20

The Splinter

When Varia returns from the Moonskemp, I tell her what happened with the valkerax before her maids come in. The crown princess is utterly silent for a good half. She peels off all her jewelry, placing it carefully on her armoire, before she finally speaks.

“Lucien has asked for your presence at his breakfast.”

“I’m not going,” I retort automatically.

“You misheard me, Lady Y’shennria.” She refers to me with my family name intentionally. “His Royal Highness Lucien d’Malvane has requested your presence at his breakfast.”

It’s a not-so-subtle flaunting of the royal family’s power over the other noble families. The prince is calling. And so, if I am still intent on being an Y’shennria, I must go. She calls for the maids, and they swarm in through the door. She stands from the armoire, going over to her closet and pulling out a simple peach muslin dress. She presses it to my dirt-smeared chest.

“He knows,” I say. “Malachite must have told him by now. Lucien knows I’m talking to—” I dart my eyes over to the maids. “To Evlorasin.”

“But he doesn’t know why,” Varia says coolly. She nods to the maids, and they take the cue instantly, undressing me with quick, sure fingers. I squirm out of the dirty dress, only half offended when they gently urge me into a silver tub of steaming herb-laced water in the bathroom and scrub me clean.

Varia picks up the letter from Yorl I’d left on the table, reading it as she speaks. “You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

I open my mouth, but she interrupts too quickly.

“I saw it last night. The entire noble court saw it.” She pauses, dropping the letter and instead picking up a brush. She patiently combs through her own dark hair, the strands shining like polished onyx. “I’ll give you a word of warning—he’s not who you think he is.”

The warm bathwater on my skin burns like acid. What does she mean? He’s Lucien. He’s Lucien d’Malvane, Prince of Cavanos and the Higher Reach. I dunk my head under the water, scrubbing my hair free of soap. I come up wiping water from my eyes.

“Be wary, Zera. My brother loves me,” Varia says. “And he desires you. But there is something he values more than either of us. And that is his people.”

The crown princess lets that linger, like a cut in the fabric of reality. Of course he values his people more than anything else. I’ve seen that countless times. He worked himself to exhaustion during the witchfire. I stand, gesturing for a maid to give me a towel. She obliges, and slowly I dry off and pull on the soft muslin dress, much softer than the world waiting outside.

“How much does he know?” I ask.

“Not enough,” Varia says. “And yet more than enough.”

“He’s going to get in the way, isn’t he?” I ask, the thought of Lucien standing between my heart and me tearing me apart at the edges.

“Not if we move quickly. Yorl has informed me there will be no visits today,” Varia answers. “But tomorrow, I expect your best effort. Especially considering Lucien is aware of such efforts now.”

The meaning isn’t lost on me. She’s gone from confident he wouldn’t be able to do anything about her getting the Bone Tree to wary. Something has changed, and not in our favor. Did it have to do with the valkerax’s escape maybe? Or is she finally realizing just how determined her brother has become in her years away from the court?

“You,” I start, then lose my courage. But it comes back around. “You’re going to die, aren’t you?”

Varia’s eyes flash in my direction, and I press on.

“The Bone Tree. It’s going to feed on your magic and kill you.”

Varia’s still, and then she throws her hair over her shoulder. “Yes. But I told you that at the very beginning.”

She did. The passage she recited from one of her favorite books, The Midnight Gifter. My flesh will feed its furnace. I didn’t know just how true to life those words were. But now I do, with the full, cold impact.

I watch Varia leave for her bedroom. Reality creeps in again—I have a full day of nothing ahead of me. No obligations, no visiting Evlorasin. All I want is to finish teaching the valkerax as soon as possible. To end all this anxiety and sadness as soon as possible.

I’ve waited three years. One day is nothing in comparison.

I’ve stalled for Gavik long enough—he should have decoded his own journal by now, and the details of the “Hymn of the Forest.” But if I go to find him in the city, Varia will know. I sigh. What does it matter? If she truly didn’t want us to talk, she’d command me to stay away from him. And she hasn’t.

But first, breakfast.

First, Lucien wants to talk to me. About the valkerax, no doubt.

