Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,81
of person the king is. And left in a vacuum of power and pleasure, the majority of people become selfish. Princes raised to be kings most of all.”
“A king’s worth is one potato,” I say softly.
He looks over at me and smiles, his broad lips sad.
“Yes. It’s a system doomed to untold cruelty at worst, and negligence at best.”
“So…what will you do?”
His hawk-eyes pierce back out at the ocean. “Change. I don’t know how, precisely, or when. But if I’m to do what’s best for the people, for my people, then I must change things. Even if it means upheaval. Even if it means temporary strife. The fact that I must change it alone is a burden. But it’s my burden to bear. And, hopefully, the last.”
“You could just be king,” I insist. “You would be a good one.”
“That…” He chuckles, the sound bitter. “That’s the conceit, Zera. Don’t you see? Thinking that one person alone could decide justly and without bias the correct thing for millions of people…that is what being king means. It’s an impossibility. But it’s a convenient one, isn’t it? If the king is bad, if the people are suffering, it’s the king’s fault, not his ministers’. Not the systems in place that make the nobles richer and the people poorer. The king’s. An arbiter of impossible decisions and a scapegoat to place blame on all in one.”
I’m speechless. His words strike deep, and are terrifying.
“To think I could rule a country alone, decide what’s best for a whole country’s people completely alone… I’d be no better than Varia. I’d be holding on to power fearfully, instead of hopefully, and using it as a weapon as she uses the Bone Tree and the valkerax.”
“Lucien—”
“You made your decision.” He turns to me, our chests close now. “You said you would choose, no matter what. That to choose was your right. And you’re correct. To choose is your right. But to choose is everyone’s right, not just yours. Not just mine. Not just the king’s, and not just Varia’s. It’s all of ours. That’s why I have to stop her. That’s why, even if she’s my sister, even if I love her—”
His voice splinters, throat bobbing, and he reaches out for me. I take his hands in mine, holding them close to my face so he knows I’m here. So he can feel my heat, my realness.
“This.” I laugh a watery laugh. “This is why I fell in love with you.”
“Self-aggrandizing speeches?” His smirk is reluctant.
“No. Your sense of justice. The way you stay true to what you believe is right. I don’t think anyone can be right all the time, but you.” I tilt my face and kiss his palm. “You come the closest to anyone I’ve ever met. You think about other people before yourself. Always. You’ve always put others first, me first, and I—”
I glance up at him.
“If this is what you want for yourself, then you should have it. I don’t know what a Cavanos without a king looks like, but…I’ll help you. I’ll help you figure it out. Until the very end.”
His kiss is slow, hot and lingering against the cold sea air. There’s an edge to it, like a razor buried deep and begging to press into skin, and the soft sound that escapes my lips doesn’t sound like me. It sounds like someone sweeter. His hands find my waist, pulling me flush into him, and that’s when I know—all of him. I want all of him, no matter what that means, no matter the trembling in my body, no matter how or when or why. I want to touch him, every inch of him, and my fingers snake in his belt, under his shirt, feeling all the hard contours I’ve only seen up until now, only been tempted with—
“Well would you lookit that.”
The voice is a bucket of close, freezing water, and Lucien and I practically leap away from each other. The watchman stands at the railing beside us, puffing on his pipe and pointing beyond our shoulders, down. He flashes a toothless grin up at us with a single word.
“Moon jellies.”
Both our faces on fire, we peer over the railing. But all my fiery embarrassment sheds the moment I see the ocean—or rather, the sight beneath the ocean. Lights. Thousands upon thousands of flickering lights, flashing between red-blue to pink-green to yellow-orange and back again like perfectly circular rainbows. Some of them float closer to the surface, bobbing with gelatinous