I am no flower to be ravaged at your whim, angry wolf—I am your hunter, bow cocked and ready. I am a Heartless, one of the creatures your people fled from in terror thirty years ago.
I let the smallest, hungriest smirk of mine loose on him.
If you were smart, you’d start running, too.
The queen smiles, squeezing the king’s arm, and the king laughs. Nothing about it is bland or subdued; it leaks with the hoarse edges of unbridled amusement. For the briefest moment as he smiles at me, he looks ten years younger.
“What is your name, clever little Bride?”
My mind says, Zera, no last name, daughter of a merchant couple whose faces I’m starting to forget: Orphan, Thief, Lover of bad novels and good cake, and indentured servant of the witch Nightsinger, who sent me here to rip your son’s heart from his chest.
I dip into a wobbly curtsy instead and spill my lie with a smile. “Zera Y’shennria, Your Majesty; niece of Quin Y’shennria, Lady of the House of Y’shennria and Ravenshaunt. Thank you for having me here today.”
Thank you, and I’m sorry.
As sorry as a monster can be.
Five days earlier
I’ve been stabbed.
This is, unfortunately, nothing new to me.
“Kavar’s teeth.” I swear the New God’s name, twisting my arm behind me and fingering the dagger’s handle. “This was my favorite dress.”
One moment I’m walking on the forest road back home, and the next I’m skewered like a village pig. I make a mental note to mark this night in my nonexistent diary as the best one ever.
The willowy figure that stabbed me stands in front of me, a dark, hooded cloak obscuring his face and body. I have no idea who he is—but he moved too fast to be human, and he’s too tall to be one of the pale Beneather race that lives underground. The swishing blue tail tipped with fur is a dead giveaway—definitely a celeon assassin, a member of a catlike race that thinks quick and strikes quicker.
“Are you just going to stand there?” I pant, my fingers meeting the slick river of blood running down the laces of my bodice. “If you want to kill me, I’d prefer you make it quicker than this.”
“You aren’t dead,” the celeon growls—their voices always sound sleek yet rough, like a banner of silk dragged across gravel. His eyes glint golden from the darkness of his hood.
“A master of observation and a master of stabbing young girls walking alone at night!” I force a pained smile. “It’s an honor. I’d bow, but the knife you so graciously gifted me is making that a tad difficult.”
“I hit your heart,” he asserts. “You should be dead.”
“I’d love to tell you you’re the first man to say such romantic things to me.” I stretch enough to grasp the handle of the dagger, and wrench it out with a great pull. The searing pain dulls to a hideous ache. “But alas—I’m a career thief, not a career liar.” I point the bloody dagger at him. “You have ten seconds to tell me who sent you. Celeon assassins aren’t cheap, so it had to have been a noble. Which one did I piss off this time?”
His tail twitches—a sure sign he’s thinking of ways to close the gap between us and end it.
“Nine,” I start.
The triplet moons are full above us, the red twins connected by a spray of stardust and the blue giant bloated like a firefly’s abdomen. They shed gloriously bright light on the woods and the Bone Road cutting through it, and I have all the time in the world to admire it, since the celeon chooses to remain silent.
“Eight,” I count down. “Was it the lady with the gryphon banners and fancy carriage who came by? She should be thanking me for relieving her of that emerald tiara. It clashed hideously with her complexion.”
Still, he says nothing. A flock of white crows flies overhead, settling in the pine trees to watch the showdown with their relentless red eyes. I suppress the urge to throw a fit. The last thing I need right now is a murder of witches watching this. I don’t like an audience when I work.
“Listen, my good celeon.” I toss the dagger from one palm to the other, inspecting the wicked tip. “You stabbed me. But I can forgive that. Lots of people stab me, and half of them I end up being great friends with! I even attend their funerals. Of course, I’m also the one holding their funerals. Alone. In the woods. With just me and their body and a shovel. But those are minor details. Five, by the way. The timer doesn’t stop just for my elegant soliloquies.”
