Bring Me Their Hearts

  “Your Highness, doing this yourself might give the wrong impression—”

  “Impressions be damned,” Lucien snarls. “We must treat your wound.”

  Malachite pushes the small of my back toward the palace. “Don’t make me pick you up and bring you there.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” I tease, desperate to get out of this situation. “Even a Beneather would be hard-pressed to lift my weight—”

  “Enough!” Lucien demands, brows furrowing sharply. “Come with me, now. This is an order from your prince.”

  The tittering of the nobles stops at his tone. I can’t disobey an order, not from the Crown Prince, and not in front of so many people. Indignation eats at me—how dare he use his position to force me to come with him? Does he think he can just get away with that? Of course he does—no one dares disobey him. I swallow, standing my ground, making my gaze sing iron refusals. I won’t let him have his way. Not like everyone else. Not like the others. I never want to be “like the others” in his eyes. But why? I don’t know, there’s just selfishness where reasons should be, and Lucien opens his mouth to say something, and suddenly the world spins, the prince becoming a blur in front of me. I faintly hear Malachite’s voice, and then my eyes are plunged into darkness.

  12

  The Apple

  and the Tree

  I wake to white walls, white curtains wafting in the gentle breeze from an open window. A soft bed beneath my body, soft blankets on top—a bedroom. But the ceiling is so high—so high that even in my foggy state I know it must be a bedroom in the palace.

  I try to sit up, but a lightning headache splits me down the middle. I double over, the pain so intense I’m convinced someone’s taken my locket, but my hand finds it on my chest, and with shaking fingers I open it. My shard of heart still beats there.

  I’m safe. But for how long? What happened? Who saw me heal? The fact that I’m in a bedroom in the palace and not in a dungeon is the only thing keeping me from losing my usual flawless composure. My forearm is bandaged so perfectly, snug and clean, and Father’s sword rests against one of the bedposts. I still wear the same primrose dress I did during the duel.

  How many people saw me faint? My mind flashes with the crowd, shadowy and huge. Too many—Gavik included. Why did I faint? And why do I feel like death warmed over? My whole body cries—my lungs struggling to breathe, my mouth drier than old cotton. I’ve felt this awfulness before: every time I died.

  I must’ve died.

  “Lady Zera, you’re awake.” Prince Lucien stands there, flanked by Malachite. Both their expressions are worried, but Lucien’s is twisted. His long braid is a little undone, wisps of dark hair hanging around his shoulders. Dark bags rim his eyes—has he not slept?

  I try to sit up, but the pain is excruciating. Lucien lunges for me, helping prop me up against the pillows.

  “Go slow,” he murmurs. “Do you need water? Are you hungry?”

  “It hurts,” I gasp. This isn’t right. Pain doesn’t linger for a Heartless—it comes and then it goes as quickly as it came. I keep hoping it’ll stop, heal magically, but it doesn’t abate in the slightest. “How long have I been out?”

  “A day. The polymath Lady Y’shennria brought said it would hurt in the beginning,” Lucien agrees. “It’s an infection.”

  “Polymath?” A tremor clings to my voice, and I desperately try to peek beneath my bandage—did I heal all the way? Did this polymath see me heal? Lucien shakes his head.

  “Don’t worry—he’s the only one who’s looked at your wound. Gavik wanted to send his polymaths, but I refused him at Lady Y’shennria’s request.”

  Relief spreads through me, tempered by wariness. Y’shennria let a polymath look at me? Why would she divulge my secret like that? And Gavik, sending his people to tend to me? He’d never do such a kind thing, unless there was something in it for him. Unless he suspected me of something. Did Fione even get what she was after, or was it all for nothing?

  Unease adds to the pain, and I swallow.

  “This polymath—what did he look like?”

  “Tall, white mustache,” Malachite offers from his place tucked against the wall. “Very stick-up-the-butt air about him.”

  Reginall. Without a doubt, that’s Reginall. Y’shennria had him pose as a polymath to visit me—clever.

  “What else did he say?” I ask. Lucien motions for a lurking maid to fetch water, and she scurries off.

  “He said you’d be better off resting at the Y’shennria manor,” the prince says. “I promised Lady Y’shennria we’d send you to her the moment you woke, and I intend to keep that promise. Malachite, call for her carriage.”

