“Pure magic goes straight for the heart, and once there, it nestles deep where nothing can touch it. But people and magic aren’t compatible. So the body rejects the magic and will do anything to get it out.”
“Out? How?”
She shrugged. “I’ve seen plenty of people tear out their own heart.”
“So with the corpse here, you thought—” Toran shuddered.
She glanced at the body and nodded. “Magic resides in the heart. It seemed like a safe bet to detach it.”
His eyes found the discarded human heart. Once a life force, it had turned into a conduit. And now it was nothing more than something for the earth to swallow.
Nes’s words echoed in his head.Magic resides in the heart.His throat bobbed. The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. “You’ve done this before. Torn out hearts.”
She stared at him. “Yes” was all she said before she turned back to the corpse.
He’d heard the screams and the moans at night from the room he rented on the third floor of the Siren’s Hair. Sometimes only a pillow pulled tight over his ears was enough to block them. He’d assumed they were the calls of pleasure seekers or drunkards. Now he wondered how many had come from the dying and how many were the cries of a person being ravaged by magic.
He looked to Nes—remembered her silent scream in the ocean. “What would you do,” he started, fingers tight around the hilt of his sword, “if you were the Witch?”
Nes didn’t look up from the body. Didn’t turn to face him as one word fell from her lips, as if it had slipped beyond her reach. “Hide.”
“What?” It was not what he’d expected her to say. Fight. That was what he’d expected. Maybe run.
Her shoulders lifted up and down as she drew a deep breath. She turned to him. “If I were the Witch,” she said, “I would hide.”
Hide. He couldn’t understand it. This was the girl who hadn’t backed down when locked in a prison. The girl who’d shoved him into a brawlhouse pit. Who’d gotten in that rowboat, head high, despite her bone-quaking fear.
Nes was the girl who made him feel things he hadn’t thought possible after Loriana’s death. The girl who made him both remember and forget his past.
And the girl who’d just shoved her fist through a corpse’s chest cavity.
He searched her face, eyes darting to her most prominent freckles. But there was no deceit there. And he knew—somehow, he knew—she was telling the truth.
“Why?”
She shrugged, her mouth cocking to the side. “The whole country wants to kill me. Why wouldn’t I want to stay alive?”
“And only hiding would guarantee your safety.”
“There’s no guarantee,” she said. She crouched beside the body, dirty fingers smoothing puckered skin. “Safety is relative.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, everyone feels safe in different ways. Safety could mean hiding away in a tower or hiding behind the walls of a legacy you despise. It could mean fighting. Swinging a sword against people you thought were your allies for the sake of another.” Nes’s fingers stopped moving. She met his gaze. “Or safety could mean being in the arms of someone you love, someone who loves you. There might not be real, physical protection there, but you could still feel safe in their embrace. Because the threats of the world fade away when they’re there.”
He knew what she meant. He’d wanted to be that person for Loriana. But she hadn’t needed him in that way. Perhaps Nes did.
When he didn’t respond, she turned back to the body. “Come look at this. Bring the lantern.”
He crouched beside her and held the lantern over the corpse.
A scrap of skin was folded over its back, showing the pink, squishy underside of the flesh. He gagged at the sight. Nes pressed the skin back into place, covering the hole. Lines, steady and black and nearly invisible on the backdrop of the man’s skin, were etched over where his heart had been. Lines that, when put together, Toran recognized.
“It’s like the symbol,” he breathed. “The one from the Drowning Square.”
Nes nodded. “I could smell it.”
“This symbol had magic?”
