Send Me Their Souls

By Sara Wolf

There are worse things than death.

With the rise of Varia d’Malvane comes the fall of the Mist Continent. Cavanos is overrun by the brutal rampage of the valkerax, led by its former crown princess. Vetris is gone. Helkyris is gone. As each mighty nation falls, the grip of the crown princess closes around the throat of the world.

But Zera Y’shennria isn’t out yet.

Alongside Malachite, Fione, Yorl, and her love Lucien, Zera seeks aid from the High Witches and the Black Archives, with the valkerax horde hot on their heels. Seemingly unstoppable, Varia can track Zera through her dreams, ensuring there is nowhere to run. Thankfully, an ancient book holds the key to stopping the incursion forever.

But at what cost comes freedom?

At what cost comes love?

At what cost comes the end of the world, and the beginning of a new one?

The Bring Me Their Hearts series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Bring Me Their Hearts
Book #2 Find Me Their Bones
Book #3 Send Me Their Souls

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Nov 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781682815083

Sara Wolf

Sara Wolf lives in Portland, Oregon, where the sun can’t get her anymore. When she isn’t pouring her allotted life force into writing, she’s reading, accidentally burning houses down whilst baking, or making faces at her highly appreciative cat. She is the author of the NYT bestselling Lovely Vicious series and the Bring Me Their Hearts series. sarawolfbooks.com

Book preview

Praise for Sara Wolf’s

BRING ME THEIR HEARTS

A Goodreads YA Best Book of the Month

An Amazon Best Book of the Month: Science Fiction & Fantasy

A zesty treat for YA and new-adult fantasists.

—Kirkus Reviews

"Captivating and unique! Sara Wolf has created a world quite unlike one I’ve ever read in Bring Me Their Hearts. Readers will fall in love with Zera, the girl with no heart who somehow has the biggest heart of all."

—Pintip Dunn, New York Times bestselling author of the Forget Tomorrow series

Thrilling, hilarious, addictive, and awesome! I absolutely loved it!

—Sarah Beth Durst, award-winning author of The Queens of Renthia series

Everything I need from a story. A standout among fantasies!

—Wendy Higgins, New York Times bestselling author of Sweet Evil

Sara Wolf is a fresh voice in YA, and her characters never fail to make me laugh and think.

—Rachel Harris, New York Times bestselling author of My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century

"From the start, this book completely stole my heart! Sara Wolf has woven a mesmerizing tale in Bring Me Their Hearts that had me glued to each page, unable to put it down until the end."

—Brenda Drake, New York Times bestselling author of the Library Jumpers series

The battle between good and evil bleeds over the pages of this exquisite fantasy.

—Olivia Wildenstein, USA TODAY bestselling author of The Lost Clan series

"Original, authentic, and enchanting! Sara Wolf creates a vivid fantasy world like no other. Bring Me Their Hearts is a breath of fresh air in YA fantasy!"

—D.D. Miers, USA TODAY bestselling author of the Relic Keeper series

This was an absolute delightful bucket of sass, witches, and stabbing.

—PaperFury

Absolutely blown away by this world, with its harsh realities and amazing characters.

—Pop Reads Box

Also by Sara Wolf

Bring Me Their Hearts Series

Bring Me Their Hearts

Find Me Their Bones

Send Me Their Souls

NYT bestselling Lovely Vicious series

Love Me Never

Forget Me Always

Remember Me Forever

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Crown of Bones, by A.K. Wilder

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Sara Wolf. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

10940 S Parker Road

Suite 327

Parker, CO 80134

[e-mail]

Entangled Teen is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Edited by Stacy Cantor Abrams

Cover illustration and design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes

Interior design by Toni Kerr

ISBN 978-1-68281-507-6

Ebook ISBN 978-1-68281-508-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition November 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For S. It’s been so long, hasn’t it? We’re here, at last.

Once, there was a tree in the middle of a hilltop graveyard. A traveler passed through, taking shelter from the rain under its branches.

Have you seen many go? the traveler asked.

The tree nodded its branches with the wind. Yes.

The traveler thought for a moment and then, Have you seen many arrive?

The tree nodded again. Yes.

Well, the traveler surmised. That’s all right, then.

1

THE FALLING

TOWER

Prince Lucien d’Malvane looks at me with the steady gaze of a wolf across a meadow. Waiting. Waiting for the others of his pack to join him. For me to join him.

