Sentience. Like the voice in my head? Like the hunger? Like the song Evlorasin talks about? Is that the “mind of its own” Yorl talks about?

“The Glass Tree,” I manage to say. “It’s still around?”

“Yes. We’re standing here,” Gavik says, thumping his empty chest. “As unliving proof of its existence.”

“And the ‘Hymn of the Forest’ talks about all this?” I ask.

“Yes. The temple of Kavar has the only remaining copy that we know of. I was afraid people would find it, so I had them change the lyrics and seal the original in their library.”

“Why didn’t you want people knowing about it?”

He lets out a breath. “I didn’t want word spreading about it, and somehow finding its way to Varia. Muro told me the Bone Tree had chosen her to feed off, and he told me if it fed off her, she would control the valkerax in turn. I couldn’t have that.”

“So you tried to kill her, too,” I muse.

“Make no mistake,” he says shortly. “I hated her. I hated Lucien. I wanted Varia’s sword dearly, to arm my country appropriately against the witch threat. I wanted the witchblood d’Malvanes gone, because I knew they would ruin the country. And they will. Varia will succeed at it, if you help her get the Bone Tree.”

“It’s an army of valkerax under her control,” I argue. “And the Bone Tree will take all her magic and kill her eventually, and then the valkerax will just return underground. It’s not as much of a danger as you—”

“Think with that silk-and-lace-addled brain of yours,” Gavik spits. “The landscape of Cavanos isn’t the only thing that will change. A valkerax army will destabilize world politics as we know it. Cavanos will simultaneously become the world’s enemy and the world’s arbiter. The rest of the Mist Continent—the Pendronic emperor, the Helkyrisian sage-dukes, and the Avellish queen—will unite together for their own safety against us. And in other continents, alliances will form and fall around the world because of us. Every spear will be turned against Cavanos in self-defense.”

The sand in my throat turns to molten lead.

“Varia thinks she’s ready for that level of power,” I whisper.

“No one is ready for that level of power,” Gavik insists. “It is beyond all imagining.”