Malachite makes a facetious salute and heads the charge, Lucien walking beside me. His hand is back, and his eye, and while I’m numbed by the illusion of normalcy, knowing he’s using magic to make them seem there churns my guts. He doesn’t want Malachite to know, for anyone to know but me. And I can keep a secret—I’m just not sure I want to.

I watch the beneather’s broad chainmail back walking ahead of me. Malachite’s devoted his whole life to protecting Lucien. He’s tortured people, killed people for him. He deserves to know about Lucien’s state more than anyone. Malachite, of all people, would unite with me if I told him Lucien’s self-sacrificing strategy. I’d feel better having someone on my side, someone other than me guard-dogging Lucien’s willingness to throw himself away for his sister.

If Lucien dies, what will Malachite do?

What will any of us do?

I don’t want to think about it. I can’t. It yawns like an open valkerax mouth, thousands of teeth and all of them promising mind-bending pain. Not right now. I raise my head and grip the warm clay jar for any shred of comfort as I walk.

Thankfully, Malachite is much better at navigating tight, dark corridors than we are. He leads us to the same door we left Yorl and Fione in yesterday, and knocks his pale knuckles against the wood. The sounds echoes, and we wait anxiously for one beat, two, before the door creaks open. One periwinkle-blue eye peers out from the dimness inside, the skin around it ashen. Fione.

“Oh,” she croaks, voice hoarse. “It’s you.”

“Pardon the insult, Your Grace,” I push into the room before she can shut us out. “But you look like shit. How about some warm tea?”

I take one step forward, my shoes crinkling paper. It’s so dim, but I squint to see the floor entirely covered in parchment—some crumpled, some flat, layered on top of each other like thousands of nonsense-scribbled cream leaves. They’ve closed the shutters, blocking out the daytime light so that a single white mercury lamp on the table is the only thing struggling to illuminate the room. And the table—Yorl’s bent over it, yellow mane peeking out from behind towering piles of books and scrolls, the sunny color the one bright thing in the pale-washed room.

His ears are drooping, tail not so much as twitching—a clear sign he’s tired. I bite my tongue to stop from bombarding him with the fact I saw his beloved grandfather roaming around last night. Not now. Not when he looks so haggard.

“Gods,” Lucien breathes into his sleeve. “It smells terrible in here.”