The walk to Lucien’s apartments isn’t far from Varia’s, but he’s far closer to the king’s chambers, which means the security is tenfold here. Lucien must’ve informed them of my coming, because all of them nod as I pass, opening the doors the moment I approach.

The gilded struts of the room give it away first as a royal chamber. A generous, fluffed goose-down bed with four posters and dark blankets sits in the middle. But it’s the books that catch my eye. They dominate the room—piles of them stacked neatly on the plush carpet, careful towers of them built on the redwood tables, and little blocks formed on stately black chairs and couches. No inch of the room goes without at least a scroll or parchment or a book open on a surface. Lucien must love reading; the Midnight Gifter books were something that brought us closer two weeks ago. Varia loves those books, too. The series is so important to both of their childhoods. I spot gold-embossed versions of every book in the series on his shelf.

In front of me, situated just so that anyone walking in would see it, is a small table and a beautiful ceramic vase. Inside the vase rests a bouquet of black roses, so fresh and vibrant they look like they were picked from the bushes of Y’shennria’s manor just this morning.

“It’s my attempt at a heartfelt apology.” The voice comes from the corner, and I see Lucien stand from a desk. He’s dressed simply—a white dress shirt and black breeches, the morning sun kissing his golden skin awake. “Malachite called it corny.”

The beauty of the roses tugs at me. I reach one finger out to them, then pull back. No—I can’t accept such a gift. Not after what I’ve done to him. I look around for Malachite, but he’s nowhere to be seen. It’s just us.

“You called for me, Your Highness?” I lower my gaze as any noble might. His cheek doesn’t have any residual sign of my slap, and for that I’m glad. He pauses for a moment, and I don’t dare look up, but I know he’s surprised at my demeanor. I was furious enough to slap him last night, and yet here I am, docile as a lamb. Uncharacteristic of me, to be sure.

“I heard you saved Malachite,” he says. “At the cost of your father’s sword. I know how much it meant to you.”

The broken hilt of the sword hangs at my hip even now, heavier than even the void in my chest. He and I talked of the importance of holding on to dead family members’ swords in that tavern so many nights ago, our faces close and flushed. A sweet memory, long gone.

“It’s nothing, Your Highness,” I say. “Metal is replaceable. People are not.”

There’s a pause, as if he’s debating pushing it, but he lets it go and changes the subject swiftly.

“Did you ever find out from Gavik what the song we discussed means?” he asks.

I incline my head. “No, Your Highness. I hope to today.”

We’re quiet, and it goes unsaid; he wants to know what it means, too. Perhaps desperately. Is that what all the books around are for? Has he been trying to find information on his own?

“I’ve been studying,” he says, the sound of his boots walking closer. His body cuts the air like a hot knife again, my own hyperaware of every single movement he makes, even without being able to see him. I watch his boots stop at a nearby table piled with parchments. “And considering you know more about Heartless than I do, I wished to ask you some questions. If you would let me.”

Varia warned me very clearly about him. Is this a trap? The fact I have to doubt him, scrutinize him at all—it makes my bones ache.

“Of course, Your Highness.” I bow lower. “My knowledge is at your disposal.”

“The white mercury of the four swords that polymath made in the Sunless War,” Lucien says instantly. “And the white mercury daggers of Gavik. These weapons will sever the connection between a witch and a Heartless, correct?”

He’ll know if I lie. The books all around him—has he been reading up on this sort of thing? Is this sort of thing even recorded in Vetrisian books, or did the humans get rid of all of them? He could already know the answer and is just asking me for show. To test me—and my honesty toward him.

An honesty I’ve never given him.

Until now.

“No, Your Highness,” I say. “White mercury simply weakens all magic in the body of the afflicted. The only magic in a Heartless is the connection between them and their witch. The white mercury weakens it. It doesn’t sever it. Severing isn’t possible, unless—”

“Unless the witch shatters the Heartless’s heart themselves, yes,” Lucien finishes for me. “I know that part.”

I feel one of my brows raise. Does he? Where would he have learned that? Certainly not from any of the books in the palace library, or, dare I say, any book in Cavanos. It’s not exactly common knowledge, but neither is it a secret. Someone could’ve told him, I suppose. Someone with knowledge of how witches work.

