Two rosaries, two trees, and the feeling that if I didn’t put them together again, something terrible would happen. That wrongness. The Tree covered in stained glass, and the aching feeling of loneliness it exuded just before all the shards stood on end to stab me. It’s the same. Varia’s face now—no, the Bone Tree’s face—it’s the same loneliness.

And the same stabbing.

I’m sure of it.

I understand now.

“One of them!” Varia snarls in her unvoice. “You’re one of them. You want to hurt us again! Split us again!”

“No,” I try. “No, I promise, I don’t—”

“EMPTY!” the Bone Tree screams, bubbles streaming out of her mouth and her working black eye darting madly around in its socket, wildly, like a berserk animal in a panic, as if it’s trying to escape its lid, driven to the final edge by fear. “EMPTY! PROMISES!”

The force of her scream feels like it’s tearing me apart, tearing my skin off my body as the valkerax ascend rapidly, hurtling up through the water, the pressure becoming less but the burning becoming more, and the explosion of water as they surface, and right before us is an island.

An island of volcanic black rock.

I jolt awake so hard, my brain feels like it ricochets in my skull, my gasp so loud it sounds more like tearing cloth than breathing.

“Zera!” Lucien’s voice faintly rings through my panic, close. “What’s wrong?”

I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on him. Six eyes. I freeze. Varia made me transform. Not just in the dream. But in reality, too.

I’m not in control.

And she’s here.

“We have to go!” I shriek. “Now!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Malachite hefts off the wall. “Go where? What’s going on?”

Fione moves like a cat, collapsing at my side with a hurried hiss. “Did you dream with her again?”

I nod, hair sticking to my cold-sweat forehead. “She’s here. Hundreds of them. We have to go. You have to—you have to tie me up. Knock me out. Something. Hurry!”

Yorl stands, hurrying over to me. “Is it Varia?”

I nod. “I can see her in my dreams. Through the Bone Tree. Look at my eyes—she did this. Not me. Her. She can…I can feel her. Inside me.”

“Shit,” Malachite hisses, lightly punching the wall next to him. “Shit, shit, shit! I told you!”

“Now’s not the time, Mal,” Lucien says, voice eerily calm.

“He’s right.” Fione looks at Yorl. “We need a sedative for her.”

“It’s not gonna be strong…enough,” I manage. “She’s… Together she and the Tree are so strong.” My eyes flicker to Lucien. “You have to command me.”

His onyx gaze hardens in an instant. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Luc.” I wince as a deep pain clenches around my unheart. “She’s trying to. You have to combat it, or—”