Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,152

my human eyes, as my smile widens and the words tumble from my lips, tragic and hopeful all at once.

“Wait for me.”

The wildfire in his gaze roars higher, eating me like kindling. The ring—his ring—around my finger feels so solid, so wonderful, the only unpainful thing in the world as every little muscle in my body strains to force the First Root back together. The tremblings of the ground grow wild, nearly throwing us off-balance, but Lucien refuses to let even the earthquakes tear his gaze from my face. The ceiling of the little cave starts to collapse in places, chunks of dirt and stone leaving puckered holes into darkness that reveal the glowing rainbow tree above. It seems more real, somehow—its branches now strongly shimmering.

Varia suddenly breaks free of Lucien’s spell, her wooden-fingered hand darting out for my throat. She squeezes and squeezes so hard I fear my head will come off—squeezes like I’m the source of all her rage and fury. But Varia’s grip is nothing compared to the iron grip of Lucien’s command, the hunger peeling apart my willpower like it’s nothing more than dry lace. He knew all along, maybe, what I was going to do. But he had a plan, too. He didn’t want to command me, but he knew he would if he had to. He’d pour all his magic into that one command if he had to.

I can’t stop him.

But I can love him.

“If I don’t do this, Lucien,” I gasp, “I’ll be hungry forever.”

It’s not the I love you he wants. It’s not the I’ll stop, and let you do this instead. It’s not the I will consider my own safety above all others’ he wants to hear. He wants me to be with him, to be us, together at last, and in peace.

And I want that, too.

Varia’s grip closes in around my windpipe. I breathe deep, for maybe my last breath, and say, “Please trust me. Wait for me.”

It’s a promise, and a cry, and a prayer.

It’s unfair to ask him. Selfish.

But maybe I’ve earned a little of that, at the end of all things.

Whisper isn’t the type to linger, but Lucien is. So I know it’s Whisper who pulls him away from me, who breaks his eye contact, who is there one moment and then gone in shadow the next. The sound of popping, everywhere, outside the cave. Clattering as swords fall to the floor, as bowstrings unwind sharply, the clank of metal as Yorl’s matronic falls, as every beneather and friend is teleported away by Lucien’s sheer power, the sounds of battle emptying in a split second, and all I can think is thank you.

I love you.

Varia digs into my neck. I feel it happen, but she can’t stop my hands. I press with all effort, all breath, into my two palms, forcing the First Root’s wound flush against itself. My neck creaks, groans, resisting her force trying to decapitate me. Around her fingers buried deep in my neck, blood and life leave me, and I see her face. I see her expression—no, the Bone Tree’s expression—as she realizes I’m putting her together instead of taking her apart.

I’ve never seen joy. Not really. Not until this moment.

It’s a deep, old, eternal joy, the sort the New God priests crow about in the temples. Divine joy. Joy that makes moving mountains possible, that makes the sun rise and set and rise again by the buoy of sheer gilded ecstasy. She—no, it—looks at me, milky, shriveled eyes somehow filled with gratitude.

“Thank you.”

The bones sticking out of Varia’s choker and piercing into me suddenly retract, small and slender and like jewelry again. There’s a clicking sound, and the bone choker comes loose, one fang at a time, until it falls to the ground and disintegrates into white dust.

Varia staggers as if she’s been cut free from some string holding her, her knees tumbling to the ground and her body unmoving, her head on her chest. My six eyes start to blacken at the edges, but I force myself to focus on my hands, on holding. I can feel the Root’s wound starting to close, inch by inch. The tremors are worse now, great clots of dirt falling on our heads, cracks and crashes beyond the little cave as boulders fall and the canyon faces start to shatter.

“V-Varia, wake up,” I stammer, throat scraped raw and open. “Your Highness…wake up, please.”

Lucien’s magic can’t reach me—not anymore. He’s gone from the Tree of Souls,