“Well then. I accidentally forgive you,” I tease, only really half listening at this point. Between the runes on the armor and the strange architecture, I can barely pay attention—the stone here is carved butter-smooth and elegantly, shaped into incredible helixes and spirals that wind down the hallways. The helix shape seems to be popular—stitched into banners and made into fountains. Occasionally, the hallways open up to underground courtyards deprived of sun, but they’re no less beautiful in their vegetation; swathes of moss like rich quilts, spidery mushrooms curlicuing down from the ceilings, and pitch-black ferns gently bleeding great globules of iridescent purple liquid. There’s even one of those sapphire, gemlike mushrooms growing that Fione and Malachite lost their minds over in Windonhigh, but this one is far tinier.

Lysulli leads us through one of the garden courtyards and up a staircase to a massive steel door. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Malachite looking at all the plants, and for the first time I see a drop of wistfulness in his eyes. This is home for him, isn’t it? He’s been gone so long.

“We’re here.” Lysulli stops in front of it. “I’ll do the talking until one of the council acknowledges you.”

“Much obliged.” Lucien nods with no hint of sarcasm, but they glare at him as if he dripped with it. They turn to the guards on either side of the door.

“Adjudicator Lysulli, reporting. I’ve got upworlders here who claim they have a contribution to the spiral.”

The guards look us up and down, and one says, “And what credentials have they?”

Malachite steps up, thumbing his nose languidly. “I’m Olt’reya Malachite.”

The guards looked shocked through their visors, hands tightening around their spears. I clench my fists, ready, Lucien’s body going stock-still in that way it does before he magics. But Lysulli squeezes between us.

“At least let them in so the council can decide the defector’s fate,” they insist.

The guards move slowly to the door, eyes on Malachite the whole time as they winch it open. This whole “outcast” thing must be a huge deal, with the way everyone’s looking at him like humans look at a Heartless. I almost feel bad we came to Pala Amna, but it’s fleeting. We had to. Malachite knew that, too.

The steel screams as it parts, the embossed valkerax on the doors beckoning us into shadow with their stylized claws and teeth.

“Any advice?” I lean in and ask Malachite. He’s not the type to be comforted by a held hand or a touched shoulder, but standing at his side feels right. And it helps; I can tell in the way his posture goes soft even as his whole face hardens with something like pain.

“Don’t let them make you feel like shit for being you,” he says. It’s a sentence with the weight of years behind it, but I don’t dare ask.

“Noted.”