“Well, that. And the rumors of a horde of valkerax coming back are probably far scarier than a lone Heartless and her witch.”

He nods, taking a swig as I pass him his waterskin back. There’s a long quiet, the lapping ocean and the screeching gulls conversing with one another.

“So,” he says finally. “You gonna shake some horseshit up, huh? In the world.”

I shrug. “Depends.”

“Depends nothing. From the moment I heard you talk at the Spring Welcoming, I knew you were gonna do that. So. Go and do it already.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you gonna be okay with it?”

“Yeah. So long as you don’t hurt Luc, I’ll be fine.”

The prince is nowhere to be seen—he and Fione long gone belowdeck to try to parse the book. They didn’t even come up curiously at the racket the duel made, which means they’re direly serious. But I look at the shadows of the stairwell anyway.

“You like him a lot, huh?” I ask.

It’s Malachite’s turn to shrug. “Like, dislike, doesn’t matter. He’s home. My home. And you won’t hurt him. Or I’ll get you.”

It’s not a threat. Not anymore. There’s an unspoken understanding—I could be valkerax. I could be susceptible to the Bone Tree. But even if I am, and I’m controlled by Varia to do something, Malachite will be here to stop me, like he stopped me on the peak of the Tollmount-Kilstead mountains that awful day. Him saying he’ll stop me isn’t a threat anymore; it’s an assurance. A promise between friends. A promise to carry my burdens equally. And I breathe easier because of it.

No matter what, no matter what I am, Malachite has my back.

The ideas are too heavy to say, too heavy for the sun-soaked sky, wet with amber and lavender dusk. Malachite’s profile against it is like marble-washed peach, delicate and refined. And then, suddenly, “If you have kids, I get to name the first one,” he says.

“Shut up,” I drone.

He tries to look deep and thoughtful. “I’m thinking…Vachiayis.”

“Shut up!”

“Big Stinky Vachiayis the Third.”

“Hold on.” I stand up. “Let me go get permission to kill you.”

His laughter follows me as I walk down the stairwell, my smirk affixed as I peer into rooms, storage nooks, behind pillars and boxes looking for Fione and Lucien. I find them bent over a rough-hewn table in the mess, both of them intently absorbed in the green-backed book. So intently that they completely ignore me as I bounce up.

“Lucien, quick question: Can I kill Mal? He’s being annoying.”

No response. Fione stutters her eyes up from the book’s pages, to me, and back down to a stock-still Lucien. A Lucien whose proud hawk profile is frozen, not a blink or twitch in sight. All stone.