23

BETRAYAL
LIKE DEATH

I know what this cold, salted darkness is now. The ocean.

In my dream it’s all around me, pressing down hard on every inch of my skin. In dreams I don’t breathe, but even so, I know it’ll be fine if I try. The water breathes for me, passing through slits in my neck I’ve made with magic.

Magic.

I look down, down into the murky darkness all around me, to see white beneath me. White fur, white scales, glowing softly against the depths of the ocean. I’m riding a valkerax. No—not me. A girl with wooden fingers is riding a valkerax.

Varia.

I’m in her mind again, the two of us connected by the blood promise and the Bone Tree and my dream.

Far and away in the water other spots of white scales glow, a rainbow tint valiantly radiating out from their manes against the crushing black. Hundreds of them. Hundreds of glowing white spots in the water, all churning in one direction. The current is strong, and sometimes the valkerax have to change course against its furor, but the goal remains the same. All of them, swimming toward something at once.

I—we—look over into the abyssal darkness, the flicker of rainbow light catching the visage of a massive fanged fish half as large as the valkerax. It scatters quickly, knowing danger when it sees it. Or perhaps it doesn’t see at all—the other lifeforms at the bottom of the ocean seem to have milky white eyes, much the same as the valkerax. Darkness doesn’t beget vision, but that doesn’t mean the ocean creatures don’t sense the incoming valkerax horde. A sawshark flees too late, caught up in the carelessly violent jaws of a passing valkerax. Black blood clouds in the black water. The skeleton ruins of old ships flicker past—wood and metal and a pearly material Varia recognizes as Old Vetrisian but I don’t. Massive crabs as big as bears sit on the ships, picking off fish and swinging claws menacingly to no avail—the valkerax slither past and swallow them whole as easily as blinking.

Varia and I both know the valkerax are comfortable, down here. Darkness is their home, depth is their home. The bottom of the ocean is perhaps the only place on Arathess anywhere close in scope and feel to the Dark Below. The water rushes past our face, past our ears, but our hearing is drowned out at all times by the Bone Tree’s hunger.

DESTROY. DESTROY. DESTROY.

anything, my hunger joins in. everything.

Ruination. That’s all it wants, and it screams that into Varia’s mind without ceasing, without a single second of rest. Her own thoughts and feelings are submerged in unrelenting pain and anger and lust for carnage, the same as mine. Louder, maybe, and more insistent. But the same intent.

Except I have the Weeping. I have a witch and organs to temper my hunger.

She has nothing.

She’s alone.

She bears the brunt of everything, alone.

But that was her plan all along. She thinks that, she knows that. To bear the worst of it, so others wouldn’t have to. So the girl she loves wouldn’t have to. So she can change the world for that girl, to make it safe for her.

The girl—what’s her name? Ruin? Destruction? No, she has a real name, and I can feel Varia’s mind start to claw out frantically for it, combing through the Bone Tree’s bloodlust, struggling to hold on to even a scrap of reality, of memory, of self. Her name. Her name, her—

Fione, I think, loud and intentionally and clear.

And just like that, we split. The dream-me peels out of Varia, and I can see myself floating beside her in the dark water, floating along with her speed as if I’m invisibly tethered to her, as if I’m one of the valkerax surging toward destruction, too. I can see the princess properly now that I’m outside of her—her long black hair streaming behind her in the water, the slits on her throat like gills on a fish. Her eyes are bloodshot, her gold skin bruised, and not just by the umber of the dark water. Great green-gray bruises have started to bloom on every inch of her body, as if she’s rotting from the inside. Is that the Bone Tree eating her magic? I think my voice—or Fione’s name—gives her a moment of clarity, because she looks up and right at me. Lucidly.

“You,” she speaks, her mouth moving but only bubbles coming out. Her black eyes go wild, furious, and I hear her voice more in my head. “You made the Trees touch in Windonhigh. They touched because they felt you.”

I’m quiet. She’s not.

“You’re trying to stop me.” Her voice is far deader than deadpan. Lifeless, even as her eyes burn. “If you make them touch, it will go away.”

She keeps one hand knit in the valkerax’s mane, but the other hand rises to her throat, to the bone choker strangling her. The Bone Tree, wrapped tight around her neck.

She traces it lightly, as if making sure it’s still there. “You’re trying to take it from me. So I’m coming for you.”

“All right,” I say patiently. Patience is what she needs, now most of all. She’s not herself. She doesn’t even remember what herself was like before the Bone Tree. But I’ll wait, patiently, and remember for her.

For Fione.

For Lucien.

For the girl who knows what it’s like to make a mistake you can’t take back.

“I’ve…I’ve killed them all.” Varia glances down at her hand. She means Helkyris. Cavanos. Everyone the valkerax meet. “I’m going to kill them all.”

