Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,144
softly.
I don’t get an answer, but the scent of lavender-vanilla tickles my nose, and I suddenly don’t need one.
Yorl stops in what must be the center of the ruin, his paws hovering over the red tile line in the earth. He bends down, and we gather around him. Just in front of his clawed toes is a hole, barely the width of two humans. It slithers down into a shallow cave, the light of the Tree and the flowers illuminating the dimness inside enough to see something sticking out of the earthen wall of the cave—something that looks to be made of pearl. It snakes in and out of the soil, a single strand, the origin of it shimmery and not-quite-real like the Tree above is, but the very end…the very end is solid wood. Solid, white-ish wood like birch, with veins of what look like pearlescent sap.
It’s a root.
And it’s split.
At the very bottom of the hanging root is a rift, the wood curling off in two different directions. The wishbone split itself is open and raw, bleeding pearl liquid onto the thirsty ground in a steady drip.
“It’s…smaller than I thought it would be,” I admit.
“Something that tiny did all this?” Malachite quirks a brow at Yorl, and the celeon nods.
“The First Root, of the first thing to ever grow on Arathess. The origin of perhaps all sentient life.”
“All sentient life?” Mal wrinkles his nose. “Isn’t that a little much?”
“The Wave gave celeon sentience.” Fione bends down to look at the root, mousy curls bobbing. “And the Wave was magic. A combine witch spell. Who’s to say the Tree of Souls didn’t radiate enough magic over time to turn humans sentient? Or beneathers? It’s just a hypothesis, but it’s not an undue one.”
Muro said the Tree of Souls gave us all its own soul, at the beginning of time. The roots I saw in that vision, connecting all of us… I stare at the pearl-bleeding thing, my own bones aching. It’s so close. I can’t do what I need to without Varia here, though. But neither can Lucien split it again. A Tree has to be here to affect the First Root.
“So we wait for Varia,” Malachite says. “And then send Lucien down there to do his thing?”
“Presumably.” Yorl nods. “It’s quite lucky this place is teeming with magic—enough that it won’t be a struggle for the prince.”
“What won’t be a struggle for me?” Lucien appears on top of a rock in a whirl of white crow feathers.
“Marriage, apparently,” the beneather grumbles.
Lucien looks taken aback. “Oh, c’mon, Mal. I told you it was coming.”
“Yeah—the first day you saw her!” Malachite snarls. “Months ago! I didn’t think you were serious—”
A joyous, golden laugh escapes Lucien as he jumps down and ambles to my side. “When am I not serious? Practically never.”
“Are the archers in place?” I ask. He looks over at me and nods, kissing my forehead.
“Yes. The beneathers have tranquilizer arrows for the majority of the horde.”
“The same tranquilizers I used,” Yorl clarifies. “Darkmoss syrup and acidified talhut blood. If they shoot well, they should be able to keep some of the valkerax asleep and at bay.”
“Long enough for me to do my job,” Lucien agrees.
“The rest we’ll have to fight,” Fione says, oiling her cane ominously with a rag.
The prince rummages in his pocket and hands her a fistful of bolts. “Tranqs for you, too.”
“Much obliged.” She makes a facetious Vetrisian noble bow, so out of place here in the bottom of the world, and the two of them grin at each other.
“Make no mistake,” Lysulli says, appearing out from behind the rubble. “We’ll have to kill most of them. The tranqs just stagger their rate of death.”
My chest sinks. And here I was, thinking the beneathers were being charitably kind about the whole thing. They exist to kill valkerax, not put them to sleep.
“Is there a hevstrata we can retreat to if shit hits the vent?” Malachite asks them.
“No.” They shake their head. “Runes don’t work near Pala Orias.”
“Ah, I see,” Yorl murmurs, chin in his hand. “The magical influence of the Tree of Souls could unravel the Old Vetrisian word-binds.”
“So this is our last stand,” Lucien says.
Lysulli fixes their bloodred eyes on him. “Yes.”
A beat. The flowers bounce excitedly in their invisible wind, and we go still in our own dread.
“I assume everyone’s in place?” Lucien asks.
Lysulli nods. “The alert’s gone round—we’re just waiting for them to show up now.”