“Don’t be afraid, Zera.” She laughs softly. “I assure you—it’s sedated with the strongest concoctions a polymath can make and held back by the freshest beneather runes. If Gavik is useful for anything, it’s for telling me exactly how to keep a valkerax alive and trapped without letting it bite my head off.”

I can’t see the beneather runes carved anywhere thanks to the darkness, but knowing they’re present eases my fear by a fraction. The beneathers—Malachite’s people who live beneath the ground in the Dark Below—are the only ones who know how to fight valkerax, how to keep them away. They’ve been doing both for a thousand years, after all. According to what Malachite told me nearly a week ago, beneather runes can keep a valkerax out of a place, or inside of a place, by binding them with their true name.

“How,” I breathe, watching with horror as the jaw disappears from the firelight and the massive shuffle of scales and breathing resumes as the valkerax moves somewhere else. “How did you—?”

There’s an earth-shaking thump that rattles the very pebbles on the ground, and Varia and I start at the same time. I’m relieved to see the princess stride backward—so even she’s scared of the thing, deep down—over the lip of the open gate, and I follow her, my body shaking and eager to get away. The metal screech of the gate closes behind us.

“The hows aren’t important.” Varia sniffs, her face paler in the firelight from her finger but no less serious and composed. “It’s the whats I want us to focus on.”

I swallow, gulping down stale air. “As in ‘what in Kavar’s bloody eye socket are you planning to do with that thing?’”

“Indeed. Yorl.” She turns to someone in the darkness. “What am I going to do with that thing?”

My heart catches again as another figure steps into the dim firelight—a celeon, blinking his liquid emerald eyes quickly as they adjust to the light. He isn’t an adult celeon—his mane too short and bristly along his neck to be fully realized, his features too sharp and lanky, like a tree that’s been growing too fast for its own bark with none of the muscle or substance to back it up. The brown robe he wears (a polymath robe without a tool belt—strange) hangs loose on him. It’s hard to tell in such a dim environment, but I think his fur is an ochre yellow, spotted with vermillion scales on his ribs and legs. His broad triangular ears are studded with two rows of silver earrings. He carries a bundle of scrolls under one arm and a quill in the other paw. A pair of glasses rests on his face, the bridge wide to accommodate his wider nose.