22

BLOOD
AND
PROMISES

There’s always this strange unspoken opinion that floats around Cavanosian society, and it’s that one’s first time changes a girl. That lying with a loved one in the carnal sense is transformative, somehow. I wish I could report that this was accurate, but alas—it barely changed me at all. It really just made me more, well, me.

“Is it hard to eat?” Malachite drawls at dinner, a fish-and-rice affair of the Black Archives’ mess hall. “With a permanent shit-eating grin on your face?”

I grin even wider and bat my eyelashes at him across the table. “I wouldn’t know.”

Malachite rolls his eyes and looks at Lucien. “You’ve created a monster.”

“I can hardly claim to take credit.” Lucien smiles contentedly into his water glass. “When she’s worked so hard on it herself.”

His black-glass eyes catch mine over the candlelight, knowing and full of himself and I can’t stand it one second more and neither can he, apparently, because we both stand and dump our trays with some muttered excuse to Malachite. The halls that were buzzing an hour ago are now empty, everyone at dinner, but an unfortunate (or should I say fortunate?) silver-robed polymath rounds the corner and catches Lucien pressing me against the wall. Nothing lewd, of course. Just simple kisses. All over my body.

I watch the polymath round the hall corner, then murmur breathlessly down at Lucien, who’s currently thoroughly engaged with my collarbone.

“We could—we could find a room, you know. A broom closet, even.”

He rumbles his assent against my skin. “Forgive me my impatience.”

“Forgiven,” I tease, pulling him by the hand. “But not forgotten.”

There’s a giddy urgency to it all this time. And the next. And the next after that. The novels in Nightsinger’s library never spoke of the intricacies of it—the way you learn someone’s body, freckle by freckle and line by line and scent by scent. They never spoke of how different and yet the same people are in their love, in their wants and needs and lusts. The novels never warned me of the sheer glow, the incredible feeling of an empty mind and a full heart.

We’ve been forbidden to each other for so long that being together feels like a dream. We relish in each and every moment, and a day passes like this, wrapped in kissing and holding and just lying, just being with each other. Someone will find us if they need us, but we try so hard to pretend the world doesn’t exist for just this short time. And it works. He knows exactly how to touch me, and where, and when, and part of me faintly realizes that’s probably his handy little skinreading ability. Used for good this time. Oh so good.

But reality always finds a way in. It needles at first, piercing tiny holes in our joy through our conversations afterward—me tracing the gorgeous planes of his stomach and listening to him worry. About Vetris, about Varia, about the war, about everything.

And then, it punctures with an arrow.

I’m brushing the dark hair off his neck, kissing a line down his spine when I reach for his hand. The unmoving one. I miss, but my eyes are on his back, so it’s understandable. I flounder around for his hand again, feeling for it everywhere, but it’s not there. My fingers follow the line of his arm, his elbow, knowing it will lead me to his hand. Because it has to.

Except it doesn’t.

I feel down to his wrist, but that’s it. There’s nothing after that. Just air. I recoil at the smooth stub, the lack of fingers and palm and—and anything. I thought he—I thought it was there! It was, wasn’t it? It didn’t work, but it was there…

“Y-You—” I stammer. Lucien straightens instantly on the cot, his expression taut as he looks up at me. With one dark eye. The other socket is empty, perfectly smooth just like the stub where his hand should be. Not wound-smooth, not scar-tissue smooth. Just…smooth. Like the skin’s been unnaturally sanded down to an inhumanly perfect flatness.

“Godsdamnit,” Lucien breathes softly. He tilts his head to shade his missing eye with his bangs, cradling his missing hand with his other. “I didn’t want you to see this.”

“I thought they—they just stopped working.” My voice cracks. “But have you been hiding this? The whole time?” I swallow nails. “Were they always gone?”

The prince won’t look at me, his one eye thin and entirely focused on the far wall.

“Lucien, please,” I beg, reaching for his other hand and bringing it to my unheart. “Please talk to me.”