He picks up a parchment, inspecting the blueprints there. “And a weakened connection between a witch and a Heartless lets the hunger inside you roam free. You can use that to disobey a witch’s command. Is that correct?”

My head snaps up, my eyes roaming over his languid posture as he reads the parchment in his hands. He knows much more than I ever thought possible. Has he read all this? No—there’s no way the things Reginall talked to me about, the things only he and I and the dead Weeping know, were ever written down. And even if they were, they were surely burned—if not by the witches who hate Weeping then by the humans who hate witches.

Lucien sees the naked shock on my face and laughs softly. “Ironically, the more we tried to develop white mercury weapons and use them in the war, the more we freed the Heartless. An unintended side effect but not an unwelcome one. Fewer Heartless following their witches’ commands means less trouble for the human soldiers on the field.”

He puts the parchment down and approaches me, so close I can see the streaks of brown in his dark eyes. He leans casually on the back of a velvet-trimmed couch.

“But you—” He swallows, strong throat bobbing. “That night in the clearing. The monster in you took over and killed those men. But it wasn’t just the monster, was it? Your eyes…they were still yours.”

My blood is slush, icy cold and red hot all at once and thrumming beneath my skin. He reaches one arm out and I stay still, waiting. Watching. Not daring to breathe. His fingertips graze my cheek, and my body clamors for more, honing in on the feel of his skin with a magnetic frenzy. I watch the prince’s eyes change when he touches me—his patient gaze turning shadowed, turning bitter. It’s just for a moment, and then he reverts to normal.

“Weeping,” he says, breaking the silence. The word jerks me away from his touch instantly. How did he—? “What you did in the clearing was called Weeping.”

How does he know that? It’s impossible—the witches know of it, surely, but humans are far less aware. How does he know the exact name for it? Has he spoken to a witch in Vetris? The one who started the witchfire, maybe—the one who caused the earthquake last night? Varia would never tell him about Weeping—it’s the key to her plan with Evlorasin, and she’s assured me she’s made certain none of her associates would talk about it. He couldn’t have spoken to a Heartless who knows of Weeping—I’m the only one left.

I’m the only one who knows. And I haven’t said a word to him about it. He read it. He must’ve read it somewhere, in one of these books. Someone must’ve written it down during the Sunless War, the tome scuttled away.

He knows too much, and his touch is intoxicating to my traitorous body, still. I have to get away from him.

“Is there anything else”—I struggle to make my voice even—“Your Highness wishes to ask of me?”

Lucien is quiet, his eyes catching the morning sun and fracturing with warm brown. “Just one. Will you forgive me?”

“For what, Your Highness?”

“The kiss last night,” he says. “I acted out of turn.”

I raise my head slightly, just enough to look into his eyes. “There’s nothing to forgive. I’ve already forgotten it.”

My lie sounds smooth, and it tests the very limits of my ability to spin a web. I’m terrified the truth is gleaming out of my blank expression—that I enjoyed it. That I remember every second of it. That I wish for another, and another, and another—

His eyes flicker with some emotion I can’t read—disbelief? He regains himself, turning to a table and picking up a small leather-bound book from it. He hands it to me.

“Then at least allow me to give you a gift.”

I look down at the book and take it, careful not to touch our fingers together. I make a proper bow.

“I’ll be taking my leave, then.”

Every bone in my body wants Lucien to stop me as I walk away. I want him to pull me back, to kiss me senseless. I want to feel not so alone in this moment, to be with him like that other timeline version of myself certainly is right now.

Stiffly, I walk to the door and leave. Once I’m out of sight and down another sun-drenched hall, I open the book. It’s a picture book. I inhale sharply—there, on the page, a grisly scene is sketched. A village sits on a tranquil hill, but the hill is fractured, the shelf sliding down into a massive chasm ripped straight into the earth. And from that chasm are rising familiar shapes—serpentine, bright ivory-white scales. Valkerax.

They surge out of the ground like snow-colored yarn spilling out of a basket, twisting around one another, curling around the buildings of the village. White-hot fire blasts out of their mouths, burning the people fleeing from their homes that are rapidly sliding into the abyss.

