Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts #3) - Sara Wolf Page 0,94
going straight to adjutant is a feat no one has accomplished in the history of the Black Archives ever.”
“Goodness! Both firsts in history, the two of us.” I walk out with him, his silver robe swishing along the floor. “When will I get my results back?”
“They aren’t yours to get back,” Yorl says evenly.
“But you’re going to tell me what they think about them.”
“Obviously,” he agrees. “Depending, of course, on how long you plan on staying here.”
“As long as it takes to translate a book we stole from the High Witches,” I say. “We think it’ll tell us how to stop Varia and the Bone Tree.”
Yorl’s quiet, the white mercury lights of the hallway glittering in his large green eyes. “I hope you don’t expect me to feel guilty.”
My laugh bounces off the walls. “Nah. I’m done with guilt, too. We did what we had to. But say that enough times and it starts to sound like a terrible excuse, so I’ve started to tell myself ‘what’s done is done’ instead. Convenient and catchy.”
The comfortable quiet that fell between us all those times walking down to Evlorasin’s arena falls now. He’s not the type to talk unless excited about something, so when he starts, I know it’s important.
“When I was helping Varia get the Bone Tree, I didn’t anticipate I’d make Arathess’s first nonhuman Heartless.”
“I mean, I’m still human.”
“Yes,” he starts slowly. “But not entirely. You’re also technically valkerax.”
“Because of the blood promise, right?” I ask. He gives me a dull obviously stare, and I laugh. “Fine, sorry. Continue, master polymath.”
And so he does, between sighs.
“I told you before—blood promises are like conversations for valkerax. They communicate thoughts, concepts, entire memories through ingesting one another’s blood, given willingly.”
“Right. But if a mortal ingests their blood, they die.”
He nods. “But if you survive… We don’t know what happens if a mortal survives. We didn’t know. Until you.”
“Six eyes, it turns out. And a weird connection to the Bone Tree.” I smirk.
“A connection?” Yorl frowns.
“I can…” I pause. “See Varia. Well, through her. In my dreams. And she can see me. Any ideas what that might be?”
“Your guess is as good as mine in that regard. It may very well be the Bone Tree sensing the valkerax blood promise in you and tying you to itself.” Yorl’s sigh is practically thunderous. “I underestimated the power of the blood promise. I thought—because you were a Heartless—that your witch’s magic would overturn the promise. Valkerax blood promises work because they remain in the blood—but a Heartless’s body is constantly regenerated by magic. And by that, I mean you’re not like a human.”
“You don’t say,” I drawl.
“Mortal blood is very efficient.” He ignores me. “And their bodies only replace it with fresh blood when blood loss occurs. Their heart pumps the new blood around. But as a Heartless, your blood is replenished by magic. That’s how you survive—not through circulation, but through constant magic replenishment.”
“So you thought the valkerax blood promise would be cycled out of my veins eventually,” I finish, and Yorl’s sigh this time is pleased.
“You’ve gotten mildly smarter.”
“And you’ve gotten slightly longer with your explanations,” I tease.
He snorts, but I know him enough by now to know that’s his version of laughter. The hall becomes familiar eventually, going thin and entirely lined with dozens of doors.
Yorl pauses before our door, looking over at me. “I’m…I have to confess. I’m nervous.”
I cock my head. “What? Why?”
“Your friends are in here, aren’t they?”
I pat his broad shoulder. “One of them’s out here in the hall, too.”
The flicker of his lashes against the gloom of the hall tells me everything I need to know—surprise. He’s not one to be easily surprised, Yorl. He’s like me. He knows things, and accounts for things, and predicts things ahead of time. To keep safe, to accomplish goals. We’re both planners, schemers, and that’s what I like best about him. Us. As I push the door open and Lucien bolts up from his chair and Malachite hefts off the wall and Fione grips her cane and stands, all their eyes fall on me, not him.
Lucien’s over in two strides, taking my hands, glancing his way down my body as if studying me, his gaze heavy with onyx concern.
“Did they—”
“I managed to wheedle some painkillers out of them,” I lilt. “So ease up on the worried look, okay? It doesn’t suit Your Highness.”
His laugh is small, but the kiss he leans into and gives me is anything but.