“You called for me, Your Highness?” I lower my gaze as any noble might. His cheek doesn’t have any residual sign of my slap, and for that I’m glad. He pauses for a moment, and I don’t dare look up, but I know he’s surprised at my demeanor. I was furious enough to slap him last night, and yet here I am, docile as a lamb. Uncharacteristic of me, to be sure.

“I heard you saved Malachite,” he says. “At the cost of your father’s sword. I know how much it meant to you.”

The broken hilt of the sword hangs at my hip even now, heavier than even the void in my chest. He and I talked of the importance of holding on to dead family members’ swords in that tavern so many nights ago, our faces close and flushed. A sweet memory, long gone.

“It’s nothing, Your Highness,” I say. “Metal is replaceable. People are not.”

There’s a pause, as if he’s debating pushing it, but he lets it go and changes the subject swiftly.

“Did you ever find out from Gavik what the song we discussed means?” he asks.

I incline my head. “No, Your Highness. I hope to today.”

We’re quiet, and it goes unsaid; he wants to know what it means, too. Perhaps desperately. Is that what all the books around are for? Has he been trying to find information on his own?

“I’ve been studying,” he says, the sound of his boots walking closer. His body cuts the air like a hot knife again, my own hyperaware of every single movement he makes, even without being able to see him. I watch his boots stop at a nearby table piled with parchments. “And considering you know more about Heartless than I do, I wished to ask you some questions. If you would let me.”

Varia warned me very clearly about him. Is this a trap? The fact I have to doubt him, scrutinize him at all—it makes my bones ache.

“Of course, Your Highness.” I bow lower. “My knowledge is at your disposal.”

“The white mercury of the four swords that polymath made in the Sunless War,” Lucien says instantly. “And the white mercury daggers of Gavik. These weapons will sever the connection between a witch and a Heartless, correct?”

He’ll know if I lie. The books all around him—has he been reading up on this sort of thing? Is this sort of thing even recorded in Vetrisian books, or did the humans get rid of all of them? He could already know the answer and is just asking me for show. To test me—and my honesty toward him.

An honesty I’ve never given him.

Until now.