Yorl and Mal both open their mouths, but Lucien smoothly interjects with all the effortless authority of a prince.

“Zera will stay awake for as long as it take us to get to Pala Amna. I’ll make sure of it. When we arrive, we inform the ancestor council of our plan first. We travel with their reinforcements to Pala Orias, allowing us to lay down traps and ambushes for the valkerax. Only when that’s done will Zera sleep, informing Varia of our plan.”

Yorl’s huge green eyes narrow at me. “Can you truly stay awake that long? It’s an instinct for Heartless to sleep when they become emotionally drained—”

“She can do it,” Malachite interrupts him, his voiced laced with a thread of pride. “I’m sure of it.”

“But that means we can’t risk sedatives,” Fione offers without looking up from her book. “If Varia calls her again—”

“She won’t,” I say. “I think—I think after the last battle, she might be afraid. Of me.” I scramble to cover. “Of what I did on the island. Stopped her valkerax, you know?”

“It’s not just her in her body, though,” Lucien argues. “It’s also the Bone Tree.”

“I don’t think the Bone Tree is as keen on trying to kill us at the moment, either.” I smile, but it feels paper-thin. “I felt it recoil when I said I was sorry. It’s confused. It might get unconfused shortly, but I think we have a little leeway.”

“And if we don’t?” Malachite grunts.

“Well,” I breathe in. “Then chain me to the rudder and throw me in the sea and let me drag along out there. Much less likely to kill someone if my excessively toothy mouth is full of seawater and fish.”

“You’re not—” Lucien’s handsome face hardens with a frown. “No. You’re here, with us. And that’s final.”

“She got through my Weeping, Lucien,” I say gently. “Your magic won’t be enough.”

His onyx eyes meet mine, studded with steel. “I will make it enough.”

“Not at the cost of your body—”

“At any cost.”

His last words ring in the captain’s room, ricocheting off the glass wine bottle, off the windows and bedframe and my cold hands. Fione looks up from the book. Malachite looks pained, and Yorl just looks at me. It won’t come to that. I won’t let him consume himself for me.

He stares at me, unblinking, sure of himself, his sacrifice. But that’s not how this story in the history textbooks goes. Lucien lives to rebuild Cavanos greater than ever before. I know it.

“What do we do now?” Fione whispers the question.

I tear my gaze from Lucien’s fiercely burning one, moving to the iron Eye of Kavar nailed to the wall above the captain’s bed, and nod at it.

“We do what the rest of the world is doing.”