“I know,” I say. She clenches her fist inward, nails biting. Blood in the water.

“They have to die,” Varia snarls. “All of them.”

“Is that you talking?” I ask softly. “Or the Bone Tree around your neck?”

Her wooden fingers move up again to the choker of valkerax fangs ringing her neck. Wringing. Her weapon. Her advantage. Her leash.

“The Varia I know had a plan,” I say. “And it wasn’t wanton carnage like this. She was going to carve the wood of the world, not throw it all in the fire.”

Her black eyes go wide, deep pools in the deep ocean, and she recovers, bristling.

“You are under my command—you will not speak! You will kill! You will kill them like I want you to!”

Something in me buckles, my unheart spasming. My blood thrums hot in my ears, every sensation suddenly very real and not dreamy in the slightest. She’s making me feel. I suffer everything intensely, no longer dream-detached, my body growing heavy and my mind becoming aware of my eyes, six of them opening on my cheeks—

“Varia, stop,” I plead. “Stop!”

Her fingers twist out at me, a cruel, delighted smile on her face. But it’s not her smile. It’s older than her, somehow. It’s lined with so much more pain than a mortal could experience—hundreds of aching years, not two decades. I watch in horror as the bruises on her body start to throb, expanding in their discoloration even farther up her neck, her chest, her wrists and arms, as if they’re…consuming her. A bruise on her scalp moves to her eye, shriveling the white of it instantly, her socket bleeding bright and the shriveled eye hanging loose and useless, a mirror of her brother’s.

“You will destroy,” she rumbles. “For us. You will hurt them, as they have hurt us.”

This isn’t her. It’s the Bone Tree. I can hear it in her voice, her words. That’s not a witch, or a d’Malvane, or even a person. It’s a hunger. It’s something beyond life and death, beyond magic and machine and mortals. Something bigger and older and wounded. Lonely.

I just know.

I just…understand. Like Muro said, it’s that feeling. That feeling of wrongness I sensed first in my dreams. A feeling that isn’t mine, but is so sure of itself anyway. It’s that feeling I felt in my dreams sent to me by the Tree of Souls, according to Muro. It wells up now, aching.

“Are you…lonely?” I manage through my squeezing throat, through the hunger’s sudden urge to rip and tear and consume.

Varia’s eyes go wide again—her withered one bleeding profusely with each inch the lid moves up. A trail of red blood banners behind her, curling around her stream of black hair. I swallow hard and fight to hold on to my thoughts—with how strong the urge to destroy is, I don’t think I can Weep, but the principal of sinking into myself helps keep my mind above water. Or below it, in this case.

“You sound lonely,” I press. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re alone.”

Two rosaries, two trees, and the feeling that if I didn’t put them together again, something terrible would happen. That wrongness. The Tree covered in stained glass, and the aching feeling of loneliness it exuded just before all the shards stood on end to stab me. It’s the same. Varia’s face now—no, the Bone Tree’s face—it’s the same loneliness.

And the same stabbing.

I’m sure of it.

I understand now.

“One of them!” Varia snarls in her unvoice. “You’re one of them. You want to hurt us again! Split us again!”

“No,” I try. “No, I promise, I don’t—”

“EMPTY!” the Bone Tree screams, bubbles streaming out of her mouth and her working black eye darting madly around in its socket, wildly, like a berserk animal in a panic, as if it’s trying to escape its lid, driven to the final edge by fear. “EMPTY! PROMISES!”

The force of her scream feels like it’s tearing me apart, tearing my skin off my body as the valkerax ascend rapidly, hurtling up through the water, the pressure becoming less but the burning becoming more, and the explosion of water as they surface, and right before us is an island.

An island of volcanic black rock.

I jolt awake so hard, my brain feels like it ricochets in my skull, my gasp so loud it sounds more like tearing cloth than breathing.

“Zera!” Lucien’s voice faintly rings through my panic, close. “What’s wrong?”

I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on him. Six eyes. I freeze. Varia made me transform. Not just in the dream. But in reality, too.

I’m not in control.

And she’s here.

“We have to go!” I shriek. “Now!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Malachite hefts off the wall. “Go where? What’s going on?”

Fione moves like a cat, collapsing at my side with a hurried hiss. “Did you dream with her again?”

I nod, hair sticking to my cold-sweat forehead. “She’s here. Hundreds of them. We have to go. You have to—you have to tie me up. Knock me out. Something. Hurry!”

Yorl stands, hurrying over to me. “Is it Varia?”

I nod. “I can see her in my dreams. Through the Bone Tree. Look at my eyes—she did this. Not me. Her. She can…I can feel her. Inside me.”

