1 Heart Eater
HEART EATER
Esme laid down on the archway curving over the entrance to Amaris’s finest prison, aptly named Muhnir’s Hole.
The black stone torture chamber was a beast crouched at the southernmost tip of the city, waiting to maul prisoners like a wolf.
Its grounds had been scorched after a recent escape plot.
The masterminds decided to try and burn down a stone prison.
A wreath of heads now decorated the archway Esme lounged on.
She was lucky not to have a sensitive nose.
It was later than late. Her mark, a prison guard with sticky fingers, was supposed to leave his post an hour ago.
Where in Ojalla’s name was he? The Bond scratched at her throat like a starving cat, and if she didn’t kill it soon, it’d drive her insane.
The air was thick, seasoned with Magic, and stung when she breathed.
Esme pulled a book out from her midnight-blue cloak to distract herself.
Just as Princess Pemia was beginning to believe Marcus, her bodyguard and her father’s assassin and her sister’s betrothed, could really be The One, a whiskey-warped voice tore her from her swoon.
“Oh, you’re feisty!”
Esme slapped her book shut and prowled to the edge of the archway.
A guard stumbled out of the entrance, encouragement and hollering from his friends following him as a night lady pulled him away.
Brined air blew his hair into his mouth, and he spat it out between the mouthfuls of wine she forced down his throat.
Esme followed them close, slithering through trees and buildings as the poor bastards tripped through Amaris’s spiral streets, bricks jutting out jagged as knives.
They looked half-confused about where they even were, but Esme couldn’t judge.
She’d once spun these circles for three days after a night out.
Then again, if it took this fuck three days to make it back to his house, Esme was going to rip her hair out.
The night lady propped her drunk on the pole of a street lantern and sighed.
Yellow light spilled over his extremely ordinary features: broken nose, thin lips, scar on his face.
Esme smirked. Ojalla loved her indeed. The man’s name was Nathan Harrel, and the necklace he’d stolen from Queen Isobel Asterou a week earlier—a black glass bauble on a chain—sat against the sickly pallor of his skin.
Isobel had thrown a royal tantrum when it had disappeared from her jewelry box, and Turiel threw a tantrum because she threw a tantrum, and now Esme was splashing around in shit and piss.
The night lady took out a cigar and lit it with her striker.
Dim light glowed like a halo around her dyed red hair.
Esme’s stomach turned. There was no color more blessed than Asterou crimson, the red of a freshly split vein.
Queen Isobel had crimson hair and so did her nephew, the Lake Prince, and so had Omniel Asterou before them.
If one even hoped to approach their level of perfection, one had to dye one’s hair that sickening, bloody shade.
Esme had made a promise never to let a drop of dye touch her scalp.
Clapping stole Esme’s attention. Across the street, a man wowed a crowd with tricks. As a snake popped out of his sleeve, his assistant relieved his audience of their valuables. Ah, such was South Amaris.
The buildings slanted sideways, each one simultaneously propped against its right neighbor and crumbling under the weight of its left.
Cheap candles belched smoke from blackened lanterns.
Ashy light draped over the night lady’s bare shoulders like the finest of fur stoles.
Another working woman stopped to steal a puff of her smoke before gliding on, dodging the craters in the pocked street with a dancer’s ease.
This part of the city was known as the Foot, and it was the single most important place in the country.
The nobles waddled on uselessly in East and North Amaris, named the Hand and the Head respectively.
The middle-class folk of West Amaris, known as the Stomach, grumbled too much when faced with harsh work.
So Amaris dropped all its weight on its Foot: the processing of poisonous plants into medicines, dangerously ambitious building projects, running the underground castle kitchens, all of it.
Tonight, the Foot hobbled on. Every crumbled corner boasted a salesman in a long cloak flashing a peek of the night’s powdered offerings.
A few streets over, cheers rang out and screams just after.
Fighting pits were the city’s favorite pastime, and the southern pits were lawless. That was what made them so popular.
Esme watched the night lady who’d dragged Nathan from Muhnir’s Hole contemplate leaving him to the thieves and smugglers. Then she pursed her lips and tossed down her smoke before taking on Nathan’s weight again. Esme scoffed. That woman had a much kinder heart than she.
