11

The Weight
of Unliving

The next morning, Varia acts like nothing at all happened.

It could be that she doesn’t remember it. Or it could be that she’s purposely pretending it never happened. Either way, the crown princess is ensconced in her closet, being dressed by her maids, when Fione walks in, her hair left long and curled and tied with daisy-yellow ribbons to match her dress. She looks lovely. She looks uneasy. The full fear I saw in her face the first few times we met again after the clearing is much less—no doubt thanks to Varia’s command. If I touch her, I stab myself. And I can see, tangibly, that idea is giving Fione some measure of security; her eyes still avoid meeting mine, but I catch her staring at my profile every so often.

“Where are you two off to this fine morning, Your Grace?” I play the polite noble card, hoping to put her more at ease. Fione’s lips purse slightly.

“A breakfast,” she says. “At my manor.”

“That’s right.” I whistle. “You have the whole of the Himintell estate to yourself now.”

“It’s nothing much,” she says modestly, and I laugh, picking up my morning chocolate drink and sipping at it, washing away the taste of the liver I’d consumed not minutes before she and the maids walked in.

“When we first met at that banquet,” I start, “you were Lady Himintell, being picked on by those frilly walking dung piles and ridiculed by Gavik. And now”—I motion to her dress, her stiff posture—“you got rid of him. Now you’re an archduchess. Give yourself a thimbleful of credit, will you? You’ve done well.”

Fione breathes out, her gaze skittering over the floor as she thinks of what to say. Finally she looks up, and this time it’s right into my eyes. For the first time since the clearing, her cornflower blue eyes look at me.

“Thank you,” she says.

It’s like the first sprout of spring breaking through a snow bank. My chest warms, and I smile back. It isn’t a long moment, and soon her gaze is out the windows again, but at the very least, it happened. My unheart doesn’t feel so heavy suddenly. Encouraged by it all, I open my mouth.

“Does she usually have nightmares?” Fione’s head snaps up, and I continue. “It’s just, she spends most nights at your place, so I don’t see it often. But last night—”

“She hurt herself. And talked about the Tree,” Fione finishes for me. “Right?”

It’s my turn to look surprised. “How did you—?”

Fione lowers her voice, her face suddenly expressionless, as if she’s trying hard to keep it together. “It’s happened every night since she’s been back. She flails, she screams, she cries. And she mutters about the Tree the whole time.”

Quietly, we watch the maids flicker in and out of the dressing room with long lengths of purple ribbon. Fione’s face is so drawn, so tight with worry. I can’t imagine what it must be like—to have your beloved back, only to watch them struggling so in their sleep.

I lean in to Fione, careful not to get close enough to scare her, and murmur, “If the Tree isn’t real, as you said in the tower, then why is she having so many nightmares about it?”

I know the Tree is real. Or, at the very least, I know Varia thinks the Tree is real. I know Yorl has given me explanations and evidence as to why the Tree is real. The valkerax has talked about it. But I’ve never seen it. I know the Tree is real in the same sense one knows the gods are real—belief. Fione has never held such beliefs for the gods; if anything, she’s shown disdain for them. She’s a lady of facts and evidence, resisting the unquestioning faith most of Vetris has been scared into by Gavik and the sheer intimidating threat of magic itself.

So my question hangs, and she’s unable to answer it.

“She’ll be all right.” I make a smile. “I’ll wake her up if it ever gets too bad. You’ll wake her up at your place. Together, we’ll keep our crown princess unbruised yet.”

Fione’s expression crumbles, worry tingeing it. “Yes.”

The guards come in then and announce that my carriage to South Gate is ready. I resist the urge to hug Fione, to put my arm on her shoulder, even, and make a bow to her instead.

I watch the city flash by, the older parts of the common quarter bustling. Construction noisily tears down old buildings and erects new ones as barracks for soldiers, and more construction still happens between the streets and alleys as emergency barricades are put in place, in case of invasion. The Temple of Kavar is being particularly insulated by such barricades, a priest standing on the steps and blessing the workers as they haul wood and metal, his sermon ringing out as my carriage passes.

“The weight of living belongs to us all!”

“Indeed. But,” I murmur to the carriage’s ceiling, “what about the weight of unliving? Who does that belong to?”

The crown princess hasn’t told Lucien or Fione what she’s doing with the valkerax, for their safety, no doubt. She wants to keep the valkerax to herself—not out of selfishness but out of a desire to protect those closest to her. I can’t find it in me to blame her. I’d do the same. But the urge to tell Lucien and Fione this one truth still burns, even in the morning light. If I do, if Lucien and Fione even believe me, I’d have a hard time believing the crown princess would be pleased. And she holds my heart in the palm of her hand, literally.