I flip the page, and the next picture is equally horrific: the flat grasslands of Vetris, completely charred to ash. The earth is naked, not a tree or blade of grass in sight. There should be verdant vegetation, and yet the only things growing from the ground are white bones—thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands of human skeletons poke through the black char as far as the eye can see, frozen in their death poses, until the very foot of the Tollmount-Kilstead Mountains. Clutching their heads, rolling on the ground to get rid of the fire, curling around themselves helplessly.

“Kavar’s eye,” I hiss. The book is full of these terrible sketches and, according to the few pages with words on them, these are the drawings of an Old Vetrisian artist who traveled the Mist Continent to cover the devastation of the valkerax rampage a thousand years ago. Her drawings were reportedly used as a piece of evidence to encourage the Old Vetrisian alliance to form in the first place. An effective piece of evidence even now—I can’t tear my eyes away, a sour chill running up and down my spine.

Lucien gave this to me because he knows about my speaking to Evlorasin—Malachite most definitely told him about the valkerax escape last night. But there’s no way Lucien could know about the Bone Tree and how Varia is planning to take control of it, so is he just trying to warn me in general? I know valkerax are dangerous—everyone does. That’s why they’re locked in the Dark Below. But I’m not going to stop talking to Evlorasin, gruesome historical pictures or not. My heart is waiting—no matter how terrifying the idea of living without the hunger is, the idea of going on living as a monster is even worse.

Gavik is waiting. I head out of the palace, a cloak wrapped tightly around me. This time, I find him on my own—a glimpse of a gray robe at West Gate pulls me into an alley.

“Kreld!” I call his fake name, and he turns. The bread basket on his arm is nearly empty this time around, his beard growing shaggy and white over his chin. His watery eyes are, for once, not entirely furious to see me. It’s not anger in his face, but something more disturbing: excitement. He pulls away from a man and walks over to me.

“I’ve done it.” Gavik pulls the diary out of his coat pocket. “I unraveled the various codes I used. Some of them were incredibly complex, but with a little effort—”

“Stop blowing your own horn and tell me what it said,” I snap. Gavik’s mouth twists into itself. He steps in to me, and I brace myself to tolerate his oily presence.

“The ‘Hymn of the Forest’—it’s not a religious hymn.”

“Then what is it?” I press.

“It was originally an Old Vetrisian bardic song,” he says. “In Old Vetrisian culture, bards were responsible for shepherding information among towns as they wandered the kingdom, singing for coin. They were given this song about four hundred years ago, around the collapse of Old Vetris.” Gavik inhales sharply. “It’s a warning song. It details how and why the kingdom fell apart.”

I frown. “We know why it fell apart—the emerging New God religion tore it apart.”

Old Vetris fell because of belief. The Old God and New God believers began to war, and that was the end of them. Everyone knows that.

“Yes.” Gavik smiles, but it’s not a pleasant smile. “But where did the split between the New and Old God begin? And why?”

“I have no clue.” I snort. “How does this have anything to do with the hymn?”

“Ten years ago, I met a historian of Old Vetrisian culture. A celeon, by the name of Muro—”

“Muro Farspear-Ashwalker,” I finish for him, swallowing hard. It feels like I’ve said that name so many times. Yorl’s grandfather is at the center of everything somehow.

Gavik narrows his eyes, but nods. “Sref and Kolissa asked his opinion on a sickness of Varia’s.”

“Her dreams about the Tree, right?”

Gavik blinks this time. “You’ve been investigating on your own. Did my clever little niece help you?”

“How did you meet Muro?” I ignore the patronizing surprise in his voice.

Gavik collects himself like an archduke, imperiously. “Muro gave an explanation to Sref and Kolissa. But they didn’t believe him. I saw him as a man of learning, and as he was leaving the palace, I convinced him to tell me his theory.”

Gavik proceeds to tell me about the Bone Tree needing to feed on magic from a witch, and luring a powerful witch in through their dreams when it gets hungry. At one point I let out an impatient sigh.

“I stalled for a day for you to tell me things I already know?”

He pulls out the diary suddenly and points to the coded passages with one knobby finger. “Muro told me there isn’t just one Old Vetrisian tree. There are two.”

