The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski
NIRRIM
IF YOU WISH TO RULE alone, you must destroy her.
Maybe, however, the tree’s fortune was intended to show that I was not meant to rule alone, but beside someone.
Or that I am not meant to rule at all.
The silence rings like that after a thunderclap. I look down at Sid as she sleeps, and I miss her. I miss who I was with her. I retrieve the dagger from the floor and place it beside her, near her right hand. Straightening, I brush my hands over my hair, to smooth it, and wipe my wet cheeks. I am not strong enough to carry her to the Herrani, but I am strong enough to surrender.
Many of my people are dead. I have driven away my friends. The person dearest to me is lost. My message to the world does not matter anymore, or at least I no longer believe I am fit to carry it.
Let the Herrani do with me what they will. I have done much to deserve it, and although I know that compassion exists, that mercy is real, I cannot imagine anyone would feel that for me.
For the last time, I touch Sid’s hand. I do it in the way she told me her people do, with three fingers on the back of someone’s hand, as a way to ask forgiveness.
Sid’s eyes open. They are entirely black, as black as a void, the blackness spread fully across what would be the whites of her eyes. My breath snags in my throat, and I don’t know if I should be elated or afraid, if she has been cured of her sleep or if this is a worsening of her condition, if she has returned to me cursed to be my enemy. Then she blinks. The blackness shrinks to the center of her eyes. She sees me and smiles, cozying into the bed as though roused from a blissful nap. “You know,” she says, “I thought being a hero meant I would be rewarded with a kiss.”
Stunned, I repeat, “A hero?”
“Frankly, I think I am owed much more, but I will settle for a kiss for now.”
“Oh?” I say caustically, suspecting some trick or game. Sid is full of them. “Is sleeping for a month newly recognized as an act of heroism?”
She yawns. “This bed is cold. Come lie down next to me.”
“There is a war outside!”
“Sounds quiet enough for now. We will go settle everything in just a minute. I don’t suppose you have any of that nice, hot Dacran drink I left behind in the house on the hill?”
Even without my heart, I’m infuriated by her. Even without my heart, I love her. “I nearly killed you!”
She lifts her hand to brush hair from my face. “But you didn’t,” she says gently.
I step away so her hand falls. “I have done terrible things,” I choke out. “I cannot forgive myself.”
Serious now, Sid tips her chin in acknowledgment. She opens her left hand, and although I see nothing there, the energy in the air changes, and I feel as if I am held in her hand. “This is yours,” she says. “I won it from the god of thieves. I think it is not something you can be forced to take, but I brought it back for you to have if you want it.”
“Are you saying you have my heart?”
“Yes,” she says, a little smugly. “I am.”
“How?”
“I went to the realm of the gods and made them give it to me.”
“We agreed. We agreed about the bragging.”
With her right hand, Sid lifts one finger, tocking it back and forth in a kind of scold. “It is not bragging if it is true.”
I stare at her left palm, and although there is nothing there, I believe her. I want my heart back … yet I do not. I am afraid of what I will feel. Afraid of who I will be. I have gotten used to the hollowness inside me. But as Sid looks up at me, expression somber now, I know that she does not deserve to be with someone less than whole. “You saved me.”
“And I would do it again. Be with me, and let me do it forever.”
I touch her left palm and seem to see a flutter of pink smoke.
“Will you accept my gift?” Sid says.
I kiss her, sinking down beside her, mouth hungry for something only she can give.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”