The celeon lowers his hood, his pronounced blue brow wrinkling as he frowns. His ears are long and slender and straight and have no visible holes. The celeon look like big cats, if cats were also lizards and stretched out thin and walked on backward-bent legs.
“I don’t reveal my employers,” he finally rasps.
“Wrong answer!” I chime, throwing the dagger between his legs and pinning his tail to the ground. He howls and collapses on the dirt, the pain of being stabbed in his most sensitive area all but paralyzing him. The celeon might be five times stronger and faster than any human, but they have their weak spots. As he struggles to free himself, I walk over, stepping carefully between his splayed legs and squatting to his eye level. I see my reflection in his fearful gold eyes as big as coins, his slit pupils dilating as I lean in and flick his furry forehead with my fingers.
“And that’s why you should wear tail armor like everyone else, silly.”
“How?” He pants, his muzzle parted, so I can barely see his wicked incisors. “A throw like that—who are you?”
“Your employer didn’t tell you? Tsk-tsk, it’s almost like they want you dead. And I’d just hate to live up to their expectations.”
I reach down and pull the dagger from his tail. Unpinned, the celeon scuttles away from me and down the road faster than I can register, cradling his purple-bleeding appendage.
“I’m Zera!” I call. “Second Heartless of the witch Nightsinger. A bit of life advice: never come to the Bone Road ever again.” I pause. “But if you do, bring a new dress! You owe me one!”
The white crows in the trees start to cackle, a storm of noise. The celeon looks from them to me, his pointed face snarling as he hobbles away. He knows what those crows are, and he hates them as all celeon do. When he’s gone, I wipe the dagger free of mixed red and purple blood, the pain in my back radiating sharply.
“Kavardammit, this hurts!” Every movement is agony now that the adrenaline’s gone.
“What have I said about using the New God’s name in front of me, Zera?” One of the crows alights at my feet, speaking with a human woman’s voice.
“Just heal me,” I gasp. “No lectures. Please.”
“Humor me,” the crow says.
“Don’t I always? That’s why you keep my heart in that awful jar—so I can’t leave you humorless for a single second.”
The crow is patient. She always is. Finally, I exhale.
“Fine. Kavar stinks. Amen.”
“Zera.”
“I will write you a ten-page essay on how much the Old God rules more than him, just after you heal me. Please. I’m dying here.”
“For the third time this week,” the crow drawls.
“And the forty-seventh time overall! Did you know the humans think that number is unlucky? It brings all sorts of nasty diseases to their grain, I guess?”
“Have you been spying on the human village again? I told you not to get too close—”
“Quick!” I exclaim. “Before I start to mold!”
With a bird’s version of a sigh, she hops around my body. Usually when I smartly try to climb a very tall tree and break my legs, or cleverly stumble onto a wolf mother den and get torn to shreds, I heal on my own. Well, if you call my heart encased in a jar over my witch’s fireplace siphoning magic from said witch to heal me “on my own.” But tonight my witch is right here. I feel the sting of a feather’s edge in my raw wound, and I bite back another swear. The crow says words, but I can’t understand them. No one can, save for her and the Old God, who responds by gifting her
magic. Or something. The workings of a witch’s magic are beyond me, but the results aren’t. The pain fades instantly, followed by the strange sensation of my wound closing up like a stitched blouse in a seamstress’s hand. My fingers dart to it, finding only smooth skin and scraps of fabric.
“Would it kill you to ask the Old God to fix my dress, too?” I struggle to my feet.
The crow fluffs her chest out. “Perhaps.”
“Ask him right away, then.” When the crow just blinks at me, I clap my hands. “Let’s go! Hurry now!”
“My death means your death. You’re bound to me as my Heartless,” she says. “You know that.”
I groan and collapse on the grass next to the muddy road. “Life isn’t worth living if I don’t have a fabulous pile of silk and satin to strut about in.”
“It wasn’t even your dress. You stole it,” the crow says.
“Why do you think I liked it so much!”