  Malachite shoots me a wink and leaves the room. It’s only the prince and me, now, and the gentle breeze. It toys with his loose hair strands, and absently I reach for one, stroking it, the softness a welcome distraction from my pain.

  “Like silk,” I manage. Lucien’s expression shadows.

  “I was worried you’d never wake—” His voice breaks, and I break with it.

  “You can’t.” I despise my pleading tone. “You can’t worry about me.”

  “And you think I haven’t tried not to?” he asks. “I tried, gods I tried, but every time I saw you it got more and more difficult, until—” He reaches for my hand, encapsulating it in his own warm one. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

  What’s left of me fragments in his hands. His words are a hammer in the center of a web of cracks on my surface I didn’t know I had. I look to Father’s sword; every night for weeks after their deaths I held that blade and cried for him, for Mother, cried for the gods to take me, too, to free me from my monstrosity and reunite me with them—it all surfaces in my memory, like a storm cloud overcoming the sun. I feel a tear slip down my cheek, and he sees it, wiping it away with a confused look on his face.

  “Why are you crying?” he asks. “Is it the pain? I can get some brandy—”

  “N-No. I-I’m sorry. It’s just—no one has ever said that to me before.”

  I want nothing more than to stay in this moment, my hand in his. But that’s an impossibility. A weakness. I am a monster, and he’s a human. I want his heart, and I want his other heart. His affection, his blood. I want it all.

  But if I take one, I can’t have the other.

  Kill him, the hunger begs, its voice deafening and more distorted than I’m used to, like a thousand voices at once instead of just one. Eat him. Kill hIm. EAt him. KiLL—

  Lucien gets up and leaves, returning with a glass of amber liquid. I greedily down it, ashamed he has to help me drink.

  “This isn’t how I imagined our first date going,” I mutter. He laughs, the sound honey to my ears.

  TaKe his hEaRt, now! The hunger is suddenly desperate, howling louder than a hurricane. Kill hiM! KILL HIM!

  It blindsides me, the urge to rip his skin from his face rising like a tide, a moon, something inexorable and unstoppable. I know then, with a horrible pinpoint certainty, that if I don’t leave at this very moment, I’ll lash out and hurt him. The hunger is so much stronger—so much stronger than I’ve ever felt. It’s like I haven’t eaten for weeks, months, when I haven’t eaten for only a day. What’s wrong with me?

  “Lady Zera? Is something the matter?”

  —KiLL hiM—

  “I-I’m fine.” I suppress the terrible hunger with all my combined years of experience, but it resists, tears through me anew like a bladed whirlwind. “I just need to get home.”

  “Of course.” Lucien nods. Malachite comes back then, and it’s a blur of the hunger screaming at me as Lucien helps me out of bed. He insists on carrying me to the carriage, but when he reaches for me I thrust my hands out, pushing him away violently. Any closer and he’s dead. Any closer and I’ll reach into his chest and pull out that godsdamned vital organ of his. Lucien’s stunned look evaporates when Malachite steps in, hoisting me into his arms. I don’t protest, and Lucien follows us lamely with my sword, a
look of helplessness on his face.

  He can’t learn what I am, or he’ll hate me for the deception, for my nature. But he must learn what I am, and soon, if I want my freedom.

  When I’m in the carriage, sword at my side and Fisher driving me home, when Lucien is so far from me I can’t hurt him, only then do I let the hunger rampage through me unbidden.

  Only then do I let my teeth show.

  The pain that doesn’t fade is the first thing to tell me something’s wrong. The second is the blood that blossoms on my forearm bandage. Blood means only one thing.

  I haven’t healed.

  A whole day has gone by, and Nightsinger’s magic still hasn’t healed me.

  Y’shennria piles out from her manor so quickly when we pull up it’s as if she’d been watching out the window for me. She’s at my side in a flash, helping me down from the carriage. My legs nearly give out twice from the pain, but she hefts me higher on her hip, never once ordering me to stand straight or to collect myself. Reginall takes over for Y’shennria in supporting me as we enter the manor, Lord Y’shennria’s portrait warmly welcoming me home. The first thing my eyes look for is the fire-calendar, an extra mark burned into it.

