“The number of my wounds is the number of my enemies dead.” He recites his favorite Endless Bog saying. I laugh and gather my bloodstained skirts to walk up the few steps to the covered door.
“He wasn’t my enemy.”
“He tried to kill you!” Crav argues.
“That’s because he didn’t know what I was. Being ignorant isn’t a crime, Crabby, it’s a curable ailment.”
I pull the tapestry back from the door. The air of the cottage is always thick with the scent of herbs and spices, a fireplace dancing with flames against one wall. In the center of the room is a pit lined with river stone, in which the body of a deer torn open rests, glassy eyes staring at nothing and everything at once. The first time I came into the cottage and saw a similar deer, I just thought Nightsinger had terrible taste in decor. But I learned very quickly that it was a terrible taste in decor that served a purpose—eating raw meat is necessary for a Heartless to live. And by “live,” I mean “continue to function as a sentient being with control over our own actions.” We’re monsters, to be sure. But as long as we eat raw meat, we can be…lesser monsters. There’s a hunger that comes with our empty chests, settles there like a diseased pustule. It can never be satiated, and it never goes away. But as long as we keep eating raw flesh regularly, the hunger can’t grow, can’t spread its darkness through our veins and cloud our minds, turning us into something far worse.
Beasts. Berserkers. Abominations. So as much as I enjoy rebelling against any and all traditions, I eat disgusting deer organs like a good Heartless, every day, at the same time. Because I relish my sanity.
Because I’ve seen the beast inside me once. And I swore that day I’d never let it out again.
Five men dead because of you, you repulsive creature—
I shut up the dark voice by picking a strip of flesh off the deer and sprinkling a few herbs from my basket on it. I down it in one swallow and try to make my grimace as pretty as possible. Even if the hunger can’t be fully satiated with food, it does get quieter, much to my relief.
I wash my hands in the stone basin in the corner and settle on a cushion with Crav.
“So, how was your day?”
He pouts mightily. “You could’ve at least crippled the celeon for life.”
“My day was great, thanks for asking,” I chime and get up. “Where’s Peligli?”
“Sleeping? I’m not her babysitter.”
“Peligli!” I stand and shout up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready!”
The rustling of blankets precedes the slapping of tiny feet on the wood floor and a high-pitched chant of “Zera, Zera, Zera, Zera.” A mass of carrot-red hair rockets down the steps and into me. Peligli—the first Heartless of Nightsinger—looks up, her round four-year-old face pale and flushed, her eyes midnight black and sparkling. She’s excited to eat—all her teeth growing slowly into their pointed, jagged, razor-sharp state over her little lips. We can control the emergence of our monstrous teeth, but it gets harder the hungrier we are.
“Zera! You back! Did you get any shinies today?” she asks.
“No shinies. But I did do several terrible things, so it wasn’t a total loss.” I smile and thumb a sleep booger from her eye. Peligli squirms her hands in a way that means “pick me up,” and I hoist her on my hip and approach the deer.
“I like terrible things,” she announces.
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do!” she insists, kicking her feet to be let down immediately. I comply and watch her fly toward dinner. She picks out the deer’s eyes with her chubby fingers and pops them into her mouth like cherries, chewing happily as she chimes, “Terrible things are interdasting!”
“Interesting,” Crav corrects dully.
She smiles with bloodstained teeth at him. “Yeah!”
Peligli’s full name is Peligli, no more and no less. While Nightsinger turned Crav and me into Heartless because we hung on the verge of death, Peligli was turned of her own free will. She’d been an orphan on the streets of Vetris before the Sunless War, and when she saw Nightsinger she followed her, never leaving her side. Though she looks the youngest of us, she’s been a Heartless for almost forty years. She insists Nightsinger didn’t let her fight in the War, which is a small blessing. I can’t imagine war would be good for a kid’s mind—especially because she would’ve had to fight.
