He scoffs, the sound almost like a purr. “Absolutely not. Cavanosians don’t trust celeon to be anything other than guards and mercenaries. Their distrust of magic means they think us inherently incapable of trustworthy thought, considering the witches gave us sentience. I have no tool belt. I did not study at the Black Archives. I’m self-taught.”

I whistle softly. “Self-taught, and you made this Old Vetrisian serum no one else has managed to in a thousand years? Consider me thoroughly intimidated.”

Instead of proudly accepting the compliment, he glowers. “Grandfather did most of the work and got none of the credit—not from his peers, and not from the Black Archives.”

“Aha. So here you are, determined to get it for him.”

Yorl regards me with his incandescently green eyes, his catlike pupils huge in the dimness, but says nothing. Finally, he turns and walks away toward the spiral staircase leading to the surface, and I follow. He leads me back up the steps, but I’m so exhausted from being masticated repeatedly by the valkerax that I stumble on a stair.

I feel something warm encase my hand immediately, too bulky to be human fingers. Leathery pads, the tips of claws. Yorl’s paw.

“Don’t fall behind.” His voice is gruff.

Secretly pleased, I strut behind him. “You could just say ‘thank you for saving my life’ like everyone else does.”

When we reach the top of the stairs and emerge into the white mercury–lit hall, he tells me to meet him at the same place, same time tomorrow, and then disappears back into the dark stairwell. I can’t stand the thought of being trapped in more stuffy dimness, so I decide to walk back to the palace instead of flagging a carriage, gulping down fresh, warm air the whole way.

One step.

I’m one step closer to my heart. The valkerax can kill me all it likes—but I won’t give up.

Dying hurts much less than lying.

The sunset is a brilliant orange gem against a sky banded with gold and platinum. I meander through a Vetris preparing for dinnertime—the smell of roasting fish and barley ale on the air as crowds of bedraggled workers shuffle toward home. Meat has been scarce lately, with most game hunters unwilling to make the long, dangerous journey to Vetris, and the caravans slowing due to avoiding the forested roads—any chance of encountering a witch and their Heartless a constant fear. All that means the meat vendors sell scraps of hare and not much else, while the vegetable vendors flourish—selling cheaper heads of crisp sugarleaf and great bouquets of red summer mushrooms. The fish vendors are even better off, fat perch and oily flatfish from the rivers within the city piled high.