“I promised you.” His face burns golden, every determined ridge hot as the sun. “I made a promise. I may have your heart, but I’ll never have your free will, Zera. That’s yours, and yours alone.”

“Well, she’ll kill us, then!” Malachite snarls. But Lucien doesn’t budge an inch. He means it, down to the last syllable. Even if it means I hurt him, he won’t command me. And in some sick, twisted way, I feel tears of happiness prick at my eyes.

He won’t strip me of my freedom like the others.

He’s not like them.

you’re not one of us, the hunger sneers at me. you never were. a traitor to the very end.

Fione is a clear voice of reason through the haze. “Either way, we need to tell the polymaths the valkerax are—”

From outside the shuttered window, the cold call of a bell starts to reverberate. Just one, and then two, and then ten, and then the island erupts with frantic warning rings and frenzied shouts. Malachite throws the window open, peering out and then back in, his face even more paper-white and grim.

“Too late.”

My throat feels like it’s in my mouth, Lucien’s hand squeezing mine barely legible through my mounting panic. I thought I had it under control. I thought I was free of her, of everyone, free to make my own choices, but now she’s reaching me—

“Zera, look at me,” Lucien says, gently capturing my face with his palms. “It’ll be all right. I can put you under.”

“But—” I look out the window. “You need me. You need me to fight. You need me to help you escape—ah!”

A lance of white-hot agony rips through my chest, up to my teeth. All my Heartless teeth sprout in an instant, longer than I’ve ever felt them, and far sharper. So deadly sharp, my lips bleeding as I clench them shut, refusing to bite, refusing to give myself the slightest opportunity. It’s not just human teeth—I can feel rows of teeth behind those teeth, spiraling all the way down and into my throat.

Like valkerax.

She’s changing me. Calling out to the blood promise in me. She’s forcing me to obey, like every other valkerax must obey her, obey the Bone Tree.

you betrayed them, and now you betray us.

“A sedative it is, then,” Yorl says after a single glance at my mouth. He whirls to a bag on the wall, rummaging in it before coming up with a vial of blue liquid. “This is enough to keep you under for a quarter-half. He doesn’t have to command you, but if he can slide a magic suggestion that you sleep—” The celeon looks up at Lucien, and they nod at each other. “There’s a good chance not even the Bone Tree would be able to wake you.”