Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,38

braids whips with his indignation. “He looks exactly like Laughing Daughter. He feels just like her. Is she not—is he not—”

“He’s the prince of Cavanos,” Malachite suddenly cuts in, standing in front of Lucien with what I know by now to be his lightly menacing aura. “And if you’ve got a problem with that, you can take it up with me and all four feet of my sword.”

“What our beneather friend means to say,” Fione jumps in, “is that we won’t be here long.”

“They’ve requested two days,” Y’shennria says to Valeweaver.

“How do we know he’s not on the Laughing Daughter’s side?” he argues. “They’re family! They’re—”

Lucien muscles around Malachite, his expression all granite and ice. “My sister and I have parted ways. Forever.”

To hear the words from his own mouth, in his own voice, is chilling. It stirs up some sick feeling in my gut. Guilt. Guilt and the hunger that preys on it.

because of you—

But we fight it. We fight it instead of give in to it. We cut it off, we don’t even entertain it anymore. The wind brays at our wet clothes, and Fione starts to shiver. I walk over and offer her my arm, a body-heat embrace, and she takes it, leaning hard into me.

“It is not for us to decide whether they stay or go,” Nightsinger says. “Guests of import are to be brought to the High Ones. Do you have objections?”

Valeweaver frowns but steps back. “No. None.”

“Wonderful.” Nightsinger turns to me and smiles. “Then let us depart. There are so many eager to meet you.”

“Go where, exactly?” Malachite motions at the empty sky separating us and the major floating landmass in the distance.

“You, sir, speak far too much for a bodyguard,” Y’shennria quips.

Malachite feigns utter flattery, fanning his face. “Goodness. Thank you.”

“Can my friends and loved ones maybe try to get along, please?” I posit the question to the air, not really expecting a response.

“Prince of Cavanos, come, if you would,” Nightsinger says over the squabble. Lucien walks to her, to the edge of the small plateau we stand on, and they face outward toward the sky together.

“What, pray tell, is your witch name?” Nightsinger asks. Lucien hesitates, and Nightsinger senses it, smiling gently. “No harm can be done to one witch with another’s name. That is only a Heartless’s caution. But it must be shared if you wish to spell with us.”

I watch his dark eyes thinking, choosing to trust the other half of his bloodline, and then he says, “Black Rose.”

“Black Rose.” Nightsinger offers her hand. “Shall we?”

Something wordless passes between them, and he takes it. Their fingers grow instantly dark, too-quickly staining with midnight void at the same rate, like mirror images of each other. Lucien lets out a strangled choke and pulls away like he’s been burned. The sound of Malachite’s sword unsheathing is a half-second harbinger of his anger. And mine.

“What did you do to him—”

“Don’t hurt—”

“It’s fine,” Lucien says suddenly, panting and holding his hand up to us. “Both of you. I’m fine.”

“Apologies, Zera,” Nightsinger says softly. “You must be so worried. What a tangled thing, to be both Heartless and lover.”

I blink, not understanding at all. But Lucien does.

“You—” he starts. “You’re a skinreader, too.”

“You are?” I turn to her, agape. I never knew. Not for the three years I lived with her.

Nightsinger smiles patiently, fox-green eyes two content slits. “Together we could do great things, Black Rose,” she says. “But for today, we will only make a path.”

He’s looking at her with a whole new expression—something like fear, like respect, like a student looks at a teacher, and then he nods.

“Together,” he says.

“We could help—“ Valeweaver offers.

“No.” The other witch shakes her head. “Let our new brethren learn.”

Nightsinger offers her hand again, and this time Lucien takes it without hesitation. The wind blares between the silence, between their fingers growing black at the tips and upward, and then it happens.

I’ve learned magic is silent, until suddenly it’s not.

There’s a persistent, quiet crackle like a sugar crust being broken, and then the empty space of cloud between our plateau and the main land springs to life, the clouds shifting and moving and reassembling into one flat white plane, wispy lattices growing around and up until they enmesh as one.

It’s a tunnel. A beautiful, unreal tunnel spun out of clouds.

Nightsinger and Lucien let go, and she starts walking across, flanked by her two witches. Y’shennria follows, and I’m about to yelp for her to stop—she’ll fall through. They’re