That’s what Heartless did in the Sunless War—killed. That’s what we do, what we exist for. A witch is just that—a witch, a singular person with magical power. And as it turns out, conjuring giant fireballs from thin air and turning into any animal shape you please tends to make you enemies. Or at the very least, it makes humans afraid of you. Because humans are afraid of everything—especially giant fireballs. Babies, the lot of them.
I look to the rows of ragged books on Nightsinger’s shelves—witch books, detailing their history and such. I’ve read them each a thousand times, because watching mud dry on a tree root gets surprisingly boring after the first month of doing it. The books told me Heartless exist to be soldiers for witches. Bodyguards. Cannon fodder, if we’re being generous. But cannons exist only in Pendron and they backfire all the time and—ugh, basically, we’re just meat puppets. Padding between a witch and her enemies. Why kill your enemy yourself if you can get an undying, magical thrall to do it?
Watching Crav and Peligli together reminds me just how close they hover to becoming killers. They love Nightsinger more than I do—too young to understand a kind captor is still a captor. They’d do anything for her—but I can’t let them become what I’ve become. I can’t let those small hands drip red. Every mercenary who comes looking for a witch’s bounty, I drive off. Every curious hunter who strays too far into the woods, I scare away, so Crav and Peligli never have to. And I’ll keep doing it, until Nightsinger dies and takes all of us with her, or until she gives me back my heart.
Because she can—a witch can give her Heartless back their hearts, and they return to their human bodies and lives. Their memories of their life before their Heartlessness come back. Except Nightsinger’s told me she needs us (me) here to defend her from the human world that’s hunting her. This doesn’t stop me from begging her to let us go. I’ve begged on my knees, bargained pieces of my soul away to her every whim, asked if there’s anything at all I can do to change her mind, but she simply, softly refuses.
And I get it. I might not be able to go outside the forest, but I hear the merchants and lesser nobles in their carriages talk before I rob them blind. I know the world hates witches. I know the Sunless War killed nearly all of them, and the survivors remain in woods, caves, isolated in dark places to hide from hunting human eyes.
But even if it’s impossible—even if it feels like it will never happen in this lifetime—I hold on to the tiny shard of hope that someday, I’ll own my life again, that it will be mine to do whatever I please with once more. I envy the celeon assassin, I blaze with jealousy at every human I watch pass on the Bone Road—wrapped up in their problems, yet still very much free to do whatever, go wherever they want. The world is theirs, if only they’d stop and realize it; they hold the greatest gift of all in their hands—their own destinies.
Mine was ripped from me the day I died, and I’ve been chasing it ever since. I’m a bit of a tragic figure that way.
I stick out my tongue, the taste of my own thoughts bitter and ridiculous. Tragic? Me? Impeccably fashionable and intensely witty are much better adjectives. With the added bonus of sounding far less self-pitying.
Crav always knows what I’m thinking. He’s got an uncanny ability to read faces—maybe it comes with the territory of being a Warprince, constantly compared to his dozens of brothers and sisters. He sits beside me, both of us watching the deer carcass.
“Nightsinger will clean it up with magic,” he says.
“Thank the Old God.” I sigh. “Can you imagine the stains?”
There’s a long silence, the sound of crickets echoing outside.
??
?Did you ask her yet?” Crav inquires softly. “About our hearts?”
I shoot him a sharp look. “How do you know about that? Have you been listening in?”
“She always leaves her door open,” he grumbles. “And you always ask around this time. I stay up and listen.”
“Well, you can’t,” I say sternly. “Starting now.”
“It’s my heart, too!” he protests. “I want to know when I’m getting it back.”
I thought I was the only one having my hopes crushed over and over. I asked Nightsinger when we were alone specifically so Crav and Peligli wouldn’t get their feelings pulverized, too. But my efforts were for nothing—he’s been listening all along.
“You should ask her again,” Crav insists. “I think this time she’ll really give them back—”
“She won’t!” I snap. “We’re never getting them back, okay? Not now, not ever.” Peligli squeaks at my tone. Crav flinches, his eyes suddenly welling with tears, and I regret everything instantly. “Crav—oh no. I’m sorry, I—”
He jumps to his feet and dashes out the door. I lurch a few steps after him, but Crav is the fastest of us—if he doesn’t want to be caught, he won’t easily be, and I don’t have the stamina to attempt a chase through the woods right now; that dagger wound drained me more than usual.