He swallows too, our throats mirror images, mirror-bruised with the ghosts of lingering kisses, of our love, and he nods slowly.

“Yes. I did the magic. Overdid it. And they just…disappeared. But I knew if you saw that, you’d never tolerate me using magic again.”

“You hid it,” I finish for him. He nods again, a flinch to it this time.

“Illusion spells are difficult. But they’re much easier if you’re filling in the natural gaps of appearance, rather than altering it to something completely different.” He pauses. “It doesn’t take much magical effort, is what I’m saying. So don’t worry.”

“I’m not,” I blurt, and his wounded look turns into a sardonic one for a moment. “Okay. So maybe I am worrying. But gracefully, and with a shit ton of poise.”

“Varia did the same thing,” he continues. “Before she went missing all those years ago, she used a spell to kill her guards and make it look like a Heartless attack. But it was beyond her skill at the time. We found only a few parts: her leg, two index fingers. But when I met her again, she was missing far more fingers. No doubt they’d been—”

“Eaten,” I repeat, pressing down the rising panic. Lucien nods, the sunrise coming through the little window painting his profile in rainbow translucence.

“I felt it. When I met the High Witches. They willingly offer their bodies to be consumed by the Glass Tree. To power it. But if any witch attempts to use a spell beyond their control at the time, the Tree will consume them, too.”

“As punishment?” I ask.

“No.” He shakes his head. “The feeling I got when I used the spells was more like…repayment. Like I owed the Glass Tree something for reaching too far. Like my reaching hurt it, and so it took from me to stem the wound. It felt as if it was making some kind of exact equilibrium.”

“But the Tree of Souls gives you your magic, right?” I say. “Not the Glass Tree. The Glass Tree is only for Heartless. So why would the Glass Tree consume you?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps when the Tree of Souls was split, the Glass Tree became the arbiter of the magic flow on Arathess. Or maybe it’s simply how magic works; I don’t know. I’m not the one translating the book with all the potential answers right now.”

There’s a soft quiet. And then I reach my breaking point.

“You won’t do this again,” I say. “You won’t use magic you get consumed for.”

Lucien doesn’t say anything, and that sets my unheart on fire even more.

“Right?” I press. “Right?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Zera.” He sighs. “You chose to use your Heartlessness to fight her. I choose to use my magic. All of my magic, if it comes to that.”

Every inch of my skin feels as if it shrivels at once. “No. No, not all of it. You can’t. I’m not going to lose you.”

His dark eye seems so distant as he moves to stare out the window. He suddenly feels a million miles away, like a mirage through a heavy fog I can’t navigate.

“I’ve realized, lately, that you may have to.”

“But—” I leap up. “All our plans! You’re going to change Vetris, right? Cavanos? We’re going to rebuild together what it means to lead your country. I said I’d help you. I want to help you.” I scrabble for his other hand, but it feels cold as I press it to my cheek. “I can’t help you with it if you…if you aren’t here anymore.”

He finally looks down at me, his smile wan. “I know. I want to be here, after it’s over. You know I do. I want to be here with you. But she’s my sister, Zera. Family. Perhaps the only family I have left. I can’t let her destroy herself like this, not for one second more. If it comes to it, I’ll use all of myself to save her.”

“It won’t come to that.” I stick my chin out.

His laugh is gentle, sad in the sunrise. “You’re so stubborn.”

I crawl onto the cot again, shivering. There’s a moment where I’m afraid to approach him. Afraid to get closer, only to lose him.

he will leave you, like everyone else.

I squeeze my eyes shut and force my body to move, to curl up on his lap and hold him down, hold him here with my weight, with my everything. My murmur is small, unsure, fractured. “So are you, Your Highness.”

I say it because I want him to kiss me. And he knows. I feel a gentle hand lifting my chin, and the short, salt-scented curtain of his hair envelops my face, his lips on mine like a goodbye and the sunrise bathing both of us in its weak, fragile pearl light and I make a decision like a hammer stroke, then and there.

