Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,56
world splits six times.
Between Malachite and me, we manage to uproot the tree with much swearing and straining and blood tears on my part. My claws dig deep into bark, the roots peeling up and away with angry groans and cracks, until the whole thing finally gives, and Malachite and I shove the trunk aside before it can keel over on the humans.
“Not bad, Six-Eyes.” The beneather pants, wiping mud and bark off his sweaty face. “You practice?”
I catch my breath, the Weeping peaceful and silent and easy, like slipping into an old glove now. “No. You?”
“Always.” He smirks, and then puts his hand over his nose, his eyes flashing with a red glow. “Spirits. You really smell like one of ’em.”
“One of who?” Fione asks as she walks over.
“Valkerax. She stinks like ’em.”
I sniff my armpits warily—bracing for the rotting meat stench I know so well from training Evlorasin. But even with my heightened Weeping senses, all I get is sweat and me.
“I can’t smell anything,” Lucien says, eyeing the hole in the ground where the tree used to be.
“Right, well.” Malachite straps his sword on his back again. “Who’s the one whose ancestors have been hunting them for a thousand years, huh? Not you, that’s for spiritsdamn sure. If I say she stinks, she stinks.” He looks over at me with a crooked smirk. “You stink.”
“Thank you.” I smile back at him with all my teeth.
Fione looks me up and down. “Curious indeed. I have no clue how valkerax blood promises work, but it seems this one has lasting effects.”
“For the rest of my life, Yorl said,” I agree.
“So you’re basically one of ’em,” Malachite groans. “Great.”
“It’s not like Varia can control her with the Bone Tree,” Fione snipes back.
“You don’t know that, Big-Brain,” the beneather scoffs.
“Neither do you,” she argues.
“If I get any compelling inklings to run off and start breathing fire, I’ll be sure to let you all know.” I cut the tension and look over at Lucien, who’s still riveted to the ground. “What now, Your Highness?”
“It’s beneath.” He points down at the soft earth collapsing in on itself. The last bit finally sloughs away with encouragement from his boot and reveals a perfect set of stairs.
“Whaddya know.” Malachite frowns. “A nice staircase leading down into the earth. Well, uh, not-earth. Sky-island earth.” He pauses. “Hey, what happens if we fall through and die?”
“We fall through and die,” Fione deadpans.
“At least it’s an interesting way to go,” I encourage him with a thump on the back.
Lucien’s the first to walk in, and Fione and I move in after him, Malachite on uneasy rear point.
Just past the mouth of the stairs, the dirt quickly becomes curved stone, perfectly round, as if a tower’s been pressed down into the earth and excavated on the inside. No doubt made by magic, though Malachite comments it’s very good stonework. And coming from his Dark-Below-dwelling arse, that means something.
“Old Vetrisian,” Fione murmurs, running a hand along the granite. “All of it.”
The Weeping leaves me in increments—the blood tears of resistance growing cold and then stopping all at once. The clear, perfect clarity in my head grows the fuzz of emotion and thought again. The world comes back to being just two—left eye and right eye—and I wipe my red-streaked face on my sleeve.
Torches dot the walls down here every so often—black fire with no color to it at all. Which I find odd, considering every variation of witchfire I’ve seen so far has had a different hue to it, based on the witch. Or so I think. Lucien’s is faintly purple. His black-purple flames engulfed South Gate weeks ago. It battled Varia and the Bone Tree’s white light on the mountain peak. Varia’s witchfire was faintly green. Nightsinger’s was gray on the edges. The only time I’ve seen pure black fire was when Gavik made that fake witchfire to scare the populace of Vetris. But this fire is no fake—it sputters and gouts, eating no fuel at all considering the torch heads are completely bare and made of metal.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s the same pure black witchfire that lit up Y’shennria’s apartments, and I begin to feel uneasy. What witch is powerful enough to keep so many torches burning, over such a distance? The High Witches, maybe?
Can they keep an eye on us through their fire?
“Where are we going, Lucien?” Fione asks suddenly. “This place—it hasn’t been touched in a long time.”