I think back to the six celeon bodies—with their strength, their sacrifice, there’s a good chance they did injure Evlorasin. Malachite orders the celeon to file out in front of us, quietly, and we move as one stealthy group, my human gait the loudest against the stone by far.

“My fellow guards.” Malachite’s voice is thin and yet audible in all the quiet. “You’ll harass the thing. Strike any lanterns you might have, any torches—its eyes don’t do well with bright light. Stab between the webbing of its feet if you can—it’s a weak spot. I’ll try to get on its back in the confusion and go for its neck.”

A murmur of assent goes around the celeon group, and they ready their lanterns and halberds.

“We need it alive!” I hiss up ahead to the beneather. Malachite’s chuckle is like his old self, before he knew of my betrayal—golden and cheeky.

“And I clearly need a raise. But here we are.”

“Mal—”

“If you think a few neck stabs will kill it, then I’m the spiritsdamn Emperor of Pendron.” He sighs. “I’m aware killing Varia’s pet would be the best way to book myself a caravan ticket back to Pala Amna and away from Lucien. So relax.”

I can’t relax. Not when Evlorasin is getting farther and farther away from me. Not when my heart is tied flush with the valkerax’s very fate.

“So what do I do?” I ask. “Stand there and look tasty?”

“Yorl said to get those shots as close to the throat as possible, right?” Malachite tilts his head. “Inside it? If I can create an opening, you should go for it.”

A cold sweat beads my neck, and it starts to run in rivulets when I pick up the sound of deep, sonorous, fragmented breathing. I’d know that sound anywhere—Evlorasin. From the complete darkness ahead that we march into, a pinprick of orange light starts to grow, and a crackling wave of heat evaporates my sweat in a flash.

The air is growing hot. But that means—

Malachite turns, eyes a blazing red, and shouts at the top of his lungs, “Get down!”

The celeon all scrabble backward in a frenzy, pushing past me and down the tunnel’s slope as the smell of burning air gets stronger. The celeon hit the ground, curling around themselves in a protective stance. The telltale paper-rip noise of the fire as it tears through the tunnel quickly turns deafening. I throw myself to the ground before the cluster of celeon, some panic-numbed part of my brain knowing I could take the brunt and soften it for everyone behind me, but I feel someone slam themselves down beside me and pull me into them, cradling my body within theirs.