Evlorasin is already unstable enough as it is—the wounds Yorl has made in it, the wounds Malachite and I made on it, and its waning strength with every day it’s away from the Dark Below—all of Evlorasin is held together by Yorl’s concoctions and the parts he’s stripped from the valkerax and thrown into the Dark Below to lessen its madness. If we weaken the Bone Tree’s hold on the valkerax further, there’s no telling what will happen, how desperate and dire things could become. It could run away faster and more furious than before, and I’d be left with nothing. Varia’s pushing us too hard, too suddenly.

It’s a risk. A risk for my heart.

“Listen, Ev,” I start. “You have to remember what I showed you—”

“The silence. It is vital,” Evlorasin interjects. “The song will crescendo from the very peaks of the mountains inside us, and we must echo it in perfect stillness. There is stone, and we also must be stone. This story is understood.”

I nod, shifting to hold the white mercury blade at an angle away from me. A weighty mass pushes against my body abruptly—the softness of fur and smoothness of scales alike. I feel around—it’s Evlorasin’s chest, rising and falling rapidly with its excited breathing.

“The song will not beg of us anymore,” it says. “We will fly above the darkness as we have not for many moons. We will spread our pride in the blue sky-home.”

I can hear its enormous claws click as it tramples dirt in place with uncontained anticipation.

“We will fly,” it says. “Below the sun and moons. We will feel the blowing whispers, and we will know the color of light again.”

I smooth my hand up its neck, feeling the blood thrumming beneath the thinner scales of its throat. Evlorasin’s rank breath washes over me as its velvet nose nudges my elbow.

“Our ears tire of the singing. We cannot wait any longer. A cut is required.”

“You have to be silent!” I chide. “Remember? If you get too wrapped up in your emotions, it’ll all come tumbling down.”

It happened to me in the clearing so many months ago—the moment I dwelled on Lucien’s terrified face, on what I’d done instead of what I had to do, I fell to pieces.

“To Weep is to control,” Evlorasin says. “Excitement is not control.”

“Exactly.”

Suddenly, the gate screeches open. I start—only Yorl and I are allowed in here, and the guards are all petrified of the valkerax. So who in their right mind would brave coming in?