16

Flesh will
Feed its
Furnace

Gavik hears my footsteps on the cobblestones and looks up. His bread basket is nearly full this time, a few drifters gathered around it as he hands them the loaves. In that moment I remember his true name—it was on the pipe wall where the valkerax skeleton was, too. The Man Without Mercy. If only they could see him now. When Varia is done with him, he’ll have plenty of mercy—one way or another.

“What are you doing here?” Gavik asks, his voice suspiciously lacking irritation. Perhaps sensing the impending conflict between us, the drifters take their bread and scatter as I approach.

“I have a gift,” I say lightly, throwing the diary at him. He catches it in his basket, picking the breadcrumbs off as he opens it. His aged face contorts as he scans a few pages.

“This—this is my diary.”

“And here I thought you were the clever minister of the bunch,” I say. I point at the ancient page where he’d copied down the translation of the hymn, and he squints at it. “You’re going to tell me what this means. It’s called the ‘Hymn of the Forest.’ Half your diary is in code, so I couldn’t figure it out myself. Which is why I’m here.”

Gavik knits his brows. He reads through the hymn and then shakes his head.

“That is indeed the song about the Bone Tree I know. Part of it, at least. The other parts—it must be in these coded passages, along with why it’s so dangerous.” He frowns. “I can— Yes, this looks like something I can solve. But it will take time.”

“You made up the code in the first place.” I snort. “Don’t you know it already?”

“I don’t remember anything of my old life. All of it is hazy, except that one sentence of the hymn. This code looks complicated. However,” he says with a sneer, “you’re correct. If I wrote it, I can unwrite it. But I need time.”

“I don’t have time.” I fold my arms over my chest.

“We have all the time in the world,” he mutters. “After all, we are immortal.”

“I’m going to teach the valkerax how to Weep as fast as I can. It’s starting to learn. Varia will have the Bone Tree sooner than you think.”

“You can stall,” he says. “You can stall for just a few hours. The command doesn’t let me do anything but hand out bread until sunset.”

“The valkerax is wasting away,” I insist. “It’s dying much faster than anyone thought, and if I can’t teach it, I don’t get my heart—”

“You hate me,” he asserts. My frown is deep, and I watch his hand dart into the basket and offer a loaf to a ragged passerby almost automatically. The passerby takes it, but Gavik’s watery eyes never leave my face. “I hate you. But we are both bound to one person. That person has our leashes. We have a common enemy, Zera, no matter how much you wish to deny it.”

“She’s going to give me my heart,” I argue. “She has a sense of morality, unlike you—”

“That doesn’t mean she is innocent,” he says resolutely.

I burst out in cruel, frigid laughter. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take you seriously, considering this is coming from the man who drowned innocents.”

“Something is not right,” Gavik snaps. “I know that. I know that the same way I know that one and only line of the hymn. I can prove it to you. A few hours, that’s all I ask. I know you don’t trust me; I don’t expect you to. But at the very least, you should know what kind of person your witch is before you go handing her the key to a valkerax army, don’t you think?”

“She’s just going to use them to force a standstill in the war.” I fight with everything I have against his logic—I don’t want to agree with a genocidal coot.

“I can assure you, as someone who spent his life chasing power,” Gavik says, “when absolute power presents itself, there are no ‘justs’ anymore. It is all or nothing.”

He’s not wrong. He’s not wrong and I hate it. My heart is all that matters, right? So why am I even entertaining the idea of stalling out the valkerax teaching for him?

Varia’s thrashing in her bed. Her voice murmuring about the Tree. My own nightmare. Lucien’s worry on his face and Fione’s denial on hers. The coincidences, piling on top of one another.

If something’s wrong with my witch, then where does that leave the people who love her? My friends?

former friends, the hunger corrects oily.

This. This can be my parting gift to them.

“Fine,” I bark. “You have your day. Make sure you don’t waste it.”

Evlorasin doesn’t want to talk today. It wants to be in the silence. And so do I, frankly, but we all have jobs to do.

