Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,77
Malachite’s face sets, and the lower his eyelids get again. He crystallizes, ruby irises glittering in the sun. Maybe he understands. He has to. That’s why, I think, when I near him and reach out to take his broadsword forcefully from his hand, he lets me with a gentle ease.
I hold both swords and look up at him. Just at him, and he stares back. He’s so tall, so different from anyone I’ve ever met. And to him, so am I. I can see that, see the difference reflected in his dark pupils—see me reflected there. His strength is being strong. Stronger than a human, faster than a human. He can hear better, smell better. Fireproof. Those are his strengths. And mine?
Well, he says mine for me.
“You’re real good”—he croaks, finally, a smile on his lips—“at getting hurt, aren’t you?”
I smile back up at him. “Kind of.”
This is who I am.
This is how I’m strong.
“Oy!” The captain’s shout echoes, fracturing the ring of sailors around us. They scatter, and she marches up to the two of us, finger in my face and a cigar in her mouth. “What did I say? No fightin’!” She glances down—looking past my cleaved hand uncaringly. “And you bled all over my deck!”
“I’ll swab it right away, Cap’n!” I blurt, making my posture straight and respectful, my half-healing hand already saluting at my forehead.
Her dark eyes cut over to me, to him, and then she scoffs around her cigar.
“Damn right you will. And when you’re done, you’ll be showing me that little backhand move of yours again.”
Swabbing the entire deck as punishment leaves me sweatier than I’d like—which is any. I stayed in Nightsinger’s forest because I had no physical choice, yes, but also because it was cold and wonderfully dry in terms of body moisture. Sweat is the enemy. But sweets? Sweets are the ally. Gods, I hope a polymath quotes me on that one day.
When the last bucket of mop water is exhausted and the last inch of ancient wood scrubbed clean, we collapse on a pile of salt-stained ropes, panting. Malachite offers me his waterskin, and I pour a bit on my face and rub it around.
“Think she noticed you healed up right away?” he asks, jerking his head to the captain at the helm. It’s a pointless question. Of course she did. The whole crew did.
“Impossible,” I drawl. “Otherwise I’d be getting burned alive right now.”
“Bet she’s used to seeing all types, Heartless notwithstanding.”
“Well, that. And the rumors of a horde of valkerax coming back are probably far scarier than a lone Heartless and her witch.”
He nods, taking a swig as I pass him his waterskin back. There’s a long quiet, the lapping ocean and the screeching gulls conversing with one another.
“So,” he says finally. “You gonna shake some horseshit up, huh? In the world.”
I shrug. “Depends.”
“Depends nothing. From the moment I heard you talk at the Spring Welcoming, I knew you were gonna do that. So. Go and do it already.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Are you gonna be okay with it?”
“Yeah. So long as you don’t hurt Luc, I’ll be fine.”
The prince is nowhere to be seen—he and Fione long gone belowdeck to try to parse the book. They didn’t even come up curiously at the racket the duel made, which means they’re direly serious. But I look at the shadows of the stairwell anyway.
“You like him a lot, huh?” I ask.
It’s Malachite’s turn to shrug. “Like, dislike, doesn’t matter. He’s home. My home. And you won’t hurt him. Or I’ll get you.”
It’s not a threat. Not anymore. There’s an unspoken understanding—I could be valkerax. I could be susceptible to the Bone Tree. But even if I am, and I’m controlled by Varia to do something, Malachite will be here to stop me, like he stopped me on the peak of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains that awful day. Him saying he’ll stop me isn’t a threat anymore; it’s an assurance. A promise between friends. A promise to carry my burdens equally. And I breathe easier because of it.
No matter what, no matter what I am, Malachite has my back.
The ideas are too heavy to say, too heavy for the sun-soaked sky, wet with amber and lavender dusk. Malachite’s profile against it is like marble-washed peach, delicate and refined. And then, suddenly, “If you have kids, I get to name the first one,” he says.