If Fione does bring me Gavik’s journal, it’s not safe to tell her the truth. But she deserves that much, and my two inclinations war with each other even as I teach the valkerax for the day. Yorl pushes me hard—we try the serum three times, and I die three times. But the valkerax has other plans: namely, lying there on the ground and wheezing. It doesn’t even move to snap at me. It doesn’t answer me, except to mutter nonsense once more—about sky-homes and earth-homes, about flying below the sun. My unheart feels like a pincushion as I listen to its labored breaths, and right then it finally hits me: it’s not going to last long. All of Yorl’s warnings were easy to ignore when it wasn’t collapsed in a heap on the ground. But now, listening with my own two ears as it struggles to live, I brutally understand.

It might die for this.

It will die without my helping it to Weep. It will die because I wasn’t fast enough or correct enough in my teaching.

And the most naked truth: I might not get my heart back.

even at the end of all possibility. The hunger sneers at me. selfish to the last.

I bask in the low, late afternoon sun aboveground, trying not to think. But it’s all I can do; if I don’t get my heart, where does that leave me? As a pawn for Varia for how many more years? Will she make me fight in the war?

A shadow catches my eye in the sparse South Gate crowd. Beneath the eaves of a hat shop, a dark figure in all leather leans against the wall. Lucien. What is he doing here? I turn and hide my face. Being alone with him again isn’t what I need right now.

but it’s what we want, the hunger insists, lolling its pitch-black tongue.

Suddenly, something black and small catches my eye. A flower? No, a rose. A black rose. It’s held by a leather-clad arm, and my eyes meet Lucien’s cowled face, his eyes full to the brim with detached amusement as he holds the rose out to me. My twisted mind tries to celebrate—he’s offering me a gift.

don’t be naïve. The hunger laughs. the little prince is already naive enough for the both of you.

“A beautiful rose for a beautiful lady,” he says. A pair of noble women passing by looks me up and down, giggling madly and clucking their tongues in equal turn. A rose given to a noble lady by a commoner is scandalous in the extreme. Lucien holds the rose out more insistently when a flustered courier boy walks by, and I tempestuously fight the urge to take the flower. There’s only one place in Vetris black roses grow—in front of Y’shennria’s manor. This is a ploy. He’s trying to remind me of my mistakes, of my lie of pretending to be an Y’shennria—a Firstblood noble. Any gift from him isn’t because he particularly likes me—we established that in the tower. He must be doing this to get to me. To hurt me.

you lied. you deserve this pain—

I smile as I take the rose, careful not to touch his gloved hand. I look at the soft petals for a moment, enjoying the familiar scent that tugs at my unheart, and then throw the rose over my shoulder, directly into a muddy puddle.

“A terrible gift for a terrible gifter.” I smile at him lightly.

There’s a moment where I think I can see the true Lucien—hurt running across his face. But it evaporates like a raindrop in the sun. He half sighs, his eyes now amused again.

“We have things to clarify.”

“Do we have to clarify them here, in front of everyone?” I ask.

“How improper of me,” he drawls. “You’re right. A true thief never does business in the light. My hiding holes are, of course, your hiding holes.” He motions to an alley behind the hat shop. “This way.”

Half wary, I trail after him over the cobblestones, thick with grime the farther we get from any main road. Is he guiding me to a setup with Fione and Malachite waiting again? He leads me through a dizzying pattern of turns: betwixt barrels and crates, beneath laundry lines, and around wells and giant water-spewing snake statues, and finally to a derelict building in a forgotten square—still standing, but molded and nearly eaten by termites, the doorframe remaining on what seems like toothpicks as we duck beneath it.

The late sunlight plays dappled beams of gold through the ruined roof and onto the creaking floor as Lucien crosses it, seating himself on the only sturdy thing on the premises—a stone hearth in the center.

He holds his arms out. “Welcome. You’re the first visitor I’ve had here. I’d tell you to take your shoes off, but at this point, a dirty boot would be the least of this place’s problems.”

“Does it have an ambush set up in it, too?” I ask.

Lucien shakes his head. “I know I might seem a little dense to you, after you deceived me about being human for two entire weeks,” he says. “But even I know not to use the same surprise twice.”

I tamp down the instant urge to flinch. He really won’t let me live it down. And for good reason. But still, he could be lying. Malachite could be behind any corner again. Half of me bleeds with the pain of not being able to trust him as he can’t trust me. He doesn’t owe me honesty, after all. Soft cooing makes me look up just then—a flutter of dove wings beating the air above the roof. I watch a white feather float down to the floor, and I reach out just in time to catch it. I can feel Lucien’s eyes on me, like two spots of uncomfortably hot fire, even as I stroke the soft thing for some comfort.

