“Yes.” He narrows his eyes out of the cave’s mouth. “But not close enough. She’s staying just out of range. It’s like she…knows.”

“Shit,” I hiss. “I can lure her out. Make her angrier, make her come right for us—”

“By sleeping again?” Lucien frowns. I should say yes, but I can’t. If I sleep, and lure her, and Varia gets close enough, I might not wake up in time to stop Lucien from splitting the First Root again. I have to be here to interrupt him. To put it back together before he splits it apart.

I can’t go to her in the dream. But the only other way I have to communicate with her, to lure her, is the hunger. My valkerax blood promise, and the Bone Tree song inside her, calling to me. The hunger here is muted by Lucien’s powerful magic. Just a little more from me, and I can push it down entirely. But if I Weep, that valkerax part of me comes out, too. The six eyes. It could make me more vulnerable to the Bone Tree’s command, not less. I could communicate with her, goad her closer, but she could also just grab my reins, force me to hurt and kill like she almost did in the Black Archives.

“Zera, no,” Lucien starts. “What if—”

“I won’t,” I say. “Trust me. Please.”

He hedges, black eyes sliced thin. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.” I say it, and unsay it. “It’ll be only for a second. Please.”

I feel the grip of his magic loosen before his expression does. “Only a second.”

I suppress my smile and dive straight into the silence. Of the silence. One foot in front of the other, one step deeper at a time. Falling, like falling into a weightless ocean. I’ve seen the ocean now.

What a beautiful unlife it’s been.

I surface into absolute stillness, into the world being split six ways, six eyes looking at six Luciens. Magma-hot blood tears streak down my face, eye-corner to eye-corner, the blood dripping to the floor and mixing with the pearl blood of the Tree of Souls. The hunger in my head is gone, gnawing at me no longer, but I understand it better now. It’s not really gone. Weeping doesn’t get rid of the hunger. It just lets it rest—from the pain. From the anger. From the guilt.

Weeping isn’t to suppress the hunger. It’s to embrace it.

To embrace all of myself, no matter how dark or terrifying.

I’m here.

I’m here, I think loudly and clearly. Come and get me.