Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,8

Just one or two are needed to light an entire area. It’s possible the polymaths here perfected them—possible and absolutely jaw-dropping. If Cavanos had this sort of technology, it wouldn’t need all the white mercury it ships in from Avel and goes through like water.

“This way.” Malachite points at a far room. Our footsteps echo on the cold stone floor until we reach the door, and he knocks in that pattern he always does for Lucien. Three raps, then two.

“Come in.”

At the sound of Lucien’s voice, all the little hairs on my arms stand up and start to burn. My witch. My prince. Mine? No. My witch, but not my prince. The people’s prince. He’s only ever belonged to his people.

My unheart spasms with the realization he’s lost his sister. Again. This time to power, not faked death. This time she chose to leave instead of being driven out. He must be devastated.

Malachite pushes the door open, and the smell of cinnamon and clove bulls us down. Rich tapestries frame a round meeting table at which stands a half-bent elderly walnut of a man dressed head to toe in emerald green and gold, and Lucien, dressed in light blue and the softest smile when he sees me.

“Zera.”

He makes a polite half bow, excusing himself to the old sage man, and walks over.

It’s just one word. It shouldn’t make me so happy. It should take more than just one. It should take books, endless epic poems, a bard’s monologue to make me feel this hot, this strong, this quickly. It’s not fair. It’s not fair he can do this to me.

it’s not fair we’re still the monster.

The room is dim, but my eyes catch every fold of cloth on him, every freckle, every inch he crosses in his boots to reach me. My witch. Their prince. His eyes—I’m so used to seeing his eyes as hard onyx shards. Betrayed onyx shards. Bitter onyx shards. But now, right now, they’re spills of ink. Liquid, gentle, reflecting the scarce light of the room and my own nerves back at me.

He stops right before the danger. Right at the border of my space and his. He knows. He can sense it, just like I can—the two white-hot rings that radiate out from us, pressing, waiting, watching each other’s every move.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asks. “You were out for so long—”

“Fine.” I smile, tense. “Perfectly fine, Your Highness.”

“You—” Lucien’s eyes flicker. “That’s—you don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“You insisted.”

“And now I insist on taking it back.”

There’s a buzz that starts in my veins, and I can’t tell if it’s the smell of his skin I know so well by now or his magic that keeps me alive.

the only thing that keeps us alive. he’s our one tether to life; he holds our life in the palm of his—

A bag. It’s shoved at me so quickly, I don’t understand what it is until I see the stitching. Haphazard, poor needlework in fine gold thread that reads: Heart.

It’s so close and tantalizing, it almost distracts me from my first thought: a bit unoriginal, isn’t he? Varia, at least, wrote Traitor on mine. But his is just a label for what’s inside. Plain. Simple. Maybe that suits him. Maybe he’s the sort of witch who values simplicity.

“Here.” Lucien holds my heart out to me, the bag faintly beating, faintly lumpy.

My brain throbs. Echoes no one else can hear emanate from the heart bag—echoes of memory, like imprints of a body in the snow I can’t remember the face of. Who was here? Someone. My parents, maybe. My past, certainly. I can almost hear words, laughter, the smell of cinnamon.

I don’t dare to dream. To believe. I want to—I want more than anything to believe he’s the sort of person, the sort of witch, to give me my heart back instantly. But I’ve met too many witches to fall for it again.

“You’re letting me hold it?” I tease. “Awfully nice of you.”

“It’s yours,” the prince insists. Iron shavings eke their way into his ink eyes, hard and sleek. “If you want it.”

It’s too good to be true. He’s too good to be true. Nobody moves in the room—not the old sage man, not Malachite, not Lucien, not the thousand-year-old stones of the walls. So I decide to, walking a slow perimeter of the round table and running my fingers along its surface.

“Hmm.” I hum idly. “Are you sure? I’m very useful, you know. Immortal at all