The crow lets out an exasperated sigh again. Her brethren wait for her in the trees, and I wave to them.
“It’s an honor, sirs and madams! I hope your witchery is well tonight!”
The crow on the ground hops to my shoulder, talons digging into my skin. “Did you determine who sent that Waveborn to kill you?”
Waveborn—what the witches call celeon. A witch’s magic spell went awry a long time ago, and the wave of it washed over a small continent to the north. It transformed the celeon from feral beasts into sentient creatures. Most celeon consider their sentience a curse, a deviation from their intended nature, and so they hate witches with a fiery passion.
“Here in the third era we call them celeon, Nightsinger. It’s less ragingly offensive to them,” I insist. “And no. Not a peep.”
“Firewalker”—Nightsinger motions with one wing to another witch-crow—“tells me his Heartless are being attacked in much the same way. Anonymous assassins sent to kill without being told who the target is.”
“What the target is,” I correct.
“Precisely.”
“They’re not after witches?”
“For once, no.”
I cradle my chin in my hand. “So someone is paying a lot of assassins to kill Heartless. Without telling them their targets are Heartless.”
“Yes.”
“Why? And who can afford to waste that much money in this economy?”
Nightsinger fixes a single red eye on me; I know that look. It’s the let’s be cryptic and vague about important issues for an infuriatingly long amount of time look. Witches love that look. I love that look—love to hate it. Silently, of course, because what magical thrall in her right mind would hate it out loud to the witch in total control of her fate?
“I should return to the meeting,” she says finally. “And you should return home. Have you the herbs for dinner?”
I motion to the basket I’d long discarded behind me, brimming with snowdrops and basil.
“Good.” Nightsinger ascends, wings beating hard. “I left you dinner. Try not to slop it everywhere this time.”
“No promises,” I say, watching as she rejoins the flock. They rise as one, eerily coordinated in their every swoop and glide. Nightsinger tried to explain witch meetings to me once, and thanks to my awe-inspiring intelligence I understood a whopping none of it. It’s apparently only safe for covens to gather during the Diamond Moon—when all three moons are full. They exchange information and magic, but since witches live isolated and hidden to keep away from humans, they gather as crows—able to fly long distances and connected wordlessly by their minds. It’s a small mercy witches who transform into animals are always an unnatural white, or none of us would know when they were around.
With the murder finally gone, I breathe a sigh of relief. No matter how long I’ve lived around it, the thought of magic still makes me ill. It’s bound me to this life of Heartlessness, after all.
I put my hand over my unheart and listen to the emptiness in my chest. After three years, I can barely remember what it feels like to have a heart anymore. I recall warmth and a tugging sensation, and if I reach far enough back in my memory, I find pain. Pain like lightning, sudden and sharp and devastating. Pain like the end of the world. If I pay attention to it, the pain only grows. So I don’t. I wander the woods. And when wandering stops working, I don my cloak and a ragged mask and steal from the nobles who travel the Bone Road—jewels, dresses, anything. Anything beautiful. Anything that, when I wear it, makes me feel like a human again.
I pick up the basket of herbs and turn back to the woods, letting the shadows of the trees devour me. They are pretty, in their own sable, pine-scented way, but they’re still very much the bars of my prison. That’s one of the less-than-ideal perks of being a Heartless—I can’t go very far from where my witch keeps my heart: a mile and a half at most. If I try, the pain rips me apart and reduces me to a useless, screaming mess.
A fox watches me from a ridge nearby, curious and fire-colored. I wave. It doesn’t move, fixed on me. What an attentive audience! Those are so rare these days. I clear my throat.
“At this point, I’m sure you want to ask—I hate Nightsinger, don’t I? I mean, anyone sensible would hate the person who has her life in the palm of her hand. That’s reasonable—expected, even!”
The fox blinks blankly at me.
“The answer…” I raise a finger like I’m a polymath and the fox is my student. “Is yes. And no. Because nothing in life is simple. It’s all utter maddening chaos and contradicting emotions.”