Peligli tugs at my hand, her own eyes tearful. “That…that’s a lie, right? We get them back…someday?”
She was turned willingly, but even her young mind’s been strained by the decades of Heartlessness. No matter how young, how willing, every Heartless gets tired. Tired of eating raw organs. Tired of seeing the same small circle of space over and over. Tired of listening to the hunger etch its toxic words into our brains. Tired of feeling empty, imperfect, unwhole. Tired of waking up and knowing all it takes is a few missed meals to become monsters. Tired of not remembering how we lived or who we loved.
I walk through the garden with her, rocking her back and forth, the swarm of fireflies lighting her tear-stained face as she sobs until she hiccups, until she exhausts her little body into the pale imitation of sleep we go through as Heartless. We don’t need sleep, what with our bodies always magically regenerating, but our human brains sometimes forget that and lapse into the old habit. I walk back into the cottage and place Peligli gently on the flax-stuffed sheepskin she calls her bed.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, tucking a blanket over her. “I’m sorry for being terrible.”
Terrible doesn’t begin to cut it, the hunger sneers faintly. Look at her—you broke her heart; human or Heartless, it doesn’t matter what you are, you’re still a hideous—
“The fire looks very nice tonight, doesn’t it?” I mutter to drown out the voice. “Very…hot. Full of…flames.” I pause, then say to no one in particular, “Remind me to never become a poet.”
I get up and wander over to the hearth, warming my palms on it. It’s strange fire—colored blue-black, like a bad bruise, but Nightsinger’s never clarified why, and I’ve never bothered to ask, because frankly her explanations of magical things tend to make no sense. My fingers flit to the iron cage set just above the fire. It’s sturdy, the bars thick, but not thick enough to hide the view of the three jars within and the three hearts beating inside. I asked Nightsinger once why she puts them above the fire, and she smiled and told me they need to be kept warm, either by spell or flame. There are dents on the iron cage from when I was younger—when the anger consumed me and I bashed it with my father’s sword until my hands bled and my legs gave out. I’d been trying to destroy my heart, to end it all. I learned later the books call that “shattering” a Heartless, and it’s the only way to kill us besides killing our witch.
As mundane as the cage looks, it’s magic. Even slipping something between the bars is impossible—some invisible barrier is woven there. Nightsinger won’t even let us kill ourselves.
Like I told the fox. It’s complicated.
Peligli’s heart is the smallest. Her jar is old, scratched, and fogged with age. Crav’s jar is sea glass, etched with ivy vines. His heart is a little bigger than hers, and currently beating fast like it’s exerted. Probably from all the running he’s doing. I’ll apologize to him in the morning with a long, uninterrupted sparring session. He’ll like that.
My heart is in the middle of the two. Elizera—or Zera for short—no family name I can remember, second Heartless of the witch Nightsinger. Sixteen years old at the time of her death. Her heart is the largest, and rests on the bottom of a curved red jar. The books say witches make the jars themselves, though some prefer bags or boxes. It’s a magic they practice from a young age, becoming progressively better as they grow older. Nightsinger’s progress—from Peligli’s simple jar to Crav’s elegant one—shows her prowess clearly. Ten, twenty years from now, how many more jars will sit beside ours? I pray to any god listening that my heart won’t be there at all by then. I dread the thought of seeing a jar more beautiful than Crav’s.
The door at the top of the rickety stairs creaks open just then, a beam of light shafting across my face.
“Zera?” Nightsinger’s voice calls. “Could you come up for a moment?”
“I could,” I lilt. “Or I could stay down here and not get stuck with a chore.”
She laughs. “Scaring off mercenaries is hardly a chore for you.”
“You’re right. It’s a breeze. But it’s a breezy pain in my arse.”
“No mercenaries, I promise.”
