2

Unborn Again

You would think I’d be used to waking up in strange places by now.

But the truth of the matter is that no one really gets used to waking up alone. There is bleary panic and utter confusion, until all the brain parts in my skull settle into place and remember for me:

I am Zera Y’shennria, and I have betrayed the Crown Prince of Cavanos.

A prince whose sister is still alive.

A prince who knows I’m a monster.

we are going to be punished. The hunger laughs, somehow quieter and more even than ever, not a trace of the instability I had after I got cut with Lucien’s blade anywhere to be heard. at last.

Lucien’s cold gaze haunts the backs of my eyelids, the void of my unheart threatening to expand and swallow me whole.

No.

I am Zera Y’shennria, niece of Quinn Y’shennria. I have many weaknesses—a well-made silk dress with just the right number of ruffles, the idea of family, the idea of my heart, a warm cup of chocolate drink and a slice of cake. But I won’t allow myself to be weakened by despair.

I shoot up to a sitting position, my spine supported by something soft. My eyes take in everything slowly, methodically: plush carpets, fragile curtains, maroon velvet and white lace adorning every inch of the room. I’m on a sofa propped between a mahogany table and an ironwood sitting chair. Vases of fresh lilies bloom next to gold sandclocks and strangely childish dolls with real curled hair and miniature silk gowns. The room has a haze of dust to it, as if it was tended to but never considered fit to live in. Until now.

I don’t recognize the room, but I recognize the walls—how could I not? The pale cream color, the lavish embossing: this is the royal palace in Vetris. How did I get here? I try to shift my legs to the floor, but something metal yanks me back into place. Chains. Someone’s cuffed my arms and legs to the feet of the impossibly heavy ironwood sofa.

“Well,” I say up at the ceiling, “this is new.” I rattle my chains. “Secure. I kind of like it.”

There’s a pause as the ceiling seems to stare down at me questioningly, and I experience several riveting seconds of my new stationary life.

“Okay,” I decide. “I hate it.”

I twist my entire body, rocking against the cushions. I might not be strong enough to break the chains, but if I can reorient the couch—

My stomach flips as I roll one last time, and the couch heaves, tipping over and sending me crashing to the ground. The cushions smother me, and I cough and blink up at the couch now firmly on top of me. The chains weren’t beneath the couch at all but rather hammered into the ironwood legs of it.

I consider the positives as I’m inhaling copious amounts of goose down stuffing. I’m still alive. My body aches with effort, but it’s healed of all cuts and bruises. Gavik’s sword wound in my chest is gone. I’m left with only the exhausted feeling from fighting Gavik’s men.

My iron determination to not succumb falters. Gavik’s men. Their body parts, strewn on the grass of the clearing. How many did I kill? Five was my old number—I murdered the five bandits who killed my parents and me. I swore I’d never kill again. And yet…

I swallow regret. One thing at a time, Zera Y’shennria. You should know by now it’s very hard to make amends in shackles.

I can’t send word to Y’shennria trapped like this. Who knows how many hours have passed? It must’ve been dozens, considering my wounds have been healing slower than normal thanks to the magic-suppressing white mercury wound I sustained from Lucien’s sword at the duel weeks ago. To heal such bad wounds with the connection between Nightsinger and me so weak…it must’ve taken days.

Y’shennria might’ve told Nightsinger I’m a lost cause already—any moment now, she could shatter my heart. Unlike most, my witch is a soft thing; she doesn’t want to shatter me, but for all she knows, I’ve been caught and am being eternally tortured by the humans.

And that’s…not too far from the truth, actually. The fact I didn’t wake up in a dungeon is promising. But waking up in the palace could mean anything. Princess Varia and Lucien obviously brought me back to question me, but that could mean torture if I don’t cooperate. And when they’re done with me, when Lucien is done with me, they’ll no doubt burn me as an enemy of all humans. Apart from the newly discovered white mercury, burning is the only way a human can slow down a Heartless’s magically fueled regeneration.

