Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,17

genocidal maniac. A religious fanatic. A fearful man, whose fear hurt and destroyed the lives of so many.

DESTROY.

Varia’s hate burns cold. Burns like winter, like Breych in the dead of night, like putting a hand to a block of ice and leaving it for eternity. Our hand pulls out a velvet bag, embroidered with the word leech.

“No—I can help. You need me—”

He doesn’t even get the chance to beg.

She denies him the chance, like he denied so many witches.

Her wooden fingers collapse, fisting around the bag. A second of resistance, of Gavik clutching his chest frantically, eyes bugging out of his skull, and then the give.

The squelch, the blood running down her fingers, the velvet soaking wet and dripping onto the waving grass.

I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard of it, feared it like a nebulous reaper far off, but I’ve never seen it happen in front of my eyes.

But it does.

Gavik’s chest implodes—ribs and flesh exploding, painting the grass with viscera in every direction. Wet splatters on Varia’s face—our face—but she never flinches. Not for a second. She watches every slow moment as Gavik’s knees buckle and his corpse falls into the grass face first. Horrified face first. No grave marker. No pyre. Nothing.

And the screaming in our head lessens. The fire, the images of death—they start to fade. Like someone ushering the horrible orchestra into another room and closing the door. It’s all muted. I—we—can think again, clearer.

We’ve destroyed.

We’ve obeyed.

And the screaming rewards us.

I feel Varia’s face smile. A delighted grin as she wipes pieces of Gavik off her cheekbone with slow ease, as her fear of the screaming turns to calculation. As she realizes the rules of it, the requirements.

“We don’t need anyone anymore,” she murmurs. “Least of all a maggot like you.”

She turns. Gavik’s gone. I don’t mourn him—he was no one worthy of mourning. But Varia’s words, the coldness and calmness in them, I mourn that. I feel it, deep down. I feel her sense of betrayal, her wounded trust, her aching love. All of it. All of it sadness like thorns, pointed out at the world.

And on the horizon of her mind, a roar. A roar, as the screaming comes back quickly, furiously, ravaging every thought in its path.

DESTROY IT ALL.

The morning breaks cold and snappish over Breych’s three ridges. Lucien wakes me, and I mumble my surprise.

“You’re still here.”

“For as long as you’ll have me.” He laughs. “Come now. It’s far past sunrise.”

Past sunrise. How long was that dream? It was a dream, right? No—it was reality. I saw Gavik die. Just like I saw Varia crawl out of the valkerax pile, alive and whole.

Do I even tell Lucien? His wound over his sister is no doubt still raw. And how can I tell him when I don’t even know why it’s happening? How do I tell him of the pain his sister is feeling, the betrayal?

One thing at a time, Zera. We’re in a warm bed now, with a warm boy.

enjoy this ease while it lasts, the hunger taunts. for it will not last long.

I push out the lingering dregs of the dream and sit up with a groan. “Why did you wake me?”

“Don’t we have something to do?” he asks.

“Yes. But I’ll have you know I’ve plucked out men’s eyeballs for far lesser crimes than this.”

Whichever romantic poet forgot to mention how exceedingly impossible it is to get out of a bed with your lover in it owes me, and I take my payments in gold and endless praise, thank you very much. I manage to dress as he does, our backs turned to each other.

“Is the prince of Cavanos trying to sneak a peek?” I tease. His fluster is immediate.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Likewise,” I chime.

When we make it outside, the pure, fresh snow crunches underfoot like particularly stiff glaze on a sweetround. It’s my turn to lead—I pull Lucien gregariously around the early-morning stalls selling fabrics, beads, wire. A handful of little iron bells, in the Cavanos tradition. Red ribbon. White wood. It won’t be the usual pyre and metal orb carved with an eye placed in the mouth. It’s not the New God’s way. But it can’t be; I don’t have the bodies to burn. Only the memories. Only their faces, pressed like flowers in the pages of my mind.

This is the old way to do things. The non-denominational way, the unfashionable way. The only way I know how, from reading the inscriptions on the mass graves near the Bone Road.