“If we can’t be friends,” I start, “we can at least be one another’s tools. Don’t you agree, Your Grace?”

Fione jumps slightly when I address her, her crossbow still clutched in her petite hands. When she knits her lips, I smile.

“Gavik’s things. Varia said you and she burned them all.”

“And?” Fione mutters. Varia might’ve been convinced Fione burned it all. But I know Fione better than that—she spent five years collecting important information about important people on the streets of Vetris in order to avenge Varia. Habits like that don’t die easily.

“Did you really burn it all? So quickly?”

Fione’s blue eyes dart around. “I don’t see how this concerns you—”

“Gavik told me he kept a diary,” I say. “You’ve seen him, I’m sure—walking around Vetris handing out bread to the poor.”

“I have,” Lucien cuts in. “But she hasn’t. He turns tail and runs whenever he sees her.”

Varia’s commanded me to stab myself if I ever touch Fione, a command Varia is convinced will protect her, make her feel at ease. She’s probably commanded Gavik in the same manner to stay out of Fione’s way.

“Bring me his diary,” I say. “If it still exists. And maybe I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“The one that speaks of the Bone Tree?” Fione blurts. A hush falls over us, and I smile with all my teeth—the human ones, not my hungry ones. So she did keep some of his things. And she read them. The Bone Tree—Gavik really did write about it. His instinct regarding his human self was right.

“Yeah. That one.”

“It’s not real,” Fione insists quickly. “It’s just a delusional excuse he was using to persecute Varia. He was paranoid. All he wanted was the white mercury sword.”

“So you’ve told me,” I lilt.

“The Bone Tree doesn’t exist. It’s just a bedtime story once meant to scare Old Vetrisian children.”

“Just as Heartless are a bedtime story,” I say. “Meant to scare New Vetrisian children.”

“The evidence for its existence is anecdotal at best,” she presses harshly, sounding so much like Yorl when he gets onto a subject he knows much about, and some part of me wistfully realizes they’d get along amazingly. “Anti-witch propaganda at worst. No one has ever been able to conclusively prove it exists. It’s just a religious symbol the Old God followers worship.”

The naked tree rosary clutched in Y’shennria’s hand when she and I were forced to go to Kavar’s temple. My nightmare of the two tree rosaries—not one. Two.