Beneather jailors for valkerax, witch jailors for Heartless. Pity reaches corrosive fingers into my heart, but I remember the massive fanged jaw I saw not seconds ago, and the fingers curl in on themselves. The books that spoke of burned villages and mountains of dead bodies only glanced over the valkerax’s reign of destruction. They weren’t always hostile, but one day during the time of Old Vetris they became so and have been ever since. The beneathers are all that stand between them and us.

“Even now,” Yorl continues, “the valkerax you saw inside the arena is withering away. The Old Vetrisian command to remain in the Dark Below is eating at its very being, driving it mad with pain. It will eventually die if we do not return it to the Dark Below soon.”

“But if I can teach it to Weep…” I trail off.

“If you can teach it to Weep, it could—in theory—resist the all-consuming command,” Varia agrees.

I glower at her. “And what do you get from it being able to resist?”

Varia blinks, surprised, the firelight catching the falter in her eyes just before she laughs. “So suspicious.” She inspects her flawless nails to regain herself. “Lucien told me you and he found that valkerax skeleton of Gavik’s in the tunnels beneath the East River Tower.”

We had. Fione needed information to reveal the misdeeds of Gavik—her uncle. She led us to his secret repository, where Gavik had kept a valkerax in the tunnels to guard it. I nod, recalling the beneather runes Malachite read on the wall where its massive skeleton had been. “The runes said it was killed by the Laughing Daughter. Out of mercy.”

Laughing Daughter. That was the code word to get down here. And it’s Varia’s witchname.

“And Lucien’s sword fit perfectly in the head wound the skull had,” she agrees. “Yes—I killed that valkerax. Gavik was keeping it for study, and the pain of being out of the Dark Below was hurting it horribly. It begged me to kill it.”

I pause. “Valkerax…can talk?”

Yorl and Varia share a look. A look I don’t like. It reeks of secrets.

“In a manner.” Yorl shrugs. “What matters is their minds have been warped by the magic of the command. They speak in fragmented riddles. To stay in the Dark Below is all they care for. If one brings a valkerax above the surface, they are in tremendous amounts of pain. And the fragmented riddles become only more difficult to understand. Unreliable gibberish at best.”