I slide into the table beside him. “What’s wrong?” When he doesn’t answer, I glance down at the page he’s looking at. All Old Vetrisian symbols I can’t read, clumped close and dizzying. I look up at Fione. “What’s going on?”

She opens her mouth, closes it. Thinks. The unease in the pit of my stomach yawns bigger. And bigger. Until—

“We’ve translated some of it,” she says, slowly. One important word at a time.

“And?” I lean in. “What did you find?”

The swallow of her pale throat is her only movement. “The Bone Tree…and the Glass Tree.”

“What about them?” I press frantically. “Fione, c’mon—”

“They’re the same thing.”

Beside me, Lucien’s eyelashes twitch in a half blink, like a deer frozen in the woods—watching, fearful, and yet still plagued by flies. I suck in a breath made of daggers, razors, cut obsidian.

“What are you talking about?” I nervously laugh. “The Old Vetrisians made the Bone Tree, and the witches made the Glass Tree—”

“It used to be one tree,” Fione interrupts me smoothly. Too smoothly. “They didn’t make it, Zera. They split it. They split it and used the halves to create their new Trees.”

My unheart falls into my stomach. “But—how—”

“The source of all magic,” Lucien’s hoarse voice finally breaks, his eyes locked ahead on a steady white mercury light on the wall, white reflecting in his black. “The tree I saw in my dream. The one that gave me magic. The one that gives every witch on Arathess their magic.”

He looks up at me—calm above, and terrified below.

“They split the Tree of Souls.”

17

17

THE TREE
OF SOULS

At this point, I’m willing to believe anything. Even things I’ve never heard of before.

I’ve seen the Bone Tree’s power firsthand. I’ve seen how it melded with Varia, embedded itself into her very skin. I’ve seen myself heal from dire things—beheadings, fires, guttings. I’ve seen Windonhigh, like an impossible myth sprung from an old bard legend—a literal island in the sky. I’ve seen massive, heavy valkerax fly—I’ve seen them overcome the Bone Tree’s brute power by Weeping.

I’ve Wept. I’ve done what I thought three years ago would never be possible.

All that to say at this point, I’d be a fool to dismiss even the wildest idea.

At the sick look on Lucien’s face, I called Malachite belowdeck and gathered four mugs of cold barley ale from the tap room, spreading them among our somber table. The ship creaks in our silence.

Malachite’s the first to admit confusion. “So what if they were the same tree? What does that even mean?”