24

The Heart
and the Bone

Walking away from the bridge in that moment is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than leaving Crav and Peligli. Harder than walking into the palace when I was introduced to the court for the first time. Harder than parting from Y’shennria for the last time. My legs are ballasted with granite, marble, the heaviest stones in the world slowing me down, pulling me back.

I put one boot in front of the other until the cobblestone of the bridge fades and the gravel of the palace replaces it.

A normal girl, an innocent girl, would cry inconsolably after leaving behind the only person she’s ever loved. But me? My eyes are dry after just two tears.

I am used to leaving people behind by now.

you are better off alone.

I walk up the palace steps and down the hall to Varia’s apartments, my chin held high. The palace is in disarray, the guards sprawling around every corner in some attempt to prepare the palace for a valkerax attack. Yorl and I approach the Serpent Wing just as someone is coming out—someone in a high-backed red velvet dress and her mousy curls in a single braid.

Fione turns from closing the doors and our eyes meet. She approaches like a true archduchess of Cavanos—her back ramrod straight and her face perfectly neutral.

“Lady Zera.” She inclines her head. There’s no fear in her, not of the valkerax, or of me—or at least none that I can see. She’s either learning to hide it or ignoring it. I make a full bow—the last one I’ll probably ever have to make, to any noble, ever again, under this beautiful white marble ceiling. All of Y’shennria’s training goes into it.

“Your Grace,” I say. “You’re looking ravishing, as usual. Did you get new makeup, or is it all that unconditional love? I must admit, I’m a little jealous.”

Fione doesn’t answer me, preferring to nod at Yorl instead. The celeon in turn makes a cursory bow appropriate as a commoner. She finally focuses her cornflower blue eyes back at me.

“You’re here,” she says softly. “Which means you refused Lucien’s offer.”

My heart is just on the other side of that door, behind her, so close I swear I can feel it sink in its bag.

“We want to help you, Lady Zera,” she insists, murmuring softly. “Being what you are is a hard thing; I realize that now. All three of us—Lucien and Malachite and I—want to help you.”

I laugh under my breath. “And what, pray tell, can you do to help me?” I walk up to her, whispering over her shoulder so the guards can’t hear. My denial bubbles up, hot and strong. “You’re not witches. A witch is the only person who can help me now. One specific witch, to be exact. And you happen to be courting her.”

“There’s a way,” Fione insists. “Lucien is—”

“Lucien,” I interrupt her, “is a deluded fool. C’mon, Fione. We both know you’re smarter than to follow fools.”

Fione pulls away from me, her face riddled with shock. “He’s done nothing but think about you this whole time, and you call him a fool? What’s—” She looks me up and down. “What’s happened to you?”

I smile at her. “Haven’t you heard? I’m heartless.”

The irony sends me into a fit of despairing giggles. Fione looks frozen, unmoving even down to the slightest blink, and a tendril of guilt worms through my hard ice wall. She was so afraid of me, and yet despite all that, she’s offering her help.

One last time won’t hurt.

I know Varia hasn’t lifted the command, even at Lucien’s insistence. She loves Fione too much to do that. I move toward the archduchess, slowly, and she doesn’t move away. As gently as I can, I wrap my arms around her shoulders. An embrace. One last time. She smells like a hundred clover flowers soaking in the sun. But beneath that is some other scent—barely noticeable but just metallic enough. White mercury. I shake my head—it doesn’t matter.

“Thank you,” I whisper into her hair. “For trying.”

Her body is stiff, but when she hears the words, she relaxes ever so slightly. I pull away and walk past her, Yorl leading me into Varia’s apartments. The command regarding Fione is starting to take hold, but I rein it in as much as I can.

“Zera!”

I pause at the sound of Fione’s voice calling my name. But she’s behind me. All of it is behind me now.

“Are you sure,” I say without looking back, “that you want to call your enemy by her first name?”

The silence is thunderous. When it lingers too long, I push into the doors of Varia’s room and close them behind me.