And I look back at him, with six eyes Weeping blood.

His sister, Varia d’Malvane, waits for me, too. They’re mirror images of each other—sheaves of midnight hair, skin like the summer sun when it sets. Profiles of marble, of hawk and owl. She stands poised and triumphant while her brother, the only boy I’ve ever loved, barely stands at all. He pants, haggard. He protected us from the Bone Tree’s explosion with all his fledgling magic, with witchfire that melted every bit of snow off this half-demolished mountain peak. He’s a witch.

But Varia’s one, too.

She’s so still, it’s as if she isn’t breathing. Perhaps she doesn’t need to any longer, what with the valkerax-tooth choker around her neck—and all the Bone Tree’s power it holds as hers to command.

To her, that choker means power. She’d faked her death, leaving behind her parents and brother. When she returned, she had me train Evlorasin—one of the massive valkerax—to suppress its hunger by Weeping. She bribed, killed, threatened for this moment. For her, that choker means everything. It means the culmination of five years of striving. Of blood. Of mercilessness and hope and everything in between. But to me, it looks like little more than a fancy shackle.

Malachite and Fione stare up at the Bone Tree swaying behind the crown princess. It’s the only noise that dares to break the air—the rattling of the strung valkerax bones that form its bleached branches, its white roots, and its smooth trunk.

And from behind the tree, they rise.

The massive, twisting pillar of alive things, of bright white gargantuan wyrms in the hundreds, sways beyond the mountain peak Varia stands on. Just behind her, like a throne. A support beam. A terrible spine reaching all the way from the depths of the Dark Below and into the sky.

They’re soundless. Or, at least, they’re so far away you can’t hear anything, not the scratch of scales I’m used to from Evlorasin, not the hungry shrieks and growls I know well. No, these valkerax are completely given over to the song. The hunger. The madness.

They’re frothing, screaming, their fanged maws snapping with rage as they scrabble over one another, desperate to obey the Bone Tree’s commands. Varia’s commands. But on the mountain, we hear nothing. There’s only the four of us, only one of us still human, all of us puffing exhausted clouds into the bitterly cold air as we watch the pillar extend. Grow. From raging hundreds to feverish thousands. Curling around one another, making a tower of their bodies through sheer frenzy. Utter silence.

None of us knows what to do, to say, in the face of thousands of starving valkerax clawing for the clouds. It’s the sort of silence that echoes, trilling bells of terror in my hollow chest.

Varia has what she wants. But where’s my heart? What I want?

I can feel it. I can feel her power surging through me like booze poured down a throat on a cold winter’s night, like a flame burning up a line of oil and snaking through dry grass. The emptiness in my chest burns with her magic, every inch of void set aflame. It’s beyond me. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever felt—and I’m Weeping. I’m supposed to be in the center of stillness, untouchable by my witch. By her. But she can touch me. She is, right now. Her magic, her influence…it’s reaching me. More than that—it’s lying on me with its full weight, making it hard to breathe, to move a muscle.

She could.

Those two words echo shrilly in my skull. A static shot of fear runs down my spine, and I realize she could. With the sheer brute power of the Bone Tree behind her, she might be able to command me through the Weeping. My one ace, gone.

My one scrap of control, of independence.

Gone.

As always, I’m the first to do the most foolish thing.

Varia! I step forward, the mud and slush from the melted snow seeping into my boots. My heart! Give it to me!

Every word rings out easily in the empty air. Varia’s onyx-shine eyes narrow imperceptibly, her smile eternal. She oozes around the Bone Tree’s trunk, sliding her hand along it as she goes. Like she has all the time in the world. Like the world can wait for her.

"We did have a deal, didn’t we? She laughs softly. And you’ve been so very loyal. Which is more than can be said for who you used to be. Or for most."

Her eyes slide over to Fione, who flinches back violently, palms hitting mud to stabilize.

It’s selfish; I know it is. Fione’s hurt, inside and out, and Malachite’s bleeding from the claw wounds on his face. Wounds I gave him. Lucien’s exhausted—even now, he struggles to stand, boots squelching hopelessly as he tries to get purchase in the mud. But Varia’s fresh. Varia’s new. Her face practically glows, her raven hair sleeker and shinier than ever before, as if she’s eaten and slept well for a compounded million years. She cares for Fione and Lucien, I know that, but the hard glint in her eyes as she looks between her brother and her lover is new and strange and I don’t like it. A wildcat’s look. Every instinct in me screams of danger.