Neither night lady nor drunk heard Esme tailing them all the way back to the shack Nathan called home.
It took damn near an hour. Ojalla on fire, could they speed this shit up?
A candle burned in the tiny second-floor bedroom.
Nathan’s wife was home and still awake. The night lady didn’t seem to care as she unlocked Nathan’s door with one hand and lugged him in.
Esme snuck to the little window around the side of the house. The night lady stood between Nathan’s legs, fixing him with the most unimpressed look a woman had ever leveled at a man.
Esme had been there before.
One of Esme’s shadows slid under the crack of the window and silently raised it.
Esme slithered in softly and crouched in a dark corner of the kitchen hidden by a half-wall.
The whole place was a shrine to despair.
Birds’ nests were cramped in the cracks of the walls and colonies of vermin were discovering civilization in the floors.
Esme found the only sturdy surface in the whole kitchen and dropped a sack of silver talons on it.
“Sorry to cut in on such a romantic evening,” she said, stepping out of the shadows, her golden hair catching the drop of candlelight. She held her hands behind her back, standing straight and unguarded. “But I’ll be taking him off your hands.”
“You didn’t even make sure your wife was asleep?” the lady asked, tossing out her hip. She turned to Esme and fixed her with an apologetic look. “Apologies, miss. I’ll make it quick.”
“’s not m’wife!” Nathan tossed out a drunk hand. “Unless ya’d like to be.” He gave her a winning grin.
“You wish,” Esme said, rolling her eyes.
A fist of shadow ripped from the black ceiling and grabbed Nathan by the middle. He flailed uselessly, spitting and screeching. The night lady dropped to her hands and knees and scrambled around the floor like a bug. “Put me down!” he hollered.
Esme walked a wide circle around them, settling just behind their backs. “I might if you guess who I am.”
“An abominable spirit!”
“A tax collector!”
Neither of them were very good guessers.
Normally, Esme might drag out her game, but she’d been wearing this glamour for a whole day and she was tired of being small.
So, she tore open her placid throat with a silver claw.
Dark brown spilled down her skin like blood.
Black swallowed the pale blue of her eyes and blinking stars connected inside of them.
Flaccid hair cringed tighter to her head, shifting into a cloud of moon white.
New fat made parts of her swell, and muscle filled out other hollows.
Her skull clicked and cracked, fixing flat cheeks with high cheekbones and correcting a square face back to its heart shape.
Her nose shifted up, to the right, and then left again, flattening and widening on her face.
Esme thanked Ojalla when the top three buttons on her shirt grew tighter.
She always feared that one day she’d glamour her tits so flat they may never return.
Not today.
“Have a guess,” Esme invited them again.
She rolled her shoulders back, happy to be free of her oppressive glamour.
She still wore a thin one—just enough for these humans to keep their dinner.
She raised a brow at her new friends. Their pupils quivered, and the night lady screamed so high that Esme had to plug her ears.
“Viper! Heart Eater!” Nathan was shaking too hard for his words to spill out smoothly, still hanging sideways in a shadow hand.
Esme pursed her lips. Song’s breath, it was one time.
You eat one heart, and all of a sudden you’re the Heart Eater.
As for her other title, the Viper… well, she couldn’t complain about that one.
Esme was indeed dark and vicious, and the fangs in her mouth could bite deeper and kill quicker than those of any snake.
She did take offense to her meticulously maintained skin being compared to scale, but she imagined people were picturing a very well-moisturized snake when screaming at her.
“Righto.” Esme clapped and the shadow dropped Nathan on the floor, face down. Before he could scramble up, another shadow grabbed his arms and hauled him into a chair. Esme turned to the night lady. “Now, I know you were probably so, so excited to do this job, but could we have a bit of privacy?”
The night lady blinked at her trapped client for about three seconds. Then she nabbed Nathan’s wallet and bolted out the front door. Esme waved at her shrinking back and a shadow locked the door behind her.
“You can stop crying now.” Esme bent down to Nathan’s height, squinting at him now that they were close. “I just want to talk.”
“Heart Eater!” was all the poor bastard could manage. Tears blinded him, his face twisting with terror at the very image of her. He thrashed against her shadows, but each fling of his body just exhausted him until all he could manage was a slump in his chair.
