The momentum of our fall starts to near critical, all the flesh on our bodies pulled back, away from the earth. I feel like a horse, teeth exposed, terror exposed, but no blinders. Nothing to dull the cut of reality. Just over Fione’s shoulders, I can see the trees of the ground loom up, and the sharper the details the more of a warning it is. Soon. Soon, we hit the ground.

The fall, and then the rise.

Evlorasin pulls out of the death dive, shearing off not five miles above a forest. Without the force of the fall, I can look up now and see that the glass roots are trembling in the air, hesitant again.

“We’ve reached the threshold,” the valkerax says. “They can go no farther.”

With aching necks, Malachite and I look at each other, pure relief coursing from him to me and then to the nobles held fast in our arms. We’re safe. For now.

Evlorasin flies an easy distance before descending to the earth, weaving between the trees big enough to accommodate it. It lets us off, bowed shoulders making the perfect stepping ramp down. I carry Fione to a dry patch of forest and rest her on my covering. Malachite manages to prop Lucien up against a tree trunk even with his split arm, and I feel a flash of anxiety run through me at all the tangled, still roots so close to him. So close to hurting him. Malachite seems to be thinking the same.

“Spiritsdamned trees,” he says through gritted teeth, tearing a bit of cloth and wrapping his arm.

I turn and look at Evlorasin, its mane-halo radiating fainter again, illuminating the dim forest in a gentle pearlescent circle. Its whiskers undulate as I approach, and its five milk white, bleeding eyes stacked on one another watch me as I slide a tentative hand over its velvet nose.

“You really saved us back there,” I mutter.

“I saved you,” Evlorasin corrects softly. “The others are not blood kin.”

“Sure,” I laugh shakily. “Right.”

There’s a silence, the forest birds and forest animals too silent—as anything would go silent upon sensing something as large as Evlorasin. I don’t know what to say to the valkerax. “Your kind are ravaging Cavanos?” “Have you seen the destruction?”

“The Bone Tree has its chime at last,” Evlorasin speaks first, tail tip lifting like a roused snake and down again.

“Yeah.” I frown. “And we’re trying to stop it.”

Evlorasin cocks its head in an almost humanly confused gesture. “The chime? Or the Tree?”

“The Tree.”

“The Tree has many roots, buried deep and long. T’would be easier to stop the trill of the chime.”

It means killing Varia. I feel the old guilt settle in, the old rankling. “I know.”