She may love them.

But the Bone Tree inside her—around her neck—might not.

The pillar of valkerax doesn’t stop moving—a tornado of wyrm flesh climbing ever higher. Why are they going so high up?

Zera! Lucien barks suddenly.

Heat. My Weeping senses feel a spot of heat behind me. My head snaps back just in time to see black hair and then an arm lacing around my neck from behind. Casually. Leisurely. Varia holding me, as if she’s embracing a friend.

I can’t move. Every inch of muscle is suddenly granite in tar. It’s her magic. It has to be.

Zera. Varia’s voice is calm, her breath on my ear. You’ve done so well.

Get— Lucien scrambles in the mud, managing to rise to his knees. Get away from her!

Who does he mean? She from me or me from her? I can’t turn my head, but I can feel it. I can feel her eyes burning out at him. Malachite gets it first. He always does—faster instincts than me. He moves for Lucien, pulling Fione along by the hand, the two of them sliding in front of the prince. Fione’s shaking too badly to hold her crossbow cane up, but Malachite raises his broadsword in front of him, in front of all of them. Defensive, waiting, even as his milk-white fingers tremble around the handle. I’ve seen him stare down a fully grown valkerax charging at him, but now is when his ruby-red eyes hint fear.

Give me— I move my numb lips. My heart.

Is that all you want? Varia asks innocently. "You could have anything, Zera. I’m the most powerful witch in the world now. Those High Witch fools, their eclipseguard, even my father, his entire army, every army on the Mist Continent—no one can stop me. Not anymore. With your Weeping and my power—we could carve the world anew. We could lay the foundation for what no king or empress or council in all of history could: peace. Real, lasting peace."

My…heart… I grit out.

"Just think, Zera, she implores harder. Think beyond yourself. No war means no more Heartless. No more Heartless like you would have to be made. No one else would suffer as you have. Wouldn’t that be worth it? Isn’t that what you want—to stop the hunger? What if you could do it for everyone, forever? Make it go away once and for all, eternally?"

Forever? For everyone?

My eyes unsplit—six points of vision condensing suddenly into two. Pain and anger flood into me, the stillness of the Weeping draining away like a stabbed waterskin. The hunger comes crawling back, too, pulling itself out of the peaceful abyss claw by claw.

you can never be rid of me. you and I—one and the same. never one without the other. we grew you. we shelter you. we make you whole.

Zera— Lucien starts, making it to his feet shakily with the help of Malachite’s shoulders. Varia, let her go—

I’ll give you what no witch has ever truly given you, Zera. A choice, Varia says patiently, stroking a strand of my hair idly. Come with me now and change the world. Or stay here while I move on, and spend the rest of your unlife screaming into oblivion at the top of this mountain.

She means to leave me. To leave me here, while the radius between us that’s required for me to function as a Heartless breaks. A Heartless can’t exist outside of their witch’s radius. It’s only a mile and a half, but thanks to my locket, that length is extended. But she could still go far beyond it. I’d be stuck here forever, screaming soundlessly in mind-bending pain, no consciousness or feelings or senses at all.

Zera, say her name. Lucien staggers toward us, fingertips going pitch-black as he conjures up magic. Say her witch name, and I can free you—

Why would you want that? Varia laughs in my ear. Why would you want her, Lucien? She betrayed you over and over again. She’s loyal only to her heart. Even now, she begs for it. A girl like her, selfish to the last, would never be loyal to you.

Loyalty, Lucien grits out, black eyes searing, is not a requirement to protect someone.

My chest swells. This is him. That is him, in one proud sentence. Selfless. Willing to stand for me, at the end of all things. I feel the thick blood tears on my face cut by something thinner, watery.

Real tears. Human tears.

My mouth moves, but magic surges through me faster than I can think.

"Don’t, Varia commands, her voice dark. Don’t speak."

The words almost bring me to my knees. Sledgehammers, beating on me over and over, forcing my lips into a single closed seam. It’s so powerful I’m dazed, blinking in the bright light of the mountain, the shadow of the valkerax pillar swaying over me.

Us. Him. Lucien. My head rings.

My tongue’s still, my lips obeying and unmoving. But my teeth—I don’t use my teeth to speak, and they care not for the command. I bite until I taste blood, sharp pain.

