“So we wait for Varia,” Malachite says. “And then send Lucien down there to do his thing?”

“Presumably.” Yorl nods. “It’s quite lucky this place is teeming with magic—enough that it won’t be a struggle for the prince.”

“What won’t be a struggle for me?” Lucien appears on top of a rock in a whirl of white crow feathers.

“Marriage, apparently,” the beneather grumbles.

Lucien looks taken aback. “Oh, c’mon, Mal. I told you it was coming.”

“Yeah—the first day you saw her!” Malachite snarls. “Months ago! I didn’t think you were serious—”

A joyous, golden laugh escapes Lucien as he jumps down and ambles to my side. “When am I not serious? Practically never.”

“Are the archers in place?” I ask. He looks over at me and nods, kissing my forehead.

“Yes. The beneathers have tranquilizer arrows for the majority of the horde.”

“The same tranquilizers I used,” Yorl clarifies. “Darkmoss syrup and acidified talhut blood. If they shoot well, they should be able to keep some of the valkerax asleep and at bay.”

“Long enough for me to do my job,” Lucien agrees.

“The rest we’ll have to fight,” Fione says, oiling her cane ominously with a rag.

The prince rummages in his pocket and hands her a fistful of bolts. “Tranqs for you, too.”

“Much obliged.” She makes a facetious Vetrisian noble bow, so out of place here in the bottom of the world, and the two of them grin at each other.

“Make no mistake,” Lysulli says, appearing out from behind the rubble. “We’ll have to kill most of them. The tranqs just stagger their rate of death.”

My chest sinks. And here I was, thinking the beneathers were being charitably kind about the whole thing. They exist to kill valkerax, not put them to sleep.

“Is there a hevstrata we can retreat to if shit hits the vent?” Malachite asks them.

“No.” They shake their head. “Runes don’t work near Pala Orias.”

“Ah, I see,” Yorl murmurs, chin in his hand. “The magical influence of the Tree of Souls could unravel the Old Vetrisian word-binds.”

“So this is our last stand,” Lucien says.

Lysulli fixes their bloodred eyes on him. “Yes.”

A beat. The flowers bounce excitedly in their invisible wind, and we go still in our own dread.

“I assume everyone’s in place?” Lucien asks.

Lysulli nods. “The alert’s gone round—we’re just waiting for them to show up now.”

Yorl, Fione, Mal, and Luc all look to me. I can see their worry, their fears, their tension drawn tight like bowstrings in their eyes. Fione most of all. Lucien most most of all.

I make my smile as big and warm as I can. “Well, then. Time to take a nap.”

We find a quiet place behind a boulder, and Lucien sits. He motions for me to put my head in his lap, and I do. Rest, at last.