16

THE BENE’THAR
AND THE
STARVING WOLF

The clamor of swords echoes on the empty ocean. Empty of everything but the horizon, our ship, our breathing, our crowd of sailors who’ve suddenly gathered to watch the friendly duel. I blink sweat out of my eyes, the hazy cloud covering the sun doing nothing to mitigate the summer heat. It swelters all around us. The pleasant sea wind died somewhere between our first blade-swing and now. There are no shadows on the ocean to hide under, no shade, no trees. And frankly, I’m thanking the gods. Sick of the things.

Malachite has me backed into a corner, the low roar of the sailors watching a welcome sound, considering Mal’s not once said anything to me. He just launched into all-out fighting the second we bowed to each other. His ruby eyes flicker dark lashes, surreptitiously watching my feet for hints on my next move.

“I know they’re pretty, but you don’t have to stare that hard,” I tease. “They aren’t going anywhere. Except perhaps up your arse.”

“You talk too much,” he finally says, hand tightening on his hilt.

“Aw, baby’s first words,” I coo, and lunge in. He isn’t expecting a roundabout, but they never do. He catches it on the back of his blade, miraculously, and we hover there, straining against each other. Kavar’s tit, he’s strong. His biceps aren’t particularly big—rather willowy, actually—but he pushes back with the force of a celeon.

“Alas.” I grit out a smile. “It seems you’re made of diamond.”

“And you’re made of bad jokes.”

“True, and fair,” I agree. He ducks, the shift in his weight throwing me off, his blade edge screeching on mine as it goes somewhere, so I frantically push away, make space. We established no duel rules before this—we just bowed. No Avellish rules, no Cavanosian rules, no rules at all. He’s not avoiding cutting me, either, throwing his whole force into his every swing. The victory conditions are unclear. And that’s the way he wants it, really. He doesn’t want a duel. A duel is just a game, a diversion, a way to pass time. Despite all the jokes he made around us dueling, he isn’t treating this as a game in the slightest. He’s trying to show me something. But what?

A flash of his paper-white arm, and then the brown tentacles of a net. He grabbed one from the boat and threw it at me! In a duel! It’s so close I can’t dodge it. I swipe, praying the sword I borrowed from a sailor is sharp enough. And it is, barely. The net splits apart, ripped fibers catching on my shoulder.

The crowd shows their appreciation by wolf whistling, blasting my eardrums with excited shouts and bellows. Malachite just waits casually for my next move, flipping his broadsword with one hand and a practiced ease. That’s more like the Malachite I know—a little fun. I brush bits of net off my shoulder, a laugh bubbling up.

“You’ll have to excuse me—my dueling partners are usually princes, you see, and they’re very formal. No prop throwing or anything of the like.”

Malachite rolls his neck, cracking it. “Shut up, Six-Eyes, and just fuck me up. Best you can, anyway.”

“Ohhh,” I sigh, thrusting square at his face. “You know I don’t do well with taunts.”

He dodges, eyes wider than the heavy-lidded usual—a head shot is very risky. And very illegal. But this duel has no rules. That move was me telling him I get it—no rules. All effort. I agree to that, to it, to whatever this duel might do to either of us. So he sets his face into a lazy smile, ready.

He lunges in this time. The salt spray of a cold wave over the ship’s edge drenches us, and I can barely see the flash of metal as he disguises his thrust in the water. It’s hard to follow, harder to dodge, but I drop my center and pray. Something nicks on my shoulder, a split-second feeling of fabric getting caught and then freed, and my arm gapes, exposed to the air, my tunic severed on that side.

I back up on my heels as far as I can, almost slipping. The sailor crowd undulates around me, and then pushes me back into the circle. I look down—no blood. It’s a miracle the stitching on my tunic stayed intact enough to cover my chest. I look up again at the beneather, his elegant face serious. He meant to nick me.

Ah—that’s what he wants.

Blood.

