I pause. “That means…I have to go with her, don’t I? To find the Tree.”

“Undoubtedly,” Yorl agrees. “The blood promise will stay with you, whether you are Heartless or human. So Varia has no reason not to return your heart as she promised.”

“But she could just command me to tell her where the Bone Tree is, right?”

Yorl opens his mouth, then closes it, and finally mutters, “To the gods with it—I’ve given her what she wants.” He looks to me. “The blood promise was given to you under the effects of Weeping, remember? Anything directly involving Weeping cannot be commanded of.”

My burden lifts a little upon hearing that. If that’s true, he’s right. The crown princess suddenly has even more reason to keep her promise that was so tenuous before.

“Where did Ev go, you think?” I ask.

“The lawguards on the wall said it rose straight up and took off to the west,” he says. “Apparently the entire city panicked—a few bumps and bruises—but no one’s seriously hurt.”

I laugh, lying back on the bedroll. “Those poor people. I’d think a giant glowing wyrm bursting out of the ground meant the end of the world, too. Did you know they could glow?”

Yorl shakes his head. “I had no clue. I studied them for ten years in Pala Amna with Grandfather. I know perhaps more about them than anyone in the world, and yet after today, I feel like I know nothing at all.”

“Welcome to my unlife,” I drawl.

…

Varia’s watertell response tells us to meet her at her apartments in the palace immediately.

Yorl doesn’t need to escort me to the surface this time, the lights all humming brightly against the spiral stone walls as we ascend up and up. I finally get to see the damage once we reach the exit and surface to South Gate—there, outside the wall and at the foot of it, near where the army is camped and in the center of an otherwise placid patch of green grassland, is a massive hole torn straight out of the earth. Evlorasin must’ve erupted from it—dirt and rock scattered around like explosive detritus, lawguards and soldiers forming a circle of barricades around it to prevent anyone falling in.

“You’ll hear nothing but this for the next ten years from the bards.” Yorl sighs.

“Chin up.” I nudge him in the ribs. “If you think about it, it’s sort of like being famous.”

He just groans.

“I thought you wanted to be famous!” I quip.

“I want to be a polymath,” he corrects. “I want to make my grandfather’s name rightly famous for the work he did. My own fame is optional.”

“Being so selfless is no fun.” I click my tongue.

He follows me through the South Gate crowd—a half-terrified, half-worried buzz humming among the people.