It won’t come to that.

That night isn’t an easy one. Even with Lucien at my side, I can’t sleep at all. I slip out of bed, careful not to wake him. He needs all the rest he can get for the…everything. Everything ahead of us. The fight. The fall. And the rise, after.

The halls of the Black Archives are patrolled by the matronics at night, but the smaller halls where they can’t fit have night watch polymaths, their silver robes softly illuminated by the handheld white mercury lamps they carry. Word of newcomers carries fast in an enclave dedicated to knowledge, and they all nod at me as I pass—well aware of who I am, of what I am. It’s almost strange, to be treated like nothing special. Like a non-threat, when Vetris treated me as everything but. Breych, this place. Only recently have I learned Arathess is much bigger than its hate for Heartless.

The cool stone floor feels good on my bare feet, and the windows display the midnight ocean like a proudly sparkling black jewel. Bit by bit, I can feel my body settling even as my mind buzzes—Varia’s out there still. The stars in the sky look less beautiful and more like spears pointed dead at all the world.

Dead.

All of them.

All of them, if we don’t do something.

Windonhigh, Helkyris. Other continents. Everyone else is too busy protecting their own. But our own is us—one another. Fione, Malachite, Lucien, and me. Yorl. Varia, too. She’s one of us, no matter what she’s done. She’s in over her head. She needs us.

All of us, protecting one another in our own ways.

If the world won’t fight, we will.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a flash of ochre tail rounding a corridor. But…the only celeon I’ve seen here is Yorl. And that color, it’s definitely his. But why is he up? Shouldn’t he be where we left him—studying the book with Fione? Is he resting, maybe?

“Yorl!” I call out, trotting after him. “Wait up!”

I round the corner he disappeared behind, but there’s nothing. No one, as far as I can see down it. I do a pivot, catching another flash of ochre to the right.

“Hey, Yorl!” I shout. “Seriously, slow down!”

My words echo hollowly about the stone, but I lunge around the corner this time, determined to catch up with him. My burst of speed is cut short as the right hall widens into a massive, polished balcony of volcanic glass. It overlooks the ocean, the long stretch of it disappearing at the moonless horizon: pitch-black on pitch-black, streaked with silver starlight.

Except in the very center is a tall streak of yellow fur with vermillion patches. Yorl. No—not him. Too tall to be him. Too bent-backed. Whiskers too droopy with age, tail silvered on the very end like an old man going white. Dewclaws too long and hard to be young.

The celeon turns and smiles at me, voice a rumbling purr.

“Ah. Zera. We meet at last.”

Green eyes, a broad muzzle, the same coloring. It has to be Yorl. But it’s not. It’s more like an elderly version of him. It might just be the starlight, or the reflection of the white mercury lamps off the black-glass balcony, but I swear the celeon’s outline shivers like water. Like hot gas. Like he’s not all…real. He seems to follow my thoughts and looks down at his own body, then back up at me with a wry, white-whisker smile.

“I see you’ve noticed my curious state. You’re the first one—the first mortal to notice me at all. And that’s a comfort, in its own way.”

“Who—” I stop myself. “There’s no way! Are you Yorl’s—”

“Where are my manners?” He cuts in smoothly. “I am Muro Farspear-Ashwalker.” He motions with his paw to the balcony railing. “Please. Join me.”

“You’re supposed to be—”

“Dead?” He laughs with all his yellowed fangs. “Yes. But then again, so are you, are you not?”

Muro—or the ghost of him, I can’t decide—turns to face me head on, the shimmering near obscuring him. But it can’t obscure his face, every clear whisker and bristle and old scar between the fur. It can’t obscure the way his emerald green eyes replicate twice down his face, and then twice again, three eyes on either side of his long, proud, lionlike nose.

Six eyes.

My brain spins, but he just laughs softly. “We seem to have the same ailment.”

He looks like me when I turn into the monster. When I Weep to control it. Six eyes. But that’s like…a valkerax. Did he…

“You…” I gulp, stepping closer to see him better. “Wait, how did you get a—” I stop, mulling over the strangeness. “Blood promise?”

