I know like the valkerax know. Or maybe it’s the fact I’m holding the First Root itself in my hands. Maybe it’s talking to me with its soul, its magic. However it’s doing it, I can see it like a clear dream. Like I’m dreaming lucid, awake. Images, feelings. I can see the battle unfolding below, valkerax dead, beneathers dead, blood smearing the ghostly gold flowers. I can see the now and the future. The Tree of Souls won’t heal without first hurting. It’ll collapse the cavern. All the canyons. The destruction will be huge.

Everyone will die.

“Lucien, take them,” I beg him. “Everyone. Take them and go.”

Spittle and blood foam in the corners of his mouth, the animate void crawling steadily up his throat, Varia’s limbs beginning to twitch.

“I won’t leave you…behind…again,” he hisses.

“Take everyone,” I say. “I can do the rest. You have to—you have to get away. To Pala Amna. As far as you can get.”

His black eyes flicker with great effort over to Varia. I make a smile.

“I’ll send her along,” I say. “When the Tree lets go of her. I promise.”

“You…can’t—”

“I can,” I assure him. “I know it’s selfish. But I can—”

“You will let go of the First Root.”

His command hits me like an arrow to my chest already riddled with them. But this one hurts more than any. He promised. He was different from the others—he’d never use me like this. He said that. He showed that. But now the magic rises up, curling around my arms, forcing itself through even the peace of my Weeping—his magic is so much stronger here at the Tree of Souls. Strong enough to defy my Weeping like Varia does. He doesn’t have a Tree in him, but even being near one is enough to give him the magical power to brute force through my will. But it’s killing him. Holding Varia and making me obey this command is…it’s too much. It’ll kill him. The hunger laces razor threads around my wrists, my fingers, pulling them apart without my will.

“You said—” I gasp. “You said you’d never—”

“I will not.” He pauses, gasping for breath. “Lose you again.”

I see it in his eyes, and the hurt drains from me one feather-touch at a time. Love.

He’s doing this for love.

He’s commanding me for love.

Not like Varia did. Not in his best interest or in mine. In ours. He wants a world with me in it, as I want that world, too. Desperately. More than anything.

We teeter on the edge of a knife, the past and the future. Our past together, our future together. The battle rages outside, Evlorasin’s roar cracking the deadly tension in the cave.