I knit my brows, my nightmare resurfacing of those two naked tree rosaries. “Two?”

“The Bone Tree was created to subdue the threat of the valkerax,” Gavik insists. “But Muro says, in the following years, there was a small sub-section of Old Vetrisians who wanted to use the technology that made the Bone Tree to push the envelope of creation. The Bone Tree commanded the valkerax to the Dark Below. But they wanted to make another tree. One that could command people to remain immortal. A tree made of glass.”

My hands start to shake. Immortality. He can’t be talking about…Heartlessness?

“The tree of bone and the tree of glass.” I repeat the line from the “Hymn of the Forest.” The glass shard in my Heartless bag—the glass jars most Heartless hearts go into. The jars witches make, the bags witches make. Varia told me they work only because of the shards of glass included in them. Those shards give us our immortality, she said.

your heart, the hunger sneers. tied forever to me.

Gavik nods feverishly. “The Old Vetrisians created the Glass Tree. But other Vetrisians thought the idea of immortality was wrong. Immoral. Against God’s teachings. They drove out those who made the Glass Tree. They labeled themselves the New God worshippers—forging a new path forward, one without immortality. And those who were driven out of Old Vetris were called the Old God’s followers.”

“The witches?” I whisper.

He frowns. “Most witches became Old God followers; by giving just a few drops of their magic to the Glass Tree, they could bind their loved ones to them forever. It was a tempting prospect.” Gavik pauses, then looks at the sky. “And it ripped Old Vetris in two. Muro told me: that is how the old hatred in Cavanos began. That is how the wars between humans and witches started.”

“How?” I swallow, my throat so dry it feels like sand. “How was Muro the only person who knew this?”

“The wars have been hard on Cavanos’s history,” Gavik admits. “Books have been burned. Historians have written about the victors, not about the truth. Even the Black Archives don’t have much on Old Vetris’s fall. Muro had to go to the old, ruined Palas—beneather cities, infested with valkerax—for what he found out.”

That would explain why Yorl knows so much about valkerax. Muro must’ve seen everything about them, observed the valkerax closely on his trips to the Dark Below, in an effort not to be killed by them. And he passed that knowledge down to Yorl.

Gavik suddenly leans in more, his voice low. “That isn’t the worst of it. The Old Vetrisians—they made the Glass Tree by taking a piece of the Bone Tree and transplanting it. All the magic inside the Bone Tree, all the sentience it developed, it replicated itself onto the Glass Tree.”

Sentience. Like the voice in my head? Like the hunger? Like the song Evlorasin talks about? Is that the “mind of its own” Yorl talks about?

“The Glass Tree,” I manage to say. “It’s still around?”

“Yes. We’re standing here,” Gavik says, thumping his empty chest. “As unliving proof of its existence.”

“And the ‘Hymn of the Forest’ talks about all this?” I ask.

“Yes. The temple of Kavar has the only remaining copy that we know of. I was afraid people would find it, so I had them change the lyrics and seal the original in their library.”

“Why didn’t you want people knowing about it?”

He lets out a breath. “I didn’t want word spreading about it, and somehow finding its way to Varia. Muro told me the Bone Tree had chosen her to feed off, and he told me if it fed off her, she would control the valkerax in turn. I couldn’t have that.”

“So you tried to kill her, too,” I muse.

“Make no mistake,” he says shortly. “I hated her. I hated Lucien. I wanted Varia’s sword dearly, to arm my country appropriately against the witch threat. I wanted the witchblood d’Malvanes gone, because I knew they would ruin the country. And they will. Varia will succeed at it, if you help her get the Bone Tree.”

“It’s an army of valkerax under her control,” I argue. “And the Bone Tree will take all her magic and kill her eventually, and then the valkerax will just return underground. It’s not as much of a danger as you—”

“Think with that silk-and-lace-addled brain of yours,” Gavik spits. “The landscape of Cavanos isn’t the only thing that will change. A valkerax army will destabilize world politics as we know it. Cavanos will simultaneously become the world’s enemy and the world’s arbiter. The rest of the Mist Continent—the Pendronic emperor, the Helkyrisian sage-dukes, and the Avellish queen—will unite together for their own safety against us. And in other continents, alliances will form and fall around the world because of us. Every spear will be turned against Cavanos in self-defense.”