…

Varia stands from the couch instantly when we walk in, her silver silk dress pooling around her like a waterfall. “You’re late.”

“Or perhaps you’re just five years too early.” I smile at her, the command twisting my limbs into a rigor. “Take back the command on me about Fione.”

Her brow raises. “Excuse me?”

“You can’t command the Bone Tree location out of me.” I raise my voice. “So take back. The command on me. About Fione.”

Her eyes snap to Yorl and, if I didn’t know better, I’d think she looks betrayed. Yorl merely keeps his usual cool expression behind his glasses, and just as my feet begin to march away to a secluded place, I bark at her.

“Now!”

The crown princess doesn’t startle, but she instantly snaps her wooden fingers, the tips of them growing black and dark. Like a dog straining to be let off a chain, the command runs away, dissipating into nothing more than air as the hunger fades out from behind it, my limbs growing soft again as my body becomes my own. It’s a hollow victory, but when I’ve eaten defeat for so long, it tastes the same as the real thing.

“There,” she says. “Now, enough wasting time. It’s done, Yorl? Truly?”

He nods. “Without a doubt. I saw Evlorasin give her the blood promise myself.”

Varia strides over to me, her heels clacking ferociously on the marble. She comes to a stop inches from my face, her own expression direly serious. Everything about her expression rings so true of Lucien that I’m almost winded.

I’ve chosen her. Over him. I’ve chosen my heart over everything.

Does that make me a monster?

“Where is the Bone Tree?” she asks, soft and yet decisive. I’ve got no reason to hold back on her, not if I want my heart. Her words bring a deluge of thoughts running through my mind unbidden; I can see the Tree again, instant and whole, its surroundings glowing brightly green all around it.

“A jungle,” I say. “Hot and humid and dense. There’s a long river, the longest I’ve ever seen. In the biggest bend of that river, ten spans east. It’s sitting on a rock, waiting for noon.”

For some reason, Yorl laughs a little hearing me say it again—incredulous, maybe. Varia just stares at me, like she’s delving into my eyes for the truth, and when she finds what she’s looking for, she swears.

“Gods almighty.”

I watch the crown princess of Cavanos teeter for the first time, uncertain and unsteady. She stumbles, clutching the back of the couch to brace herself. The shock of accomplishing what she’s been after all these years—what she faked her death for, what she has nightmares of, what she killed her bodyguards for, what she tortured a valkerax for, what she became a witch for—must be crushing.

“Most probably the jungles of Gutroth,” Yorl offers from the corner of the window he’s staring out. “And the Golden River.”

“We can’t go there today.” Varia regains herself admirably quickly and whirls sharply around to him.

“No,” he agrees. “It’s too far a journey to make by noon, even for a teleport spell.”

“Then I wait,” she asserts. “I wait for the Tree to go somewhere near Cavanos, and I leave the instant it arrives there.”

“Agreed.” Yorl nods. “The paperwork you promised me—”

“Patience, Yorl,” she insists. “You’ve been waiting for five years. Surely you can wait for another few hours.”

“I’ve enjoyed our time together as much as you have,” Yorl snarks. “But my grandfather’s legacy has waited fifty years—it cannot wait another moment more.”

“When I get the Bone Tree,” Varia recites. “That was our agreement. No sooner and no later.”

Yorl lets out a feral snarl. “I gave you what you wanted! I gave you everything I promised, down to the letter. I did the impossible—I did what no polymath in a thousand years has been able to do, and I deserve what is mine!”

“Settle. Down.” Varia’s voice is cold. “Or I’ll have Zera here settle you down for me.”

She could do it—and I know that better than anyone. I’d have no choice but to lash out at him. I flash an apologetic smile at Yorl, who’s suddenly looking at me warily. He spits what sounds like a swear and folds his arms across his chest.

The waiting is always the worst part.

