Lady Tarroux is the exact opposite of everything I am—quiet, gentle, easygoing, innocent. And best of all, she’s humble. She’s different from the other nobles, enough that she could catch Lucien’s eye, if he just gave her a chance. And Malachite seems dead set on providing that chance.

She’s perfect.

The perfect wedge to drive between Lucien and me—so perfect I almost pity her. I’m going to use the poor girl like a tool, and she’ll never see it coming. But maybe that’s for the best—she’ll have a princely husband out of it, if all goes well.

But I don’t have the time to help Malachite orchestrate anything between Tarroux and Lucien. For four days, my life is consumed entirely by the valkerax. First thing in the morning, I wash and dress and head to the South Gate via Varia’s carriage. In the dark arena below the city with Yorl, I try desperately to teach the valkerax how to sit still (an increasingly impossible feat, considering how much pain it’s in) while simultaneously trying to understand its lyrical, half-mad poetry. Each day I walk into the arena, its voice gets a little softer, and that worries me. Yorl insists the valkerax is stable, but it’s hard not to think otherwise. On the second day, its voice is barely loud enough to hear. Yorl’s there with me every step of the way, unflinchingly brave even when the valkerax thrashes around violently in fits of pain. We barely make any progress—and I hardly even manage to get two coherent words out of the valkerax. The sound of it whining in sheer agony makes my stomach sink and pity rise.

“Can’t you, I dunno, give it some permanent polymath painkiller? Or have Varia magic the pain away?” I ask Yorl as we ascend the stairs after the session, his paw in mine. I feel Yorl’s immature mane brush my shoulders as he shakes his head.

“I’ve tried. But the Bone Tree was made with the most advanced Old Vetrisian magic available. That sort of forging is lost to us. There are temporary solutions, but nothing works permanently to relieve their pain. It’s almost as if it’s a fundamental agony the Bone Tree has written into the laws of valkerax existence.”

“Couldn’t I just…” I stumble over a stair and Yorl tenses his arm, and I pull myself up by it. “Couldn’t I just go down to where the valkerax live, then? Into the Dark Below? I could teach one that isn’t in pain.”

Yorl snorts. “No one goes into the Dark Below and survives—not humans and not witches. Perhaps if you were a beneather culling party, but even then there’s a good chance half of you wouldn’t make it back.”