I distract it as best I can without really damaging its teachings up until now—I ask it all sorts of harmless questions. What it’ll do when it’s free, where it will go. Evlorasin wants to fly, mostly. It loves flying. I’m a little surprised—I didn’t know they could fly, and I spend an exorbitant amount of time grilling Yorl about it when I die for the first time. It works like a charm—at least for a while. He gets so caught up in telling me about every Old Vetrisian text that talks about them flying that he nearly forgets to give me my next vial. He remembers eventually and snarls at me for distracting him. I apologize profusely, and we walk into the arena again together.

“What did you mean?” I ask Evlorasin. “When you said the tree of bone will always call out to the chime strong enough to be its roots?”

The valkerax thrashes its tail, clearly irritated that, for the third time in a row, I’ve interrupted its silence.

“We are like the river over stones; we say many things that are true and do not recall them.”

“You were in a lot of pain,” I agree. Evlorasin snorts out a violent breath of air through its nose.

“Pain is nothing and everything. The Starving Wolf knows this, too.”

I feel the valkerax move the air as it circles around me, a puff of hot breath wafting against my shoulder. There’s a long, heavily breathing pause, and then Evlorasin speaks.

“The song that calls to us comes from the tree of bone.”

“Right,” I say softly. The song means the hunger. The hunger that forces Heartless and valkerax to obey commands, that feeds on our own doubts and fears.

“A tree cannot grow without the sun or the rain,” Evlorasin hisses. “The tree of bone is no different. Sun is not its food. Water is not its nourishment.”

“Then,” I murmur, “what is?”

“Power.” The wyrm’s whiskers beat the air. “Power all around, floating like clouds and falling like earth. Power that cannot be held by a tree without hands. A chime must hold it, offer the cup of it to the lips of the tree.”

I knit my brows in the darkness. A chime must hold it. By power, Evlorasin means magic, doesn’t it? Which means the Bone Tree needs magic. Magic from a chime—a witch.

“We can hear its hungry cries,” Evlorasin growls, low in its throat. “It has not been fed sun or rain for many moons. It hungers for a great, grand chime, ringing clear and loud and sweet into the world. It will call to this chime, as it calls us and pulls us below the earth.”

My whole body feels suddenly stiff. The first thing my mind flashes to is Varia’s magic. My wounds. It takes her magic seconds to heal me—it’s stronger and more potent than Nightsinger’s magic by miles and miles. When I was burned alive by witchfire, my bones nothing more than ash, it took Varia’s magic not hours to heal me. Killing a Heartless by fire is known to slow down their healing significantly. The witchfire started roughly at sunset. But Varia’s magic had me alive again during that same sunset.

She is wildly powerful.

Varia’s nightmares about the Tree—it’s calling to her. If what Evlorasin says is true, then everything lines up.

The Bone Tree wants Varia’s magic. And it’s calling to her.

I walk out with Yorl after the session, feeling his tail whipping the air beside me as we ascend the stairs.

“We can’t afford to waste time like you did today.” The celeon’s voice has a snarl in it. “The valkerax might sound improved, but that doesn’t mean it’s any better physically. Death is not—”

“The Bone Tree feeds on magic from a witch, right?” I lilt. Yorl goes quiet, letting go of my hand. I may be able to find my way on my own now, but it’s the gesture that hurts the most. What little trust I’ve built with him feels suddenly strained, but I press on. “The Bone Tree is more like an Old Vetrisian relic, you said. They pumped so much magic and polymath engineering into it that it’s developed a mind of its own. What if it’s manipulating Varia? Is that possible? She’s a strong witch, and if it’s hungry—”

He stops me on the stairs, something slightly sharp poking into the empty void of my chest. A claw from Yorl’s paw. He’s pointing at me. I can’t see his gaze, but I can feel those huge emerald orbs on my face.

“Do you want your heart in your chest again or not?”

My own hackles raise. “Obviously.”

“Then why?” he asks carefully and softly. “Why are you asking these questions?”

I exhale, frustrated. “Because it’s important! Varia said she wants the Bone Tree to control the valkerax and stop the war, but what if the Tree is manipulating her instead?”

“And if it is?” Yorl argues. “No exchange in Old Vetris was unequal. Varia will get her valkerax army. And the Bone Tree will feed off her magic. She knows that.”

My flesh will feed its furnace.

