“Don’t tell me what to do,” he says.

“Please.” A celeon guard to my right wheezes. “J-Just go in. Before I drop the gate.”

They can lift five times their own weight, there are two of them, and yet they’re struggling—the gate must be incredibly heavy. I duck under it and hear Yorl’s claws scratching the dirt as he ducks into the arena after me.

“If you die, can I use your pelt as a cape?” I ask lightly.

“If you die, can I use your skin as a shirt?” he fires back.

“Afterlife yes,” I hiss. “That sounds so fashionable. Three caveats: wear a ruffle collar with it, dye it bright pink, and flay it off when I’m not-alive.”

“No promises,” Yorl grumbles. The great, deep breathing all around us suddenly gets closer to me, and the sound of hard scales slithering across dirt stops in front of my feet. It’s breathing properly—none of the weak gasps I’ve gotten used to.

“Starving Wolf.” The valkerax’s booming voice rasps over my ears. “You have made safely the journey back.”

I’d shift my gaze to Yorl if I could see anything at all in the darkness. Is it addressing me? If so, it’s a vast improvement from the four days of nothing but aimless thrashing and speaking in nonsense.

“Yorl,” I swallow and call out. “Did you—”

“Focus, Heartless,” he barks. I inhale hugely.

“I’m going to keep returning every day, my good valkerax,” I chime, smiling into the utter blackness. “Until you learn how to Weep!” I hold up the white mercury blade. “See this? This is the physical part I was talking about. You’ve gotta be cut by this for the Weeping to work.”

“This small thing, like a spear made of snow—” A gust of hot, rancid air blows over me, concentrated near my hand holding the sword. “With a scent of dying stars. This is the blade we will hold to the throat of the song?”

“Yeah. The song will be louder, almost too loud to resist, but it’ll also be prone to your control. Which means I have to teach you how to go into the silence first.”

I pause and shake my head. I’m the one who sounds mad now. There’s a quiet, the chitter of Yorl’s quill scratching madly on his parchment pad faintly interrupting.

“The chime,” the valkerax says finally. “We heard a chime above us yesterday, when the sun was moving to meet the sea.”

Chime. The valkerax has blabbed that word enough for me to know what it means for sure: a witch.

“A chime above you?” I freeze, staring into the dark. Could it mean the witch that started the witchfire?

“How? How does one silently cut the throat of a song?”