“Much younger than I thought they’d be, but no less impressive,” I murmur to Yorl, who nods.

“Beneathers don’t have a very long expected lifespan. The spiral takes most of them before their time. Getting older than three decades is a rarity.”

“Aha.” I nod, and think to myself that’s perhaps why the ancestor council was so eager to agree to Fione’s offer—tired of seeing their young succumb to the valkerax, only to be replaced by the younger. And it explains why Lysulli is in a position of power and still so young. I watch them salute the two commanding officers of the battalions by placing their pale fingers together, lightly interlaced. From where I’m standing, the points of Lysulli’s fingertips almost look like a spiral. Always the damn spiral.

In a way, the beneathers are imprisoned just as much as the valkerax they fight.

As much as Heartless.

The battalions are much less impressed with us than we are with them—but the matronic definitely catches their attention and awe. They shoot looks at it as they march, and we march with them. At some point, we pass a long, low, flat expanse of stone, almost like a field. Amethysts have been carved into various shapes of various sizes, embedded in the stone in a way that’s all too familiar. In a way I saw that day I left Nightsinger’s forest, along the Bone Road.

Graves.

Graves innumerable, stretching into the darkness.

But these graves aren’t from the Sunless War. They’re from a thousand years of fighting. Of dying. Of sacrificing.

The bracelet of amethysts jangles on my wrist as if calling out to its brethren, calling out to the place we all go in the end. The place we’re all marching to. A place I refuse to let my friends go to. A place I’ve been many times. A place familiar to me and yet, at its core, still unfamiliar. Frightening. Comforting. A spiral.

Malachite’s scars. Evlorasin’s blood promise within me. Lucien’s memories, of a cool little room overlooking a black sand beach.

No one is ever really gone.

“This is never-goodbye,” I whisper.

30

30

TO PALA ORIAS

The trek to Pala Orias is far easier than the maze we traversed after the Fog Gate. Or so it feels. Having two beneather battalions of highly trained warriors cut down every hungry crawly that decides to slither toward us is a true blessing. As is having Lysulli. They know the way to Pala Orias with a bird’s mind for navigation, steering us through tight weaves of rock tunnels and devastated canyons so huge and wide, they put infinity to shame.