“It’s a hunter, isn’t it?” I groan. “Hunters are way harder to chase off. And they all have stories about starving kids they need to feed. Remember that one you tried to give the boar to, and he almost shot you in the head for being a ‘heathen’—”
“No hunters, either,” she interrupts smoothly. “Just a talk between you and me.”
I heave a sigh and ascend the stairs, my stomach dancing. I always get nervous when I near her room—it’s something about the smell of it, lilies and sandalwood—that puts me on edge. Or maybe it’s the magic emanating from it; it turns the air heavy, as if I’m breathing fog.
I push the door open and adjust my eyes to the thousands of glass flowers throwing light around the room. It’s Nightsinger’s favorite hobby—crafting plants from glass. She keeps them in dozens of vases, in baskets, while some of them simply float in midair. Delicate, impossibly detailed orchids and roses glitter with transparent petals, capturing the candlelight and fracturing it into a thousand points of diamond brilliance. There are flowers I don’t know the names of, flowers that glow of their own accord or spiral slowly in on themselves and back out. Some exhale and inhale as if they’re alive, spreading crystal pollen on the wooden floor like snow. I’ve seen her use them to “see,” sometimes—the flowers showing her images of certain areas in the forest. My best guess? They’re attached to the trees that hide us, somehow, but that’s as far as my magic theory-crafting goes.
Nightsinger sits in the middle of the flowers, on a simple wooden chair. The room is empty save for her crystal creations—no bed, no dresser, not even a desk. Out of her crow form, she cuts an impressive figure; a full bosom all but bursts from her usual white dress, her waist and arms strong and thick. She’s so tall she has to duck beneath the doorways of the cottage, and though she could easily change the height of them with magic, she doesn’t. A mane of tawny hair descends along her back, always glossy and curled just so at the ends. Her lips are sensuous, her fair, plump face decorated with hazel eyes sharper and full of more wild secrets than that fox’s.
She stands from the chair and sweeps over. It’s her movements that mesmerize me the most—fluid, as if her feet don’t really touch the ground. While Heartless can still pass for human, anyone looking at her would know instantly she’s not human in the slightest. She was born a witch—raised to believe making Heartless was as natural as breathing. And she isn’t the worst of them by far; I’ve read enough to know Nightsinger turns only children killed too early, children who deserve another chance at life
. There are—or rather, were—some lovely witches in history who turned just to see humans suffer. Some even did it as a status symbol; only witches with powerful magic could sustain many Heartless at a time; the more you had, the stronger you looked. Most of them died in the Sunless War. Nowadays, the few left choose their Heartless carefully and less often.
“There’s some news, Zera, that we must share with you,” Nightsinger starts. In that moment, I see the two white crows sitting on the far corner windowsill. “If you would, my friends.”
The crows fly onto the floor, glowing. The brightness shifts, unfolds into two large human shapes, then fades. Two witches stand before us, radiating power; a pale, bald man in an immaculately pressed gold-threaded suit and a woman with short, impossibly blue hair and a flowing, gauzy dress that hides little of her midnight skin. Both of them are so tall— though not as tall as Nightsinger—and with that same eeriness about them that gives me goose bumps.
“Zera, this is Firewalker”—Nightsinger points to the man, who nods at me stiffly—“and Seawhisper. They’ve come for you.”
“Little old me?” I ask nervously. “And here I am, without a single cup of tea to offer.”
“Silence.” Firewalker steps forward, thin eyes sharp and on me. “You will listen, not speak.”
Oh good. One of these sorts of men. Seawhisper chides him for me.
“Come now, have an ounce of patience, will you?” She turns to me. “I’m sorry about him. He’s a bit of a…relic when it comes to treating Heartless decently.”
“We don’t have time to waste,” he snaps, “on coddling our puppets. We need her in Vetris now. The Spring Welcoming—”
“Is in four days,” Nightsinger interrupts him patiently. “We have time at least to explain what’s going on. A confused Heartless helps no one.”
Firewalker opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. “Fine. Then you explain it. But do it now. Her carriage is waiting, and humans are known for their impatience.”