“I don’t want to eat your heart, Nathan. It’s not even been marinated.”
He didn’t laugh. Boo.
Esme rolled her eyes. “Just give back what you took and we can all leave alive.”
“I didn’t steal anything!” he blubbered, sliding further down in his chair.
“Come, now. I’m not stupid,” Esme wheezed out.
The Bond that forced her to follow every rotten command uttered from the Micrean sovereign’s lips stung around her throat, inching its collar tight enough to starve her lungs.
She wiped Nathan’s tears away with her thumbs and a shudder ripped through him at the frigidity of her hands.
Despite the beating of her heart, Esme was little more than a well-oiled corpse.
She’d been born dead until her mother plunged her into a river of holy metal.
The goddess Ojalla had been the one to resurrect her as a baby, and Her Magic had kept Esme alive ever since.
It was Her blood freezing in Esme’s veins, Her saccharine tint to her breath, Her otherworldly stirring in Esme’s eyes.
The only thing Esme hadn’t inherited from Ojalla was Her patience.
Esme ripped Nathan’s shirt open and yanked the little glass bauble off his throat.
The Bond’s stinging dulled to nearly nothing.
This strange little thing was what King Turiel had thrown a fit over?
It was egg-shaped, black, and hollow. Isobel was so strange in her jewelry choices.
She had sapphires as blue as the sky, gold as bright as the sun, and this little black thing, not even the least bit shiny.
Esme rolled it over in her hand before shrugging and stuffing it in her back pocket.
Nathan blubbered so much he drooled down his chin. “I just took it from her room,” he said. “I didn’t even think it was important! I just thought it’d sell well because it was from the castle! I’m sorry!”
Esme nodded. It sure didn’t look important. But Nathan had a point. The Asterou family had its fanatics, and they’d drop Nathan’s entire yearly pay to hold something that once sullied the neck of the Queen Isobel Asterou.
“Was that so hard?” Esme asked.
Nathan shook his head.
“Exactly. Truth is easier than deceit, Nathan. You’ll be good to remember that.”
He nodded.
“Now, truthfully, I’m going to kill you.”
Nathan didn’t even get to make a sound. A shadow swept down from above and cleaved his head from his neck. Esme tried to avoid the blood, but a bit got on her boot. She cursed. Mina hated it when she tracked gore in.
“If she scolds me, I’m blaming you,” Esme told Nathan’s corpse.
If it had been up to her, Nathan would have walked out just fine.
Unfortunately, King Turiel was one for overzealous revenge.
Bring back the thing he stole from my wife and take his heart!
he’d said. She hated commands like that. Take his heart where? To dinner? Idiot.
But that had been the command, so Esme did just that.
She dropped her glamour to free her silver talons and sliced Nathan’s chest with her thumb.
Then, while wondering if Mina had left dinner out of the coldbox for her, she wriggled her hand around inside his still-warm body and ripped the still-spurting heart out whole.
“Murder’s done!” Esme yelled up the stairs behind Nathan’s body.
His wife peeked down from the floor above, eyes wide.
“Sorry for the mess,” Esme said. “Lye soap does wonders.”
The wife nodded, staring at the steaming heart that used to live in her husband’s chest. Esme smiled and turned to leave via the front door like a regular guest.
“You’re not taking the body?” Nathan’s wife asked.
“Why?”
“To eat,” she said.
Esme scoffed, but she couldn’t help the smile that curled her lips.
“Not my preferred flavor. Chop it up, bury it, grow some mushrooms.” Esme turned again. “I left the money in the kitchen.” All one hundred talons. Esme’s original offer had been seventy-five, but Nathan’s wife had driven a hard bargain for her husband’s life.
Esme escaped out the front door and took a big breath of smoky, Magic-brined air. Summer was unfolding and the nights were still nippy, but it was good to take a breath without the Bond wringing her throat. The shadows churned under her feet, flicking away a speck of blood she hadn’t noticed.
“You’re so kind,” she said with a wink, then patted her pocket to check on the necklace and turned her back on the Foot.
Thank Ojalla this was over. Now she had to find a place to put this heart.