I learned this in Nightsinger’s woods, waiting for something to happen for three years. The nothingness drives you mad eventually, the way it did to me—talking to animals and trees and constantly throwing jokes to entertain myself in the dead air of the forest. Varia spends the time packing some clothes and other essentials into bags: parchment, quills, candles, dried food. Where has she been keeping these supplies tucked away in her room? She’s packing like she’s never coming back.

“Is your wife not joining us when we leave?” I ask lightly.

Varia looks up sharply at me, then snorts. “No. She’s staying here in Vetris, where it’s safe.”

“And your father?” I run my finger along a dusty vase. “How does he feel about you becoming the most powerful person in the world? Have you asked him? Or is it just a given that he won’t mind, as long as you’re alive? Does he know how long you’ll be alive for? Does anyone?”

This gets to her. I can see the stitch in her mouth, no matter how desperately she tries to hide it. She’s close to her goal—the one she’s had nightmares about since she was small—and that’s making her sloppy. It would make anyone sloppy.

She pulls my heart, still in its bag, out of her breast coat, and grins like a hungry fox at me. My body goes on point in a split second, every hair standing up on my arms, my skin vibrating with heat and anticipation. My muscles twitch toward the bag, pulled like one of her eerie dolls on a string. I’ve never been more elated to see the word “traitor” in my life. My eyes roam over the stitching on the bag, over the way it thumps gently as my heart beats beneath the cloth.

Mother. Father. Human life. It’s all resting in that tiny bag.

“I still have this,” the crown princess reminds me. “So play nice, would you?”

I glower but say nothing. She might not be able to command me to tell her about the Bone Tree, but neither can I refuse her. We’re at a dangerous impasse, the two of us standing on the same knife’s edge.

It’s an hour that lasts longer than three days. Varia packs, she and Yorl going over details and minutiae. I sit in the only moveable chair in the room—a simple wood thing—positioning it in front of the sandclock on the mantelpiece over the fireplace. I wait one more hour after waiting for three years, watching the sand grains of the clock fall, each golden dot pushing me further from Lucien and closer to my heart.

“Will we be followed?” I hear Yorl ask faintly.

“There’s a possibility,” Varia agrees. “But only by a witch, and only if they’re familiar with my magic.”

“The rogue one in the city that started the witchfire,” Yorl says. “They may know.”

“No. It has to be a more intimate knowing, repeatedly exposed to it—”

I tune them out, my eyes fully focused on the clock but my ears wandering. Outside, through the open windows, I can hear the palace in a quiet uproar. The word “valkerax” drifts up, said with fearful nervousness, as if people are unsure whether merely saying the word will summon it to their doorstep.

Reality starts crashing down around me as the clock’s sand fills the noon slot to brimming. Where will I go? No, I’ve always known where—back to Nightsinger, Crav, and Peligli. Her forest is gone, razed by the human army, which means she has to be at Windonhigh—that witch city Varia mentioned. But how do I get to a witch city, especially one Vetris hasn’t even discovered yet? My only hope is to follow Y’shennria’s letter and visit Ravenshaunt. If I can find her, safe with the witches who are her allies, then surely I can find a way to Windonhigh. It will be hard. But I’ve lived and died through the worst injuries, the worst deaths. I’ve survived—with most of my sanity intact—three years without my heart. I’ll find the people who matter most to me. I’ll find them no matter what.

“Zera.”

Varia says my name shortly, hard and sharp, and I know what she wants. The Bone Tree comes up in my mind differently this time, like a windblown cloud transforming in the sky each time I look at it. The Bone Tree creaks, looming and white and lonely, on top of more white. Snow. The Bone Tree is on a mountain peak, the wind howling bitterly. From the peak, I can see all of Cavanos—the gentle green hills rolling, interrupted only by the charred black swaths where the army has burned the forests. And on the other side of the peak, the Helkyris side, I can see a city farther down, strung between smaller peaks and constructed almost entirely of towers. An intricate web of bridges connects every tower in the city, the abyss yawning below it.