Muro’s smile is more approving than Yorl’s. “A blood promise. Correct.”

“How?”

“The same way you did: I befriended a valkerax. Not as effectively as you did, I’ll admit. You, it seems, were much more skilled at it. You could simply talk! I, on the other hand, had to spend years in the Dark Below watching, baiting, cajoling, getting bitten.”

“Hey!” I protest. “I got bit, too.”

Muro’s laugh is louder this time, so loud it scares a frog from a nearby tree.

“That you did. Many times. And terribly.”

My mind churns. How does he know that?

“I’ve been watching,” he admits. “Not you, though you are very interesting. Yorl. I’ve been watching over him. I saw it all—his journey to replicate my research, the way he helped Varia and worked with you and that valkerax.”

“Wait, you were watching us that whole time?” I swallow. “Are you…dead? Yorl said you were. And if you’ve drank a blood promise, then—”

“Yes,” he agrees, but his expression never changes from its mildly pleased state. “I died an old man, when Yorl was young. My age finally caught me in some sickness. But I’d held on to the blood promise my valkerax friend gave me all those years ago, during my research. And in the name of polymathematics, and with little life left, I took it.”

Muro motions down to his finely silvered fur. “It wasn’t a blood promise given under sanity, so it wasn’t as effective as yours. But it was effective enough.”

I frown. “You’re worse than Yorl! Haven’t either of you ever heard of the expression curiosity killed the cat?”

At this, Muro’s laughter echoed. “That it does. Quite literally. He takes after me so fiercely, the silly thing.”

Muro. This is Muro Farspear-Ashwalker, the brightest celeon polymath to ever live. Or die. Lucien’s parents called on him years ago to try to heal Varia’s habitual nightmares of the Bone Tree. His research helped make the white mercury blades during the Sunless War. He was the one who brought the Hymn of the Forest to Gavik’s attention, an act that kickstarted Gavik’s vendetta against Varia, trying so hard to kill her before she could get the Bone Tree and destroy the kingdom.

With a cold chill in my spine, I realize she succeeded in that one.

And Muro knew. He knew she was chosen by the Bone Tree. He knew about valkerax, more about them than anyone. I walk up to the balcony tentatively, my frame dwarfed by Muro’s sheer height. Even old, he’s tall as sin. Was. I still can’t decide if this is some sleepwalking dream of mine or not, but the way Muro’s outline shivers each time he blinks makes me think it has to be.

“Is this…a dream?” I ask.

The celeon thinks hard on this, and then holds his paw up lightly. “I’m not sure. Perhaps, and perhaps not. I know very little and can explain even less. Time is a fickle thing, in my state.”

“How can I see you, if you’re dead?” I blurt.

“Because of our blood promise—we are connected. A blood promise is a conversation, forever. Surely Yorl told you that. The Tree of Souls connects us all, and the valkerax understand this best.”

I wrinkle my nose. “I can see who Yorl got the ‘talk frustratingly cryptically’ trait from.”

“Indeed.” Muro chuckles, tail thrashing. “He’s a good boy, and a strong one. Even stronger now, in no small part because of meeting you. I thank you for that.”

“I didn’t—”

“Please,” he interrupts kindly. “Spare me the modesty. I’ve seen enough of it from you for a lifetime. Or a deathtime.”

I knit my lips, and it twists into a smile. “Okay. You got me.”

“For a while, yes,” he agrees mysteriously. We watch the sea together for a second, and then, “Do you know what a soul is, Zera?”

“Uh.” I glance at him. “You? Shimmery, kind of here, kind of not?”

“Possibly. I’m not sure what a soul is, myself. Here in Arathess, we talk of the ‘afterlife,’ but rarely do we speak of what part of us goes there. Is it our bodies? Our minds? Or something else? Our feelings, our essence, our memories, a great mishmash of our lived experiences—it could be any of these, or all of them.”

