At last, there’s no Hall separating the tree and me. It’s a naked tree, dark and small and still young, barely taller than I.

I run toward it, the shards of glass serrating my feet. Blood everywhere. But the bloodstained shards begin to move as I do, racing faster than I ever could toward the tree of their own free will, dragging crimson lines of my blood in the ground behind them. I run, but the glass shards run faster, chittering against one another like short-lived bells, like thousands of birds. They reach the tree first, and I watch as they settle against the trunk, securing themselves to it as if they want to be the bark instead. Like chaotic puzzle pieces, they assemble themselves over the tree like armor. The entire history of Vetris, fragmented and broken, gleams up the branches, curls down to the roots. The tree glitters so brightly, I’m nearly blinded, my bloodstains on the glass the only thing daring to dull it.

Still, the waves of loneliness from the tree do not ease. Still, I reach out for it, and suddenly, all at once, like a thousand spears of an army, the glass shards all raise like spines and point square at my face—

I bolt awake on Varia’s couch covered in a cold, clammy sweat. My blurry eyes focus on the room, and I stare at the gorgeous silk curtains, the gold-leaf paintings, the sheer beauty of the princess’s room to ground myself, force myself to calm down. My breathing evens out slowly as my eyes drink in the breathtaking sight of the white marble balcony in the moonlight.

I blink when I find someone standing on it, their long raven hair let loose and tangled as if they’d just woken up. Varia. She’s in her muslin nightgown, facing away from me and toward the Blue Giant half-moon in the sky. I sit up to see her face and freeze.

Her eyes are glazed, far away. Her whole body is still, gently swaying in a way I’ve never seen before. She always stands straight, her posture perfect. But it’s neither her eyes nor her body that alarms me most.

It’s her mouth. Her mouth is moving, quickly and silently. At first I think she’s casting a spell, those wordless spells that only the Old God can hear. But then, slowly, I lift myself off the couch and linger at the balcony’s door, and I hear her monotone words.

“The tree,” she says. “The tree…the tree. The tree.”

Terror grips me, irrational and mind-bendingly strong. How does she know what I dreamed? Or is she dreaming, too?

I back away from the balcony, wrap myself in a fox fur throw blanket, and spend the rest of the night in the corridor with the unquestioning guards.