Lau—

Don’t! Varia snarls harder. The sledgehammers turn to boulders, a landslide, to a cascade waterfalling down and pulverizing me to nothing more than bruised lumps of flesh. And in the bloody wake, the creeping fear settles in—if Lucien becomes my witch, it’s just another person who will use my heart against me. Another witch commanding me. Chained to another, to be used for his ends, his goals.

My own heart and own memories and own life still beyond my reach.

He reaches his hand out, all his fingers dark with magic now, the effort of standing quaking his knees. But still, he stands. Still, he waits. I look up at his soft face, the shadow of the valkerax swaying over him. Light, dark, light, dark.

Whatever happens, Zera, he murmurs through cold-ravaged lips, whatever you choose, I’ll always be here for you.

will you? The hunger laughs. or are you only brave and good now to get what you want, little prince?

If I become his Heartless, he could command me. He could do anything he wanted to me, and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

he could hurt you.

He could hurt me.

he could use you.

He could use me.

he could destroy you.

He could destroy me.

Don’t be naive. Varia laughs in my ear. You know best of all that love is worth nothing. No one stays. Look at my brother—he’s turned on me. His own flesh and blood he loves so much. Look at Fione—she betrayed me, and we were meant to be married. Love never stays. But power, Zera—power does. Changing the world permanently, enduringly, means more than love ever will.

The Weeping’s fading so fast, her magic flooding back in to fill the gaps. Lucien stands there, eyes silk—strong and steady—and waits. Just waits. He looks ready. He looks…at peace.

Whatever I choose, he’ll be here for me.

The valkerax pillar sways closer over his face, and I look up in dawning horror. Not up. They’re not going up.

They’re going across.

The pillar of valkerax bends at the midpoint, falling through the air and toward us, toward the mountain, with screaming velocity. A bridge. It’s going to form a bridge—right at Varia’s feet. I feel Varia’s blazing magic stutter for a split second, a streak of panic in her as it flares out of her control, and she unhands me, her fingers going dark as she tries desperately to rein it back in.

No! she snarls up at the falling pillar. Not yet!

But the valkerax don’t care. They’re coming, plummeting to earth like fallen birds, growing bigger and bigger. My Weeping is almost gone, the peaceful void growing smaller and smaller.

It’s now or never.

she is safer. The hunger tries one last, desperate, honest attempt. you know what she’ll do to you. but him…you have no idea. unsafe, chaos, a gamble, a danger—

I’ve been afraid. I’ve fought a valkerax, I’ve lived among a human court who’d love nothing more than to burn me alive. I’ve fought off the first mercenary from Nightsinger’s woods, shaking and clutching my sword. Fear never means nothing—not even when you’re immortal. There’s always the fear of pain. Without death, the fear of pain is the only thing you have left. The only thing that anchors you to the world, to the cycle of life and death like everyone else. One foot in agony, the other in the never-grave.

Fear means everything.

Fear is all I have.

I’ve never, in my entire life, been more afraid than the moment the words tumble from my lips.

Laughing Daughter!

2

HEARTS

BENEATH SNOW

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this wide world, it’s that time is the rebellious child. Like yours truly. It doesn’t act like you want it to, especially in crisis. Short moments feel long, long moments go by quickly, everything fragments and spins and comes in as feelings, scents, sounds when it should just be clear, concise thought.

The moment I say Varia’s witch name, the rebellious child tears apart the world.

I know for certain that two things happen: her incredibly dense magic tries to clench down on me one last time and then instantly lets go. Freefall. An iron hand, choking me one second and gone the next. I hear her scream, frantic in a way the crown princess of Cavanos has never once been.

"No, no no—Lucien, give her back! she yells. She’ll be your undoing! I know it! I can protect you from her—"

A tendril of her power shoots through my heart like an arrow, grasping. Searching. I gasp, choking on the feeling, but it’s short-lived. Something not-me pushes the tendril out instantly, resistant and insistent and hard in its decision. Final.

Lucien’s smirk is nearly too exhausted to exist, but he tries. A tinge of sadness there, almost.

Even the mighty Bone Tree can’t go against the rules, Varia, he says. You should know that better than I. Much better. You had five years of formal training, after all.

Lucien! Varia’s snarl turns keening. Don’t do this!