“My grandfather knew that. He told the king and queen that, but they didn’t believe him. They didn’t want to believe him—that their daughter would hurt herself in her sleep every night until she was dead, or until some Old Vetrisian relic consumed her magic.”

A coldness seeps into my veins. Yorl pulls his claw back from my chest.

“The truth is just the truth, Zera. It affects nothing. What matters most is what Varia wants. If she gets it, then we get what we want, too. Focus on that. Center your mind on that.”

My unheart sinks. “If she gets the Tree, is she going to die?”

Yorl starts walking up the steps, his footpads soft, and I walk with him, feeling for the cold stone walls.

“I don’t know,” Yorl admits. “There isn’t much documentation on how the Tree feeds, only that it requires a strong source of magic every so often. But I’d hazard a guess that it doesn’t take all the magic at once from a witch—Old Vetrisian inventions are complex and often don’t work instantaneously. It most likely would siphon her magic from her slowly.”

“And kill her?” I ask.

Yorl is quiet, and then, “Yes. Eventually. By my grandfather’s calculations, a witch cannot survive having all their magic taken from them.”

I can’t bring myself to walk forward anymore. Varia will die. Lucien and Fione will lose their loved one all over again. Their pain will come back tenfold. And I’m helping that happen.

Lucien’s suspicions were right. And something else gnaws at me.

“If she dies, what happens to the valkerax? Are they just free to roam?” I ask.

“No,” Yorl says. “The Bone Tree will always default to forcing the valkerax into the Dark Below. If…when—” His voice catches. “When she dies, in theory all the valkerax will return beneath.”

I’m silent. So Varia’s doing all this just for temporary power. The conversation between Yorl and me dies and doesn’t resurrect until we reach the surface-level door.

“None of this concerns us, Zera,” he says, his pupils slits in the light. “Keep your mind on your own goal. Not hers. Not mine. Your own.”

I breathe in. Every fiber of my being knows his logic is sound. But I can’t help but think about Lucien’s face, how broken it will look when Varia dies again. And I will have helped her to her grave with my own two hands.

Nothing distracts me from my own thoughts better than a book. And I need distraction now more than ever. I need to read someone else’s words to clear my head of all the ones buzzing around in my skull.

My time at the Vetrisian court didn’t allow me to visit the library as much as I’d have liked. I had Y’shennria’s library, which served me well during the scarce few moments of rest time between trying to steal the prince’s heart, but I’d never set foot in the palace’s library. Most of my time here was piddled away on boring things like pretending to be interesting and making other people like me.

A waste, in the end.

A waste, always.

But now, a few weeks older and wiser, I step into the most beautiful library I’ve ever seen. The windows are kept small and modest to keep sunlight from damaging the books. A brass globe in massive proportions hangs from the ceiling, suspended by cables and rotating slowly. Huge rosewood shelves tower over us, laden with every book I can imagine—from the sweeping epics to the children’s bedtime stories to the written history of every civilization on Arathess—it’s all here. The basics of polymathematics, the famous odes of a poet-general during the Helkyrisian War, the sweetest, most breathtaking romances ever written by a noblewoman with too much time on her hands and too little action in her bed—my hands can’t flicker through the pages fast enough.

But of course, there are no books left in the palace library about witches.

Cavanos hates them, after all. No doubt their libraries have been purged of all literature pertaining to magic and witches. The only indication witches even exist are the children’s books, in which (witch, I am terribly clever) a Heartless or three hunt and eat the parents of the hero-child, their long limbs and gnashing teeth puncturing through the page and directly into my unheart.

I tilt one such children’s book as I look at a picture. “They got the knees all wrong. And is that— No!” I hiss softly. “We do not have furry underbellies!”

In utter disgust, I put the book back on the shelf, the old wood thing wobbling angrily as I do.

“There, there.” I pat it to still it. “I know. These humans never get history quite right, do they?”

“Except when someone wrongs us.” I look up at the voice at the end of the aisle and see Fione standing there. I pretend not to notice the way her hand grips her valkerax-headed cane as if her life depended on it, or the way her head is held a little too high. The hunger can smell her fear even through her riding coat, and I tamp it down with extra fervor. Her noble mask is otherwise perfect, impassive as she walks a mere one step closer. I try to make myself small, unthreatening.

