Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,51

that’s not how Vetrisian nobles work. So when Reginall comes out with a massive hazelnut delight—the little towers of cream in ceramic boats dotted with four ripe cherries—I don’t know what I’m expecting. But I certainly didn’t expect Y’shennria to take the warm pot of butter-syrup and stand, going around the table and pouring some on the delights herself. A task usually reserved for servants.

“There we are, Your Highness.” Her voice is smooth. “I anticipated this dish just for you. I remember you being quite fond of it as a child.”

“I was,” he agrees, and for some reason his gaze won’t leave his delight. He traces the fall of the syrup with his eyes with an intensity completely unwarranted for a simple dessert.

“He really loved sweet shit when he was little,” Malachite agrees, shooting a glance over at the kids at the table. “Uh. Sweet stuff.”

Crav gives him a withering look. “I know what ‘shit’ is.”

“Shid!” Peligli chimes happily, beating her fork against the table. “Shid shid shid!”

Perriot, perhaps the most polite of the three, panics and tries to distract her with a cherry, which Peligli joyfully accepts, her mouth staining deep fruit-red. She’ll bleed it out from her eyes later, as Heartless do with all human food, but her temporary joy is worth it. And the temporary silence.

Y’shennria pours syrup only on Lucien’s and then lets Reginall pour it for the rest of us, sitting back down in her emerald skirts elegantly. It’s so bizarre, but Lucien and Y’shennria just go on to talk spiritedly about the precise height, in miles, of Windonhigh, and Fione joins in with equations eagerly. Malachite looks a little sick when they settle on a massive number, but I’m still stuck on the syrup. Have I lost my courtly edge? I know there’s something to read between the lines in what Y’shennria did, but why would she—

I’m staring down at my own delight when it hits me. The spire of fluffy cream off-center, the four cherries situated around it evenly, as if demarcating quarters.

Quarters.

The spire in the center is the High Witch building in Bear. And the four cherries are the four quarters—Bear, Fox, Deer, and Crow.

I look over at Lucien’s dessert, untouched.

The syrup Y’shennria poured pools on the edge of Crow.

If Y’shennria had to resort to visual representations in whipped cream instead of telling Lucien the information she wanted to out loud, it means several things, all of them troubling.

One, we might be being listened to.

Two, if we’re being listened to, it means someone views us as a potential threat.

And three, whatever Y’shennria’s pointing us to is likely heavily secret, and therefore, heavily guarded. Heavily important.

There’s a fourth, of course. And it’s that Y’shennria is giving us this information at great risk to herself. Once again, it’s Vetris all over—Y’shennria putting her life and the lives of her household on the line to help me. Not the witches this time, but me.

I watch her smile at me through the candlelight over my teacup—cinnamon and dread wafting into my senses.

She’s doing this for me.

And this time, if the witches catch wind of it, she has nowhere else to run. Windonhigh is the last sanctuary for an Old God family like hers. If they don’t kill her, they’ll chase her out to the ground, to Cavanos, to a Cavanos being ravaged by the valkerax. A Cavanos where no one is safe anymore.

Peligli passing out on the couch, drooling, is the first indication that the night’s grown too long. The second is Crav succumbing, too, Peligli’s little head on his lap and his book slipping from his fingers. I catch it just in time, moving to put it back on the shelf when Crav’s stunning turquoise eyes flutter half open.

“You’re not leaving again, are you?” he mumbles sleepily. I smile, but it’s the sort of brittle effort that breaks my unheart in two.

“I might have to.”

He thinks on this, eyelids too heavy to keep open for long. Emotional exhaustion is a more powerful narcoleptic for Heartless than anything, and the three of us reuniting was no easy thing.

“Will you come back?” he finally decides to ask, and I can’t help my laugh. I drape a nearby sheepskin throw over him, the fluff obscuring his chin.

“You still don’t pull any punches, do you?”

“Answer me.” He frowns over the fluff.

“I don’t know, Crav,” I admit. “I have to go do something pretty dangerous. I might not come back.”

“You’re Heartless,” he argues. “We always come back. Unless…” He swallows.