  “Five days,” I moan. “That’s all I have left.”

  “Hush,” Y’shennria chides. “Focus on getting better.”

  “I don’t care”—I grunt, every step Reginall takes with me in his arms ricocheting magma pain through my bones—“about getting better. If I get his heart, I’ll be fine. His heart. That’s all that matters.”

  “You’re delirious.” Y’shennria sighs. “Quickly, Reginall, get her in bed.”

  “I’m going to the Hunt,” I insist as he puts me on my bed, wrapping the blankets around me. “I’m still going…no matter what.”

  “Of course.” Y’shennria nods. “Now stop worrying and get some rest.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I snort. She looks utterly fatigued, her dress wrinkled as if she fell asleep in it. Her makeup is a little off, and that’s how I know she’s been…what, worrying about me? Nonsense. I look to Reginall. “You came as a polymath, right? Disguised.”

  Y’shennria nods. “When I’d heard you collapsed, I knew it couldn’t be from a simple human cause. So I brought the one who knows Heartless best. What happened to you?”

  “Prince Lucien and I dueled, and he cut me accidentally, and then I fainted. That sword is made of white mercury. The wound burns, all over my body now. I think it…killed me.”

  “Surely you’re fine—you’re lying here talking to us, after all.”

  “Look!” I offer her a view of my arm. “My wound isn’t healed. And the hunger—gods, Y’shennria, it feels like the hunger wants to devour everyone I see. Controlling it is like…like trying to tie down a starving beast with thread.”

  YoU call us tHe beast, but yoU’re the one whO’s killed fIve meN. You’rE the onE who’s goiNG to beTrAy the prince, the hunger screeches. PiTiFul.

  Y’shennria pales and quickly leaves the room. Dismay crawls into my throat at her abandonment (still, after everything we’ve been through?), but Reginall smiles grimly at me.

  “Lady Zera, you said it was the prince’s sword that killed you? A white mercury weapon?”

  I nod. Reginall lets out a breath.

  “There were weapons like that, too, in the Sunless War. Blades made of pure white mercury. We knew they were hard to make for the humans, because there weren’t many of them. A few generals had one.” He pauses. “If it sliced you, the white mercury would linger in your system for days and days, making it hard for your witch to heal you, command you. Do you remember when I told you about the Weeping Heartless?”

  “Why?”

  “The weeping were always those who’d been killed by a white mercury blade before.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not entirely sure myself. I’d see them in camp, after battles, suffering with wounds that refused to heal. Being cut by such a strong white mercury blade might weaken a witch’s hold on a Heartless, or so we’d hear the witches whisper.”

  “That’s…that’s nothing bad,” I say. Reginall holds up a hand.

  “I didn’t know this for many years, but the connection between a witch and Heartless does more than heal you. A witch’s magic helps keep your hunger calm. Calmer, at least, than if you didn’t have a steady stream of magic siphoning into you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying to be cut by a white mercury blade so powerful weakens your connection to your witch. The hunger becomes louder. And the beast within hovers ever closer to assuming control. A few Heartless cut, as you were, transformed randomly—lashing out wildly at anyone and everyone. Eventually considered risks, they were shattered by their witches. Only a few ever mastered Weeping—a way to quiet their hunger out of necessity more than anything. It was that or die.”

  I swallow. It’s already so hard to keep the monster at bay. Reginall pulls a nearby chair up to the side of my bed, staring at me intently. “Close your eyes.”

  I do as he says, my locket thumping nervously.

  “Concentrate on the void in your chest.” Reginall’s voice is low, even. “Feel the weightlessness of it, the emptiness where a beat should be. You are in the silence. You are of the silence.”

  The blackness on the back of my eyelids becomes somehow deeper, free of light imprints or nerve strain. Is he teaching me how to weep?

  “Place your hand over your unheart,” Reginall continues. “And you’ll find it there.”

  I wait, my fingers still against my chest. Find what? There’s nothing under my skin—nothing but darkness. I’m incomplete, inhuman. There’s nothing but a girl made of mistakes and lies beneath my hand. The door opens, and Reginall startles, my eyes flinging open. Y’shennria walks in, a silver tray of livers in her hands. She wrinkles her nose and places them on my bedside table.