“Lovely weather we’re having.” I start with something harmless and trace my finger over the spine of a book. A fine cloud of gray particles spins up into the air. “A little dusty, though.”

“I gave you my uncle’s diary. So—your end of the bargain. What is Varia having you do?” Fione isn’t distracted in the slightest, her voice strong.

I wipe my finger on my simple flax dress and smile. “You really care deeply about her.”

I watch Fione draw herself up to her full archduchess height, her mouse-curls gleaming in the library’s sun. It hurts my unheart to see her so protective of Varia, so determined to figure out what’s going on.

“Answer me,” she demands.

I hear no warmth in her words at all. Why should I? I’m helping her lover kill herself.

“You’re right.” I sigh. “I suppose I don’t deserve pleasantries.”

I must hallucinate it, but something like pain runs through Fione’s composure. And then, between the swirling dust, she says softly, “I need to know. That’s all.”

“I’ve been trying this thing lately called ‘getting wiser,’ and I’ve decided there’s a difference between enlightening people and hurting them with knowledge.”

“Zera!” Fione’s voice is firm. “I beg of you; in the name of the friendship we once had, in the name of the friendship we can still have, please—tell me what Varia is having you do.”

I startle, deep down in my soul. The friendship we can still have?

lies, the hunger sneers. all of it. lying to manipulate you like she was born to do, lying because she fears you…

I knit my lips. I burn to tell her the truth—that Varia is planning to force a ceasefire by controlling every valkerax in the Dark Below. But what girl wants to hear her lover is on the verge of effectively becoming the most powerful—and most feared—person in the entire world? Fione’s illusion of happiness would be shattered. I could tell her the truth. But isn’t it better to let her live out her happy dream with Varia for as long as she can, the one she wanted all these five hard years?

Isn’t it kinder, in the end, to be cruel?

So I laugh. “I’m sorry. But you’re just not convincing enough.”

Her mask slips. She blinks a dozen times, wounded. “Our friendship isn’t convincing enough?”

“Not particularly.” I stroke the spine of another book. “All I did was lie to you for two weeks, and all you did was use me for two weeks to get the information you needed from your uncle.”

“We were more than that,” Fione insists. “I felt like I could be myself with you.”

I nearly smile and agree with her. So did I.

But I’m helping to kill the person she loves the most. And I won’t stop. I’ll keep doing it—all for my heart.

I really am the monster.

“Oh dear.” I smile at Fione. “You fell for my lie just like Lucien did.”

She makes a sudden staggering motion, flinging out her hand to catch herself on the nearest bookshelf. The wobbly one. It groans and creaks, and in one horrifying moment I realize exactly what’s going to happen.

if you touch her, there will be pain—

The hunger’s voice is too late—the bookshelf tips backward and then comes hurtling forward, a frozen Fione poised with deer-wide eyes between it and the ground. My hand catches her shoulder first, and I shove her as hard as I can in the other direction.

The shelf looms, inches away, and I brace myself against the impact, against the command’s rising demand that wrenches control from my body, leaving me numb.

You will find a secluded place and stab yourself three times in the stomach with something sharp—

The heavy pain of the shelf never comes. Something else hits me, something much less dense, something warm and that moves on its own. A person. They throw me to the floor, my head hitting the wood and my ears ringing, drowning out the sound of the bookshelf crashing to the ground.

Dark, disheveled hair, dark eyes peering down at me fiercely. Lucien.

Dust swirls between us in the aftermath, his face close to mine. A shaft of sun enamels him in white-gold light, one dark eye molten gold, red strands illuminating his otherwise midnight hair. Vaguely, through the command’s numbness, I feel his arm around my shoulders, as if he’d tried to cushion my fall.

lovestruck fool.

If I could stay in this moment, looking up at his stern expression, his arms around me, I would. The girl in the other timeline has, many times already, savored his presence in ways I’ll never be able to.

I smile to myself and up at him. She’s so very lucky, I think.

“That’s the second time you’ve pushed me out of the way of imminent danger,” I chirp, and I’m sure my eyes are sparkling deviously. “But at least this time I don’t have to pretend to be impressed by it.”