The fox blinks again. I throw my hands up.
“Don’t look at me! Take it up with the gods if you’re so mad about it!”
The fox is, understandably, not as incensed as I am. It slinks away over the ridgeline without so much as a thank-you for my gracious life lessons.
I adjust the basket higher on my hip and sigh. “Talking to animals like they’re people who can understand you was last year, Zera. Let’s try to think of something new and more rewarding to pass the rest of our immortal life with, all right? Maybe something that doesn’t make you seem mad.”
I start walking again. The answer to the fox’s question—my question—is this: I don’t blame Nightsinger for taking my heart, no matter how it’s twisted my body and soul. How could I? She saved my life from the bandits who murdered my family, from the darkness of death itself, and so I serve her. I’m a monster, not a complete arsehole. I know that one good turn deserves another. It’s just been a very, very long turn. This palatial forest, this empty chest of mine, these memories of what I’ve done—I’ve been stuck with them all for three years. I can’t remember much about my life before my death—no Heartless can. Those memories fade when our hearts are ripped from our chests. But I remember every second of what happened during my death. And after.
I wait, and wait. And like a faithful, awful dog, the dark voice in my head comes out to play.
Five, it hisses at me, like a snake’s scales sliding against midnight grass. You killed five of them. One old, one young, one with no left eye, one who never screamed (not once), and one with a bad smile that didn’t last long. You wish he lasted longer. You wish Nightsinger turned him into a Heartless, too, unkillable like you, suffering forever like you—
I might not have a heart, but I still have a stomach, and it churns violently. I hurry my steps like I can leave what I did behind, the trees leaning away and into me, creating a path otherwise inaccessible to the outside world. Their branches shudder, roots trembling and bark groaning with the effort. They conceal Nightsinger willingly—unlike me, they had a choice to join her.
Somewhere between the shifting trees and my own self-pity walks a beautiful young boy in an orange tunic. “You didn’t kill the celeon, Zera,” he accuses.
Just seeing the boy’s outline makes the awful voice dim, lessen. Finally, something other than the past to focus on. I flip my hair haughtily.
“Yes, well, I don’t do a lot of things. Wear the color puce, for instance, or obsess over swo
rds. Also, kill perfectly innocent assassins.”
The boy snorts, unimpressed. He’s younger than me, and he’ll always look that way, until Nightsinger releases his heart back to him and he can start growing again. His curly black hair falls in his moss eyes, his skin a deep umber and smooth with baby fat. His full name is Crav il’Terin Maldhinna, born of Mald the Ironfist. He’s a Warprince of the Endless Bog, and the third and final Heartless of the witch Nightsinger, but I have my own nickname for him that he appreciates and cherishes.
“Look at you, Crabby.” I walk up to him, measuring the top of his head against my shoulder. “You’re permanently almost as tall as I am.”
“Fall into a pit,” he retorts.
“Gladly.” I pat his arm. “Just as soon as I’ve had something to eat. Nightsinger said she left food—did you have some?”
He wipes his mouth on his arm, his sleeve coming away a bit red. “A little. I’m not that hungry.”
“Nonsense. We’re always hungry.”
“Well, I’m not.” He thrusts his proud chin forward. He became a Heartless only a year ago—he still fights it in the most childish of ways, in ways I used to. “Now answer me. Why didn’t you kill that celeon? He attacked you.”
We walk together, the trees parting one last time. In a violently purple thicket of foxgloves and nightshade sits a round stone house no bigger than any village house nor any fancier. The roof of the cottage is magic-touched canvas to keep heavy rains and snows off our heads. A tin chimney puffs smoke into the air. The few windows of the cottage glow warm with buttery candlelight. I don’t know what it is about this clearing, but fireflies adore it like no other place in the forest—hanging in the air as gently pulsing clusters of turquoise glimmers.
“Not everything that attacks me has to die, Crav,” I say patiently. I don’t expect him to understand—the people of the Endless Bog decide everything in their lives by a strict code of martial rules.