My head still spins—why did the prince ask his sister to spare me, the traitor? Why did he ask her to appeal to the king for me?

he wants something from you.

The hunger echoes in my skull, as it always has, for the three years since I became Heartless. It’s a terrible, dark voice that haunts every Heartless, rushes in and fills the gaps when a witch takes our heart and makes us their immortal thrall. It wants only to kill, to maim, to feast on humans. It thrives on my sadness, my pain, kept at bay and suppressed only by my witch’s magic. On every other day that ends in a y, it wants to break me. But right now, its words ring true. Lucien is a logical person. And no logical person would ask his sister to spare someone who tried to kill him. He must want something from me. Something. What could he want now that I’m a traitor in his eyes?

your body.

The fracture in my willpower yawns wider and wider and then shatters me. Is that all I am to him now? A thing to be trapped and used? I can’t get the look on Lucien’s face, as he watched me transform into the monster, out of my head, the sheer horrified expressions of those men as I ripped them to nothing but shreds. After everything. After I promised to never kill again.

My eyes brim with hot tears. “Wh-What a way to go,” I choke. “Trapped under a couch and crying.”

pathetic, the hunger taunts. it’s better this way.

Once more, the hunger is right. Dying is better—I’ll never have to see Lucien again. His lost trust, his disappointment in me—I’ll never see it. Malachite and Fione will learn I’m a Heartless from him, I’m sure. I won’t have to see their hurt, betrayed faces, either. I failed Nightsinger. I didn’t stop the war like I promised Y’shennria. I did nothing but let the people in my life down. I failed them all.

And now I die for it.

I close my eyes, a bitter peace washing over me.

The clicking noise of someone’s tongue resounds. “Tut tut. What a mess you’ve made.”

I squint to see through the small gap between the couch and the floor, but suddenly the couch lifts off me, and five pairs of legs in armor reveal themselves as palace guards. They put the couch to one side, the chains yanking me up and contorting my limbs painfully. But at least now I can see who the voice belongs to—Princess Varia in the flesh, her black hair sleek and combed. She no longer wears the dusty traveling robe; a brilliant shimmery purple ensemble hugs her adult curves. She is an adult, isn’t she? I’m so used to looking at her teenage death portrait, I forgot she would’ve aged in the time she was presumed dead. By five years, to be exact. Her dark, lustrous eyes look down on me, a faint smile on her lips as she dismisses the guards.

I have nothing to lose. I lost it all in the clearing.

“Is this your room?” I croak. “Terribly sorry. I’d offer to take the dents out of the floor myself, but I don’t think I’ll be around much longer.”

Varia quirks a brow and clips over to me in high riding boots. “Lucien is resting, in case you care. Malachite and Fione have graciously filled me in on everything that’s transpired. I knew you had to have bravado to even attempt to infiltrate the Vetrisian court, but I didn’t anticipate a sense of humor, too.”

“That’s all right. After seeing what the court has to offer, I wouldn’t anticipate humor, either. Zealotry? For certain. Beauty? In spades. The ability to string two words together and make them funny? Much rarer.”

“True,” Varia agrees, walking around me at a slow clip. “I could hire you as the court’s new laughing boy. But that would be a waste of your…talents.”

That hungry gleam in her eyes returns as she looks me up and down. I’m reminded painfully of my position—far below her. She’s a princess, and I’m a prisoner of war at best. A thing. A body. She could do anything she wanted with me.

I watch her walk over and stroke one of the dolls sitting on the dresser, her delicate finger coming away with dust.

“Shame on you, and shame on the witches for taking advantage of my brother.” She sighs lightly. “Though I have to begrudgingly admit—they sent the best one for the job. They hit all his high points—blond, tall, sharp as a tack. He was doomed to lust after you from the start. And you of course went with it, because it seemed like a simple job. A bitter young man, jaded and lonely. Easy prey for someone like you.”

She’s laid out in plain words what’s been haunting me these last two weeks. I flinch but try to sit up higher on the couch cushions.

