“Hmm.” I hum idly. “Are you sure? I’m very useful, you know. Immortal at all times, unaging at all times. I can’t promise I’ll be quiet or polite at all times, but I can give it a good try.”
I near the old sage man, all his creases and crinkles watching me.
“Heartless?” he asks, his voice low and croaky with pipe smoke.
“Just one of many.” I smile at him and curtsy. “Pleasure.”
“You’ve been through enough—” Lucien doesn’t let me get away. He strides after me, rounding the table and cutting off my circuit. “For this damnable thing. I’ll put it back right now.”
I see his fingertips blacken, golden twilight turning to deep night.
It’s here. Finally, after so long. He’s going to—
if you lose us, how will you protect him?
My eager thoughts snap-freeze.
without us, you have only your sword. we keep you from true death. If you lose us, you are weaker. weak enough someone may kill him before your very eyes.
Weakness. I’ve felt weak for so long, for three years, but feelings are rarely reality. The witchfire in Vetris where he almost died, the night of the Hunt where he was very nearly murdered by Archduke Gavik. If I wasn’t immortal—I couldn’t have helped him. He would have died. And now, with Varia on the loose, leading a thousand-thousand valkerax into battle against the world—death is never far off. For anyone. Him most of all.
if you lose us, you might lose him.
I know he’ll try to stop her; I can see it in his eyes. I saw it the moment I walked in—sadness, yes, but tempered by a horrifically strong will. He has a plan.
If I’m human, I can’t protect him.
you could run. take it and run.
I could.
you won’t.
I won’t. Not anymore.
Not when I’ve found him again.
He holds out the bag so innocently, so convinced of his own conviction. Of course I want it. I betrayed him for it. I lied for it. I sided with Varia for it. His fingers deepen with night, determined to give me what he thinks is what I want.
What I thought I wanted.
I know better now. Varia taught me better. Wherever she is, I’m faintly thankful to her for the trials, the errors, the pain. The realization.
“It’s never been my heart,” I say.
The darkness on his fingers stops growing, his face going still, and his black eyes confused. “What do you mean?”
I laugh and round the table past him, coming back to where I started next to Malachite. “It was never my heart I wanted. What I wanted, always, was to feel human again.”
“Then…” He starts forward. “Here.”
“It took me a while to learn. It’s a hard thing to learn.”
“Zera, please, just—”
“That little beating thing in your hand, Your Highness,” I interrupt him, “doesn’t make someone human. It makes their chest a little heavier, their body a little louder. It gives them a drumbeat to march to, a compass to navigate by when the sun goes down. But it’s not the thing that makes one human.”
His fist holding my heart wilts, his brows knitting. “Then…what does?”
My smile breaks in two. I know what I have to do now. No—I’ve always known, since that night at the Hunt, when my body reacted before I did. Something in me has always known.
“What makes us human is a feeling,” I start. “A feeling I get when I’m with you.”
Lucien’s eyes widen and then catch fire.
“If,” the old sage man croaks, “I may interject.”
Grateful for the spotlight off me, wanting Lucien’s burning eyes off me, I wave my hand at him. “Please.”
“There are a great many polymaths here in Breych. They study night and day the secrets of life, of nature, of the sky and the void beyond it.”
“And?” Lucien impatiently leads. Our proper prince, interrupting his elders? Since when?
“Recently, a very interesting theory has been put forth by Miralin’s sect, hypothesizing that some kind of energy is given off upon death. Mercurial energy, kinetic energy, heat energy—they aren’t quite sure what it is. But it seems to be there, for all species, across all ages. Perhaps—” He pauses, looking up at me. “Perhaps this is what you would call the ‘soul.’ Perhaps that is what makes us human. No…” He glances at Malachite thoughtfully and corrects himself. “Perhaps this is what makes us exist, here, in this moment on Arathess, feeling and thinking both sweet and terrible things.”
For a moment, nobody speaks. It’s a big thing, too big to shoulder. We share it all, in this room, the weight of it near-crushing on its own and only manageable together in silence. Until Malachite gives off a snort—the pleased kind. Lucien won’t stop staring at me. And I at him.
“Forgive me.” The sage taps his cane on the ground. “In my old age, I’ve become the rambling sort. Let us adjourn the meeting for now, Your Highness. We can resume in the morning when you’ve had rest.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lucien says, never once looking away from my face. “Until then, the way guide you.”
“And you as well.” The old sage nods with a wry grin.
Time behaves badly, again and again. Lucien’s steps over to me are so slow, so stretched out, and then the heat of his hand on mine is fast and all at once, and I’m walking, no—running, both of us running out the door and the tower’s main room and past the snow and ice and onto an empty bridge where no one walks, no one looks, and then warmth, all of it. Warmth blazing against the freezing cold, on one side of my face, around my waist, against my chest and lips.
Him. A kiss, a clasp, fire burning in my mouth and in my stomach and in my face and he’s everywhere and I want him to be everywhere. The hunger evaporates in the heat, there one moment and gone the next, not even ash left.
Ah, some faint part of my disconnected brain thinks, so a kiss can be like this. Not like the world ending. But like the world beginning, too.
It has to end. Everything has to end sometime, and time stops behaving badly when I least want it to—cold air lashing my skin as we pull apart.
“Every day.” He cups my face in his hands, his gloves doing nothing to stop the warmth radiating from his palms. “Every day you weren’t at my side dragged on like slow torture.”
“I’m sorry.” I laugh. “It was my duty, wasn’t it? To keep you entertained. And I vanished on you.”