Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,55
flames, I swear his hand disappears entirely and reappears again. I rub my eyes—I must be projecting. Insinuating things that aren’t there. Worried—far too much—about him disappearing, bit by bit.
I make a smile and bounce up to him. “Yes, Your Highness?”
He’s in no mood to play, or kiss, or playfully kiss. Brows drawn tight, he motions to the tree above us. “Can you move this?”
My eyes widen, and I consider it. “This whole tree?”
“The whole tree,” he agrees. “We need to uproot it.”
“Why not just use magic?” Malachite frowns. “It’d be easier.”
“He can’t, obviously,” Fione sighs. “Or it’d be detected.”
“Pretty certain I can’t lift it all by myself,” I finally say. “Mal?”
The beneather shrugs his sword off his back, rolling his sleeves up. “Worth a shot.”
He moves to the trunk, digging his heels in and finding a good grip.
I look up at Lucien. “It’s really heavy. And all those roots…I might need the hunger.”
“If you want to Weep—” Fione steps up, fingering the white mercury dagger on her hip, the bejeweled hilt sparkling.
“Can I?”
“It’s not as if it’d be detected,” Fione says. “It isn’t magic—it defies magic. Right?”
She looks to Lucien, but he shakes his head. “I’m not sure. But if that’s what will get this tree moved, then we must do it.” He pauses and looks at me. “It’s…it’s not painful, is it?”
I smirk. “I mean, traditionally being stabbed isn’t a pleasant experience.”
He flinches. “Yes. Of course.”
“Hey,” I reach my hand out, cupping his strong cheekbone. “I’ll be fine.”
“Someone told me once that sacrifice shouldn’t be celebrated,” he says quietly, leaning in to my hand and closing his eyes.
“Look at you”—I laugh softly—“using my words against me. It’s almost like we’re a real couple now.”
His eyes go tender on the edges, black water instead of black stone. “Zera—”
“Weeping is mine, Lucien. I made it real. It’s my weapon against the world, and no one else’s. I choose.”
The black water in his eyes swirls, thinking, worrying, struggling with being my witch, with orders and well-being and control and then…becoming my lover. Becoming proud.
“Yes. You choose.”
I turn to Fione and hold out my arm. “If you love me, you’ll make it quick.”
“Good thing I don’t, then,” Fione drawls, unsheathing the dagger on her hip. She holds it to my skin, her fingers trembling around the hilt. Over the pearls of her and Varia’s love.
“When did she give it to you?” I ask softly. Fione stares woodenly down at the veins in my wrist. Our embrace in Breych’s tower seems so distant now. This isn’t our first time in this position, her readying to stab me as she did on the mountaintop. To free me.
“Before she left,” Fione answers, lost in a time I can’t see. “Five years ago. ‘To cut through the horseshit of the world.’”
“Sounds like something she’d say.” I laugh a little. Fione’s apple-cheeked face doesn’t move, frozen. We both know Varia in different ways. Me as a witch and her as a lover. Lucien knows her, too, but not like we do. He knows only a sister, but we know her secrets. Her heart.
I put my hand over the hilt with her and press harder, blood pooling and acid fire rippling through my nerves.
“We’re going to get her back, Fione. Together.”
This makes her come round to the present, to Windonhigh again, and she looks at me. Really looks. The sort of look that feels like a tattoo. And then she cuts. She cuts with memories, and pain, and hope for the future—hope for the right future—and I can feel it. I can feel it twisting like the white mercury twisting through my veins, beneath my skin, writhing invisibly with wildfire, with the poisonous curl of burning, consuming, destroying.
I hold on.
This time, I hold on.
It’s not a whole sword of white mercury. It’s a dagger. It’s enough to weaken the magical tie between Lucien and me so that I can Weep, but it’s not powerful enough to knock me out. Not like the duel. Or maybe I’m stronger.
I’m stronger this time.
Maybe, despite everything, it’s possible for a Heartless to change after all.
I stagger, Fione gripping my elbow for support. Touching me again, trusting me again, and my unheart in my empty chest and my real heart in Lucien’s bag shudder as one, in pain and in joy.