Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,37
temper his magic. To stop using it to destroy himself. That’s all I can hope for, because he hasn’t listened to me thus far.
I swallow imaginary glass.
if the boy you love destroys himself to stop his sister because you gave her the Bone Tree—
My brain brandishes a white mercury sword against the hunger, the gloom.
No.
We’re fighting the guilt this time. To the teeth.
To the death.
The thunderclouds choose that moment to finally open up, a gentle pitter-patter pattering down harder until it’s entire sheets of water dumping on us, completely drenching the bleached and thirsty ruins. We wait, and wait again, a string of sick-wet moments, until my ears pop with that familiar nothingness, the world dimming to rushing blackness, and light and sound coming back in all at once.
Thunder replaced by rushing wind. Not the sort I’m used to—through trees or bushes or the grasslands. Lighter than that. Freer than that. Wind without boundaries, unhindered, howling against and with itself. The light is the near-dying sort, the sun hanging low and silver on the horizon.
But I see it clearly.
Just the horizon. Just the sun, and stretched out before us are nothing but puffy white clouds. A quilt of them, as far as the eye can see. We’re high, so high. We’re standing and dripping water on a small platform of what looks like dirt and stone, overgrown with moss and grass. It looks like land, but it isn’t. It can’t be, because there are clouds simmering just inches away, the drop down hundreds of miles.
“Windonhigh,” I hear Fione mutter next to me, and I turn to face her direction.
There, on top of the endless sea of cotton clouds, is green. Green land, rife with trees, and between them sandstone spires like lighthouses, like the tallest lighthouses in existence, stretching so high they seem impossible. Impossible too in the way they’re twisted, smooth and hollow with hundreds of windows and yet bent around each other organically, like stone trees grown side-by-side. The stone spires end somewhere, the green trees end somewhere, sheer cliff-faces peeking from white fluff. The land looks like it’s been lifted from the ground, torn out, dirt and stone and roots dangling down into sheer blue sky.
A city.
It’s a city in the sky.
And the crows.
White crows everywhere—in the trees, in the spires, flying and nesting and chattering. White deer, eating from the little meadows dotting the city. Pure white bears, sunning themselves in the afternoon light filtered through the trees, fishing in little rivers that start somewhere I can’t see and drip diamond water over the edge of the land and down into the sky.
White animals, this many—witches. Witches shapeshifted.
Hundreds of white crows streak by us, close enough to drop feathers, close enough to hear their cawing and see their black eyes watching. They tear through and by us, doing easy loops around my head, hairpin-turns over Lucien’s shoulder, swirling between Fione and Malachite in dizzying spirals. The cacophony blasts my eardrums, ringing wingbeats and scratching caws, and as quickly as the horde comes, they’re gone, only three crows hovering on the little shard of sky-land we stand on.
And then they’re not crows at all. White feathers elongate, take on the color and texture of cloth, bird-legs turn to human-legs in a twisted flash, and three people stand in front of us, hair blown by the wind.
Witches.
A particular witch, with an awe-inspiring mane of tawny hair and the stature of a statue—thick arms, powerful waist, and a face like the roundest moon with the brightest smile.
“Zera.” Her green eyes crinkle. “Welcome home.”
8
WINDONHIGH
“Nightsinger!” I cry, the looming death-drop just beyond my feet forgotten as I launch myself at her. “I—I never thought—”
“As did I,” she agrees softly, embracing me. Always soft, eyes evergreen. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for sending you off on such a selfish mission—”
“It’s okay. Really.” I flash a smile. “We’re here now, and I’m starting to learn that’s all that matters.”
Nightsinger’s nod is small, her smile wry. “Crav and Peligli are very excited to see you. You must have so much to talk about.” Her eyes slide over to Lucien as he steps to my side. “Ah.”
“Greetings,” he starts with a careful bow, eyes never leaving her.
“You—” One of the witches at Nightsinger’s side narrows his gaze.
“We will allow them entry, Valeweaver,” Nightsinger says instantly. “For he is witch.”
“It is custom to entertain brethren in one’s home,” the other witch at her side murmurs, her stunningly embroidered mantle lifting in the wind.