The sand in my throat turns to molten lead.

“Varia thinks she’s ready for that level of power,” I whisper.

“No one is ready for that level of power,” Gavik insists. “It is beyond all imagining.”

Suddenly, I spot something out of the corner of my eye—a shadow, lingering at the mouth of the alley behind a pile of discarded pig iron. They’re too close to us, and too hidden, to be doing anything but listening. Gavik starts to talk again, but I hold up one hand in his face, and he pauses. The pause is too long, and it spooks the shadow. Before I can blink, the shadow pivots and is gone, and I rush to the throat of the road just in time to see a scrap of darkness disappear around a corner.

I dash around it, and come face-to-face with the wall of West Gate, so high and tall that nothing could jump it, flanked on either side by similar brick walls, smooth and free of hiding places. The shadow is gone. But where? There are no places to duck into, no holes to disappear down. It’s like it simply…vanished.

Anyone could’ve followed me. But only one person would want to. Only one person knew I’d be going to talk to Gavik today.

“Lucien?” I whisper at the looming white wall.

But I get no answer.

When I return to Gavik, he tries to convince me, once again, to refuse to help Varia find the Bone Tree. But his pleas fall on ears long closed to him. I walk back to the palace, stopping in front of Y’shennria’s manor. The black rosebushes tug at my unheart as they wave beneath the immaculately blue summer sky, the fluffy white clouds so innocent and sweet.

Even under a sky that looks this peaceful, war is happening.

Varia has been throwing me at the valkerax. I’ve died over and over again, and no one has mourned. The witches throw their Heartless at the human army even now, but they won’t mourn them. War only means something because death does. Death only means something because life does.

Life—that tenuous, bright thing that humans take for granted. Each moment, a possibility. Each day, a new beginning.

All of that, stopped only by death.

The Old Vetrisians back then were right to be afraid of the Glass Tree. The real monster is not death. It is immortality. It is nothing changing, ever. It is that choking gray haze. It’s remaining the same for three years, trapped in a forest. It’s death being reduced to a joke. It is death meaning nothing, because then life, too, means nothing.

I want to be human.

I want to mean something again.

“Lady Zera?”

I start, and look up at the voice to see Lady Tarroux peeking her round face out of a decadent passing carriage draped on the sides with gold-plated eyes of Kavar. A long caravan precedes her, each bed bursting to the brim with trunks and bags and furniture. Guards flank the procession, their swords ready and their faces grim. There must be fifty of them—their ranks bolstered by heavily armored mercenaries.

“Good afternoon, Lady Tarroux.” I smile. “Where are you off to with all your things?”

Her eyes are downcast. “Helkyris. Father couldn’t wait a day longer to leave.”

My lungs deflate. “I see.” There’s a pause, and then, “Do you want me to kidnap you? I’m very good at crime.”

The worry in her gaze falters with her soft laugh. “That would be so lovely. But I’m afraid Father would miss me if I were gone.”

“Isn’t he worried about attacks on the road?” I ask. “The war is in full swing.”

She motions all around her to the mercenaries. “Father’s spared no expense. We’ll be fine, I think.”

“Surely,” I agree with a small laugh. “By the looks of it, he’s hired a small army.”

She laughs, too, though it sounds sad. “I’m sorry, Lady Zera. I feel as if we’ve just become friends, and I’m abandoning you.”

I smile brightly at her. “You’ll be back. The war might be over sooner than you think, and you’ll come right back here and marry Lucien.”

It doesn’t hurt to say it as much anymore. Maybe I’m getting used to the idea. Finally.

“How—” she squeaks, her cheeks going red. “How do you know that?”

“Call it a…vision.” I smile. “Sent to me from the New God.”

Her blush fades, and then her face lights up. “Oh! I just remembered.”

I watch her rummage around inside her carriage for something, before she leans out the window and hands it to me. “Here. Please give this to Prince Lucien. He was asking after it, and I’d hate to leave without giving it to him.”

I look down at my palm to see a carefully folded paper. “Do you mind?”