I get it now. That’s why he’s going all in, every time—because the first one to draw blood is the winner. The opposite of Cavanos rules. The antithesis of Avel, and even the Endless Bog. These are his rules. The bodyguard of the prince of Cavanos’s rules. No. Malachite’s rules.

Just Malachite.

“Fine,” I mutter, tearing the flapping, useless sleeve off. “I’ll play.”

The sailors try to grab the cloth, hooting as I flip my sword and walk in. In to Malachite. Up to him. If he wants to face me head-on, then that’s what I’ll give him. No Weeping. No tricks. Just me. Just Zera.

He doesn’t know what to do. I see it in his eyes—no one walks right at their opponent. Lunging, stabbing, angling. All those things. But not walking. I want to show him, though. What it means to ask for me. What it means to face who I am.

I grab for him, his shoulder, his wrist, whatever I can get, but he flicks his blade at me, trying to make space between us. It’s a light effort from him. But a light effort from him still hits hard. I know that, but I won’t block it with my sword. That’s not what he wants.

That’s not what I am.

I put my palm up at the last second, the blade tip catching in the meat of my hand. Bones crunching easily, the fragile ones, and a searing pain cutting canyons up my spine. But there’s still enough flesh there to stop the momentum. Malachite’s eyes widen, the widest I’ve ever seen them, and he quickly pulls the blade out. The cheering of the sailors dulls, and I let it carry my feet forward, into the beneather. Into Lucien’s bodyguard, his friend. My friend.

My hand hangs, half split, the salt wind stinging at it, the blood drawing a splattered line on the deck as I near. The closer I get, the harder Malachite’s face sets, and the lower his eyelids get again. He crystallizes, ruby irises glittering in the sun. Maybe he understands. He has to. That’s why, I think, when I near him and reach out to take his broadsword forcefully from his hand, he lets me with a gentle ease.

I hold both swords and look up at him. Just at him, and he stares back. He’s so tall, so different from anyone I’ve ever met. And to him, so am I. I can see that, see the difference reflected in his dark pupils—see me reflected there. His strength is being strong. Stronger than a human, faster than a human. He can hear better, smell better. Fireproof. Those are his strengths. And mine?

Well, he says mine for me.

“You’re real good”—he croaks, finally, a smile on his lips—“at getting hurt, aren’t you?”

I smile back up at him. “Kind of.”

This is who I am.

This is how I’m strong.

“Oy!” The captain’s shout echoes, fracturing the ring of sailors around us. They scatter, and she marches up to the two of us, finger in my face and a cigar in her mouth. “What did I say? No fightin’!” She glances down—looking past my cleaved hand uncaringly. “And you bled all over my deck!”

“I’ll swab it right away, Cap’n!” I blurt, making my posture straight and respectful, my half-healing hand already saluting at my forehead.

“We’ll swab it, Cap’n!” Malachite echoes me, saluting too. “Together!”

Her dark eyes cut over to me, to him, and then she scoffs around her cigar.

“Damn right you will. And when you’re done, you’ll be showing me that little backhand move of yours again.”

Swabbing the entire deck as punishment leaves me sweatier than I’d like—which is any. I stayed in Nightsinger’s forest because I had no physical choice, yes, but also because it was cold and wonderfully dry in terms of body moisture. Sweat is the enemy. But sweets? Sweets are the ally. Gods, I hope a polymath quotes me on that one day.

When the last bucket of mop water is exhausted and the last inch of ancient wood scrubbed clean, we collapse on a pile of salt-stained ropes, panting. Malachite offers me his waterskin, and I pour a bit on my face and rub it around.

“Think she noticed you healed up right away?” he asks, jerking his head to the captain at the helm. It’s a pointless question. Of course she did. The whole crew did.

“Impossible,” I drawl. “Otherwise I’d be getting burned alive right now.”

“Bet she’s used to seeing all types, Heartless notwithstanding.”

“Well, that. And the rumors of a horde of valkerax coming back are probably far scarier than a lone Heartless and her witch.”