“The Tollmount-Kilstead Mountains,” I say. “One of the peaks. There’s snow, and I can see Cavanos on one side, where the army’s been burning the forests, and on the other side, far below, I can see a city made of towers. The Tree is going to stay there for…” I pause, staring at the Tree in my memory. Somehow, with the blood promise thrumming through me, I just know. “Two hours.”

“Breych,” Yorl says immediately. “The scholar city of Helkyris.” He looks at Varia, green eyes wide. “Your gods favor you.”

“They favor us,” the crown princess insists, pulling on a cape and handing one to me. “Dress warmly and quickly.”

She walks over to a box and unlocks it with a tiny key on a chain around her neck. From inside she pulls out a roll of parchment and hands it to a wide-eyed Yorl.

His paws take the parchment shakily, and he looks up at her.

Varia smiles. “I appreciate everything you did, Yorl. Never forget that.”

His ears perk up and, stowing the parchment away quickly in his robe, he looks to me and nods. “Good luck, Starving Wolf.”

“You, too.” I grin. “Ironspeaker.”

Our true names ring in the room as he leaves, the only remaining fragments of what we’ve been through together. The last I see of him is his yellow-tufted tail disappearing through the doorway.

I pull on the cape, and Varia motions for me to follow her. She stops in front of an oil lantern in her bathroom; to my utter shock, she tilts it forward, and the sound of something clunking into place resounds. A dark trapdoor opens in the slate tiles of the floor, just big enough to let one person through at a time. The tightness of the secret passage reminds me of the one I found in Y’shennria’s manor. Varia wastes no time in climbing down the ladder on the side, and I follow.

“Is this Lord Y’shennria’s handiwork, by any chance?” I ask.

“Indeed. Father thought it was so clever, he had Lord Y’shennria build one in each apartment of the Serpent Ward. They all lead to various parts of the city—mine is the only one that leads outside the wall, and only the royal family knows about it.”

Belatedly, I realize these passages must be how Lucien escapes the palace and slips into the common quarter as Whisper. Thorns curl around my unheart at the thought of him. I’m never going to see him again, am I? My hands start to shake at the thought. The Bone Tree. I let the sight of it in my memory—so lonely on top of the mountain—grow huge and consume the idea of Lucien whole.

The two of us hit the bottom of the trapdoor’s shaft, and Varia leads me along a thin tunnel barely wide enough for my shoulders. To illuminate it, she lights her wooden finger with fire, and I follow the dancing flame through the darkness. The crown princess is so close to me, I can practically hear my heart beating in the bag beneath her cape.

“Do the witches know about the Bone Tree?” I ask.

“Only the High Witches,” she answers. “And they think it’s better to leave it alone.”

“I know it might be a little late to propose this, but they could be onto something.”

Varia gives a withering scoff and continues forward. My voice is the only thing that breaks our silence.

“Lucien won’t forgive you, you know.”

She doesn’t speak, but her footsteps start moving quicker down the tunnel.

“He told me I’m his enemy now. Does that mean you are, too?”

This, and only this, makes her pause. She whirls on me, the firelight illuminating her black glass eyes. She gazes at me steadily and then turns back around and starts walking at a blazing speed, her words ringing among stone.

“I’ve spent five years preparing myself to be his enemy.”

…

The tunnel eventually lightens naturally as it slopes upward, and Varia finally pushes open a trapdoor. Dirt and pebbles and grass rain down on our heads as we exit into a bright blue sky. When I emerge, Varia pushes the door closed behind me with a hard click—the door covered in grass so flawlessly, it looks just like a curve on the side of the rolling hill.

“Finally,” Varia breathes out. She turns to me. “Give me your hand. And whatever you do, don’t move.”

I put my hand in hers. It’s cold and smooth where her wooden fingers are, at odds with her warm human palm. Just like Nightsinger, her eyes grow black from corner to corner, the wood of her fingers staining dark and void, completely colorless as she casts the spell. Her mouth moves, but no sound comes out, in that usual silent prayer to the Old God that accompanies magic.

