It’s charging for us with a single-minded fury—right for the mortals. This tunnel is even smaller—even worse than when Evlorasin escaped and Malachite and I stopped it. There’s no space to fight at all, the tunnel essentially a feeding tube funneling right to the giant insect. Definitely a trap.

We can’t back up. It’s so fast—so much faster than I’d be able to dig a hole through the stone. I have to stop it here. Right here, where it meets my blade, because the mortals are lined up behind me like a row of perfect sweetrounds. I don’t know how thick the armor on its head is, but I don’t have a choice—

I feel Lucien’s hand on my shoulder just then, a liquid warmth running down it and through my body, curling up my arm and lighting the darkness brighter—witchfire. Purple-black witchfire slithers up my arm, unburning, and moves to my hand, wrapping around the hilt of Father’s sword and up to the blade.

“Run,” Lucien whispers.

And I trust him.

I trust him, to the end of the world and back again.

Cloaked in black fire, I hold the sword high through the fear, running full tilt at the insect. The fire banners out like a flag, the tip of the sword grinding sparks against the stone ceiling, and I can see every hair on the thing’s body now, every drip of poisonous saliva glinting on the mandibles, every hexagon of its unwounded eyeball, its blood the smell of tar and vinegar, and with all my Heartless strength I brace and let out a roar, my hands death-gripping the sword’s handle for all they’re worth. I feel it hit, blade meeting between the mandibles, the fire burning into what the blade can’t reach.

we are hungrier than you.

A second of resistance, a hitch. It writhes against me, the force of its long body condensed into this one point. I strain with all the words and muscles and teeth the song gives me.

“I am…hungrier than you!”

And then the give.

Freed, the sword carves through the insect and I sprint, cold black blood raining down on me but unable to extinguish the witchfire, to extinguish my momentum as I slice through all of it, the whole length of it until the spiked tail.

For a moment, the insect still clings to the ceiling.

And then the split; the long, twitching corpse falling to the ground.

Panting, I look behind me, the witchfire lighting up Lucien’s face—the gentle curve of his beaming smile, the rise and fall of his likewise panting chest, the way his eyes glint out like black diamond from the other end of the tunnel. We’ve done it. Together.

I can taste the kiss he’s giving me without ever touching him. His expression in this second is clearer than any signpost, any flag.