Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,73

the Bone Tree is another matter.

Fione taps me on the shoulder, fresh and dewy, and motions to the steaming bathwater. “Your turn.”

I shake my head. “I told Luc I’d take a nap.”

“You can!” She pushes the small of my back into the room. “In the tub.”

The room’s tiny, all wood, and I sink into the tub built into the floor. No porcelain or gold like the tubs in the palace, but I’ve never been more grateful for one. The water’s soap-murky but more than usable, and I peel off my sweat-soaked leathers and slide into the water and my own thoughts.

If we have to destroy the Bone Tree, that would mean the valkerax go free. And in my unheart I know that’s the right thing to do. I’ve seen Evlorasin’s suffering too closeup to think anything different. The valkerax, like the Heartless, have suffered for long enough as magical thralls. We live and breathe the same. Magic shouldn’t be used to make thralls, no matter how much safety it gives the witches. No matter how much safety it gives a country. And that sounds mad even as I think it. I’m talking about destroying the one thing that keeps the valkerax from rampaging across Cavanos—maybe across the whole world. But Evlorasin showed me that we can talk to them; because Heartless are unique in their deathlessness, Ev and I can talk. And that’s never been done before. Heartless and valkerax have never overlapped before Ev and me. Maybe we’re the first of our kind. And maybe we can change the world. Talk to each other. Ambassadors, both ways.

All I know is things need to change. No more fear. Well, always fear. It’s naive to say fear will never be there. But moving ahead, and in new directions, despite the fear. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve tried to do, every single day since I left Nightsinger’s woods in Y’shennria’s carriage.

Alyserat, indeed.

Fione’s words come softly through the door. “I’m scared, Zera.”

For all her bravado, for all her determination—she’s still scared. We all are.

“I know,” I say. “Me too.”

It’s a moment, and then two. The sunshine warms the wood, my face, the water, and I embrace the light. Whatever light I can find.

Footsteps suddenly pound on the floor outside, and I hear Fione stand up quickly on her cane. Someone slaps their hand on the side of the room’s little wall.

“Get out of the puddle,” Mal’s voice rings. “We’ve found a boat for the bigger one.”

The Lady Terrible is a far cry from the airship we took from Breych—the most obvious being that in the sky, there are no barnacles. The underside of the ship is completely encrusted with the things, the rhythmic gaping of their beaked mouths as the seawater waves lap up on them nigh nauseating.

“I knew the ocean was big,” I say. “But I had no clue it was also godsdamn weird.”

“Extremely weird,” Fione agrees next to me. “The greatest variety of wildlife live in the sea, and by all polymath estimates, we’ve catalogued only thirty percent of them.”

“My favorite are the blood-sucking eelworms,” Malachite offers as he pulls astride us on the gangplank.

Fione nods wisely. “Their jaws are so strong, they can bite down to your bone and suck out your marrow.”

“Okay, please!” I throw my hands up. “Is an entire valkerax horde after us not enough for you people?”

“There are jellyfish,” Lucien says in my ear as he joins us on the ship’s railing, “with tendrils so poisonous, they rot your skin off wherever they touch.”

“Hello to you, too, my piquant ray of sunshine,” I drawl. Lucien’s laugh feels good to hear, soothing some worried ache I’ve had in me since seeing the valkerax corpse. He pulls away from me, and I instantly miss the heat over my shoulder.

“I’ll tell the captain we’re onboard,” he says. “Try not to cause trouble.”

Malachite looks to me immediately. “Duel to the death?”

“Absolutely.”

Lucien’s snort as he walks away is barely audible over the chanting of the sailors as they raise the anchor and adjust the sail. Unlike Helkyrisian airships, which float via aergasel balloons and propel with precise jets, Cavanos ships are very much just ships—blown by the wind, rowed when necessary. They haven’t strayed from their original form in a long time. The invention of white mercury lamps is the only modern touch, and objectively much safer than open oil lamps on a fully wooden boat. The sailors we pass are curt to us, and not much more—they have