One moment, the two of us are surrounded by grassland and an impeccable azure sky, and the next time I blink, the warm air turns blisteringly cold. White appears everywhere—fresh, untouched snow—and I shade my eyes to block out the sun reflecting blindingly off it. It’s been so long since I’ve experienced real magic for myself that I almost laugh at how incredible it is. I look around only to see Cavanos far below us now, green and distant. We’re on a peak of the Tollmount-Kilstead Mountains, thousands of miles up and away from Vetris.

Varia looks nonplussed. The snow crunches under her boots as she immediately starts walking, though much slower than she was going in the tunnel. I try to keep up.

“This is as close as I could get us,” she says. “Stay near to me, and if you see any wildlife, I’m relying on you to kill it.”

“Why? Have you run out of fireballs?” I ask lightly, striding ahead of her.

“I’m saving energy,” she answers. “For the Tree.”

Without Father’s sword at my hip, I feel naked. I’ve kept the new blade and old hilt in a bag around my waist but unassembled, they’re mostly useless. Giant condors, bonemoths: those are the only two animals I’ve heard of living so high up here. I could use my teeth to kill a giant condor or two, but a bonemoth is another story. I keep my head on a swivel and my hearing sharp.

The sun beats down on us relentlessly—no relief anywhere for miles, as there aren’t any trees, and few rock formations tall enough to throw shadows. I can feel the sunburn begin to crawl over my shoulders, and I can see it happening on Varia’s nose as a bridge of red. But other than discoloration, no real dangers present themselves. I’m totally unprepared for snow, but wet boots can’t bother me anymore—not with my heart so close.

Varia stutters once, her foot catching in the deep snow on a sharp incline, and I bend my knee and motion to my back. “Hop on, Your Highness.” I smirk. “Zera’s carriage service, at your, well, service.”

“I can get there on my own two feet,” she snaps, her d’Malvane pride raising its quills in defense.

“With all your energy intact?” I lilt. Her brows furrow, and after a glare from her, I feel her pressure on my back, and I lace my arms around her knees. Despite being physically older than me, she’s not anywhere near as heavy as I am. It could be the prospect of the Tree being so close, or it could be the way I can feel her heart—or is it mine in the bag?—beating against my spine, but no matter how tiring it is, I manage to haul her up the incline. My legs ache, my fingers and toes starting to lose all feeling, but instantly I sense Varia’s magic healing me of the frostbite.

“Hey,” I demand. “Cut it out. Save your energy.”

“As if I have a choice,” she scoffs down at me.

“Why did you bring just me?” I ask. “What about Gavik? He could protect you, too. You’re so far away from him—he’s probably screaming in the middle of Vetris somewhere right now.”

“Gavik is superfluous,” she says. “I need only you to find the Tree.”

“I’m flattered,” I grunt. The sweat beading down my neck feels like a trail of ice, my skin prickling as the wind howls louder and rips faster across the snow the higher we go. My ears are open for anything condor- or bonemoth-sounding, so when the blistering crack of ice happens, I brace myself immediately and turn my head. Yet there’s nothing at all—not in the sky, not on the ground. We are the only ones in this lonely white space. But I swear I heard—

“Why are we stopping?” Varia presses, nudging me with her knees. “Hurry up—it’s just over that rise.”

I can feel her five years of want burning through her blood and into mine. I peer over the stony edge of the peak and to the abyss below us—there, standing tall against the snow, is the web of bridge-connected towers. The scholar-city of Breych, Yorl had called it. But with the way I saw the Bone Tree in my memory, I was looking down on the city from a much higher angle. Steeling my thighs, I carve up and through the mountain snow as fast as I can without dislodging Varia.

The farther up I climb, the stronger the wind howls. The flying snow goes from kissing my cheeks to stinging them ferociously, each flake like a blade of ice. And then suddenly my feet find a flat expanse of rock, and I blink away the frost from my eyelashes.

Something white looms before me, swaying gently in total anathema to the raging wind.

The Bone Tree.

