The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

NIRRIM

HOW COULD SID LEAVE? WHY?

The hollow space inside my chest no longer feels like freedom: a light, floating emptiness that gives me a sense of calm and purpose. Instead, it trembles like glass about to shatter. I don’t understand. Sid returned to Ethin. She said she couldn’t bear to be away from me. That selfish mother of hers lured her away. That father made her feel unworthy, like she could never measure up to his history. But Sid fought her way free of her parents’ lies, hadn’t she, and came home to me, penitent and loving? She saw me arrayed in glory. My beauty. My strength. How my people adore me.

I shout for my guards. Someone must know where Sid had gone. She could not simply vanish. And when I find her, I will make her pay for this insult, for this loneliness washing through me, this hurt to be abandoned twice by the same person.

I slam the book from the library flat open on the floor and whistle for my bird. “Find them,” I tell the Elysium, pointing at the drawn portraits of the king and queen of Herran. Then I reach for pen and paper. Using my new knowledge of the Herrani language, I write a message—no matter if it is in disordered grammar, my word choice limited to the small number of Herrani words I found in the book. The message I write will be clear enough. I roll the scrap of paper tight and tie it to the bird’s leg.

If the king and queen of Herran do not surrender their kingdom to me, I will send them the dismembered head and hands of their only child.