The Laughing Daughter’s magic is so incredibly strong, I’m almost offended by it. It gives me no time to sit and languish in pain and throw a pity banquet for myself at all. The three stab wounds in my stomach stitch themselves together, the skin warming on the edges where it entangles over itself. Those little lines of warmth are what yanks me out of the blank white precipice of death and plops me back into unlife. I crawl to my knees, slipping on the pine needles as I look around for Varia.

I find my witch (gods, so strange to call her that) idly sitting on a log not a few paces away from me, her heels beating against the wood like an impatient child. I scour the forest around her.

“Just you?” I start. “What a disappointing welcome back party.”

Varia shrugs, midnight sheet of hair spilling over her shoulders. “Fione left. She saw your body and ran in the other direction looking sick.”

“Poor thing,” I murmur. “Probably best that way. No human likes to watch flesh mend itself again.”

But at least now she knows—I can’t touch her without very painful consequences. That should ease her mind, at least a little, and that in turn makes me feel a tiny bit better about it all.

Varia clears her throat. “I appreciate the gesture, by the way.”

“Which one? The dying?” I brush dirt off my mouth and motion to my tunic that’s now horrifically bloodied. “Or crashing your gorgeous picnic whilst covered in blood?”

Varia’s smile is strangely absent as she speaks, her wide lips serious. “You reached out to touch her first. I wasn’t relishing the idea of ordering you to do it.”

“Because that’s where you draw the line.” I snort.

Varia’s eyes flash like black witchfire. “Fione is my dear heart. Obviously that’s where I—”

“She’s an eighteen-year-old girl who’s never left the court’s influence,” I retort. “And you’re a twenty-one-year-old witch plotting to use the world’s most terrifying army against it. She spent five years looking for you. Lucien spent five years. Both of them suffered horribly for five years because of you.”

Varia suddenly laughs, the sound bitter. “Oh, this is rich. The Heartless who earned their trust and then betrayed them all—lecturing me on hurting them? You truly are the only funny noble in Vetris, Lady Zera.”

My blood boils at the way she says it. I worked my arse off for Y’shennria to be called that. She was proud of me. No matter how huge a facade it was, I held it up with my own two arms. I earned that title.