I can’t Weep. I haven’t been cut by a white mercury blade. No matter how much silence I call up, the image of that kiss in the Moonskemp ballroom, the feel of Lucien’s palm on my palm—the hunger just screams and screams, a constant echo chamber of unending torment.

HE USED US. THEY WILL DIE FOR DARING TO USE US, TO STAND AGAINST US, US, THEY HAVE TURNED ON US AS I SAID THEY WOULD, FILTHY, YOU ARE FILTHY FOR EVER TRUSTING THEM—YOU ARE WORTHY OF NOTHING BUT DEATH BUT THEY WILL PAY YOUR PRICE INSTEAD—

I lick Malachite’s blood from my fingers, smirking at him with all my sharpened teeth. A massive force suddenly blindsides me, sweeping my legs out from under me and tackling me into the snow. I try to flip out of the hold, but Malachite’s thin arms are mind-bendingly strong—his grip steel and infinitely heavy. I can barely move, but beneath his hands I feel the worst to come. My limbs are elongating.

The monster is coming.

For one brief moment, I flicker in the darkness. I surface above the endless lake of despair the hunger has dragged me into, looking up into Malachite’s face looming above me, bleeding onto me.

“R-Run,” I choke out. “Take them and run.”

The beneather smirks down at me. “Not a chance in the afterlife.”

“Step down from the Tree, Varia, or Fione is Heartless,” Lucien shouts beside us, his darkened fingers digging into Fione’s chest. Fione tenses, her mouth open in a mute cry as blood drips from the entry points. I try to lunge for her, to pull Lucien’s hand out, but the hunger yanks me below once more, enraged at my efforts to break free.

PATIENCE. THEIR TIME IS COMING

“Fione,” Varia says, her voice suddenly gentle. “Step away from him and come here.”

“No!” Fione blurts. “I have made my choice already. This is yours!”

“Then even you—” Varia’s voice cracks down the middle. “Even you would turn against me, beloved?”

From my place pinned in the snow by Malachite’s knees, I can see Fione’s face twist, fracturing with a different kind of pain in the delicate places—her mouth, the corners of her eyes. But she doesn’t move an inch from her place at Lucien’s side. She’s so strong. So sad.

There’s a beat, the Bone Tree creaking between us. And then Varia’s will incinerates my mind.

TAKE THEM APART

The world goes red. Six times.

My eyesight fractures—six points blurring into one just beyond my nose. Heat. Heat above me, cold beneath me, my limbs suddenly longer and strong, faster, fast and strong enough to throw the beneather off me. Beneather. Mal. Mal-what? What is his name?