Tarroux shakes her head. “Not at all.”

I unfold it and read: it’s a picture-guide to a certain sewing technique. I quirk a brow up at her. “What’s this?”

“Oh, well.” Tarroux goes red again. “The prince asked me to teach him to sew.”

I blink. “Sewing? He asked you to teach him?”

Her blush fades only marginally as she looks up. “Yes. He said he wanted to make a gift for someone, and so I obliged.” She suddenly bows her head, bobbed hair sweeping over her shoulder as she blurts, “I’m sorry, Lady Zera! I know you are his Spring Bride! I didn’t mean to have such feelings while there is a connection between you and His Highness!”

I’m struck again by how straightforward and kind she is. Silly girl, I think. Don’t be sorry. You’re doing exactly what I need you to do.

I reach up and clasp her small hand in mine over the carriage windowsill and grin wider. “Can I let you in on a secret?” I ask. She nods, wide-eyed. “I’ll be gone soon. The court is no place for me, I’ve decided.”

Her eyes get even larger, and I fight back the hot haze behind my own that threatens tears. She can’t see me cry, see me show any emotion other than glibness. I must look sincere, deathly so. The words come easily, even if my expression doesn’t.

“He can be very prickly,” I say. “And stubborn. And he’s convinced—” I laugh. “He’s convinced he’s the only one who can save anyone. Maybe that’s why we got along at all in the first place—him with his savior complex and me with my martyr complex.”

“Lady Zera—” Tarroux starts gently, but I cut her off.

“Speak your mind whenever you can—he hates platitudes most of all. Don’t try to get him to drink. Oh, and he likes the city much more than he likes the palace.”

My hands start to shake as everything runs through my mind—every time I’ve seen him, touched him, laughed with him. Only two weeks. It was only two weeks, so I really have no right to be this sad. Two weeks is nothing. A flimsy infatuation—lust and lust only. Two weeks means nothing.

I let Tarroux’s hand go so as not to betray myself, my words spilling out faster.

“Please, Lady Tarroux. When you come back to Vetris, please watch over him. Protect your prince as I cannot anymore.”

…

Lady Tarroux never gets to answer me. Her caravan begins to move again, pulling her toward South Gate. I wave and wave, until her carriage is nothing more than a golden dot on the horizon. Then I drag myself back to Varia’s apartments at a slow crawl. I should be happy—what I wanted has coalesced. I’ve pushed Tarroux toward Lucien, and myself away.

She’s innocent. She’s free of blood. She’s human.

I coax my miserable self into Varia’s sitting room, surprised to find her already there. At this time of night she’d usually be out to dinner at Fione’s estate. But she sits on an ironwood couch in a grand feathered bathrobe, staring into a glass not of the imported brandy from Avel that’s so popular among the Vetrisian nobles but some clearer liquid. It’s strange, to see someone so in control relaxing for once.

She looks up with subdued eyes as I walk in and sees me staring at her cup. She waves it at me with a flourish. “Can’t stand the Avellish stuff.”

“What is it, then?” I ask, eagerly welcoming any change of discussion at all. “I would say bogwater, but I know you’re not that kind of witch.”

She gifts me a half-scathing, half-amused glance. “Yolshil. Celeon liquor. It’s got more burn but less bite.”

“Which makes it perfect for you, because you have enough teeth already.”

It’s a vague allusion to the valkerax, but even slightly buzzed she gets it, and to my surprise she throws back her head and laughs. When she calms down, she drinks the rest of the liquor.

“Father really did miss an opportunity to make you his laughing boy.”

“Why are you still up?” I ask warily.

The princess shrugs. “Sleeping is difficult for me, as you’ve seen.” In a bid to change the subject, she motions to a table next to her. “You’ve received gifts.”

I walk over to the table laden with two things: a letter and a long package wrapped in brown paper. I quirk a brow and approach suspiciously, peeling the letter open. It isn’t sealed with wax, which means it’s not a letter from a noble in Vetris. The handwriting strikes me as familiar, but I can’t quite place it.

Zera,

I hope this finds you well. Considering I am sending this letter to Vetris once I am finished, I would hope, too, that you are practicing and executing your manners within court sufficiently.

