Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,42

out I’m here.

“If you would, Black Rose.” Nightsinger motions up the massive staircase that leads into the stalwart building. “The High Witches await.”

Certainly, they wait. They wait for us to ask them for help, for a spell that could somehow weaken the Bone Tree’s hold on the valkerax. They know best about thralldom, and about how it might be broken.

We have no leads but them.

Malachite sets his jaw, and Fione grips her cane harder. Lucien flashes me a smile—taut and nervous deep in its roots—and lets go of my hand, starting up the stairs lined with eclipseguards.

We follow our prince.

9

MADE WHOLE

The inside of the High Witch’s building is unnaturally cool and dim compared to the bucolic magical springtime outside. Unlike the oil braziers and white mercury lights of Vetris, the witches use living flame—a massive hiss reverberates in the echoing hall, and Malachite unsheathes his sword and I drop my center, ready to fight. Fione’s more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, watching the streak of black witchfire arc over our heads as it moves between the mouths of two stone wolves.

“Ingenious,” she murmurs, periwinkle eyes drinking in the long rows of stone wolves on either side of us and the streaks of witchfire that rhythmically jump between them, illuminating the hall in bursts. “They’ve staggered the release of the fire to ensure there’s at least one light source at all times.” She turns and looks at us. “You two are a bit jumpy, aren’t you?”

I smother a laugh, and Malachite rolls his eyes.

“Excuse me for being ‘a bit jumpy’ around witches who may or may not wanna gut us,” he says.

Fione sighs and shakes her head like she’s instructing a child. “They have magic, Mal. If they wanted to gut us, they would’ve done it already, and there’s nothing we could’ve done to stop it.”

“A practical—if chilling—thought,” I agree cheerily.

“I’m serious,” Malachite insists, lowering his voice so just we can hear. “Luc’s not really one of them. They could turn on him. And if they do—”

“We’ll use our words like grown-ups.” Fione straightens. “Or rather, I will, because I can’t trust you to string two civil words together when it comes to Lucien’s safety.”

“What about me?” I point at myself.

Fione’s grin is barely there in the fire-washed gloom. “Unfortunately, Lady Zera Y’shennria, you make far too many jokes for your own good. Or for the good of political bargaining.”

“Fair.” I smirk.

The building is labyrinthine, and the farther we get from the entrance, the colder it becomes. Curls of mist hang on the ground, swirling into nothingness as they’re displaced by our shoes. Windows start to appear, or what I think are windows. It’s actually great jagged insertions of glass—not the thin sort, but the thick, unpolished, raw sort I saw outside. This time it grows into the sandstone walls—from the sandstone walls in irregular patches, almost like veins of ore. It’s so thick it lets no light in at all, only captures it. Nothing can be seen beyond it. Not windows, then, and neither was the glass intentionally built—it looks far too…organic.

Nightsinger points Lucien down a series of twists and turns, eclipseguards watching silently as we pass. The glass veins become more common the deeper we go, and bigger—taking up whole walls, arcing over to replace entire sandstone tunnels with glittering black.

“Interesting design choice,” Malachite murmurs in awe.

“It wasn’t a choice,” I mutter back. He doesn’t press it, but he does start to narrow his ruby eyes at the glass with a newfound suspicion.

Suddenly, Nightsinger stops us before a seemingly innocuous wall. She nods at a nearby eclipseguard, and the guard nods back. They lift their spear, and next to me I feel Malachite tense, but the spearhead whips around to hit the wall instead. The impact should be short-lived, metal on solid stone, but it rings like a bell. Exactly like a bell, hollow and lingering. Lucien makes a step back as the wall begins to crumble, rubble spilling over the misty floor like an ancient, too-dried thing. No dust, which means we can see the door revealed in the wall clearly—stone. Pure stone, and far too heavy to open with manpower alone.

Which is why, when the doors part swiftly and easily peel apart, I know it’s being done by magic.

Lucien tries to immediately march in, but Nightsinger stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “A moment, Your Highness.”

He turns, eyeing Nightsinger as she steps in and whispers something to him. He nods,