“How many did I…?” My dry throat breaks. “How many did I kill? In the clearing?”

She brushes her hands off. “Nine lawguards.”

I let out a breath. Fourteen men.

I’ve taken the lives of fourteen men.

there will be hundreds more, the hunger taunts.

The princess continues. “I thought it was strange—the trees kept telling me two people had intruded on my clearing. One of them was Lucien; I was used to that. He’s been to those woods nearly every year, scouring for me.”

I speak, brittle words a welcome distraction. “Why didn’t you say hello before, then?”

“He asked me the same thing.” Varia shakes her head. “As if the answer isn’t obvious.”

“Gavik,” I breathe, remembering she’s made him her Heartless. “Where is he now?”

“Around,” the princess says cryptically. “Regardless, I saw Lucien with a girl in my clearing this time, and so I stopped to watch you two. I was thrilled at first—my brother, finally moving on from my loss and embracing love again. And then Gavik made his sordid entrance. And like an Old-God-sent miracle, you did what I couldn’t. After all those years of hating him while growing up, what I dreamed of finally happened. You dragged him out of Vetris, out of the seat of his power, and you so graciously killed him. I didn’t need to hide anymore. That’s the only reason I even deigned to listen to Lucien’s pleadings for me to ask Father to spare you—you freed me, and so I’ll keep you from the jaws of Father’s torturers. You’re welcome.”

“I can’t take all the credit.” I force a thin smile at her. “Fione did most of the ‘dragging him out of Vetris’ bit.”

“So I’ve heard,” Varia muses, pressing on. “Lucien…he’s always been easy to read. He was smitten with you, you know. I saw it in his eyes in the clearing, before you turned on him. But that heart wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You took what he offered and threw it under a carriage wheel.”

Her words might as well be poisoned arrows, riddling me with holes that burn all the way through. I flinch, the chains rattling. Suddenly she kneels next to me, pulling my chin up so my ashamed eyes meet her molten ones. They burn exactly like Lucien’s—all dark brimstone.

“I lived with the witches for five years, Heartless. I know their secrets. I know their strengths. I know the way they pull at your strings to make you dance.”

Breathing is painful as I speak. “Get your insults in while you can. My witch is going to shatter me any moment now. That was our agreement—if I didn’t contact her, she’d assume me captured and mercy-kill me. It’s been days. My death is right around the corner.”

“Days?” She barks a laugh in my face. “You think it’s been days?” My muscles go tauter than a crossbow string. Varia drops my chin, her cool fingers leaving my skin as she stands. “Nightsinger, right? That’s your witch’s name?”

Something in her confident tone makes me uneasy.

“Did you know”—the princess picks up the doll she touched earlier from the shelf—“that a Heartless is never supposed to say their witch’s name aloud to another witch?” She twines a finger in the doll’s hair lovingly. “Of course you don’t. If a Heartless says their witch’s name aloud, you’re essentially giving other witches permission to steal you away. We can use the sound to create a spell to transfer ownership. But Nightsinger never told you that, did she?”

A cold pit hardens in my stomach. Varia twirls the doll around as if she’s dancing with it.

“After all, what use was there? She didn’t live in the last witch enclave—Windonhigh—with the rest of the witches. She lived stubbornly alone in a forest. There were no witches who would steal you away. And she knew there’d be no witches left in Vetris to try to steal you, either. She must’ve wanted so badly to keep you under the illusion that you weren’t chained to her. A useless kindness and, in the end, one that sealed your fate.”

Varia suddenly stops spinning and drops the doll, the porcelain body shattering into a million pieces, shards of arms and legs flying. A piece slips by my cheek and cuts it, hot blood oozing down my face. But as soon as the cut splits my flesh apart, the familiar feeling of a wound being stitched closed by magic surfaces, knitting me back together again in a blink. Faster than Nightsinger’s magic. Faster than any magic I’ve ever felt. The cold pit in my stomach blossoms into sickly horror as I look up at Varia, the princess smiling down at me.