Faintly, behind him, I see the outline of someone else—someone with milk-blond hair and a hand over her delicate mouth. Lady Tarroux. Were they walking in the library? Gods, I ruined their time together, didn’t I? She’s frozen, and before Lucien can speak, the real world pierces the moment. The command demands, and I push him off and rise to my feet. I can hear Fione scrabbling to stand up, Lucien, too, and Lady Tarroux calling out after me, but my command-rigid gait is already halfway out of the library. By the time they’ve gotten their bearings, I’m down the hall, passing the guards who run toward the commotion of the shelf falling.

The command takes me into the sweltering kitchens, snatching a fruit knife from the table smoothly as I go. The chef and her many assistants embroiled in broiling don’t even notice it’s gone as I slide out of the kitchen and into the darker, cooler wine cellar.

The command is terrifyingly smart, efficient. It places me behind a row of barrels, over one of the drains they use to flush out old, bad wine. The blood will not be noticed.

Nothing ruptures this time. The jabs are clean and quick. I gnaw the inside of my mouth, cold sweat beading my forehead and my legs grinding against the floor in some attempt at relieving the agony. Shouting or groaning isn’t an option anymore, not when I can’t afford to be seen, to be caught. I can’t show anyone how I really feel.

Perhaps I never could, in this city.

I wait for the wounds to heal with Varia’s magic, the blood seeping into my bodice, over my stomach, and slinking down the already darkly stained drain.

it wasn’t worth it, the hunger snarls.

As the cuts mend, I laugh softly. “What would you know…?” I wince as I sit up. “About what people are worth?”

The sound of creaking wood makes me stagger to my groggy feet. A human? Gods forbid a human sees this—Varia will have a time of covering it up. But it’s not just any ignorant human. There, from between the barrels, steps Lucien, his handsome face strict and pale, as if he’s watching the world end. How much has he seen? The stabbing? The talking to myself?

I clutch my stomach in some vain attempt to hide the massive bloodstain there, my voice nervous as I motion around with my other hand. “And here I thought the place where they hide all the merrymaking liquids would look a little cheerier.”

His gaze doesn’t waver, his posture stock-still. “Fione said Varia has ordered you to stab yourself if you touch her. Is that true?”

I shrug one shoulder as lightly as I can. “It’s for Fione’s peace of mind—”

“Is. That. True?” he repeats, harder. One last grain of truth, then. One last shard of truth, if he wants it so badly. He’s so serious, so drastically different from the irreverent thief who offered me the black rose in the ruined house.

“Yes,” I murmur.

He’s there one moment and gone the next, and I follow the sound of his boots over the stone, into the kitchen. Where is he going? I pull a discarded apron off the dirty laundry pile, donning it to hide the bloodstains and dashing after him to catch up. He’s so far ahead of me I can only hear his footsteps, not see him, but they lead right to the Serpent’s Wing, and to the only apartments I’m allowed near—Varia’s. He’s dismissed the usual royal guards outside the room, the door left slightly ajar.

“—so why would you do it?” Lucien’s voice singes the air—not quite a shout but nowhere near low.

“I wanted to make sure Fione felt safe.” Varia sighs.

“And what about Zera?” he barks. “What about her safety?”

I hear Varia pause, and then she bursts out laughing incredulously. “Her safety? She’s a Heartless, Luc. She’s safe no matter what.”

“She’s not safe from pain,” he retorts. “She feels it just as much as we do! Why would you inflict that on her?”

“I told you.” Varia sighs deeper. “Because I care about Fione.”

“And you care nothing for Zera. Because she hurt me. That’s it, isn’t it? She lied to me, and so you’re exacting some kind of sick revenge on her for it.”

“She’s breaking your heart!” Varia’s voice suddenly pitches up, half hysterical. “And I’m watching her do it every day! I’m watching you let it happen!”

Lucien is quiet, and that quiet rings throughout the room. The longer it reverberates, the more I feel sick to my stomach.

“She’s a Heartless, Luc,” Varia repeats finally, softer. “She will always value her heart above yours.”

truth, the hunger laughs. truth from the Laughing Daughter, always—

“You’re wrong,” Lucien growls. My unheart sinks into the depths of the Twisted Ocean.

no, dear prince, she’s so very right—

“Am I?” Varia asks coolly.

