Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,87

from your body. Is this trade acceptable?”

I glance at Lucien, and the worry is clear on his face. What are they planning to do to me? I can see it flash across his mind. He tries to speak first.

“We—”

“Yes.” I cut him off. The woman nods, and the silver robes suddenly speak, so loud this time it thunders around the sea-lit dock.

“So it has been deemed.”

19

THE BLACK ARCHIVES

“Can I be the first to say these guys are freakin’ weird?” Malachite offers under his breath as the silver robes lead us under the white-mercury-lit arch and into a long black glass hall.

“Like a cult,” Lucien agrees softly next to me.

“And the New God churches aren’t?” I posit lightly. “Let’s just get what we came for, and go.”

Fione’s totally quiet, marching on the heels of the woman with a single-minded determination. I try to keep up with her, no matter how much the fear is pulling me apart at the seams as the Weeping fades. Lucien offers me his handkerchief, and it’s a wordless moment of comfort as I wipe the blood tears from my face.

“I’ve ruined so many of these,” I laugh as I hand it back to him. “Sorry.”

“Hopefully you won’t have to ruin any soon,” he says, dark eyes roaming over my face. He thumbs away a speck of blood, smiling as bravely as he can. But he’s just as scared as I am. Maybe more. Whatever these librarians want to do to me, I can endure. I’ll survive, no matter what. That’s what being a Heartless means. And enduring the pain is the choice I’ve made. I can do it, if it’s for him. For the good of everyone. But he needs to hear that.

“If it’ll get Varia back, I can do it,” I reassure him.

He stares, then lets out a breath. “I know. But I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Hey, c’mon. It’s the only thing I’m good at. Let me have it.” I wink, and then go somber when he doesn’t smile at all. “Let me do this.”

“I already know there’s no ‘letting’ you do anything. You’re going to do what you’re going to do, because you’re Zera Y’shennria, and you never listen to anyone who isn’t your own unheart.”

My smile mirrors his—wry and knowing. The white light flashes over his face as we ascend a wide staircase, and I’ve never been more grateful to have him. To have someone who knows me, what I’m like at my very core. I used to be afraid of it. And maybe I still am. But right now, I’m just thankful.

The silver robes lead us deeper and up into the Archives, past what look like blocks of countless dizzying dungeon cells and up, up into a winding staircase lined with white mercury stripes. They’ve figured out how to make the lights into glass bars, instead of the glass lamps I’m used to from Vetris, and they wind around the walls in efficient, stark, otherworldly patterns, almost like blocky, precise veins in a body. This place feels…ancient. Deep and old, like the valkerax. But the technology screams of bleeding-edge newness—newer than even Breych with its airships and ultra-efficient white mercury lights—and the contrast makes me uneasy more than anything.

“It’s like a fortress,” Lucien marvels.

The leader speaks again, voice echoing. “We are about to enter the central library ward. Please keep your voices down to a minimum, and refrain from touching anything—”

“The usual,” Malachite grumbles.

“And, if you would, do not look directly at the machinery. It makes them rather uncomfortable.”

Malachite and Lucien and I all share a wary look. Uncomfortable? Since when do machines feel comfort?

Fione is still unmoved, her gaze straight ahead and fixed on the woman she follows stalwartly up the stairs. Not knowing what to expect, I lace my hand into Lucien’s, relieved when he laces his fingers in mine. Together. Together, at the very least.

The stairs finally flatten out, the view widening into a cavernous room of black glass. “Cavernous” doesn’t really cut it—this place is massive. The ceiling is so tall it utterly melts into forever-darkness. You could fit a hundred of the arenas where I trained Evlorasin into this one space. But the polymaths of the Black Archives have decided to fill every available inch of this seemingly infinite space with books. Not in the usual bookshelves, though—rather, the entire shell of the cavern is carved with hollows in which books are perfectly slotted. Thousands—no, millions. There are scrolls, too, stored in the traditional