It looks so much more frightening up close—far more massive, so tall I can barely see the top of it. The wicked claws at the ends of the branches scythe the air idly, as if they’re just waiting for someone with flesh to pass by. Varia stirs on my back, climbing off and staggering through the snow toward the Tree with an enraptured gaze.

“The Tree,” she whispers, the white of the bones gleaming in her fervid onyx eyes. Each bone is so huge, the ivory eerie in its seamless perfection. There’s a faint darkened aura around the Tree—noticeably dimmer than the high noon sunlight beating down on us from above. Valkerax bones suck in light, Fione had said. This isn’t a tree made sloppily—every bone has its place; every one fits to make the tree a titanic whole. Its spindly shadow stretches as long as the peak, and the air around it—the closer I walk to the undulating bone roots of the tree as they clack together, the heavier the air gets. It’s the same sort of feeling I used to get walking up to Nightsinger’s room, some undeniable weight to the atmosphere around me.

But this…this weight isn’t some light, ominous reminder. It is crushing. It feels as if it’s trying to grind me down into nothing.

The crown princess clambers up the rocky peak, her hands out in front of her as she walks beneath the Tree’s massive branches. I can barely hear myself panting over the howl of the wind, so I climb after her, the air pummeling my empty chest.

“Your Highness,” I shout. “I brought you to the Tree. It’s time you hand over my heart!”

She doesn’t move an inch, her gaze fixed on the bones of the trunk, her hand hovering just above as if she’s afraid to touch it.

“Varia!” I shout, pulling at her arm. There’s an immediate sizzling sound in the air, and just over my shoulder bursts a flash of light and an intense heat. I fling myself backward, but the burning doesn’t go away, and my eyes find my cloak. A lick of black witchfire blazes on it, smoldering over the wet wool. Did she try to burn me?

I reach out and grab her arm again.

“My heart,” I insist, steeling my mind for another shock of flame. But nothing comes. The branches of the Bone Tree merely sway above us, the creaking sound identical to the creaking of ancient wood. My shoulder burns, the fire gnawing through my layers and down to my skin, but I hold fast to the princess.

“My heart!”

This gets her attention, and she whirls around. But her eyes don’t look at me—she peers into the snowstorm behind me, her gaze waiting and on guard, more owlish than ever as she searches for something on the horizon that I can’t see.

And then she grips my arm, her fingers digging like ice daggers.

“I still need you to protect me,” she murmurs, face taut. Fear? Why would the Laughing Daughter fear here, at the precipice of all her goals realized? At the cliff’s edge of becoming the world’s most powerful person, what is there to be scared of? I turn and look to where she’s looking.

Three shadows cut out of the ice and snow, their cloaks whipping in the wind. Humans. I expected leagues of bonemoths, thousands of giant condors.

“Just three?” I step forward and crack my neck leisurely. “This will take only a half, Princess. Keep my heart warm and ready.”

Varia says nothing, her whole body stiff. For a moment I think she’s frozen over, and then, as the shadows grow closer, she calls out, “You can still turn back.” Her words are almost instantly swallowed by the snow. The three figures show no sign of slowing, and she raises her voice. “Go back, now, and I will forgive you.”

My brows twist. Who is she—?

I don’t know who or what does it. It could be the Tree, or Varia herself, or the people approaching, or perhaps even merciful nature. Regardless, the wind suddenly dies. It doesn’t just stop—it keels over dead in its tracks, the snow flitting down in soft tufts once more and silence echoing in the wake of so much howling.

Without the storm, in the midst of the peak at peace, it is easy to see the faces of the three.

A girl with mousy curls on the left, her nose and cheeks like rosebuds, her hand gripping a valkerax-headed cane. A tall, white-haired, slender beneather on the right, his eyes gleaming crimson, like two pinpricks of blood amid the snow.

And there, in the middle.

Black leather. Black hair. Black eyes. A hawk, shrouded in shadow.

Prince Lucien Drevenis d’Malvane.