Page 26 of Hearts Lost

I shrug. No sense in denying it now. Everyone’s born with magic, as the saying goes, and no one’s happy about it.

“I was raised with horses,” I explain. “They’re still what I’m best with, but yeah, I can sense any animal. And I was making real progress with the shadow animals too, until you woke up and knocked me on my ass. You scared the nine hells out of them, by the way.”

I glare at Aloserin, but I doubt he even notices. He’s staring at the half-eaten fruit in his hand like he’s never seen one before.

“That’s how you knew what to eat,” he says, speaking slowly.

“Yes,” I reply. “I did say that earlier.”

Aloserin turns from the fruit to me. There’s an expression on his face that I don’t entirely trust, something that makes me feel like a tool in a belt.

“What?” I snap. “You don’t have handlers in the Kingdom of the Fall?”

“We don’t have animals,” Aloserin says.

I shiver. It’s not true, of course. I’d sensed mice and cats in the palace, and chicken, goats, and sheep in the courtyard. But the absence of horses had felt like a hole in my chest, and the little songbirds that landed in the gardens were nothing more than flickers of illusions. The Kingdom of the Fall had animals, but I could tell what Aloserin was saying. It didn’t have enough.

He’s still watching me like I’m a riddle he’s trying to solve. I don’t like it. I turn back to the hypnotic swirls of the river being swallowed by the larger, darker sea.

“Why would Grathgore send a handler?” Aloserin asks. “Were you going to spy on us through animals?”

It’s an offensive question, a stupidly offensive question, but there’s something about the look on Aloserin’s face that makes me think he’s genuinely curious. That, and the strange, old-fashioned term he’d used. I’ve only ever heard my grandmother call my magic handling.

I take a bite of my own fruit and chew the dust-flavored mush in silence. The black waves beat against the stones behind me, and the blue grass on the hills that stretch out behind Aloserin sways softly to a rhythm totally out of touch with the breeze tugging at my hair. There’s an iridescent shimmer to those dark waves that dance and twist with each puff of wind; the scene is almost beautiful. Not that Aloserin would appreciate it, I think, with a bitter little twist in my chest. He seems to hate everything about this place.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I finally say, after swallowing my mouthful of fruit. “First, I can communicate with animals, I can’t control them. Second, animals don’t understand a thing we say, and most of them could care less about us or the things we do, so it’s not like they’d report anything interesting back to me. And, third, I’m not a spy.”

I glare at him to emphasize that last point. His mouth curls into a tight little grin.

“So, what are you then?” he asks. “You’ve clearly had martial training, and there’s no way Grathgore would send a mere handmaiden.”

I swallow hard. My mouth has gone dry, and nightmare images shuffle through my brain. Grathgore standing over his desk. Sliding open the drawer. Handing me the heavy, slick silver spheres, two of which are still buried inside the lining of the sleeve I’d cut off and tied around my shoulders. One of which exploded, sending me to the void with this man. And possibly killing Princess Elanerill, along with all the other members of the Royal Court of the Kingdom of the Fall who’d made the grave mistake of treating me with civility.

My hand squeezes into a fist, and my fingernails bite into my palm. My eyes sting in the strange, heavy air. I try to think of my sister, to conjure her tear-stained face in the darkness of the palace gardens, but instead, I’m remembering Elanerill. I’d like to bring you with me today, she’d said. As a sign that not everyone in the Worlds Above is a monster.

I pull a ragged breath over my lips and try to will the tears to stay hidden. Sure, not everyone in the Worlds Above is a monster. There’s my sister, for one, and my father and all the rest of my family at the ranch on the bend in the Dragonsbane River. There are the human servants; they probably aren’t monsters, at least as far as I can tell.

But me? I’m a monster.

Aloserin makes a coughing, throat-clearing sort of noise, and pebbles clatter as he shifts and comes to his feet. He’s not expecting me to answer, of course. Why would I? If I’m a spy, I’d have to be an idiot to give away my mission.

But I’m not a spy. And I’ve already told Princess Elanerill that I was sent here to kill her. I think of the white light swelling inside the teleportation hub, the strange magic that lifted me and pushed me here, and I feel strangely hollow, like a dried-out husk at the end of winter.

I did warn her. And then I killed her.

“I’m an assassin,” I say.

My voice is soft; the words sound flat. I can almost imagine I’ve sent them skidding out across the black waves, skipping like stones, sending up strange, iridescent rainbows in their wake.

Aloserin makes a noise like a twig snapping in the back of his throat, and then we’re staring at each other, him on his feet with his hand on the hilt of his sword and me sitting on the ground, a half-eaten fruit dripping tasteless juice down my fingers.

“And you’re telling me this because—” Aloserin begins. His voice trails off, drowning in the thunder of the strange, dark surf.

I shrug. “You asked.”

It’s the worst possible answer I can imagine but, after a moment of staring at me like I’m going to leap to my feet and try to murder him with a half-eaten piece of fruit, Aloserin sighs and brings his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

“Who were you supposed to assassinate?” he asks. “King Galan?”