The falling line of valkerax comes closer and closer, the ground trembling and roars crescendoing. A line of writhing white cuts the high blue sky in two. The impact’s going to kill us all. I can see them now, their whiskers and their scales and their eyes—every valkerax with six ghost-white eyes and no pupils, and fear crystallizes into horror as I realize every single one of them is looking right at Varia. No matter which way their body is twisted, no matter how twisted or how fast they writhe, every massive wolf-maw head is focused dead on her. Like they’re going to eat her whole rather than obey her.

There are so many. So many more than I ever thought.

Time behaves badly again—someone pulls me away by the hand, and even through the clamminess of their skin I know the feel of those fingers, those callouses. Lucien. A flash of white hair as Malachite pulls us both away from Varia, and Fione’s broken sob as she raises her crossbow higher. Toward Varia.

The valkerax are close enough for me to smell their collective rotting breath.

Time slows. Impossibly slow, for all of one quick second. I turn my head over my shoulder, my neck bobbing at the force of Malachite’s simultaneous yank, but my eyes strain to stay on Varia. A Varia standing alone in a muddy wasteland, looking at us. Betrayal, anger—all the burning emotions on her face melt away to something quieter. Lonelier as we flee from her. From it. White feathers and scales from the valkerax rain down like animal snow.

A lonely princess stands there and stares as the world falls down on her. A single white feather lands delicately in her outstretched palm.

The shadow of the valkerax eclipses her.

Impact.

The first bodies to hit the ground break instantly under the others, flesh and bone and valkerax screams. Blood vaporized by sheer speed explodes out, a fine, hazy red mist hanging in the air for a split second. And then the earth heaves, force rippling the mud like waves, and all four of us are flung off our feet like rag dolls.

Someone reaches for me in the air, gripping frantically and curling around me. We hit mud, not hard ground, going skidding for what feels like miles. Malachite to my side, Fione on top of me, Lucien around me, and then the ground gives way, and we fall into nothing. Fione’s scream, Malachite’s beneather swear, and Lucien’s hand around my waist, his golden fingers turning black at the tips, up the knuckle, to the palm.

I know, deep down, that he can’t protect me. I’m the immortal one.

It has to be the other way around.

I twist my weightless body in the air, clutching him close, covering his skull, his chest, his abdomen with all of me. The vulnerable parts. If we hit ground, I’ll be first. I have to be first.

Bone and blood exploding, like the valkerax.

I have to protect him. I’m his Heartless.

No.

I’m his.

The wind whistles cold. Malachite shouts something. And then everything goes dark, the image of Varia standing alone with the white feather in her palm burned like an emblem on the back of my eyelids.

It’s not a dream. Not really. Not the way it’s supposed to be, floaty and out of place and certain. There’s the smell of blood everywhere. Darkness everywhere. Too real to be a dream but not real enough to be my reality.

I’m looking through someone else’s eyes—two eyes, and in my heart there’s an unshakable strangeness in seeing through only two. It’s supposed to be more than two. Far more. I’m being crushed—no, not me, the person I’m seeing this through. Weight everywhere. We have to escape. A hand in my vision—not mine—reaches out into the weight, gripping, summoning, and a hot blast of fire explodes from their palm.

Light.

Light pierces through the flesh-dangling hole, and we crawl out, inch by inch, until we flop into freedom, the sunlight. The crushing weight moves from our outside to the inside. To our chest, where our heart should be.

A heart.

I can feel it beating. This is definitely not me. A mortal. They look down at their hands, golden hands with midnight fingertips shrinking, the animate darkness retreating to smaller and smaller bits until it’s gone entirely. Human nails. Human skin. Half the fingers human, the other half wood.

Varia.

And the screaming.

Gods above and below, the screaming. Like broken bells, like metal on metal, like things dying and being born and dying all over again, an endless cycle of noise. We can barely hear, barely think. We fight vomit, collapsing to our feet and staring at the mud. Dirty. Unpleasant. Pointless. The world is spinning, and screaming, and sickening.

DESTROY.

The hunger? Here, in her, too? Witches don’t have the hunger.

DESTROY.

Not the hunger. Not my hunger. This is clear, not tamed by magic or freshly consumed flesh. This will never be tamed, never be lessened. This isn’t a hunger.

It’s a wound.

DESTROY.

It’s a command. An imperative. Our head floods with flashes of burning forests, of burning houses, of burning people. Flashes of lightning splitting the earth, of seas demolishing mountains, of broken bones and yellow fat and gray organ sacs spilled, burning wood and stone, rubble. All of it rubble, the flesh-kind and not-flesh-kind. And it never stops. Never pauses. Like a million chain link of memories that aren’t mine or even Varia’s. Ruin.

