“Go!” His roar is louder than the fire for a moment and his eyes, now normal again, flicker over to me, wordless and pleading.

go, the hunger echoes him faintly. But he’s put no magic behind it. It’s not a command. It’s a wish. A desperate request.

“C’mon!” I snag Malachite by the chainmail. “We’re pros at this by now, right? You check the buildings still standing, Sir Fireproof. Fione—let’s gather the survivors and get them to a safe place.”

Lucien’s eyes soften in gratitude. Malachite tries to argue for one second, sees the look between the prince and me, and makes the decision to dash into the blazing walls of fire. I take off downwind, and Fione trots after me, keeping up surprisingly easily considering she just spent the last couple halves retching.

“Not a fan of the sky, huh?” I shout back, passing her my handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth.

“Certain parts of me aren’t keen on the sky, apparently. The polymaths say every day we should try to learn something new about ourselves.”

Her dry joke gets me, but only for as long as it takes for me to see a little crowd of huddled children by the remains of the town well, smeared with ash and fear. I gather them up with promises of their parents, and Fione offers a few of the more dazed-looking ones water from her skin.

“What happened?” Fione asks a child gently. They gulp water greedily, and lower the skin only to point wordlessly at the ground.

There, in the perfect ashen detail of the dirt, is a massive scratch mark. Four lacerations deep and long in the earth, punctuated by a titanic paw impression, white fur and scales scattered about.

Valkerax.

It might still be around. Lucien—I can’t be worried about Lucien. Not now. He teleported us from an airship who knows how many miles in the air to the ground. To a village somewhere in Cavanos. All four of us. By himself. It took three witches to teleport just me from Nightsinger’s house to the Bone Road. And after Varia teleported herself and me to the Tollmont-Kilstead mountains, she was so exhausted I had to carry her the rest of the way to the Bone Tree.

He’s hurt himself. He had to, to do this.

I shake my head, gold hair sticking to sweat. I can’t think about that now. He wants me here, doing this. Not worrying about him. But I can’t help it. If he keeps going like this—if he keeps trying to help people with his magic without regard for himself, he’ll…