Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,93

side of my face in his hands. “You have your painless time, Heartless. Now tell me; do you hear the song?”

I have no filter anymore, my thoughts spilling out faster than I can make them.

“I hear both songs. Glass and bone. But the bone song only ever in my dreams.”

He blinks. “The Heartless hunger is not the song.”

“It is,” I argue, my head lolling uselessly back as he lets go of me. “I’ve heard them both. They’re the same thing. Different notes, but the same music, deep down. I can feel it.”

“That’s—that’s utter nonsense.”

I laugh, rolling my head to look at him. “I sound a bit like a valkerax, don’t I? But don’t you know? The Old Vetrisians split the Tree of Souls.”

“Of course.” He pulls a shining scalpel out of his pocket, testing my skin. “But it’s been more than a thousand years. By all deductions, the Trees’ connection to each other should’ve completely eroded at this point.”

I go quiet, watching the silver blade split my skin and hot blood ooze out. Yorl holds my wrist softly between his paws, steadying the work. I want him to push the hair off my face again, but he’s Yorl. He has a job to do, and polymathematics to aid. It’s enough for me that he cares enough to be here, that he came to this at all. I’m starting to slip in and out of consciousness, the world blurring on the edges. Better to pass out, I suppose, because I’m not particularly fond of the idea of being here when they take my slice of brain.

to be together, the hunger slithers. to undo what you did, weak things afraid of death.

“They want to be together again,” I mumble. “More than anything. So they sing. They sing to punish us…to—to guilt us. To make it unbearable. To make us undo what we did.”

The darkness claws around me, but softly, folding interlocking talons one by one over the light until there’s only shadow and the hunger left—two hungers, same but different and both ringing clear as winter rain in my head.

together.

TOGETHER.

The feeling of someone’s leathery pads pushing my hair off my sweating face gingerly, and then nothing.

As with most people I’ve met, once they have what they want, the scholars of the Black Archives are far nicer to me. In that they leave me the afterlife alone.

“Humans really are humans, no matter where they are or how smart they think they are,” I groan, massaging my head as Yorl undoes my restraints. When I wake up again he’s the only one left in the room, the instruments and blood all cleared out and cleaned up. It’s like nothing ever happened—like I just sat down here and fell asleep. With leather wristbands on, but still.

“The entry hole closed almost instantly.” Yorl jerks his hairy chin to where I’m massaging my skull. “In a way that suggests your new witch is either very powerful, or very attentive to you.”

“I want it to be the latter,” I admit. “But I think it’s more likely the former.”

“Or a combination of both,” Yorl suggests.

“I forgot I can always rely on you to be the stark realist,” I tease, poking his wet nose lightly with one finger when my hand works free. “Yes, it’s true. I’m in love with my witch.”

Yorl mechanically undoes my other restraint, not a single twitch on his face.

“No applause, please,” I add.

“Wasn’t planning on it,” he deadpans, offering a spare shift. “Do you want new clothes, or what?”

“Here I am talking about direly important things like love,” I huff. “And all you want to talk about is which burlap sack would look best on me!”

“I doubt your love’s going to appreciate it if you come back looking like that.” He motions to my blood-smeared everything, and I sigh, grabbing the shift.

“You’re right.”

“I usually am.”

Ignoring his infuriating confidence, I slip behind the throne to change.

“So,” I start, pulling blood-soaked cotton over my head carefully. “How’ve you been? What’ve you eaten? How many other girls have you experimented on while I was gone?”

“You’d think a recent death experience would make you less chatty, not more.” He sighs. “Come. We need to vacate the surgery.”

I walk around the throne, now far drier and cleaner-looking. “Personally I’d call it a dungeon, but all right. You’re the boss. Although apparently not enough of a boss. Do you always let the other polymaths in here push you around?”

“I’d like you to realize earning a kingsmedal whilst also bypassing initiate and