This thing in us wants ruin.

But we invited it in, didn’t we? We’re going to use it, aren’t we?

It is our tool, not the other way around.

We get to our feet, the snarling and snapping of a thousand valkerax behind us, and we hold close the only thing we have left. A face. A sweet, apple-cheeked face with a mass of mousy curls, standing strong even as the images of death and ruin flash behind it.

We look over at the Bone Tree, no longer swaying in an invisible wind. It’s perfectly still. And beside it, faintly and like a ghost, is another tree. One I know but Varia doesn’t. One that I can see but Varia might not.

Like a trick of light on water, this tree wavers in the air. It’s a mirage made of glass branches, glass roots, glass leaves, moving gently in some unknowable breeze.

The Glass Tree.

TOGETHER AT LAST.

In a stunning turn of events, my body wakes up before my brain does. And my mouth wakes up before the both of them.

Old God’s great hairy shit in a bush—

Whoa. A voice, and a hand instantly trying to press me down. Whoa there, Six-Eyes. Calm down. You’re safe.

I blink, and from the offending swathe of bright light carves shadow and color. Deep ruby-red eyes, ears so long and pointed they droop a little, a mouth that always looks slightly entertained. And three new, angry red claw wounds across a nose, ripping the corner of a mouth up. No pain in my body. I’m not hurt. But he is.

Malachite! I inhale. What are you— The room’s strange, too much stone and blue velvet. I’m in a too-soft bed. Where are we?

Some city. We’re taking a break after all that horseshit, that’s all I know. Hold on. He lifts one finger, rummaging around in his chainmail back pocket and pulling out a hastily scrawled piece of parchment. He clears his throat excessively and reads: ‘Zera, I wrote this for you because Malachite likes to twist my words to his liking.’

Lucien. I exhale a half laugh, leaning back on my pillows. Malachite trundles on with all the emotion of a carriage wheel.

‘We’re in Breych. It’s a small Helkyrisian city just on the border.’ Malachite pauses, making his own addendum. "And is full of boring things like books. ‘Varia’s alive,’ he continues. ‘I’m sure of it. Fione and I are fine—I’ve gone to speak with the sage, and she’s conferencing with the local polymaths. We’ll be back soon with a plan. In the meantime, please rest. Yours, Lucien.’"

Is he really fine? I press, zooming my face into the parchment. Is Fione—

Don’t ask me how. Malachite grunts as he crumples up the parchment and lobs it smoothly out the thin stone-cut window. But he managed to cushion our fall with whatever scrap of magic he unbelievably had left. And by some stroke of rune-crusted luck, we ended up hitting one of Breych’s many safety nets.

Safety…nets?

He sighs. Knowing you, you won’t get it until you see it for yourself.

He stands from the chair at my bedside and heads for the window, and my perfectly healed body follows him, the holes and tears in my clothes funneling cold air onto my skin. It’s so bitterly cold—far colder than Cavanos ever gets, even in the dead of winter. The beneather motions with one long hand to the window, and I stick my head out.

"Vachi-godsdamn-ayis." I breathe a white-cloud swear.

It’s the city of towers I saw on my hike up to the Bone Tree, but real and eye level. It looked so small when I had Varia on my back, like a toy set for a child, and now it’s looming all around me, on every side. Towers. Dozens upon dozens of towers, built straight off the stone of three mountain ridges, stately and yet placed in chaotic, half-baked rows. Some towers are grand and huge, with gargoyles carved in bone-moth likenesses and steeples of gold and lapis lazuli, while others barely look sturdy at all, their wooden supports rickety and their stone sills sagging with thick beards of moss, the roofs gabled simply in green and purple tile. Between the three close ridges runs a dizzying spate of rope bridges back and forth, some wide, some thin, but all of them connecting the towers. Sunset peeks out from between two towers, catching the diamond glass of their roofs.

And between the ridges? Between the towers? Nothing at all. Darkness. Hundreds of miles of drop, an abyss, yawning all around the city. I squint—not quite right. Threaded over the shadows of the crevasse I can see tawny strands. Woven. Purposefully. Huge beams of wood jut out from beneath the towers every which way, planted all along the stone ridges and supporting an intricate web of nets that spans the whole city, like a last halo of salvation, as if a massive spider’s carefully woven a web around it. The wind whistles viciously, and I pull my head back in to avoid the shards of ice.

