Find Me Their Bones (Bring Me Their Hearts, #2)

by Sara Wolf

“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.”

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.”

“As in ‘what in Kavar’s bloody eye socket are you planning to do with that thing?’”

“You came to Vetris for your heart.” Varia breathes raggedly. “All Heartless want their hearts. But you’re not all Heartless, are you, Zera? In the clearing, I saw the way my brother looked at you. And I saw how you looked at him, too.”

“Make sure not to get eaten before then,” I call to Yorl. “Make sure not to eat anyone before then,” he deadpans back.

how courageous can a mouse be, when it faces a wolf tearing mice apart? The hunger sneers. and yet there you stand, foolishly, still thinking a mouse and a wolf could ever be friends…

“New Gods’ tit,” I wipe my eyes and mutter, the crowd all looking the same. “It shouldn’t be this easy to lose someone that tall.” “And yet you continually surprise us all by managing it somehow.”

I’m sure of only two things in my unlife: that I have royally fucked up (pun intended, thank you very much) and that Lucien deserves someone far better than me.

It did wonders for my pride and nothing for my back.

“I’m Elizera Y’shennria. Zera for short,” I interrupt. “But celeon usually call me a pain in the tail tuft.”

“Hi,” I try into the shadows. “Me again. Are you still up?” “You could talk to an ancient wyrm with a little more respect,” Yorl hisses from across the chamber. “And you can kiss my very well-developed arse,”

walk out and stare at the abandoned picnic blanket, disheveled but still beautiful, and I do what any sane undead thrall about to go on trial for their unlife would do. I pick up the half-empty wine bottle and chug

This is what silence means—to live only for the next moment.

don’t want him to die. I don’t want him to forget me. That thought burns hotter in me than the witchfire burns on me. For all my insistence he move on, he hate me, I don’t want him to. I want him to be with me, for us to be together. I don’t want to lose him, even though I know I must, and it’s tearing me apart.

killing yourself for him, to the very end.

“Great. Well, that officially makes you the smarter one, which means I’m the pretty one. Um. Not that your giant fangs and claws aren’t pretty. Because they are.” I swear from the other side of the arena, I hear Yorl smack his paw to his forehead.

was wrong. I know, shocking. Me, of all people on the two gods’ green Arathess, wrong? But I am—it

He parts from me first, his dark eyes piercing down at me. “I will not kiss you a third time, Lady Zera, without you kissing me back. My pride will not allow it.”

“We need it alive!” I hiss up ahead to the beneather. Malachite’s chuckle is like his old self, before he knew of my betrayal—golden and cheeky. “And I clearly need a raise. But here we are.” “Mal—” “If you think a few neck stabs will kill it, then I’m the spiritsdamn Emperor of Pendron.” He sighs. “I’m aware killing Varia’s pet would be the best way to book myself a caravan ticket back to Pala Amna and away from Lucien. So relax.”

“So what do I do?” I ask. “Stand there and look tasty?”

“As if I’d let you take all the glory.” I roll over to see Malachite sitting up, brushing the gravel off his chainmail. He…protected me?

I run to Malachite’s side, but he just ruffles my hair with his unbloody hand, laughing breathlessly. “You did it. You actually did it, you little whelp!”

The next time we meet will be a happier reunion.’”

“The last thing I want is for him to lose family over me. For him to lose anything over me.” “You know,” Malachite says after a beat, “I’m actually inclined to believe you—you, the greatest con man Vetris has ever seen—this one time.” “That’s a very impressive-sounding title for only having put on a few dresses and talking about potatoes,” I grumble. This ekes a laugh from him.

Malachite laughs again, the most I’ve heard from him since the reveal of my betrayal. “Love isn’t fair at all, ever.” “You’ve hurt people to protect him,” I press. “Killed people to protect him.” Malachite nods. “Then you know what it’s like,” I say. “What if someone who’d never killed wanted to love you? Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats? Someone who doesn’t know what it means to make a mistake they can never take back?” I breathe in, looking up at the stars. “Lucien deserves someone who doesn’t know these things. Someone like him. Innocent.”

War only means something because death does. Death only means something because life does. Life—that tenuous, bright thing that humans take for granted. Each moment, a possibility. Each day, a new beginning. All of that, stopped only by death.

“He can be very prickly,” I say. “And stubborn. And he’s convinced—” I laugh. “He’s convinced he’s the only one who can save anyone. Maybe that’s why we got along at all in the first place—him with his savior complex and me with my martyr complex.”

Religion has killed her. And still, she loved it.

“Yes,” Yorl drawls. “You are certainly the rarest imported resource here.”

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.

“I am Zera Y’shennria—the Starving Wolf,” I whisper. “And this is never-goodbye.”

I start forward, and Lucien barks, “Trust me, Zera. Please.” “You have a life to live,” I spit. “That life is not worth living.” His voice is hard. “If it’s not with you.”

The Prince of Cavanos, the thief Whisper, the boy I fell in love with on the night of the Hunt, the witch named the Black Rose—all of them come together as I watch his shoulders, his heaving back. He lets out a jagged roar to shame even the witchfire’s noise, and the flames leap back to life, stronger than ever, dancing with newfound vigor and radiating an unholy black light.