Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,28
from afar.
“Aren’t they supposed to hate witches?” I blow air out.
“It’s difficult to hate someone who saves you,” she muses. “Or someone who looks like, well. That.”
She motions to Lucien’s muddy everything. Even exhausted and covered in dirt, he’s all sharp points and dark brows.
“They do share the same parents, don’t they?” I lean back against the debris, wood digging into my back. There’s a stillness, and then Fione heaves a sigh too, thumping me on the side of the boot with her cane.
“Come on. Let me show you how it’s done.”
“How what—”
She grabs my hand in her tiny one and pulls me to my feet with surprising strength. Haphazardly—but together—we march over to the thronging crowd around the prince.
“I learned very quickly that when one is in love with royalty,” Fione says, words clear over the food-fire’s gentle crackle, “they will always be busy. Always be in demand. One has to insert oneself into their lives, or you’ll become just another subject. You’ll fade away into the tapestries, and then they’ll ask you where you were the whole time, and when you try to explain, it all becomes a massive load of irritation. Excuse me, excuse me, behind you—”
She shoulders through the crowd, parting them with the force of her stride and the height of her chin alone.
“But you’re an archduchess!” I protest. “There’s no way you—”
“Nobility is nobility,” Fione says, weaving around a block of men. “Royalty is royalty. It’s another world entirely, and all we can do is look in from the outside. And occasionally yell, when appropriate.” She turns and barks shrilly over the crowd, “Lucien!”
I see his head pivot, his eyes widen, and he starts excusing himself and making his way over to us. Fione turns to me, the cold-tempered mask she’s worn since Varia left the slightest bit softer.
“You’re part of his life now. You get to take up space. You get to be greedy too, Zera. Never forget that.”
Coming from her, after she’s lost Varia…the words are as bittersweet as the sentiment. I try a smile and clutch her hand tighter. “Thank you.”
A call from the medical tent draws her periwinkle eye, and she releases me. “I should get back. Good luck.”
“Don’t work yourself too hard.”
“Impossible. Have you seen these hands?” She smooths her palms over each other. “I’ve barely worked a day in my life.”
“You’ve worked quite a lot! With your brain.”
“Brains are not hands.”
“They’re basically the same thing.”
“If they were, perhaps we’d have an easier time holding on to our thoughts.” She pauses, her grin miniscule. “This conversation is complete nonsense. You’re rubbing off on me.”
I grin back. “Unfortunately.”
Her mouse-curls fade into the night, vanishing as she steps inside the medical tent. A voice warms the air behind me.
“Zera.”
I turn to see Lucien standing there, all the villagers’ eyes on him. Some try to hide it better than others, but most don’t bother. He’s their prince, after all, and a witch. I glare up at him.
“I’m still trying to figure it out,” I say.
“Figure what out?” His black eyes gleam curious.
“Whatever it is about you they find so fascinating.”
His scoff is soft. “I’m sure you have at least some idea.”
“None at all, I’m afraid.” I turn on my heel and start walking away from the throng of onlookers, into the near forest. “Except the part where you saved a lot of them from certain death. But that’s not typically a quality I look for in a man.”
“And why would you?” he agrees lightly, following after me. “You’re immortal.”
“True.” I wave a finger. “But even immortals appreciate being saved from pain from time to time.”
A blazing heat streaks into my palm, fitting there against my skin. He pulls, the momentum whirling me around and into the crook of his arm, pressed against his chest.
“Were you?” His brows knit down at me. “In pain?”
His mouth is so close, his cheekbone smeared with mud, his hair disheveled in a way it never got in the palace. Breathless. Sincere.
“N-No.” The shameful truth squeezes out of me. “I—I just wanted your attention.”
He tilts his head, outline near-fitting like a hovering puzzlelock before my nose and mouth. “You have it.”
Warm ribbons wind down my throat, through my chest, pulling me closer to him. Enmeshed. When did it become so easy to touch him, so perfect? When did it become so easy to imagine him against my skin, over and over—
He swipes one finger along the bridge of my nose suddenly, then holds it up for me to