The ocean laps below us, the sound soothing against his cryptic words.

“I may not know what a soul is, Zera, but I may be able to tell you where they are. In humans, their soul resides in their heart. In valkerax, it is in the blood—the marrow that makes blood.”

“Their…bones,” I say slowly. “The marrow in the bones?”

He nods. “It’s why the Bone Tree is made of their bones, and why the Glass Tree must have a sliver of itself touching a human heart for it to create Heartless. They are Trees made to control two different creatures, and the only way that is done is by the soul.”

I blink, reeling. “How do you know all that?”

“When you look past all the labyrinthine twists and turns here”—Muro smiles—“there’s really much to be learned on the other side.”

I don’t get it. I don’t get it, but he smells like Yorl—copper and sun-warmed fur—and that’s the only clue this might not actually be a dream.

“The Tree of Souls,” Muro starts patiently, “is a special creature. It is alive, as you or I. Well, you.” He smirks. “Regardless, it is a creature. It, too, has a soul. And it gave that to us, at the very beginning of Arathess. It gives that to us every day—but only some of us are able to grasp it, hold on to that great gift.”

He tilts his maned face over to me, six eyes gleaming. “I’m speaking, of course, of witches. Of magic.”

“Magic,” I breathe. “Are you saying—magic is the Tree of Souls’…soul?”

He chuckles. “Perhaps I went too quickly in too short a time. You’ll understand for yourself, someday, when you join me here. But you’ve already taken the first steps to understanding, haven’t you?”

I knit my brows at him, confused.

“The dreams,” he clarifies. “Of the Tree.”

“I mean, sure. I’ve had a dream about the Trees. The two tree rosaries,” I say slowly. “But I haven’t had any grand, spontaneous moment of understanding, nothing like you’re talking about—”

“Truly? No feeling of sureness in you? No strange feeling that seems like it comes from outside of you, but one that is so sure of itself regardless?”

I freeze, then mutter, “That feeling of wrongness, like if I didn’t put the trees together—”

“—something terrible would happen,” he finishes for me, leaving a beat for digestion. “The Trees communicate through dreams. The Glass Tree speaks to witches. The Bone Tree spoke to Varia in her dreams. But when you arrived in Vetris, it was neither the Bone Tree nor the Glass Tree that spoke to you. It was their mother, and their true self. The origin. The Tree of Souls spoke to you.”

I remember every dream-moment painfully—the tree covered in stained glass crying out in pain, in loneliness, turning the glass on me when I got too close. That was the Tree of Souls? The origin of all magic on Arathess? The tree Fione and Lucien looked so wary talking about on the ship?

“Why me?” I instantly demand. Muro’s chuckle is despairing this time.

“I cannot do much more than guess—it may have known. The Tree of Souls is connected to us all, and perhaps it knew what you would become.”

“Beautiful?” I try. “Smart? Stylish?”

“It knew you would be touched by both the Glass Tree and the Bone Tree.”

“So is Varia,” I argue. He nods.

“True. But she is only witch. You are Heartless and valkerax, all at once. She has felt the Bone Tree’s pain but not the Glass Tree’s. She has not felt the pain of both the Trees as you have. You have felt the Tree of Souls’ pain as no one else in the world has.”

I watch him tilt his muzzle up to look at the stars, and he shimmers so violently, the ochre of his body almost entirely melts into the black.

“Ah. Time is so fickle.” He pivots to me, that eternal smile in place. “I will see you again, Zera, someday.”

“Wait—” I reach out for him, but my hand passes through him like air, my fingers making the shimmer worse. “There are a million things I want to—”

“Tell Yorl I am proud of him, would you?” he interrupts, soft and yet determined.

I catch his emerald eyes, all six of them gentle, and I nod. “I will.”

And then I blink, and he’s gone. No increments, no fragments. Just there and then gone. But somehow, as I trace my steps back to the cool bed and Lucien’s arms, I know he’s not really gone at all. It’s the blood in me, the promise in me. It’s a feeling. A knowing.