“She saved me,” he says. “She could have let Gavik kill me in the clearing and taken my heart then and gotten her own for it. But she defended me. She killed those men to protect me.”

No. No, no, no. The wrongness crawls over me, pinching my skin as it goes. That memory is for me and me alone. That memory is for me to keep, forever, by myself, so that no one else can use it as some false proof that I’m worth saving. Just like he’s doing now.

one good deed does not forgive a lifetime of mistakes.

The royal siblings are silent, and then, “When she’s human—” Lucien starts, voice ragged.

“When she’s finally human, she will leave,” Varia interrupts him smoothly. “Because that’s what any self-respecting person who’s been magically enthralled for years would do. You are trying to hold on to grains of sand, brother.”

Her rightness about me hurts worse than the three stabs—far worse, as if they’ve blown through my flesh and left gaping holes ten times their size. I will leave. I have to leave; there’s nothing for me here anymore, just people I’ve hurt and betrayed and left bleeding trust all over the floor.

But the crown prince of Cavanos has never known when to give up.

“What are you making her do?” he demands.

“Luc, I love you,” Varia says, and I can hear the swish of her stiff skirts as she stands. “But that’s between her and me.”

There’s a beat, and then Lucien says, “Undo her command about Fione.”

Varia laughs. “When did you get hard of hearing? Was it while I was away? You know as well as I that Fione is terrified of Heartless, and I’m going to do everything in my power to—”

“Undo her command about Fione,” Lucien says again, ironclad. “Or I will tell Father what you are.”

I feel my face go cold. He wouldn’t…for me? Varia might be his sister, but she’s still a witch, the most powerful witch I’ve ever met. He’s making an enemy out of her—his beloved sister—just for my sake! And I won’t have it.

I stumble through the doors. “New God’s bulging tit!” I brace myself from falling on the back of a couch and blink my eyes at Varia and Lucien. “Oh my! Is that an interrupted argument I smell, or did I step in something on the way back?”

As the d’Malvane siblings glare at each other—Varia sharp and Lucien fiery—I spot another decanter of wine and snatch it up gleefully.

“Princess Varia.” I sink onto the couch and tip a little wine into my mouth sloppily. Nothing like a slovenly drunk to defuse a situation. “I’m starting to run out of those dresses you gave me. Any chance I could get some new ones? Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: covered in diamonds, made of the purest Avellish silk, and all black so I can bleed without panicking the entire palace.”

Still the d’Malvane siblings stare at each other, like two street cats posturing defiantly against each other. Finally Lucien breaks off, walking out of the room with clipped strides. He passes just shy of touching me on the couch, and I linger weakly in the clearwater smell of him. I’m almost weak enough not to notice the scent of white mercury following it. Almost. Has he been hanging around polymaths often or something?

When the click of his boots on the marble fades, I look to Varia. “Is everything okay?”

Varia turns back to her makeup boudoir calmly. “You were outside the door. You tell me.”

I scoff. “Do you always know where I am?”

“I know where you are the way I know where my own foot is.” Varia picks up a wax-pencil, drawing careful lines on her cheeks.

“What, so I can’t even play hide-and-seek with you? Boo.” I blow hair out of my eyes. “I’ve suddenly decided magic is cheating.”

“You and Gavik have been speaking with each other, haven’t you?”

My spine goes stiff. If she can tell where her Heartless are at all times, then there’s no use denying it.

“We ran into each other and decided to get tea together,” I say.

Varia doesn’t respond, applying her makeup with precision and focus, but even through the strokes, I can see the way her hand trembles. She’s going to die. She’s going to sacrifice herself to stop this war. That’s all I can think. There’s a grand ball gown on her dressing mannequin, a deep crimson with silver stars embroidered into the bust and skirt. There must be some banquet tonight, but the idea of banquets rings hollowly in what I know she plans to do.

She speaks eventually. “I want you gone as soon as possible, Zera.”

the longer you linger, the hunger lilts, the more he risks.

The coldness with which she says it is like the deepest winter ice. I shiver, once, and breathe in to steady myself. I laugh and take a swig of wine.

“This is why I’ve stuck with you, my dearest princess. Partly because I have no conceivable choice in the matter, but mostly because you and I are written on the same page of the same bad book about terrible people.”