Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,90

the precious green-backed book idly.

Lucien ignores her and pulls me flush to him, my waist against his, my forehead against his. Malachite makes a discontented noise and struggles to face his chair away in the small room, and Fione’s smile is the smallest saddened hint, but Lucien doesn’t seem to care. His eyes are on me, his gaze never wavering as he speaks, low, like I’m the only person in the room. In the world.

“If you need me, I’ll come for you.”

“You don’t—” My breath catches as he kisses a soft pond-skip from my cheek to the corners of my lips. “I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he asserts, kissing the fullness of my lips. “But I want you to be fine with me.”

“You’ll—” His kiss this time feels like a slice, where the others were paper cuts. “You’ll have to let me go sometime.”

“Yeah, Luc,” Malachite grumbles self-righteously. “Who’s the one who’s ‘bad at sharing’ now?”

“Heard that, did you?” Lucien lilts.

Over the prince’s shoulders, I see Malachite tap his ears.

“I hear everything, dolt. And if I have to hear you two smacking over there for one more second—”

The door opens, framing three people in silver robes. Malachite kicks his shoes off the table and exhales.

“Oh thank spirits.” He jerks his head at us. “Do something about them.”

The silver robes enter wordlessly, and Fione closes the book and stands. I try to make what little space I can between us, but Lucien won’t let me go, his grip around my waist tight and high-strung. He’s worried. Worried like I’ve never seen him worried before. About me.

My unheart tries not to melt at the idea—worry is a natural part of caring about someone. He’s worried for me many times before this. But, still. Still, this feels different, deliberate, painted in absolutes and with two high-contrasting colors. He cares. About me. It’s a foolish thought, after everything, but he cares for me out of everyone in this world. He’s chosen me, out of all the Spring Brides, out of all the eligible, witty beauties of the world, and that makes my chest glow with buttery gold joy. As the silver robes take their places standing against the walls of the room, I lean up and whisper in his ear.

“You have strange tastes.”

He gives me a look, lips crinkling with a smile. “As do you.”

“The six-eyed Heartless will come with us to undergo preliminary examination,” one of the polymaths suddenly says. “The duration of our study will be approximately two halves. If the results of the preliminary examination prove the presence of further information, you will be allowed access to our materials.”

Malachite snorts. Fione stands, hands folded over the book, and the book to her chest.

“You won’t harm her?” she asks. The polymath’s silver-robed head tilts to her and pauses, as if it’s a question they’ve already answered, or maybe one so obvious it doesn’t deserve an answer. Fione, worried about me, and Malachite in his own way. All of them, caring for me.

I ease Lucien’s hand off my waist, slow and reassuring, and give him my best smile. “I’ll be back.”

“You have to be,” he insists, the black of his eyes near-matching the volcanic rock. “We have a beach date.”

My laugh goes nowhere in the cramped room, and as I pass Malachite, he pulls on my ear softly. “Don’t put up with it if it stinks.”

“Yes, sir,” I agree, patting him on the head. The silver-robed polymaths follow me out the door, and I can hear Malachite’s grumbling all the way down the hall as he fixes his hair, the sound a comforting accompaniment into the unknown.

The polymath who spoke leads me down the hall, but not to the central library ward. This time we hang a far left, arcing down and around a ramp built on the edge of a massive chasm, in which a huge pendulum made entirely of what looks like clear quartz crystal rocks gently side to side. It’s a miracle the thing doesn’t just ram through the walls of the room, but I suppose that’s all due to the polymaths’ careful calculations.

The rocking of the pendulum soon fades, our steps the only things daring to break the black silence. The hallway narrows down to a single ominous door, and the silver robes open it for me with a ring of keys from their belts. This room is far more spacious than the reception cell they put us in, but also sparser. The only things in the room are a