Yorl wakes me up on the small sleeping mat, and I’ve never been happier to see someone so colorful and illuminated and with slightly fewer teeth.

“Is Evlorasin going to be like that from now on?” I wipe the remnants of cold sweat off my forehead.

“Evlorasin?” Yorl furrows his brows.

“That’s its true name.”

Yorl thinks on this, then offers his paw to me, and we start to ascend the stairs. “I misjudged the amount of painkiller required. I’ll adjust, and tomorrow it will remain sedated for a little longer.”

“Isn’t that gonna push into our teaching time?”

“Yes.” He shakes his head. “We’ll have less time. And time is crucial now, in the valkerax’s last days, more than ever. But—” He winces.

“But what?”

“I have…” He winces again. “Faith.”

“Faith?”

“I don’t have it often,” he snaps, as if I’ve thrown a punch at him instead of a word. “I hold little stock in the imaginary, baseless, unprovable belief that has all but turned this country against itself. But for some infuriating reason, I have it now. I have faith in…in, well, you.” He manages to finish with a great flinch.

A smile curls my lips. “Well then. Let me just jot you onto my list of people I’m trying desperately not to let down.”

The dark stair climb is becoming less and less taxing on my body. Yorl barely has to drag my unseeing self up the stairs by the hand at all—I remember how the steps go.

“It said something about the tree of bone and the tree of glass,” I say, and with a great swallow, I press on. “Your grandfather—his name was Muro Farspear-Ashwalker.”

I can’t see him, but Yorl’s whole body goes rigid next to me.

“How did you—?”

“He went to King Sref once,” I push forward. “The king was worried about Varia’s nightmares. Your grandfather sang them a song, and it had a line like that in it. A tree of bone and a tree of glass.” There’s a beat. “Lucien told me.”

Yorl’s absolutely silent, and I swear the air between us is suddenly a thousand times colder.

“What does it mean—?” I start, but Yorl is faster.

“‘The Hymn of the Forest,’” Yorl interrupts, every word cutting. “Grandfather based all his research on it. And he was called a fool for it.”

“Yorl—”

“That’s enough,” he barks. “You don’t need to know it. Forget you ever heard about it.”

“But that’s not—”

His warm paws suddenly grip my hands. “I’m serious, Zera.” Not Heartless but Zera this time. “It’s nonsense. It drove my grandfather to ruin. You have to drop it before it ruins you, too.”

He waits. As if I’m going to forget about a coincidence like this. But he’s not going to budge unless I assent.