“Congratulations are in order, Zera. You are now the Second Heartless of the Laughing Daughter.”

…

It takes my brain three frozen seconds to fall into place and begin working again. It hasn’t been days. I’ve healed immediately. If I was still Nightsinger’s Heartless, it would’ve taken much longer.

“No,” I blurt.

“Yes,” Varia says patiently.

“You can’t do that,” I snarl. “The Crimson Lady—that tower out there would’ve detected any magic spell you tried to do—”

“I have someone taking care of that for me,” she chimes, kicking through the shards of the doll idly. “It’s incredible, really, who your father the king will approve for a position in that red eyesore once you rise from the dead and plead with him.”

She has someone in the magic-detecting Crimson Lady—the polymath-controlled tower that’s kept Vetris safe from all magic and witches since it was built. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but it senses magic, and the guards perform arrests depending on the information it gives via the watertell system. The elaborate array of water-fueled pipes ferries messages to and from every corner of the city in a blink—meaning the guards can move on the information even faster. If Varia has someone in the tower covering up the information for her…

“No one knows,” I hiss, “that you’re a witch?”

Varia’s smile is self-satisfied. “No one but you and Lucien. I’m sure Lucien will tell his bodyguard eventually—what’s his name? Mallory?”

“Malachite,” I snap.

“Oh yes.” She shrugs. “And I’ll tell Fione when the time comes. But why are we talking about petty interpersonal affairs when we have so much to do? There’s a war brewing on the horizon, and you’re going to help me stop it. This time, without some risky gamble involving my brother’s heart. Something more secure, I think, and without so many High Witches hovering about it.”

She sweeps over and unlocks the shackles on my arms and legs. I’m so busy staggering to my weary feet, I barely catch the cotton tunic and breeches she throws at me until they’re in my face. “Wear these. We can’t have you strutting about in bloodstained things and startling my people, now can we?”

I stand there, paralyzed by fear, my eyes roaming over the stitches of the clean outfit, the holes of the bloodstained dress I’m wearing, and my skin through them. I’m not Nightsinger’s Heartless anymore. My reins have been forcefully taken by Varia. It was easier to resign myself to death than to consider living with my mistakes. My betrayal. But now? Now I’ll have to keep going. Now I’ll have to face the people I’ve hurt.

And that’s far more terrifying than dying.

“What are you waiting for?” Varia’s voice cuts through my shellshock. “Put it on. We have places to be. Don’t make me command you this early.”

Commanding.

A witch can order their Heartless to do anything they want. Nightsinger never used it on me or with her other Heartless—the adorable children Crav and Peligli. Godsdamnit—Crav and Peligli. How will I ever see them again? I chew on my lip and desperately try to focus; Varia isn’t Nightsinger. I saw how she commanded Gavik. I hurt her brother. In theory, she could command me to jump off a cliff into the maws of a dozen ravenous sharks and I’d have no choice but to do it.

Slowly, my limbs moving like rusted gears, I shed my tattered black dress and pull on the tunic and breeches. The golden heart locket still sits between my collarbones, heavy and somehow comforting. I’m not sure if it works—allowing me to physically go more than a mile and a half from my witch—but just having it around my neck gives me a strange strength, warming my cold, fearful bones ever so slightly. My witch is new, my unlife is uncertain, but the necklace remains.

A guard suddenly walks in when I’m dressed and offers me Father’s rusted sword. Just seeing its flaking metal handle has me breathing easier. It’s the last thing I own of my parents’, and here, at the end of my world and the beginning of a new one, I couldn’t ask for anything sturdier to lean on. I take it, pinning it to my belt. I feel doubly protected now, even if I know it’s a hollow illusion. Varia points to a pair of black boots near the door, and I lace them up my calves, watching her out of the corner of my eye. When I’m done, she immediately moves for the door and motions for me to follow her.

