His white brows knit. “Why would I help you? You just slapped Luc; I could hear it all the way out here, for spirit’s sake.”

“You’re the only one I can think of who can stop a valkerax.”

Malachite’s expression detonates, his anger blown to smithereens by shock. “A valkerax? Lying once spectacularly wasn’t enough for you?”

There’s no time to argue with him. “There’s a valkerax below this city. Are you going to help me stop it or not?”

There’s a long beat of silence. Malachite frowns. “You’re serious?”

“Not often. But right now? Yes.”

The beneather darts his eyes over to the dim candlelit party. He looks back to me and nods. “Fine. But if this is some trick, I’m arresting you.”

“Yes, yes, you’re very important.” I grab his cool, marble-white hand and pull him down the hall, out of the palace, and into a carriage. I pound on the carriage roof the whole way, demanding the driver go faster, and thankfully he obliges, the wheels screeching over the cobblestones and the cobblestones themselves bouncing Malachite and me violently around.

“A valkerax was kept beneath South Gate,” I shakily admit to Malachite, the bumpiness of the ride making my teeth bite my tongue. It heals too quickly to be of consequence. “But it’s escaped. We have to get it back.”

“Dark Below,” he swears, voice chopped by the vibrations. “Now’s probably not the best time to admit I never completed my culling practice, then?”

“It’s fine—you did it, at least, right?”

“Enough to tell the mane from the tail,” he asserts.

“You’re the direst threat in the city I can think of besides myself,” I say. “It’ll be fine. It has to be fine.” He scoffs, and I ask, “What? What is it?”

“You’ve got so much faith in me, and none in Luc.”

Lucien. Godsdamnit—he’s going to know there’s a valkerax below the city once Malachite helps me. His best friend will surely tell him. They’ll inevitably start to suspect what I’m doing for Varia involves the valkerax, and with Fione’s talent for acquiring information—and all of Gavik’s research at her fingertips—they’ll certainly find out she wants the Bone Tree, and what that means.

But no, it doesn’t matter right now. The first priority is to stop Evlorasin running before it hurts anyone, no matter who learns of its existence.