I’ve done so much. Learned so much. Been so many things to so many people. And now here I am. But who is “I?” Am I really me? Did I spring from my forgotten mother’s womb as me, or have my friends and loved ones made me?

pointless.

The sum total of me is every moment I spent with Lucien. With Fione. With Crav, Nightsinger, Peligli. Every loss. Every gain. Every smile and joke and tear. Undeath tried to stop me. Tries to stop me still, whispering despair into my ears.

you are nothing, nothing, NOTHING.

I am everything.

Life has made me. The world has made me me.

And it’s my time to return the favor.

“Our time. Together, Starving Wolf.”

I start up, the familiar voice echoing in my head. I heard it for so many weeks, in that pitch-dark arena below Vetris.

Lucien blinks drowsily, gripping my hand harder. “What is it, Zera?”

The clamor outside the cave comes instantly—the clash of bone armor on bone armor, beneathers shouting in their language, the sound of bowstrings being fired. Lucien and I jump up as one just as a shadow appears at the mouth of our cave, folding itself in half to look in at us with ruby eyes.

“Valkerax,” Malachite pants. “Nearby.”

“Is she here?” Lucien demands.

Malachite shakes his head. “No sign. But if the valkerax are here, she isn’t far behind.”

“Wait.” I swallow. “I don’t think—”

“Ready the first round of tranqs, for the love of the spirits!” Lysulli’s shout from outside dumps cold water into my veins. I dash for the cave exit, squeezing past Mal and running furiously to the front line, legs pumping over rubble.

“Wait!” I screech. “Wait! That valkerax is a friend!”

A beneather soldier looks up from his bow like I’m absolute batshit and scoffs. “Yeah, and it’s here to politely ask us to dance.”

“Prepare yourselves!” Lysulli’s faint orders resound as they stride up and down the firing line, and I sprint around broken pillars and piles of traveling packs to reach them. The archers draw their bows tight, eyes focused and scanning the silently howling darkness just past the golden glow of the flowers. No shadows, no light. Just yawning nothingness out there.

I freeze when something moves.

Deep in the black, something slithers. I hear it, so they definitely hear it with their long ears.

Yorl comes skidding to my side, nose twitching madly. “It smells like valkerax. Is it Evlorasin?”

I nod. “We have to get Lysulli to stop—”

“There!” a beneather soldier suddenly cries out. “P’ashath ora!”

The whole firing line rises up with cries of “p’ashath ora,” and Yorl breathes an unthinking translation beside me, his green orbs locked in the distance.

“The wyrm cometh.”