The palace should look different—as different as my life feels—but it doesn’t. Moonlight still streams through the windows and onto both the sleek red carpeting and the marble statues of half-naked women with spears. The guards at every door bow to the princess, and she nods back with perfect regality, as if she wasn’t absent for five years. They shoot me wary looks—Lady Zera Y’shennria, with the princess?—but they don’t question it. Varia walks ahead of me, and my feet woodenly try to keep up even as my mind spins circles around itself.

“I’ve told Father you’re a Heartless, of course,” the princess says softly. “And he’s ordered that information to be kept under lock and key, lest panic break out. I’ve also told him your witch is eager to keep you alive, and I’ve assured him you can’t share any of Vetris’s secrets with them. But I’m certain at some point he’ll have to question you about Gavik’s death. You won’t tell him anything, of course.”

“You obviously don’t know me,” I shoot back. “I’m a notorious blabbermouth. I’ll tell him you’re a witch. Even if you command me—”

“I’m not going to command you to keep quiet,” she says lightly. “I won’t need to. You won’t say a thing to anyone, least of all him.”

Her mystifying conviction is iron. How can she be so confident of that? Does she know I can Weep? Reginall—Y’shennria’s butler and a veteran of the Sunless War—taught me the framework of a technique the Heartless developed out of desperation during the War. A handful of Heartless managed to resist their witches’ commands to fight and kill. They called this Weeping, for the way blood tears stream from our eyes for the duration. Even if it’s temporary, the act of Weeping makes the hunger’s voice go away. Totally. Not dulling it, like feeding on raw organs does, but eradicating it.

It frees a Heartless completely—allowing them to do whatever they want, regardless of what they’ve been commanded to do, regardless of the hunger’s fanatical, blood-lusted voice. It’s the closest thing a Heartless can ever come to being human without having their heart again. I Wept that night in the clearing when my monstrous form killed Gavik, his men, and then turned on Lucien. I managed to Weep and control the monster before it could kill the prince.

Did Varia see me do it? Reginall told me the witches in the Sunless War didn’t take kindly to their Heartless learning how to defy them. Those who could were shattered—their hearts kept by the witches crushed, which kills the Heartless for good. If I don’t want to end up like them, I need to play my cards very carefully.

I almost stop walking. Can I still Weep? There are two parts to Weeping: one, the internal calming of thoughts, the clearing of the mind, and two, the external, being cut by a pure white mercury blade. My old connection to Nightsinger had been weakened the moment Lucien accidentally cut me with his white mercury blade during the duel. But this connection between Varia and me hasn’t been mangled by magic-suppressing white mercury. It’s strong and vibrant.

My stomach writhes as we pass all-too-familiar doors—to the banquet hall, to the throne room, to the gorgeous stained glass Hall of Time and the entrance hall. Lucien’s psychic scent lingers in all of them—shadows of memories of when we met for the first (second, really) time. These are places I’ve been as a different person, as a monster pretending to be a human. He tolerated me then.

He loved me then.

My nerves walk on broken glass—my body had been waiting for two whole weeks in this palace to be reviled and hated, for my secret to come loose. I keep looking around, sick with the thought that I might find Lucien around every corner.

How he must hate me now.

The one boy I felt my unheart beat for, hating me.

The thought tries to drive me madder than the hunger does. It reaches twisting fingers for me, but I focus on every curve of the marble statues, every fiber of the grand carpets, every petal of the vases of impeccable hothouse flowers. The painting in the entrance hall of the New God Kavar looms dark in the night, the scales in his long hands tipping, the hundreds of eyes tattooed onto his divine golden skin glaring down at me as if seeming to say, There is no escaping justice. You will atone for what you have done.

Fourteen men. One for each finger on my hand, and then some.

Varia points out the entrance hall, to the gigantic oaken front doors being held open by the guards. Outside, a black-trimmed carriage awaits at the bottom of the grand steps.

“Hurry now. There’s something I want you to see.” She ushers, sweeping past me and descending the stairs with her skirts held high. Every step of hers is so perfect by Vetrisian court standards that I know even Y’shennria would be impressed.