The people here felt the explosion, Malachite says. And the quake from the falling valkerax.

Were any of them hurt? I blurt.

He sighs. Do you two have to do that?

Do what? I blink.

Ask the same question right in the exact same spot. You’re either the same person or meant for each other.

He means Lucien. Heat tries to tickle my cheeks, but I won’t let it.

No one in Breych got hurt, he finishes wearily.

Fantastic. How long have I been out?

Seven halves.

Good! I throw my hands up. Not enough time to miss anything important. Where can I get clothes?

Here. Malachite walks over to a dresser, throwing me a drab-yet-functional mustard dress and a heavy black wolf-fur covering.

Ugh. I wince. "The colors."

Bright, clashing shit seems to be the order of the day around here. He opens his own leather covering to reveal a pink tunic with a mess of magenta ruffles. We both burst out laughing, the sound quickly swallowed up by the dour stone. The silence isn’t oppressive, but it’s there, echoing shards of reality back at us. A reality that’s changed so quickly, so brutally.

Varia’s gone. She has the Bone Tree. The valkerax.

I’m Lucien’s Heartless.

Fione is…

Malachite and I—

I hurt you, I say, reaching out to touch the edge of his face. Not the ointment-smeared wounds that must be agony but the skin still whole.

His red eyes soften, and his smirk crooks high. "You wish you managed to hurt me."

Mal—

It’s over, Zera. He cuts me off. Not hard. Easily. Gently. You made your choice. And for once, I happen to agree with it.

I step behind the wooden divider, pulling the rags of my clothes over my head. It’s not all forgiveness from Malachite. It can’t be. His wounds are too fresh for that. My betrayal up until that moment on the mountain peak is too fresh for that. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s the start of it. Better than nothing. Kinder than nothing. He’s so kind to me, even after everything.

I’m going to cry. I’m going to cry behind this godsdamned ugly divider. Ugh, no. I’m not. He wouldn’t want that. I know that.

I know him.

I’m so glad I know him.

Quiet at last. A moment, behind the ugly divider, where I can be alone after everything. Well, not all alone.

never alone.

The hunger is so faint, I have to strain to hear it. That’s a first. And possibly a last. Lucien’s trying hard to suppress it with his magic. Devoting way too much to it, probably, more than Nightsinger and Varia ever did. It doesn’t feel sustainable.

Me as his Heartless. Him as my witch. Is that sustainable? Is it even right?

What do we do after losing everything? We lost. Varia has the Bone Tree. We lost. I wasn’t supposed to lose, but I did. I was supposed to get my heart, and now…

Now I have my friends again.

And maybe, some small part of me whispers, that’s a fair trade.

Well. I step out in the mustard dress and try the coyest of smiles. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky to still be alive to complain at all.

Yeah. Malachite’s mouth twitches as he offers his arm and a dripping noble accent. My clashing lady? Shall we venture out into the city and hunt our lovable quarry down?

Verily, I agree, taking his arm with a terribly overacted haughtiness.

…

My room is a tower room, I learn, about as quickly as it takes me to descend the seemingly endless spiral staircase. But it’s not the only room by far—this entire tower is an inn of some sort, with numbered doors all along the descent and a main room at the bottom serving drinks at a small wooden bar. The farther we go down, the colder it gets. Malachite opens the door and icicles ooze off the doorway, cracking and sliding soundlessly into the banks of snow below like blades into scabbards.

It’s even colder outside! I whine. How do people live like this?

Warmly, he drawls, motioning around at the rope bridges nearby, a throng of people walking back and forth about their daily business in heavy, eye-searingly colored wool. The beneather leads me over one bridge, then another, and I’m surprised at how sturdy the structures are compared to how fragile they looked from far up. No slots open in the lacquered slats, and not a single sway in the bridge, not even when it’s full to bursting with momentum and wind.

Every step I take over a bridge slat is another step of worry. Of fear.

What do we even do now? Varia is the most powerful witch in the world, isn’t she? And then there’s us—my thief instincts muse over survival first, always. A beneather, a very smart girl with a crossbow aim, a witch, and a single Heartless. I know we have our strengths. But realism bites down on me hard—we have strengths, but none strong enough to face the Bone Tree power I felt in Varia.

She touched me even through my Weeping. Weeping, my last safety. A safety that’s supposed to be impenetrable.

