“Just one of many.” I smile at him and curtsy. “Pleasure.”

“You’ve been through enough—” Lucien doesn’t let me get away. He strides after me, rounding the table and cutting off my circuit. “For this damnable thing. I’ll put it back right now.”

I see his fingertips blacken, golden twilight turning to deep night.

It’s here. Finally, after so long. He’s going to—

if you lose us, how will you protect him?

My eager thoughts snap-freeze.

without us, you have only your sword. we keep you from true death. If you lose us, you are weaker. weak enough someone may kill him before your very eyes.

Weakness. I’ve felt weak for so long, for three years, but feelings are rarely reality. The witchfire in Vetris where he almost died, the night of the Hunt where he was very nearly murdered by Archduke Gavik. If I wasn’t immortal—I couldn’t have helped him. He would have died. And now, with Varia on the loose, leading a thousand-thousand valkerax into battle against the world—death is never far off. For anyone. Him most of all.

if you lose us, you might lose him.

I know he’ll try to stop her; I can see it in his eyes. I saw it the moment I walked in—sadness, yes, but tempered by a horrifically strong will. He has a plan.

If I’m human, I can’t protect him.

you could run. take it and run.

I could.

you won’t.

I won’t. Not anymore.

Not when I’ve found him again.

He holds out the bag so innocently, so convinced of his own conviction. Of course I want it. I betrayed him for it. I lied for it. I sided with Varia for it. His fingers deepen with night, determined to give me what he thinks is what I want.

What I thought I wanted.

I know better now. Varia taught me better. Wherever she is, I’m faintly thankful to her for the trials, the errors, the pain. The realization.

“It’s never been my heart,” I say.

The darkness on his fingers stops growing, his face going still, and his black eyes confused. “What do you mean?”

I laugh and round the table past him, coming back to where I started next to Malachite. “It was never my heart I wanted. What I wanted, always, was to feel human again.”

“Then…” He starts forward. “Here.”

“It took me a while to learn. It’s a hard thing to learn.”

“Zera, please, just—”

“That little beating thing in your hand, Your Highness,” I interrupt him, “doesn’t make someone human. It makes their chest a little heavier, their body a little louder. It gives them a drumbeat to march to, a compass to navigate by when the sun goes down. But it’s not the thing that makes one human.”

His fist holding my heart wilts, his brows knitting. “Then…what does?”