I know I’ll see him again.

I’m tempted to write off Muro’s appearance as a dream. Wipe it away clean as a passing fancy, as my mind trying to explain everything to me neatly, wrapped up in a bow. As a convenient dream. I want to forget, and snuggle deeper into Lucien’s embrace in the morning. But Muro’s words linger, insisting realness into my blood, staring back at me as my dusty feet from walking the halls late at night.

It’s a feeling, deep in my unheart. My soul.

I just…understand it was real.

Lucien tries to ask me about it, but I have no words for it, offering him my wrist limply. He holds it, and the air thickens with the hum of magic as he skinreads me. He can see what I’ve seen easily—it’s only thought-reading that’s truly difficult, or so he’s said. And I trust him. I trust him enough to let him see, now, and he frowns.

“Who was that? It looked like—”

“Yorl?” I offer. “Yeah. I think it was Muro, his grandfather. Like, his ghost or something. Or his…soul. Is that even possible? With magic?”

Lucien looks as lost as I feel. “Perhaps. I know so little, compared to any other witchblood my age. But why would he appear to you now?”

“I don’t think he chose to.” I frown. “It just…happened. He said I could see him because of our blood promise.”

“Well then.” The prince nods. “That’s Yorl’s territory, isn’t it?”

My murky thoughts carry over into the morning meal in the mess hall. The polymaths are poring over some shoddy pieces of paper, all of them strangely identical in their black ink letters. A “printing,” I hear one of them call it, though I have no idea what that means. As far as I can gather, it carries news, because the polymaths won’t stop whispering among themselves.

“Helkyris has fallen—”

“Naturally. If their western armada falls, Helkyris falls. That’s a given—”

“If the armada succumbed to the flying valkerax, then Avel’s spear-runners have no chance.”

“The Mist Continent is done for. The valkerax will move on to the Star Continent next, no doubt—it’s the closest.”

“Where are the beneathers at a time like this? Surely they’re not sitting on their thumbs in the Dark Below letting all this happen—”

“With the political anarchy they have no one to rendezvous with above—not Cavanos, not Helkyris. It takes more time than you’d think to deploy their forces up from the Dark Below, and their ancestral bureaucracy ensures a mired response to say the least—”

At our table, Malachite throws a very effective glare at the polymaths. They shut their mouths near instantly at his dangerous eyes, going back to their porridge and hushed discussions of whatever experiments they’re working on.

“I hate it here,” the beneather scoffs. “All this sun, and nasty sand. This whole place is basically one big barn for people who wanna act like they know everything.” He looks at me and shoves a scabbard across the table. “Here. I got a polymath to put it together.”

I quirk a brow up at him, the hilt so familiar, the grooves of it—

“You didn’t,” I breathe, pulling the blade out. Father’s blade, or the replica of it, the handle still the original but the blade remade by Lucien. Mal got the pieces I’d been carrying around for so long put back together. My heart swells at the feeling of it in my palm.

“I did.” Malachite grunts. “No mushy thanks needed.”

I immediately jump up from the table and pull him into a hug across it. “Thank you! Malachite, thank you so much.”

“What did I just say?” the beneather squawks awkwardly, freeing himself from my grip and sitting back down with the biggest flush on his cheeks. “No fuckin’ thanks. Just use it to defend Luc. That’s all I ask.”

I throw a smile at Lucien, and then back at Mal. “Understood.”

“When is Fione gonna be done, anyway?” The beneather tries to quickly change the subject. “I keep checking on ’em, but they just tell me to stop bothering them.”

“We should check on them together, then,” Lucien agrees. “Knowing Fione, she’s probably conveniently forgotten to eat or sleep this entire time.”

“Yorl’s the exact same,” I sigh. I slip one last liver in my mouth and stand, picking up the clay jar of honey tea on the table. “Right. Operation Rescue the Bookworms, begins!”

