crumbling ruin. Arches, plazas, chipping supports of houses long collapsed. The architecture is entirely different from Pala Amna—far smoother, taller, lots of domes and curves and strange pillars of coiled stone. Not spiraled but coiled tight. Malachite can’t stop looking everywhere, and neither can Yorl, but I look at only one place—ahead.
here at the cradle, the hunger whispers. here at the grave.
At first I think it’s me—my eyes going bad. But then I realize it’s a warp in the air. You can see it only when the golden flower-light hits it just so—a shimmering, rainbow-esque outline of something. Something huge, something looming gargantuan over the ruins, over us, spreading far and wide with many sturdy limbs and without a single thrown shadow. It gives off a faint rainbow light in a pattern like veins, pulsing gently in time to some unseen heartbeat, to some unseen music. To an unseen song.
The song. The one in my head, the one in my heart. The one in Evlorasin’s head, Evlorasin’s heart.
“Shit,” Malachite manages to grit out. “It’s huge.”
“Like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Fione agrees in awe.
“They say it began here.” Yorl’s green eyes shine with the Tree’s light as he takes it in, tail swishing madly. “Life. They say the Tree of Souls was the first thing to ever grow on Arathess.”
I look up with an awed sigh at the shimmering veins—no, they’re branches. Branches bigger than entire rivers latticing the darkness above us. “And I godsdamn believe it.”
Lysulli gets over their awe first, and immediately begins