My unheart swells. It’s so much more than a chilly sentence. I know instantly who wrote this—Y’shennria. Suddenly the paper I’m clutching and each word on it become more precious than gold.

You should know that I and the others who came with me are safe, and we have been since our departure. I wish that you could be here with us, so that I wouldn’t waste what’s left of my life worrying into the night about you.

She’s worried about me? My chest feels like it’s glowing from within. Reginall, her driver Fisher, her cook Maeve, and her stableboy Pierrot—all of them are safe. All of the people who helped me immensely, who were kind to me in different ways. It’s a huge relief to know they’re out of harm’s way.

Our mutual friend who sent you to me originally has told me something precious to you now belongs to someone else in Vetris.

The sentence is vague intentionally, no mentions of witches or Heartless. She means Nightsinger, and my heart.

If you see a chance to depart from Vetris someday and find yourself alone, I will leave some direction for you at the place you have seen, where the birds fly.

Where the birds fly? Ravenshaunt—of course, her ancestral home that was all but destroyed by witchfire. She pointed it out to me when we first met, in the carriage to Vetris. A deep burden I didn’t know I was carrying suddenly lifts off my shoulders, and a true smile pulls at my face. She’s saying if I manage to get my heart back, I should head to the ruins of Ravenshaunt to find her.

I want that more than almost anything.

Finally, an anchor. A point on a map to walk toward.

The letter is too short.

What you have done took great strength. Know that I am proud of you.

I await, steadfast.

The smallest of her sentences rings with great impact in my head. Her words are a tiny glimmer of hope in the mire I’ve been wading through, and the urge to get my heart back explodes, brighter than ever. Crav and Peligli are waiting for me. And now a third person. I have somewhere to go out there beyond the walls, beyond the war. A home. A real home.

Varia’s watching me, but at some point she turns away to refill her glass. No doubt she’s already read it, but still I wait until she’s not paying attention to fold Y’shennria’s letter over the fragments of her wanted poster I keep in my chest pocket.

I pick up the paper-wrapped package. It’s long and thin, and I open it quickly. My eagerness withers the moment I see what’s nestled in the wrapping.

A blade. The blade of a sword without a hilt. And not just any blade. I almost don’t recognize it because of the lack of rust until I see the blood gutter down the center leading to a distinctive sheaf of ivy carved into the bottom of it.

My father’s blade. A perfect replica, new and shining.

But who would—? Only a few people know my sword broke at all. Fewer know what it looks like up close. Malachite. Did he—?

Varia makes a disgruntled noise over my shoulder as she peers at the blade. “Fool.”

I look back at her. “Who?”

She downs more of her fresh yolshil, sighing tiredly. “Pendronic silvered steel. The same stuff the d’Malvane ceremonial swords are made of.”

d’Malvane. Does that mean…Lucien did this? He’d seen Father’s sword more than once, but I had no idea he’d paid that much attention to it. I pick up the blade, matching it hesitantly to Father’s rusted hilt. To see the sword whole again, to feel its exact weight in my hands—I run my thumbs over the hilt, the blade. It’s so familiar, comforting.

In this city where I am the enemy, the air suddenly doesn’t feel as cold anymore.

I tuck the blade and hilt into the box and turn to Varia.

“Tomorrow morning I’m teaching the valkerax again, right?”

She nods, tightening the belt of her grand feathered robe. “Obviously.”

I watch her beautiful face. I know she knows I went to see Gavik today. I might as well come clean.

“Do you know?” I ask. “About the ‘Hymn of the Forest’?”

Varia smiles wanly at the glass of jade-colored yolshil. “How do you think I found Gavik’s pet valkerax in the pipe below the East River Tower? I scoured every inch of this city before I faked my death, looking for ways out. Of course I know about the temple’s library and their little hymn.”

“He told me,” I press on. “About the Bone Tree and the Glass Tree.”

There’s a beat, and for a moment I swear the only noise is the sound of the three moons setting over the garden hedges outside her windows.

Finally, Varia looks to me, her smile gone, her eyes tired. “Don’t bother with the past, Zera. The future is where you’ll find your freedom.”

With that, she stands, drains her glass, and disappears into her bedroom.