Malachite makes a facetious salute and heads the charge, Lucien walking beside me. His hand is back, and his eye, and while I’m numbed by the illusion of normalcy, knowing he’s using magic to make them seem there churns my guts. He doesn’t want Malachite to know, for anyone to know but me. And I can keep a secret—I’m just not sure I want to.

I watch the beneather’s broad chainmail back walking ahead of me. Malachite’s devoted his whole life to protecting Lucien. He’s tortured people, killed people for him. He deserves to know about Lucien’s state more than anyone. Malachite, of all people, would unite with me if I told him Lucien’s self-sacrificing strategy. I’d feel better having someone on my side, someone other than me guard-dogging Lucien’s willingness to throw himself away for his sister.

If Lucien dies, what will Malachite do?

What will any of us do?

I don’t want to think about it. I can’t. It yawns like an open valkerax mouth, thousands of teeth and all of them promising mind-bending pain. Not right now. I raise my head and grip the warm clay jar for any shred of comfort as I walk.

Thankfully, Malachite is much better at navigating tight, dark corridors than we are. He leads us to the same door we left Yorl and Fione in yesterday, and knocks his pale knuckles against the wood. The sounds echoes, and we wait anxiously for one beat, two, before the door creaks open. One periwinkle-blue eye peers out from the dimness inside, the skin around it ashen. Fione.

“Oh,” she croaks, voice hoarse. “It’s you.”

“Pardon the insult, Your Grace,” I push into the room before she can shut us out. “But you look like shit. How about some warm tea?”

I take one step forward, my shoes crinkling paper. It’s so dim, but I squint to see the floor entirely covered in parchment—some crumpled, some flat, layered on top of each other like thousands of nonsense-scribbled cream leaves. They’ve closed the shutters, blocking out the daytime light so that a single white mercury lamp on the table is the only thing struggling to illuminate the room. And the table—Yorl’s bent over it, yellow mane peeking out from behind towering piles of books and scrolls, the sunny color the one bright thing in the pale-washed room.

His ears are drooping, tail not so much as twitching—a clear sign he’s tired. I bite my tongue to stop from bombarding him with the fact I saw his beloved grandfather roaming around last night. Not now. Not when he looks so haggard.

“Gods,” Lucien breathes into his sleeve. “It smells terrible in here.”

“Acid-wash,” Fione blinks, gratefully gulping the bowl of tea I pour her. “To remove the lacquer decomp on the book’s untreated pages. We couldn’t see the letters through the stains.” She looks at Lucien. “The phrases you gave me on the ship helped immensely, by the way. Thank you.”

“Anytime.” The prince tries a smile. “Zera’s right, though. You look exhausted.”

“Almost done,” she insists with as few words as possible and shoves the bowl back at me before walking to the table and sitting down again. She looks over at Yorl. “The four-point remedy?”

“Close,” he says back, voice even rougher than usual. “Need a second adjudicator on the sentence structure.” I pour another bowl of tea and offer it over his shoulder, but he waves it off. “No. Can’t risk the papers getting wet.”

“Oh, c’mon. One little drop won’t hurt ’em,” I insist. “But one drop could do wonders for you, Sir Large Brain.”

He glares up at me with emerald slits, then down at my boots. Those are Muro’s eyes, through and through. No wonder everyone can tell he’s Farspear-Ashwalker by just looking at him.

“Move. You’re standing on Willem dal-Braal’s verb-transfer theorem.”

“Well, Willem dal-Braal will have to wait for a bit, then, won’t he?” I shove the tea bowl under his broad nose. “Go on. The price for me moving is three sips.”

Yorl’s glower is far worse than any valkerax’s. His ears lay flat as he snatches the bowl with his claws and barely puts his muzzle to it.

“Big sips, mind you,” I singsong.

He makes a snarl and chugs, shoving the empty bowl back at me. “Begone, you irritating mother hen.”

“He’s proud of you, you know.”

His eyes snap up to mine, confusion there for just a moment before he realizes who I must mean. His grandfather. Message sent, Muro.

