Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,15

then you’ll break the habit.”

“Th-That’s, that plan—” I start. “Considering how many of the best polymath tutors you’ve had, that plan’s a scathing disappointment. It won’t even work.”

“I know.” He smiles.

“I’m going to slip up on purpose,” I threaten weakly.

He puts his forehead to mine, his murmur soft. “In all honesty, I’m hoping you will. Many times.”

I’ve felt so many quiets in my life. So many silences that lingered, in different ways. Some crash, some burn. Some fall slowly, like snow, and others pelt heavily, like rain. But this one is strange and new.

This one trembles.

What comes next? I know what comes next. I know, as he leads me back to the inn tower, to the blazing of the hearth melting the snow on our eyelashes, both of us dripping water and laughter up the stairs.

Boots are awfully pointless, aren’t they?

Your cheeks are so red, you look scrubbed raw.

I do not!

If you go any faster I won’t be able to keep up.

Teleport a little, then, Sir Witch.

We barely make it past each torch before I pull him in to me, over and over, searingly desperate to make sure this is real and not some figment of my Heartless brain dying somewhere, on some forgotten plain. Some gift from the gods in my final moments.

Dreams can feel real. Dying dreams most of all.

And then I’m back, standing in the tower room I woke up in halves ago, a hand in mine and a smile mirroring my own. With slow movements, Lucien peels my snow-wet covering off, kissing a deliberate line down my neck. The near-dead embers in the hearth have nothing on the glowing blaze that starts to lick at my insides—

he could command you to do anything, and we would be powerless to resist.

—and then all at once, it vanishes.

“Lucien.” My voice sounds small in the stone room. I try again. “Luc—”

He straightens in a blink, eyes roaming over my face. “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

“I—” I swallow. “I don’t think I can do this.”

I watch his expression, ready for disappointment. But there’s none, just a wry smile where it should be. He backs up, putting a slice of thoughtful space between us.

“All right.”

“Aren’t you—”

“No,” he cuts me off. “What you want, you shall have. What you don’t want, you won’t have. It’s that simple.”

All the fear in me drains, and it feels like I’ve taken a physical step away from some unknowable cliff’s edge. His warm hand moves, achingly, to tuck a strand of blond hair behind my ear.

“That’s better.” His smile widens (that sunrise smile, the beginning of it all). “Some color back in your cheeks.”

“Being undead doesn’t mean we should strive for unbeauty.” I flip the rest of my hair over my shoulder, and Lucien’s laugh echoes as he seats himself on the bed, pulling off his boots.

“You’ve never once been unbeautiful, Lady Zera, and you know it.”

“Hey!” I bend to unlace my own boots. “If I can’t call you Your Highness, you can’t call me Lady Zera!”

“Says who?”

“Me! Your Heartless!”

“My Heartless,” he repeats, and the words suspend in the air. I almost regret them, regret reminding us both of the power imbalance, until he says, “I never did ask—how long do you intend to stay my Heartless?”

I say it without thinking: “For however long you need me.”

Dark hawk eyes cut over to me, his fingers undoing his shirt buttons freezing. “That’s not an answer, Zera. What do you want?”

It hits me like a runaway carriage—silent road and then thundering all at once. No witch of mine has ever asked me that question. Not even Nightsinger, the most temperate of the past two. It was an implicit understanding with Nightsinger; she saved my life, and she didn’t want to be anywhere but the Bone Road forest. With Crav, Peligli, me. She wanted us there with her. To protect us from the outside world that was so cruel to children most of all.

But I’m not a child anymore.

I’m Zera Y’shennria, first Heartless of the witch Black Rose, the Starving Wolf, Six-Eyes. I helped Laughing Daughter obtain the Bone Tree, and with it, the power to destroy everything. Wherever you’re flying right now, Evlorasin, you were right. Even in madness. Especially in madness. The Starving Wolf’s hunger for her heart opened the gates that held back the end of the world.

“I opened the gates,” I say. “So I should close them.”

“Not obligation, Zera. Not selfless sacrifice.” Lucien’s voice gets harder as he stands, shirt swaying open to reveal skin under