I’m so lost in thought, Malachite has to suddenly jerk me to one side to avoid a townsperson. Hey, you feelin’ all right? He peers into my face.

Y-Yeah. I smile. I’m fine. Let’s keep going.

The air is so crisp and thin up here, I feel dizzy and frozen on the inside all at once. The only sources of warmth are the occasional cracked-open tower doors as we pass, roaring hearths inside. Tower chimneys puff banners of velvet smoke up into the sky, rivaled in motion only by the multitude of spinning brass crosses on the roofs.

Weather vanes, Malachite says, pointing to one fashioned in the shape of a spinning valkerax. For wind speed, direction. That sort of thing. Apparently they predict future temperatures, too.

How? I marvel.

He shrugs and says simply, Polymaths. Helkyris is crowded with them.

Hard to pick them out, I muse. When I’m so used to them wearing those hideous brown robes.

Didn’t you wear one once?

And I hated every minute of it. I smirk up at him. It’s true, though—unlike Cavanos, the polymaths in Breych don’t adhere to a strict dress code. Or any dress code at all. I can’t see a single brown thing—just color after woolen color, like flowers crowded together or overexcited butterflies.

I think I get it, I say finally as we cross a far wider bridge, this one carved with wolf heads on either end.

Took you that long, hmm? Malachite drawls.

It’s all rock and snow here. I ignore him. Gray, white, gray, and more white. What else do you do when you’re living in a monochromatic world, other than dress up to the explosively hued nines?

Malachite smirks and I go quiet, watching my boots cross the bridge, the wind whipping my hair around my neck. I put one hand on my chest. It’s so strange—I was so convinced a day ago that, if I walked up that mountain, I’d come back down human. Remembering. Whole. But my chest is still empty. Life hasn’t worked out the way I planned for, schemed for, sacrificed for.

Betrayed for.

Lucien’s my witch. My heart is missing still, but it’s never been fuller. I’ve never felt it more than this moment, swelling with something I can’t even name. Pride? Relief? Fear. All of it mixed together in a murky whirlpool, and me holding on to whatever pieces of the shipwreck that float by. Right now, it’s the idea of seeing Lucien again. My feet get quicker, my thoughts slower.

He’s my witch.

There’s a contract between us, magical and invisible, and I might still not know all the rules. I know more of them now, to be sure—more than I did three years ago when I first became Heartless. But not all of them. I don’t want to have to know all of them. I’m happy to be alive, that we’re all alive, but a nagging worm gnaws at the base of my skull—I should have my heart back. I’m meant to be human.

I want to be human.

With Varia, I wanted to be human.

What do I

Reviews for Send Me Their Souls

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book! I thought that it was an excellent conclusion to a trilogy that I really enjoyed. I get excited about a lot of books but every once in a while, I get my hands on a book that I just cannot wait to read and it gets moved to the top of the pile. This was one of those books. Once I had it loaded on my reader, I couldn't help but to start reading it and once I started there was no stopping. This is the third book in the Bring Me Their Hearts Trilogy which really needs to be read in order since the book picks up right where the previous one ended. Zera is still Heartless and now her heart is held by a new witch. This witch happens to be the man she loves, Prince Lucien. Zera, along with Lucien, Malachite, and Fione are all determined not only to stop Varia from destroying the world with her control of the Bone Tree but to save her while doing so. They face a lot of really big obstacles in this story but I loved seeing their resolve and I think that they worked really well as a team.The relationship between Zera and Lucien has been developing throughout the trilogy. I really do like them as a couple and felt like not only do they have fantastic chemistry but that their personalities fit together really well. Things definitely progress in this book beyond simple flirtation into a full relationship. I think that the friendships between all of the members of the group grew a lot over the course of the story and I found it touching how much they would each be willing to risk for each other. I thought that the overall mission in this story was very well done. There is plenty of excitement in this story that kept me glued to the pages. I loved the way that the story was able to keep me guessing and there were plenty of completely unexpected developments to keep things very interesting. I thought that the series came to a very satisfying conclusion and the epilogue was phenomenal. Can I just say how much I love a well-done epilogue? Well, this epilogue blew me away.I would highly recommend this trilogy to others. I thought that this was a very well done story that captivated my attention from beginning to end. I definitely plan to read more of Sara Wolf's work in the future.I received a digital review copy of this book from Entangled: Teen via NetGalley.