Y’shennria.

she left you here to rot, the hunger snarls. she abandoned you to save her own skin.

My unheart pangs as I climb into the carriage and seat myself opposite Varia’s prim posture. I don’t blame Y’shennria for leaving me here in Vetris all alone, but part of me wants to. Part of me wants to rage and scream at the unfairness of it all—I wanted only my heart. I failed. Why do I have to suffer, to keep living like this, chained to a witch all over again? A part of me is furious. A part of me is scared to the bone. And all of me doesn’t want to be alone.

Nightsinger, Crav, Peligli—where are they now? Will I ever see them again?

I look up at Varia’s faintly smiling face. Her sheet of black hair gleams in the moonlight. She turns her eyes from the window to look at me, and her smile widens. Calm. Satisfied. In control. She is the total opposite of me.

The city, too, is no different than when I left it. The iron talismans twirl and spin in the midnight wind from every eave and rain gutter—a crescent with three lines moving through it. The Eye of Kavar. Even here, the humans’ god is watching me. The spire of the Temple of Kavar broods over the alleyways and streets as we pass through them, drunkards shouting hymns and bedding songs equally as they stagger home from taverns.

Whatever Varia wants to show me, it isn’t in the heart of the city. The carriage leads us to what I think is the South Gate, hung with sagging chains of warm oil lamps and choked with the soft hum of murmured conversation as the trading caravans prepare for predawn departures. The princess is silent the entire ride until the carriage comes to a rough stop at the gate.

“We’re here.” She motions for me to get out. “Try to be on your best behavior.”

“Oh, I’ll certainly try,” I murmur and swing my legs out. “And more certainly fail.”

The sleepy crowd envelops us almost instantly, and for a moment as I push through them to follow Varia, the huge iron-cast doors of the South Gate catch my eye. Ten on the ground, twenty—no, thirty lawguards in shining armor stand rigid on the white wall the gate is nestled in, perched like vultures as they watch the crowd below. The wall surrounding Vetris might keep witches and bandits out, but it’s the lawguards who keep people in.

My mind flickers briefly to escape. Even if I scaled the wall by some miracle and got past the thirty guards without being riddled with spearheads, Varia would surely stop me with a command. And I’m not sure of my Weeping anymore. But if I don’t run…

I’ll have to face Lucien. Fione. Malachite. I’ll have to face them as a traitor. As who I really am—a murderer. A liar.

Everything in me wants to run. The scaffolding up the wall is so close. I could run. I could sprint like my life depended on it—

Varia’s noticed me lagging and turns in the throng. If the crowd recognizes her, none of them shows it. How could they? It’s been five years since she was seen last. She’s morphed into a young woman, proud and strong.

“Come on,” she urges me. “There are things to be done.”

I back away from her slowly, and my feet move for the scaffold. I have to try. I can’t face Lucien. Not now. Not now that I’m a monster to him. Varia could be bluffing, could be lying about being my new witch, about the entire transferring ownership ordeal, and I could leap that scaffold. The only thing between me and running free at last could be that white wall, the curve of those wooden inclines against it.

“Don’t.” Varia’s voice turns harder. “Zera—I’m warning you.”

“What?” I sneer back at her. “Afraid you’re not my witch after all? Afraid I’ll escape?”

I spin on my heel, only to be frozen by her words.

“You will follow me.”

It’s only half her voice. The other half is a dark, deep, visceral tone I know all too well, reverberating up from some jet bell nestled inside my very being. Varia and the hunger say the same words at the same time, and the sound—the meaning—courses through me like icy river water, locking me in place. I will follow her. I will follow them—her and the hunger—until I can follow no more.

I spin again on my heels, this time toward her, and like I’m outside my body, hovering above it and observing it like a play on a stage, I watch myself obediently trot after the princess farther and farther into the crowd.

She is my witch.

Every single step of my boots on the cobblestones beats it into me like a terrible, inescapable drumbeat.

Princess Varia d’Malvane of Cavanos—the Laughing Daughter—is my new witch.