Finally, I nod. “Okay. All right. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

He sighs. “It’s fine. Just as long as you have the good sense not to go pursuing it.”

After a long, mostly silent journey, we reach the top of the stairs. For once, I’m not a panting mess.

“As much as I hate to admit it, you did good work today,” Yorl says in the doorway.

“Aw, I appreciate you, too.” I reach to bop his black nose, but he lifts his chin out of the way.

“Don’t.”

I stamp my foot. “Why does everyone in this city hate fun?”

“Do you think a stranger sticking their fingers up your nose is fun?”

“Up your nose? Gross. I was just going to tap it. Who’s been trying to stick their fingers up your nose?”

“The human children,” he grumbles. “Every chance they get.”

I laugh. “Well, don’t walk around all sour and hunched, and maybe you’ll be too tall for their grimy fingers to reach.”

“Goodness. Do you give advice for a living?” Yorl drawls.

“You know, it told me your true name.” I ignore him. “Evlorasin did.”

His huge green eyes light up like twin shooting stars, and he pushes his glasses on his nose. “It did?”

“Yeah. Ironspeaker. Then it started spiraling, saying something about its duty to read? And that my duty is dying.” I sigh. “Was that just rambling? I mean, you put its scales into the Dark Below so it would ramble less, right?”

Yorl’s muzzle frowns. “I don’t know. My grandfather liked to say they are mystifying creatures. They live for roughly five hundred years, but most of my research indicates they predate humans and beneathers by over ten thousand. By all accounts, they were here at the beginning of the world, and they will be here at the end.”

The song that sings of barren immortality, Evlorasin had said. Barren immortality - five hundred years. I can’t imagine living as long as a valkerax. Except I can, actually, and that’s why I’m teaching a valkerax for my heart.

“The Ironspeaker.” I point to Yorl, then to me. “The Starving Wolf.” There’s a beat as I think it over and put on a horseshit-eating grin. “My true name is way better.”

Yorl rolls his eyes. “Just because you say something once out loud doesn’t make it true.”

It’s a moment of lightness before I have to trudge through the ash-laden South Gate and return to the teetering, frantic humans plunging into war, and I bask in it as long as I can—which isn’t very long, considering Yorl is obsessed with his work and leaves me nigh-instantly to go back down to the valkerax. But I do hear him happily muttering “Ironspeaker” to himself as he goes, like the name is a coat and he’s trying it on in the dressing room.