He nods, taking a swig as I pass him his waterskin back. There’s a long quiet, the lapping ocean and the screeching gulls conversing with one another.

“So,” he says finally. “You gonna shake some horseshit up, huh? In the world.”

I shrug. “Depends.”

“Depends nothing. From the moment I heard you talk at the Spring Welcoming, I knew you were gonna do that. So. Go and do it already.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you gonna be okay with it?”

“Yeah. So long as you don’t hurt Luc, I’ll be fine.”

The prince is nowhere to be seen—he and Fione long gone belowdeck to try to parse the book. They didn’t even come up curiously at the racket the duel made, which means they’re direly serious. But I look at the shadows of the stairwell anyway.

“You like him a lot, huh?” I ask.

It’s Malachite’s turn to shrug. “Like, dislike, doesn’t matter. He’s home. My home. And you won’t hurt him. Or I’ll get you.”

It’s not a threat. Not anymore. There’s an unspoken understanding—I could be valkerax. I could be susceptible to the Bone Tree. But even if I am, and I’m controlled by Varia to do something, Malachite will be here to stop me, like he stopped me on the peak of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains that awful day. Him saying he’ll stop me isn’t a threat anymore; it’s an assurance. A promise between friends. A promise to carry my burdens equally. And I breathe easier because of it.

No matter what, no matter what I am, Malachite has my back.

The ideas are too heavy to say, too heavy for the sun-soaked sky, wet with amber and lavender dusk. Malachite’s profile against it is like marble-washed peach, delicate and refined. And then, suddenly, “If you have kids, I get to name the first one,” he says.

“Shut up,” I drone.

He tries to look deep and thoughtful. “I’m thinking…Vachiayis.”

“Shut up!”

“Big Stinky Vachiayis the Third.”

“Hold on.” I stand up. “Let me go get permission to kill you.”

His laughter follows me as I walk down the stairwell, my smirk affixed as I peer into rooms, storage nooks, behind pillars and boxes looking for Fione and Lucien. I find them bent over a rough-hewn table in the mess, both of them intently absorbed in the green-backed book. So intently that they completely ignore me as I bounce up.

“Lucien, quick question: Can I kill Mal? He’s being annoying.”

No response. Fione stutters her eyes up from the book’s pages, to me, and back down to a stock-still Lucien. A Lucien whose proud hawk profile is frozen, not a blink or twitch in sight. All stone.

I slide into the table beside him. “What’s wrong?” When he doesn’t answer, I glance down at the page he’s looking at. All Old Vetrisian symbols I can’t read, clumped close and dizzying. I look up at Fione. “What’s going on?”

She opens her mouth, closes it. Thinks. The unease in the pit of my stomach yawns bigger. And bigger. Until—

“We’ve translated some of it,” she says, slowly. One important word at a time.

“And?” I lean in. “What did you find?”

The swallow of her pale throat is her only movement. “The Bone Tree…and the Glass Tree.”

“What about them?” I press frantically. “Fione, c’mon—”

“They’re the same thing.”

Beside me, Lucien’s eyelashes twitch in a half blink, like a deer frozen in the woods—watching, fearful, and yet still plagued by flies. I suck in a breath made of daggers, razors, cut obsidian.

“What are you talking about?” I nervously laugh. “The Old Vetrisians made the Bone Tree, and the witches made the Glass Tree—”

“It used to be one tree,” Fione interrupts me smoothly. Too smoothly. “They didn’t make it, Zera. They split it. They split it and used the halves to create their new Trees.”

My unheart falls into my stomach. “But—how—”

“The source of all magic,” Lucien’s hoarse voice finally breaks, his eyes locked ahead on a steady white mercury light on the wall, white reflecting in his black. “The tree I saw in my dream. The one that gave me magic. The one that gives every witch on Arathess their magic.”

He looks up at me—calm above, and terrified below.

“They split the Tree of Souls.”