I watch him tilt his muzzle up to look at the stars, and he shimmers so violently, the ochre of his body almost entirely melts into the black.

“Ah. Time is so fickle.” He pivots to me, that eternal smile in place. “I will see you again, Zera, someday.”

“Wait—” I reach out for him, but my hand passes through him like air, my fingers making the shimmer worse. “There are a million things I want to—”

“Tell Yorl I am proud of him, would you?” he interrupts, soft and yet determined.

I catch his emerald eyes, all six of them gentle, and I nod. “I will.”

And then I blink, and he’s gone. No increments, no fragments. Just there and then gone. But somehow, as I trace my steps back to the cool bed and Lucien’s arms, I know he’s not really gone at all. It’s the blood in me, the promise in me. It’s a feeling. A knowing.

I know I’ll see him again.

I’m tempted to write off Muro’s appearance as a dream. Wipe it away clean as a passing fancy, as my mind trying to explain everything to me neatly, wrapped up in a bow. As a convenient dream. I want to forget, and snuggle deeper into Lucien’s embrace in the morning. But Muro’s words linger, insisting realness into my blood, staring back at me as my dusty feet from walking the halls late at night.

It’s a feeling, deep in my unheart. My soul.

I just…understand it was real.

Lucien tries to ask me about it, but I have no words for it, offering him my wrist limply. He holds it, and the air thickens with the hum of magic as he skinreads me. He can see what I’ve seen easily—it’s only thought-reading that’s truly difficult, or so he’s said. And I trust him. I trust him enough to let him see, now, and he frowns.

“Who was that? It looked like—”

“Yorl?” I offer. “Yeah. I think it was Muro, his grandfather. Like, his ghost or something. Or his…soul. Is that even possible? With magic?”

Lucien looks as lost as I feel. “Perhaps. I know so little, compared to any other witchblood my age. But why would he appear to you now?”

“I don’t think he chose to.” I frown. “It just…happened. He said I could see him because of our blood promise.”

“Well then.” The prince nods. “That’s Yorl’s territory, isn’t it?”

My murky thoughts carry over into the morning meal in the mess hall. The polymaths are poring over some shoddy pieces of paper, all of them strangely identical in their black ink letters. A “printing,” I hear one of them call it, though I have no idea what that means. As far as I can gather, it carries news, because the polymaths won’t stop whispering among themselves.