“Shit,” Malachite hisses, lightly punching the wall next to him. “Shit, shit, shit! I told you!”

“Now’s not the time, Mal,” Lucien says, voice eerily calm.

“He’s right.” Fione looks at Yorl. “We need a sedative for her.”

“It’s not gonna be strong…enough,” I manage. “She’s… Together she and the Tree are so strong.” My eyes flicker to Lucien. “You have to command me.”

His onyx gaze hardens in an instant. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Luc.” I wince as a deep pain clenches around my unheart. “She’s trying to. You have to combat it, or—”

“I promised you.” His face burns golden, every determined ridge hot as the sun. “I made a promise. I may have your heart, but I’ll never have your free will, Zera. That’s yours, and yours alone.”

“Well, she’ll kill us, then!” Malachite snarls. But Lucien doesn’t budge an inch. He means it, down to the last syllable. Even if it means I hurt him, he won’t command me. And in some sick, twisted way, I feel tears of happiness prick at my eyes.

He won’t strip me of my freedom like the others.

He’s not like them.

you’re not one of us, the hunger sneers at me. you never were. a traitor to the very end.

Fione is a clear voice of reason through the haze. “Either way, we need to tell the polymaths the valkerax are—”

From outside the shuttered window, the cold call of a bell starts to reverberate. Just one, and then two, and then ten, and then the island erupts with frantic warning rings and frenzied shouts. Malachite throws the window open, peering out and then back in, his face even more paper-white and grim.

“Too late.”

My throat feels like it’s in my mouth, Lucien’s hand squeezing mine barely legible through my mounting panic. I thought I had it under control. I thought I was free of her, of everyone, free to make my own choices, but now she’s reaching me—

“Zera, look at me,” Lucien says, gently capturing my face with his palms. “It’ll be all right. I can put you under.”

“But—” I look out the window. “You need me. You need me to fight. You need me to help you escape—ah!”

A lance of white-hot agony rips through my chest, up to my teeth. All my Heartless teeth sprout in an instant, longer than I’ve ever felt them, and far sharper. So deadly sharp, my lips bleeding as I clench them shut, refusing to bite, refusing to give myself the slightest opportunity. It’s not just human teeth—I can feel rows of teeth behind those teeth, spiraling all the way down and into my throat.

Like valkerax.

She’s changing me. Calling out to the blood promise in me. She’s forcing me to obey, like every other valkerax must obey her, obey the Bone Tree.

you betrayed them, and now you betray us.

“A sedative it is, then,” Yorl says after a single glance at my mouth. He whirls to a bag on the wall, rummaging in it before coming up with a vial of blue liquid. “This is enough to keep you under for a quarter-half. He doesn’t have to command you, but if he can slide a magic suggestion that you sleep—” The celeon looks up at Lucien, and they nod at each other. “There’s a good chance not even the Bone Tree would be able to wake you.”

I let out a strangled cry-laugh through my gritted teeth. It’s a sweet attempt at putting my fears to rest, and I want to trust it. I want to trust him, and Lucien, but I’ve felt the Bone Tree. It’s doing unimaginable things to me—things it’s not supposed to be able to.

“Sleep? It’s feeding off Varia,” I pant. “Getting stronger. Don’t—don’t put me to sleep. She’ll see me again, control me. The dreams…dreams are how they talk—”

“How who talks?” Malachite frowns.

“If we put you under strongly enough, you won’t dream,” Fione assures me.

“But—”

“Hush,” Lucien murmurs into my hair, lips pressed to my head in a kiss. “You’ve done your part. Rest now.”

Yorl holds the vial to my chapped lips, and I can’t think. My teeth are so many, my claws growing strange and white and long. I have to down it. It’s this or rampage as a valkerax, with the valkerax. It’s this or hurt the people in this room, maybe.

And I promised I’d never do that again.

I promised I’d never lose control and hurt someone again.

you were meant to hurt, the hunger laughs gleefully. you were born to hurt others.

The fourteen graves, bells and ribbon swaying in the mountaintop breeze—

I gulp greedily and a wave of magic slides through me, the warmth of the sedative harmonizing with it to weave a deep, dark, utterly inescapable slumber. The panic still buzzes to the last—they need me. They need me to fight with them. They’re mortal. I’m not. I’m going to be nothing but dead weight, unable to help like I want to, like I have to. I’m the only one who can survive if I die. I’m the only one who can protect them, protect him, Lucien—

“Lucien,” I whisper. His blurry smile beams down at me, golden and soft, his murmur slowed and drawn-out by the looming sleep.

“Let us protect you, this time.”

The sedative is strong—of course it’s strong. It’s Yorl’s. The magic, too, is strong.

