Serious Lucien. Lucien, in all his midnight glory, black hair and black eyes piercing out into the night. It hurts to think about him alone. But he won’t be. He’ll have Malachite and Fione, and someday, a girl who reminds him of me. A girl who can pierce that dour, sad look on his face, who sweetens the bitterness of his life. He’ll never be alone. He’ll have me, no matter where I am or what happens to me. I’ll be with him, always. I know that now. The Tree of Souls—that strange thing that’s kept calling to me, giving me dreams—it connects us all. And even if it didn’t, by magic or by my own sheer will—I’ll be with him until the very end.

Because I love him.

With a great wrench, I pull myself together. When Lucien touches me, he’ll read my thoughts. I can’t think about anything. And certainly not about what I have to do, what I saw in that locus of perfect understanding. He’ll try to stop me if he knows. They all will. This is my choice.

So how do I keep it mine?

A wolf to eat the world, Evlorasin’s words drip in.

That’s it. If I think about it like a poem, like Evlorasin and all valkerax do—it will sound like nonsense, and not a plan going against his concern for me. It’s not to put the Trees back together. It’s to eat the world. I am the wolf, and I eat the world. There. Nonsensical. Perfect. A perfect mantra.

Armed with it, I clear my throat. “Ahem. Why so pensive, children?”

All three black silhouettes on the sand round instantly, the bonfire melting gold across their tense, worried faces.

“You’re back!” Fione chimes, smile blooming in relief.

“And just two eyes,” Malachite adds with a smirk.

“Thank the gods,” I exhale. “Do I look like the sort of girl who has the time to put makeup on all six of them every morning?”

“Absolutely not,” Lucien agrees, swooping in to help me sit up with one arm around my shoulders. He anticipates the question in my half-open mouth. “We lost a dozen polymaths.”

I quirk a brow. “A dozen? I was expecting far more.”

“The matronics are machines capable of terrifying power,” Fione says, looking me over for wounds with a polymath’s sharp eye. “But even they were being overwhelmed by the sheer number of valkerax. We would’ve lost the entire Archive if they hadn’t stopped.”

“‘Stopped’?” I blink. “What do you mean ‘stopped?’”

Malachite shrugs one shoulder. “Halfway through the battle, all the spiritsdamn valkerax just froze. Jaws open, tails thrashing, but no hostile movements. Varia was sitting pretty on a flying valkerax, circling the whole place, but Fione saw her freeze up, too.”

I glance at Fione, whose hand nervously moves to the brass seeing tube hanging from the chain around her neck.

“She was just…staring,” the archduchess murmurs. “Just staring at nothing, her jaw slack, like she was—”