  “Eat.”

  GlAdly, the hunger screams. OfFer yoUr tHroaT so I caN finIsh whaT tHe oTheRs staRteD.

  I wolf the livers down so fast I gag. Y’shennria turns her back, watching outside the window. Even Reginall, no doubt used to the sight, turns away, straightening a sandclock on the shelf. When the plate is clean, I expect to feel full, for the voices to stop. But the hunger still screams in my ears, deafening.

  “H-Have you heard from Fione?” I struggle. “Did she get what she needed?”

  Y’shennria nods. “She asked you to visit her at the royal shooting range. I told her only when you get better. If you get better at all.”

  “I will,” I insist, unsettled by how unsure my voice sounds.

  “Do not help Lady Fione more than necessary, Zera. No amount of help she can give us is worth exposing you.” Y’shennria won’t meet my eyes as she lingers in the doorway. “Rest, for now. Reginall, come. Leave her.”

  Reginall goes to her, flashing me one last hesitant smile and bowing as he closes the door. My unheart sinks—does Y’shennria think me useless now? If I lose my Heartless abilities, will she find some replacement for me? Logic manages to claw its way through my fears; she doesn’t have the time to train a human girl to get the prince’s attention. She’s stuck with me, no matter how useless I become.

  ShE caN’t abAnDon whaT sHe doeSn’t lOve, the hunger sneers.

  Even with a plateful of livers in my stomach, the hunger isn’t satisfied in the slightest. It shrieks for more. I can’t sleep to ignore it, either, its nasty, violent thoughts piling up and up, like rancid garbage, like rusted needles poking under my skin. Maeve walks by my cracked-open door, dusting the hall’s paintings, and the hunger claws against my skull.

  OLd, wEak, easY prEy, a wArMup foR tHe huNTing dAy—

  The sight in the mirror across from me only makes it worse—my reflection pale and ragged, my teeth constantly long, no matter how hard I fight to hide them. How will I ever blend in at the court again—at the Hunt—if I can’t control myself?

  How will Lucien ever forg
ive me if I take his heart?

  He wOn’T—

  I put my left hand over my right, desperately trying to imitate the warmth of his palm, the silken feel of his fingers against mine.

  ImpOssiBle, the hunger snarls. You cAn’t haVe boTh his heArts, yoU paThEtic liTTle girl—

  Fed up with wallowing in my own pain and mental filth, I grab my sword and get out of bed. The sun set long ago, and as I venture downstairs I spot the remnants of Y’shennria’s preparations for the Hunt—an open trunk of mine, filled with perfectly folded dresses. The fire-calendar mocks me relentlessly, its charred marks like black eyes watching me. Lucien’s eyes. What is this awful obsession with him all of a sudden? Just because he touched my hand? Why can’t I shake him from my mind?

  I stumble, my legs giving way for a moment. I’m weak. I’m distracted.

  YoU’ll nEver geT HiS hEarT liKe thiS—yOu’ll dIe liKe this—

  The hunger’s voice is like a dozen harps being dragged over broken glass, jagged, the strings snapping as they go. Determined for a moment of peace, I venture outside and grab a whetstone, a bowl of water, and a rag. On the steps of the manor, in the full red and blue moonlight, I sharpen Father’s sword relentlessly—the repetitive movements just barely drowning the hunger. The hordes of black rosebushes sway in the midnight wind, thorns like fangs trying to pierce the sky.

  HoW maNy more pEopLe do yOu haVE to maKe sUFfer beFore you’Re sAtiSfied?

  I admire my work, Father’s sword so sharp I entertain the thought of trying to cut the moonlight itself.

  It’S a cYcle Of hATE anD paIn and you’re jUSt anOtheR wheel keepiNg it going—

  The hunger’s doubts and fears are a cacophony, never-ending. I clutch my head and double over.

  “Lady Zera?” Reginall’s voice makes me turn, his bushy eyebrows drawn in concern. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I admit, half laughing. “Something’s wrong with me. I’m in pain. The hunger is so loud and distorted. And my wound—” I hold up my bloodstained bandage, fresh red overtaking the faded brassy blood. “It won’t godsdamn heal.”