Of course it is; it’s Lucien’s.

Their attempts to put me under are so strong. But the Bone Tree is strong, too. Varia is weaker, but the Tree has only grown. It flutters my eyes open in momentary bursts, sound and light and sensation coming through. Someone carrying me in their arms—the smell of honey. Lucien. The swhick sounds of Fione’s crossbow cane firing heavy bolts, Malachite’s ferocious battle cries, and the air-shredding bellows of valkerax in return. The sound of stone crumbling, the feel of wet droplets on my face, half of them salted sweat and the other half metallic blood.

There’s a terrifying moment when my six eyes open fully and I see a copper giant—a matronic—swinging massive fists into the scaled serpent body of a valkerax. A silver robe is perched inside each matronic, a polymath sitting inside it and maneuvering it like a suit of armor a dozen times their size. That’s why, my human brain chimes. That’s why the Black Archives made them—not to bring them up to bookshelves, but to fight.

The valkerax try to bite down on the copper titans, to rip and tear like they would flesh, but the matronic is metal, harder, and my own new teeth chatter with the urge to bite, to help, to destroy.

DESTROY.

DESTROY IT ALL.

Above me, I hear Lucien shout something, but my mind’s battle between sleep and wakefulness is too chaotic. I can’t understand. I can’t understand any of it—why me? Why me, of all people? Why am I the valkerax-Heartless?

Why, Trees? Why give your lonely dream to me?

Why am I the wolf at the end of the world, and not someone else?

someone braver, someone better, the hunger slithers. Lucien, Fione, Malachite—any of them would’ve been better.

why are they friends with you?

Why are they friends with me?

Why am I still asking this when I know the answer?

I have to trust them. They’re friends with me because I’m worth it. Because, despite all the flaming horseshit I’ve put them through, I’m worth it to them. I’m worth it, period.

My friends chose me because they believe in me.

The Trees, maybe, chose me because they believe in me.

I can’t give in. Even as the Bone Tree beckons me to battle, keens for me to pick up my claws and tear the one holding me apart, to tear this whole world apart, I fight it.

DESTROY. DESTROY. DESTROY.

Fight it. Fight with everything in you. Fight by the light of the moon, of the sun, whatever faint light you can find.

I battle the urge to destroy with every memory I’ve gathered—Fione’s apple-cheeked smile, her gentle hands. Malachite’s smirk, ruffling my hair. Lucien kissing me, the hollow of my throat, the way he breathes when he holds me—all the memories stand like soldiers, like the soldiers once gathered outside Vetris’s walls, like the eclipseguard gathered in Windonhigh, like the valkerax gathered in the Dark Below obeying eternally the Bone Tree, like Crav and Peligli and I in Nightsinger’s forest, waiting to fight for her. To die for her. Over and over again.

Love. Not-Love.

TOGETHER, the Bone Tree’s demands go soft, for just one moment. together.

It wants to be together. Of course it does. Everybody wants to be together with the one they love. Fione wants to be with Varia. I want to be with Lucien, with all my friends. Malachite wants to be with us. Crav and Peligli want to be with me.

The Bone Tree wants to be with the Glass Tree, again.

Because it’s lonely out there, isn’t it? It’s a lonely world if you aren’t together. And the Trees have been lonely for a thousand years.

I’m sorry, I think. I’m so sorry you’re alone.

And then it lets me go.

For just one second, the magic and the sedative come roaring back against the Bone Tree’s suddenly weaker grip, and the darkness of sleep consumes me in one fell swallow.

I see it all.

In that one moment of the Bone Tree’s vulnerability, I see it all, like looking into a deep, clear, still pond. I see the Bone Tree, its roots tangling back into the roots of a bigger tree, so much bigger and standing alone. I see the Glass Tree in the distance, roots tangling into the same tree, the same massive tree, and the roots of that tree spiral outward, like millions of hairs connected to each and every one of us on Arathess—every human, every witch, every celeon, every beneather, every frog, every bird, every leaf, every berry. Everything. Everyone.

Not alone.

Muro stands under the great tree, smiling.

The great tree, connecting us all. Pulling us back in when it’s our time, and growing us back out, over and over again.

The Tree of Souls.

No one is ever really gone.

Muro reaches his paw out, six eyes smiling brighter. And above him, the Tree of Souls with two gaping wounds in its trunk, bleeding black. And like a conversation, like an embrace, I know it’s the source of everything. The destruction. The anger. The hunger. Yearning, wounded, alone. He was right. Muro was right. He’s there, waiting for me, and he’s right. I’ve felt both Trees’ pain. They’re alone. All alone, and hurting.

I know what I have to do. Because I know what it’s like to be alone.

I understand now.

I have to put the Trees back together.