“That black rose,” I say. “Was it from Y’shennria’s manor?”

I hear him chuckle. “Obviously.” There’s another moment of quiet, and then, “On nights it was hard to be in the palace, I would stand outside the manor and watch the lights of your bedroom. The black rose bushes were always in my way. But over time, I began to feel a fondness for them. Seeing a black rose meant I was near you, near the one person who understood me.”

The sharp pain in my lungs makes my breathing ragged, but I recover. I have to recover.

“What is it we need to clarify?” I ask stiffly. “As you might’ve guessed from stalking me every day to South Gate, I’m a busy woman.”

Lucien swallows hard. “Very well.” He stands but keeps his distance. “The Tree.”

I snort. “That’s all anyone talks about anymore—”

“I knew about the Tree before anyone,” Lucien interrupts. “Before even Varia knew.”

I turn the dove feather over curiously. “What?”

“Fione told me Varia’s been having nightmares about the Tree. That you saw it last night. I was the first one to ever see her have a nightmare about it.”

I try not to betray the interest in my voice. “When?”

“I was seven,” he says. “She was ten. We were in the palace’s nursery.”

“That’s so young. She wasn’t a witch then, right?”

He shakes his head, the sun catching on his black cowl and illuminating the rich darkness. “No. But I remember the night it happened for the first time. And it kept happening. Mother brought every polymath to her, desperate to diagnose her, to ‘fix’ her. It was the best kept secret in the palace—that Varia was ‘sick.’”

“Why?”

“Father was worried,” Lucien says, and cracks his neck leisurely. “You’ve heard of the assassins Malachite deals with, trying to kill me. The royal family isn’t liked. And the whole court knows the rumor that we are a witch family. Any display of oddness was Father’s greatest fear.”

“So he didn’t want rumors of Varia’s nightmares to get out,” I muse. “Because it would make the nobles uneasy.”

“Uneasy at best,” he agrees. “And at worst, it would give them cause to dispose of the d’Malvanes. Witches are never trusted in Vetris—no matter who they are.”

“So your mother brought polymaths to her?” I lead. He nods, shaggy bangs nodding with him.

“They all said she was mad. Father refused to believe it, but it kept happening. He used to order the servants to drug her with moonroot every night so she could sleep without hurting herself.”

I’m silent. Lucien isn’t.

“On bad nights, she used to sleepwalk.” His eyes get a glassy, far-off look in them. “I remember waking up and finding her on the balcony staring off into space more than once.”

I go still, my fist clenching around the feather. So that night…she was dreaming.

Lucien presses on. “I’d try to wake her, but all she would do is mutter about the Tree. They got worse, the older she got. She broke both of her wrists when she was thirteen.”

“Are they just nightmares?” I ask. “Or could they be magical?”

He shrugs. “I have no clue. The polymaths had no clue, either—they study magical symptoms in order to combat them, certainly, but they’d never seen anything like this. So we were led to believe they weren’t magical. They were just part of the way her mind worked in sleep.”

The dust swirls in the light, like thousands of miniature fireflies. I understand something then. “And you— So when she died, you went looking for it. You used the annual prince’s Hunts to search the woods, thinking you could find this Tree. You thought—”

“I thought it had something to do with her death,” he agrees, eyes focusing on me again. “That it lured her somewhere. That sounds equally mad, I know. Part of me was using it as an excuse. But another part of me was—is—still suspicious. The polymaths said her symptoms weren’t magical. But I’ve seen it happen too much to think it’s just a human symptom, either.”

He breathes out, heavy and long, looking up at the blue summer sky through the shards of roof. “She was gone for five years. And she came back. And still, still she dreams of that godsdamned Tree. I’d hoped she’d gotten better. Fione and I—after we got over the joy of having her back—we both dared to hope, but…”

For a moment, I admire the way the shafts of sunlight illuminate his proud nose, his thick brows. Prince Lucien flits his eyes to me.

“There was one polymath,” he says. “One, out of the thousands, who didn’t think Varia was mad.”

“Just one?” I quirk a brow.

“He wasn’t an official polymath,” the prince says. “But Mother and Father were so desperate to find someone who knew something, they called for anyone who could pass a basic test. He was an old celeon. I’ve always remembered his name—he was the first person who dressed in polymath robes and smiled at me kindly at the same time. Farspear-Ashwalker. Muro Farspear-Ashwalker.”

