I wake up to a lighted underground—on the same bedroll I always do. The oil lamps are lit again, the whole underground brightly visible. Yorl’s sitting next to me, tail curled around his feet and watching me like a hawk. Behind him, the celeon guards pass huge chunks of rock to one another, a chain working methodically to clear out the caved-in arena. My body’s a little dusty but whole, healed.

I move to lean against the wall. Yorl starts, his paws helping me up even as his brows furrow.

“It escaped,” he says, a tinge of marvel to his voice. “But you—I saw you lick its blood. It gave you the blood promise, didn’t it?”

“I don’t—” I massage my throbbing forehead. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“Where is the Bone Tree?” Yorl asks.

The Tree? How should I know where it is? I’m not the valkerax. I’m about to laugh in his face when the throb in my forehead suddenly morphs into a keening pain, like a gargantuan bell rung once, but then it clears, and I can see something in my mind—in my memories. It’s not a new thought. It’s a thought that feels as if it’s always been here in my head. A huge, placid bend in a long river, a dense jungle of deep green palms and softwood trees heavy with golden fruit. On a sun-drenched stone by the river creak the branches of a bright white tree.

The Bone Tree.

It’s made up of thousands of smooth, bleached lengths, the trunk formed by interlocking giant bones of all shapes—joints, long leg bones, jawbones fitting neatly into one another like a puzzle. It keeps going, up and up, glowing like snow under the high sun. Its bone roots drape over the rock it sits on, gently undulating with a life of their own. The willowlike branches arc high and jut out in all directions from the trunk as loose, drooping ropes made of huge vertebrae, shin bones, and at the very ends of each branch—like a demented fruit—a valkerax finger bone, tipped with a giant, wicked claw that sways in the breeze.

It’s not just that I can see it. I’m there. I remember it—I know it. I feel like I’ve always known it.

I can feel the warmth of the sun on my face, the humid air on my skin, the shrieking animal cries as they emanate from the jungle nearby. And I know the tree. I understand its intent. It’s going to stay here until the sun hits noon, and then it will be gone.

This is the Bone Tree. And I know where it is.

My mouth opens to tell Yorl, his wide emerald eyes waiting. His very whiskers vibrate with anticipation—the culmination of all his efforts resting with me.