“Nervous?” I ask her as we walk down.

She murmurs through gritted teeth, “Let Lucien do the talking.”

“No fun,” I pout.

“Please.”

“All right,” I sigh, putting my hands behind my head leisurely.

Malachite elbows me as he passes. “Hands down. Try to look interested in what they’re saying.”

I feign innocence and outrage. “Why is it me you’re all harping on? I’m capable of not ruining things, too!”

“In theory,” Malachite groans. Fione’s too nervous to say anything more, and we all follow Lucien as he draws even with the line of silver robes. I see him square his shoulders minutely, head high. The prince has arrived.

“I am Prince Lucien Drevenis d’Malvane of Cavanos.”

“You are greeted.” The woman with the limpid eyes looks him up and down. “What do you seek from the Black Archives, Prince Lucien?”

Lucien’s dark gaze slices over to Fione for a split second, and she steps up and says, “We wish to find a way to interfere with the Bone Tree.”

The line of silver hoods look to one another ever so slightly. Most of them stare straight forward, and I can’t help but wonder where Yorl is in all this. The woman herself doesn’t so much as blink.

“And what knowledge have you brought to replace the knowledge you will take?”

I see Fione take a deep breath, steadying herself. She unlaces the strings of her pouch with deliberate slowness and pulls out the green-backed book. She opens it to a page, holding it out so the woman can see.

“An Old Vetrisian book. It speaks of the Trees.”

The woman steps closer, pulling a monocle out and peering at the writing, and then at the writing on the spine. She straightens quickly, eyes hardening on Fione and her monocle dropping on its chain.

“We have this book already. The rough draft, to be more precise. What we will gather from your book will be too slight a repayment for what you seek.”

The line of silver robes suddenly speaks all at once, scaring me out of my skin: “So it has been deemed.”

And just like that, the line turns. The woman makes a soft bow, the goodbye sort—utterly dripping with finality—and Lucien looks at me and I look at Malachite and he looks at Fione but she’s frozen, hands trembling on the book cover.

“Magic?” Malachite snaps at Lucien. “You could tell ’em about that skinreading shit. It’s rare, right?”

“Not rare enough.” He shakes his head. “Surely you know a few tricks about hunting valkerax, Mal. You could tell them—”

“No way. Every kid in Pala Amna knows—”

With each step the silver robes take, Fione’s face falls further, deeper into a pit of despair. I can see it happening right in front of me. In her mind, in our reality, Varia is slipping further and further away.

“Wait!”