“I’ll stop, then.” I drop the midnight strand, but he takes my hand and presses it against his cheek.

“I’m willing to make an exception.”

“How charitable of you.” I laugh. The ship turns, the wind battering at our backs now, and the ridge falls away from us, revealing the rest of Cavanos.

And the smoke.

Lucien’s body around me tenses hard as rock almost instantly, and both of us straighten.

“Is that…” I trail off, peering into the distance.

“Gods,” he breathes. “No.”

He lunges for the railing, gripping it with white knuckles.

Marring the perfect emerald roll of the grasslands is a blackened banner consumed by the edges of riotous flames. Smoke billows into the air, tall and wide as storm clouds, taking up nearly the whole eastern horizon. The Crimson Lady, the spires of the castle—Vetris, as big as it is, is completely obscured. King Sref had ordered his troops to burn the forests after his declaration of war on the witches, but not like this. This isn’t one forest, burned by human hands. This is a whole third of central Cavanos up in flame and ash, the ground entirely blackened dead and cratered deep. Not a single tree left, not a stone, not a road or village remaining.

Everything. Gone.

She wouldn’t. She— Her mother and father…

“She didn’t!” I choke out.

The great wall of Vetris—breached. Gaped open by fire and black brimstone.

The shake starts in Lucien’s shoulders and works its way to his whole body. Like fire. Like the fire just below him, eating his kingdom. His people. Vetris looks superficially intact, but it’s hard to see details through the choking smoke. I walk up to his back, afraid of it and keening to comfort him all at once. What do I even do? All I can do is what I want to do—touch him. Lightly, gripping his elbow to root him here with me, moving up to his hand. Ice cold.

What can I even say? Nothing. Except exactly what I want to.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His throat bobs, and then he whirls, black eyes ink and midnight and stuck like burrs to me. “I have to stop her.”

“I know.”

Our words are simple, said simply, and yet anything but. Scratch the surface and below are a thousand-thousand clockwork arms, spinning and whirring. History. Battering the two of us as we fall through it without a choice.

we made every choice to be right here, right now.

The hunger is right. I made the choice to do this. To go down this path. To stop Varia. Lucien’s hands grip mine, tight.

“I’m going to use it for good.” I pause. “I’m going to use the hunger in me to put things right this time.”