The valkerax. Everything it said swirls, diaphanous and enigmatic, in my mind. I know so little about witches and valkerax and true names, and yet they all seem intertwined. But what good does knowing do? I’m not a witch. All I need is to teach it. Everything else is pointless.

On the way back to the palace, a vendor still open amid the war crisis is selling steaming hot maple-glazed sweetrounds. There’s something deeply familiar about the smell, so I buy one. I cup it in my hands knowing I can’t bite it—I’d weep blood tears after ingesting such a human food, and too many lawguards are around, all of them on a knife’s point and searching rabidly for signs of Heartless. A girl dabbing her eyes too much could be one of them.

“Look at me, being smart and worrying about my own well-being,” I marvel. I settle for smelling the sweetround, the mere act of keeping it close by me somehow strangely comforting.

My feet take me home. Not to the palace but to Y’shennria’s manor. I stand in front of the severe darkwood architecture clutching the black iron gate in one hand and the sweetround in the other. The smell of black roses cloys my way—heavy with honey and licorice. The windows are empty, lifeless. I stare at Y’shennria’s bedroom window at the very top, quiet and bitterly still, and close my eyes. For a moment, the window is lit in buttery light, and against it is the regal silhouette of a woman with puffed hair, a teacup in her hand as she stares at the night, looking out for someone.

The patrolling lawguards will find the maple-glazed sweetround lying on Lady Y’shennria’s porch, and wonder.

15

15

The Hymn
of the
Forest

I wake up the next morning to a terrible wine headache and thick billows of smoke in the distance.

I sip chocolate drink—blood tears be damned—to be rid of the taste of last night’s mistakes and watch the clouds of smoke smolder on the horizon: not inside Vetris this time but far east and west of the city. Those must be the forests burning.

How many witches are losing the last home they have right now?

Varia wakes up later than I do but not by much, and she watches the smoke with me in her silk bathrobe, the two of us silent for a long moment.

“Try not to worry so much about Nightsinger. I sent word,” she says as she turns from the window to get ready for the day. “She should be in Windonhigh now, if she wasn’t already.”

I swallow the relief, refusing to let her see it. She has me at a disadvantage enough already.

“You’d think they’d name the last witch enclave something, oh, I don’t know, more intimidating,” I say. “Witchier. A lot more ‘dark’ and ‘blood’ words involved.”