I shout before I think. The silver robes pause, the woman looking over her shoulder with a decidedly anticipatory aloofness. Waiting. I settle mentally, deep in the sand, sinking to the bottom of the ocean of stillness inside myself. The hunger falls away, down into darkness. When I open my eyes again, it’s six worlds. Six views of the world, of the woman’s gray gaze going wide. Hot blood tears sluice down my cheeks, one from each eye.

“Weeping,” I say. “I can tell you about that.”

Next to me, I see Lucien watching me. Nervous, and yet proud. There’s a beat before the woman walks up to me, pressing the monocle into her eye and looking me over. I feel like a piece of meat hanging on a butcher’s hook as she circles me slowly.

“We already know of Weeping,” she says tersely. “We know of the valkerax who Weeps, we know of the Heartless who Weeps, and we know of its mechanisms. This was our newest initiate’s kingsmedal project.”

Yorl. She must mean Yorl. He detailed it all, it’s true—my every interaction with Evlorasin, my every thought about Weeping and how to do it. The whole time he was scribbling in that dungeon arena beneath Vetris, he was signing the death warrant for this moment. Even through the perfect emotional peace and stillness, my chest deflates. My one advantage, gone. Just like that.

Fione darts forward. “Please, whatever I can do, the book, my uncle’s white mercury research—”

The begging sounds wrong in her voice. Unnatural. Fione is sweet, she’s smart, she’s determined. But she’s always had her pride. Until now. Until her hope and her love for Varia were cut away all at once with this woman’s words. The woman doesn’t look at her, doesn’t so much as acknowledge what she’s said. She turns, and it’s a decision. A rejection. The sound Fione makes at my side tears me in half—like a lone wolf dying on a winter’s night. She sinks to her knees, her tears splattering on the volcanic glass. Lucien’s posture sags, the hope draining from him, too. Malachite’s face twists and his mouth opens but he never gets the chance because the woman speaks again, clear.

“However, our newest initiate failed to mention a Heartless with six eyes like a valkerax.”

Fione’s head snaps up, gaze glimmering fiercely through her tears. Lucien helps her to her staggering feet, and she juts forward instantly, voice breaking. “Does that mean—”

The woman turns to face us, extending her hand to me. In her palm is a black-glass medallion, etched with a dizzying gold and silver symbol of some sort, like a flower opening or a star exploding.

“You may enter,” she says coolly to me. “And you may learn from our books. As we may from your body. Is this trade acceptable?”