My blood goes cold. That name is chillingly familiar—it’s Yorl’s last name. Yorl’s father? No—his grandfather? The one who did all that polymath research and got no credit for it? The one who all but made the serum that lets me talk to valkerax? The one Yorl is working so hard to vindicate with the valkerax—with Varia?

“What did he say about Varia’s nightmares?” I blurt.

Lucien sighs. “I don’t know. I was young. I was playing with some toy at Mother’s side while they talked. I assure you, over the past decade, I’ve tried to remember. It all blends together. But one thing did stand out.”

My feet take me to him, burning with curiosity. “What is it?”

Lucien looks up at me slowly. “A song. I don’t remember what they were talking about, but I remember at one point this old celeon just started singing.”

A song. It can’t be—this can’t be a coincidence.

“What were the words?” I demand.

“I don’t—” Lucien runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t remember. If I could, I’m sure it would make more sense. I just remember he started singing—”

“The tree of bone and the tree of glass will sit together as family at last.” I let the words tumble from my mouth, my voice shaky and the notes a bare skeleton of what I can remember Gavik singing.

Lucien’s face lights up instantly. “You know it?” He grabs my shoulders. “Kavar’s eye—how in the afterlife do you know it?”

I look up, my eyes sparking into his, both of us flushed with discovery. The facade of his lofty effortlessness is gone now. He’s treating me like someone he genuinely likes again. It’s then I realize just how close we are. Just how high my words could stoke him. He can’t know what I know. The valkerax is dangerous.

“Zera,” he insists, fingers trembling on my shoulders. “You’re hoarding all this information—why? Varia can’t do everything herself. I know she’s trying to. I know she’ll kill herself doing it. Please—you have to help me help my sister, before she hurts herself.”

Varia’s words, her recitation of the Midnight Gifter, ring in my head. My flesh will feed its furnace. He’s right to be worried. She’ll do anything for her people, just like him. The care in his voice is a velvet knife plunged into my chest. His love for her is so obvious and untethered by guilt or complicated emotions. It’s so strong it even glows through his disdain for me, forces him to ask for help from someone he holds his pride like a shield against.

“If you tell me what’s going on,” he presses, “Fione and I can help you—”

“Why would you?” I laugh. “We’re not friends anymore. I’m a monster, not your Spring Bride. You have no obligation to me. In fact, you hate me.”

Lucien inhales, this time sharp as a spear. “Zera—”

I start moving to leave the ruined building, the sun shafting through my eyes.

“If I could convince my sister to free you—” the prince’s voice suddenly calls.

“No. I won’t be freed by your hand.” My voice is sleek steel.

“Why not?” he presses. “I could free you—”

“I’ll free myself.”

The silence lingers, my body on the edge of collapsing if I don’t get out from under his gaze. My boots take one step over the dusty floor, and Lucien’s words this time aren’t soft at all—they’re strong and clear to my back.

“I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you.”

My chest caves. To turn and face him right now, to talk through our problems and mistrust, to try to heal the wounds I’ve made—I want that.

he’s manipulating you. The hunger sneers. reeling you in with bait to help the sister he cares so much more for.

I speak without turning to look at him. “It’s better if you do.”

Every cobblestone I walk over and put between him and me, the easier it is to breathe. The pressure on my chest is crushing, but the emptiness in my unheart is cold and hollow. He will not stand between my heart and me. Not again. Not this time. I will not be weak anymore.

My feet take me back, determined, to South Gate, but when I emerge into the sunlight of the main road, my ears catch the sound of lawguard footsteps approaching. They pause just behind me, and a lawguard calls out, “Lady Zera?”

Did Lucien order them down on me? No. He’s fast but not that fast, and he wouldn’t risk revealing his identity as Whisper. I turn to face the lawguards—an astonishing number of them, at least a dozen, and six of them in the back are royal celeon lawguards.

“Yes?” I ask innocently.

“His Majesty the king has requested your presence in the throne room.”

Gooseflesh crawls across my arms. It’s time, then, for the inquiry into Gavik’s murder.

The sick feeling in my stomach intensifies, but I keep my posture tall as I sigh. “Very well. Lead the way, gentlemen.”

To my surprise, the lawguards flank me, separate, and then close in, the two halves compressing around me in a protective—and inescapable—formation. As they march collectively forward and I walk in the center of the iron flower, we pass Lucien’s shadowed lurking place near the hat shop.

I can feel eyes following me, two obsidian needles prickling into my skin, the air ringing with the words I can’t say to him.

I’ve learned, Your Highness, that it is easier to hate than it is to love.