From the depths rises a white line, slow at first, slithering over and under rubble, into and out of the ground. It’s massive. I still viscerally remember just how massive Evlorasin was, is, but with it surrounded on all sides by the giant canyons and headed off by the monumental, ghostly Tree of Souls, it looks no more than a toy. A string. Something quaint and small, until it darts in closer, its five white eyes catching golden-flower light and glimmering in the darkness and all of a sudden it’s huge and everywhere.

“Starving Wolf,” Evlorasin says in its calm, guttural voice. “I’ve come to aid you.”

“Fire!” Lysulli yells.

“No!” I spin on my heel, wrenching a beneather’s bow out of their hand. “No, no! It’s friendly! Stop!”

But the line doesn’t listen to me—only to Lysulli. They nock their bows, and I watch in horror as a hundred archers pull, tense, and then fly loose their arrows. Some tranq, some not, but they all soar toward Evlorasin’s exact location, exactly at its five white eyes and undulating whiskers—

And then they stop.

The hail of arrows stops just before Evlorasin, who slithers fully out of the darkness, white scales and long halberd claws on display, its wolflike paws pattering down the earth in heavy thumps as it nears, leaving prints the size of horse wagons on the canyon floor.

“Didn’t you hear her?”

The voice seems to boom around the stone, and Yorl and I watch in shock with the archers as a white crow flies to the front, hovering just before the wall of unmoving arrows frozen in space.

Lucien.

The crow’s feathers meld to his armor, his cape, his smirk as he looks back at us.

“This one’s a friend.” The arrows suddenly bunch into one dense knot in the air, floating back toward the line of archers and landing softly on the ground just before them. He’s so powerful. This place…it’s made him a giant. That’s supposed to make me feel happy. Satisfied.

But all it does is terrify me.

will he be strong enough to stop us?

Lucien just throws me a small grin. “Always wise to save ammunition in a time like this, isn’t it?”

“Prince!” Lysulli booms. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? The thing’s next to you—”

Evlorasin slithers just behind Lucien, and joy pierces me as the prince turns to pat it on the nose.

“See?” He looks at Lysulli. “Gentle as a rabbit.”

“It’s the one I told you about.” Malachite sprints over to Lysulli far easier than I with his beneather agility. “The one Zera tamed.”

Yorl hems and haws. “‘Tamed’ isn’t really the correct phraseology—”