My unheart clenches. A tree of glass. Like the one in my dream. I keep my face cool, composed. “What sort of song is that?”

He narrows his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t remember any more of it. But I heard it a long, long time ago. And it was important. I pursued it—I must’ve. I couldn’t remember anything of my human life when I first woke up as a Heartless. But over time, the single line of that song broke through my mind. I caught myself humming it, and then the words came. After that, the memory of the Bone Tree flooded in.”

I frown. “What sort of memories about the Bone Tree are kicking around in that hateful old skull of yours?”

“None.” His watery eyes dim, and he looks down at the bloodstained cobblestones. “I don’t remember anything about it. But I remember it exists and that it’s dangerous. A terrible, dangerous weapon.”

I blow out air. He’s not technically wrong. I realized that, too, the moment Varia and Yorl told me what the Bone Tree is, and does.

“I know that,” I bite. “What’s your point?”

“Varia can’t have it,” he insists.

“She’s going to get it,” I say. “And I’m going to help her.”

“You have to stop,” the archduke insists. “I don’t remember—” He slams his fist on the ground, knuckles skinning themselves and healing all in a second. “I don’t remember why, but the Bone Tree is terribly dangerous. More so than you think, more than anyone knows.”

Doubt starts to creep in, but my unheart burns. Of course it’s dangerous. But it’s the one path left to my heart. It’s the last road left open, the last one I can walk on my own. Mother’s face lingers, an outline that I know can be filled in so easily, so warmly, if my heart returns to my chest.

“You don’t say,” I drawl. “It’s almost like it’s a tree that can control all valkerax.”

Suddenly, to my utter horror, I feel something tug on my breech cuffs. I look down to see Gavik…begging. On his knees, folded in half, his hands clinging on my boots and his face downturned. I stagger back in alarm.

“Please.” His voice is thin, all traces of sneering superiority gone. “You must stop helping her find the Bone Tree. I don’t know how, or why, but I can feel it—if she finds the Tree, it will mean disaster.”

An archduke. Not just any archduke—the most powerful archduke, the most influential noble in Vetris. The most proud, arrogant man in all of Cavanos, the man who hated me with a burning passion as Y’shennria’s niece and an outspoken girl, now begging me.