She’s so happy—the voice is quiet for once. That terrible, aching hunger to destroy, to ruin—it hasn’t spoken to her once since she set the last witch city on fire. She’s done it. She’s obeyed, and more than that, she’s found out how to silence it. Zera—I—had Weeping. But she—we—have this.

Destruction.

As long as she destroys, it stops swallowing her mind whole. That’s when the tides of the Bone Tree’s power even out and she can surface above the waves of chaos. She can see the mousy-haired girl’s face now and remember her name—Fione. Flashes of memory—of stolen kisses beneath cherry trees, of slow, never-silent touches beneath silk sheets. The smell of her is the lightest of perfumes, clover and lemongrass, and she tastes of beeswax and copper, especially when she comes in from her uncle’s workshop.

Lovely Fione. Loyal Fione.

Loyal no longer.

Varia’s heart pangs, but we keep our chin high. We will carve the world—a better world, a safer world—for her.

We must.

And so, we listen happily to the flames and the screams of the witches as our white wyrms circle the floating city.

Circling, in rainbow halos.

Flying.

My unheart—just mine—shudders. Flying?! How are they flying? Only Evlorasin knows how—how to Weep, how to fly. Peligli, Crav, Y’shennria—no, I just found them. I just left them, safe in their beds…

I’m thrown out of her body. Her eyes aren’t mine anymore. I’m behind her, floating somewhere above her, and I watch in slow, dripping horror as she turns around and looks right at me. Up, and at me, with a smile.

“Blood, Zera,” she says with a little laugh, motioning to the flying valkerax like I’m a dense child. “Remember? Blood is a conversation for them.”

She can see me. Talk to me. A conversation. Evlorasin gave me its blood, and I know where the Bone Tree is at all times. Forever. I know where she is, forever. Evlorasin’s wound on its hind leg, telling me other valkerax bit, that they followed. That’s how they followed Evlorasin, that’s why it struck me as strange that they could follow Ev at all—they learned. Through Ev’s blood, they learned to fly.

And they’ve attacked Windonhigh. My friends. My family.

Varia’s eyes search me, her gaze resting around me, and she breaks out in the most piercingly beautiful of smiles.

“Shall we find where you are?”