I smile cheerily and hop off the parchment. Yorl unfreezes and shakes his head, deciding I’m talking nonsense again. He leans over in his seat to scoop the paper up, comparing it to the book page under his paw and muttering quietly to himself. I shoot an exasperated eye roll at Lucien, and he smiles with the bare corner of his lips back at me.

“So what’s our time estimate for some answers? Because I’m pretty done with this place.” Malachite sits at the only other open chair at the study table, managing to prop his boots on the paper-strewn surface for just a half second before Fione instantly raps her cane against his shoes and he lowers his feet back down.

“You can’t rush this process,” the archduchess says wearily, and it’s then I notice both her and Yorl’s voices are more even than I’d like. Even in a way that shows no enthusiasm. At first I chalked it up to them being exhausted, but the lack of a single inflection in their tone starts to worry me. Yorl looks like he’s far along in the book, almost done with it. The fact they got so far in such a huge book in only two days is mind-blowing. Then again, they are the two smartest mortals I know.

But that means it’s almost over.

The ultimatum is almost here.

The hairs on my arm stand up straight, hot with nerves. Whatever they’ve found thus far probably hasn’t been good news—or they’d be way more chipper. Fione especially. I send her a meaningful asking glance, but she won’t meet my eyes. Another bad sign.

“You’re in here, you know.” Yorl looks at me and waves his paw at the green-bound book.

“Little old me?” I blink.

“At the end of the world, there will be empty-stomached wolves,” he recites. “Didn’t Evlorasin say your name was Starving Wolf?”

“The High Witches said something like that, too,” Malachite grunts. “When they questioned her.”

“‘Questioned.’” I make air quotes. “It was more like one of your torture interrogations.”

“You don’t even know what those are like,” Malachite drawls, and then adds, “yet. There’s still time.”

“This all certainly feels like the end of the world,” Lucien murmurs. “Helkyris has fallen. Cavanos is…” His voice catches, but he straightens. “Avel will be next. And then the rest of the world after that.”

“Someone will stop it,” Malachite assures him.

“And that someone is us,” Fione asserts, exhausted voice unfurling a little stronger.

“Surely the beneathers are mobilizing.” Yorl looks at Malachite, and he nods, long white ears bobbing.

“Definitely.”

“But they’re mobilizing to kill the valkerax,” I interrupt. “Not the source. Not the Bone Tree. They’re gonna throw themselves at everything but the root of the problem.”

“Literally.” Lucien makes a pallid grin.

“Literally,” Fione brushes past the joke and agrees. “Because as far as we’ve found from the book, our best bet is something called the First Root.”

“What is it?” I ask.

She motions to Yorl. “He’s finding out, right now.”

“Then we wait.” Lucien moves to me, taking my hand in his and stroking his thumb over mine. There are moments when two people share a look, and then there are the times when everyone in the room shares a look, and it ripples through us now. Red eyes, periwinkle eyes, green eyes, black eyes, and my pale gray-blue ones. An unspoken hope, passing among all of us.

Malachite settles against a far wall, chin down in his armored collar, the same pose I always saw him with in Vetris: his intimidating waiting pose. Fione sits across from Yorl sipping more tea, her bowl ever so slightly shaking as her fingers do. Nervous. How could she not be? The fate of her beloved depends on this last bit. The fate of the world, maybe, depends on it.

Lucien and I sink against the wall, sitting with each other and against each other, our hands intertwined tightly. It’s so quiet, so dim, a moment suspended in time. I wonder if the history books will talk about this someday. If we succeed, if we destroy the Bone Tree or the Glass Tree or both and change the world, will the books talk about this still, gray moment—the moment before everything changed? No. They’ll talk about everything else—the battles, the struggles, the deaths, the rise and fall of kingdoms. But not this. This will be lost to history.

This belongs only to the five of us.

Somewhere along the way as we wait and worry and wait, my head falls on Lucien’s broad shoulder, and, exhausted by thought, the embrace of sleep pulls me under.