Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,4

twist my weightless body in the air, clutching him close, covering his skull, his chest, his abdomen with all of me. The vulnerable parts. If we hit ground, I’ll be first. I have to be first.

Bone and blood exploding, like the valkerax.

I have to protect him. I’m his Heartless.

No.

I’m his.

The wind whistles cold. Malachite shouts something. And then everything goes dark, the image of Varia standing alone with the white feather in her palm burned like an emblem on the back of my eyelids.

It’s not a dream. Not really. Not the way it’s supposed to be, floaty and out of place and certain. There’s the smell of blood everywhere. Darkness everywhere. Too real to be a dream but not real enough to be my reality.

I’m looking through someone else’s eyes—two eyes, and in my heart there’s an unshakable strangeness in seeing through only two. It’s supposed to be more than two. Far more. I’m being crushed—no, not me, the person I’m seeing this through. Weight everywhere. We have to escape. A hand in my vision—not mine—reaches out into the weight, gripping, summoning, and a hot blast of fire explodes from their palm.

Light.

Light pierces through the flesh-dangling hole, and we crawl out, inch by inch, until we flop into freedom, the sunlight. The crushing weight moves from our outside to the inside. To our chest, where our heart should be.

A heart.

I can feel it beating. This is definitely not me. A mortal. They look down at their hands, golden hands with midnight fingertips shrinking, the animate darkness retreating to smaller and smaller bits until it’s gone entirely. Human nails. Human skin. Half the fingers human, the other half wood.

Varia.

And the screaming.

Gods above and below, the screaming. Like broken bells, like metal on metal, like things dying and being born and dying all over again, an endless cycle of noise. We can barely hear, barely think. We fight vomit, collapsing to our feet and staring at the mud. Dirty. Unpleasant. Pointless. The world is spinning, and screaming, and sickening.

DESTROY.

The hunger? Here, in her, too? Witches don’t have the hunger.

DESTROY.

Not the hunger. Not my hunger. This is clear, not tamed by magic or freshly consumed flesh. This will never be tamed, never be lessened. This isn’t a hunger.

It’s a wound.

DESTROY.

It’s a command. An imperative. Our head floods with flashes of burning forests, of burning houses, of burning people. Flashes of lightning splitting the earth, of seas demolishing mountains, of broken bones and yellow fat and gray organ sacs spilled, burning wood and stone, rubble. All of it rubble, the flesh-kind and not-flesh-kind. And it never stops. Never pauses. Like a million chain link of memories that aren’t mine or even Varia’s. Ruin.

This thing in us wants ruin.

But we invited it in, didn’t we? We’re going to use it, aren’t we?

It is our tool, not the other way around.

We get to our feet, the snarling and snapping of a thousand valkerax behind us, and we hold close the only thing we have left. A face. A sweet, apple-cheeked face with a mass of mousy curls, standing strong even as the images of death and ruin flash behind it.

We look over at the Bone Tree, no longer swaying in an invisible wind. It’s perfectly still. And beside it, faintly and like a ghost, is another tree. One I know but Varia doesn’t. One that I can see but Varia might not.

Like a trick of light on water, this tree wavers in the air. It’s a mirage made of glass branches, glass roots, glass leaves, moving gently in some unknowable breeze.

The Glass Tree.

TOGETHER AT LAST.

In a stunning turn of events, my body wakes up before my brain does. And my mouth wakes up before the both of them.

“Old God’s great hairy shit in a bush—”

“Whoa.” A voice, and a hand instantly trying to press me down. “Whoa there, Six-Eyes. Calm down. You’re safe.”

I blink, and from the offending swathe of bright light carves shadow and color. Deep ruby-red eyes, ears so long and pointed they droop a little, a mouth that always looks slightly entertained. And three new, angry red claw wounds across a nose, ripping the corner of a mouth up. No pain in my body. I’m not hurt. But he is.

“Malachite!” I inhale. “What are you—” The room’s strange, too much stone and blue velvet. I’m in a too-soft bed. “Where are we?”

“Some city. We’re taking a break after all that horseshit, that’s all I know. Hold on.” He lifts one finger, rummaging around