His shoulders faintly shake. Gingerly, I raise my hand to him, warm skin on warm skin.

“But what?” I press.

“It takes twelve beneathers to take down just one valkerax. And a majority of them die in the process. They’re strong, immune to fire. The human death toll to kill just one…it’s not feasible. The sheer amount of valkerax we saw with Varia that day on the mountain—there’s too many of them. Even with the beneathers’ help.”

“But we can try,” I say. “Maybe—when we explain to the High Witches what’s going on, they’ll want to help. And then we get the beneathers, and what’s left of the Cavanosian army, and maybe the Helkyrisian armada, and together—”

“It’s just the four of us.” He sighs. “We can’t remake the old concordats. That was a thousand years ago—and it took decades of valkerax violence before the Mist Continent caved and made them.”

“But we can try,” I stress.

My hand slides down, and he captures it with his, bringing it to his lips. Featherlight, still, molten beneath the satin sheen of water.

“Just for a night,” he murmurs against my palm. “Just for one night, I don’t want to think about it. Is that…selfish of me?”

My laugh is half breath, all nerves. “You’re allowed to be selfish once in a while, Your Highness.”

His eyes dart up to mine, the unspoken future written out, chosen by my word choice. Choices, made one by one, to bring me standing here, in a starlit pool with the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.

I reach my free hand out to his left one, wanting so badly to interlace our fingers. He’s looking at me with so much softness, but his hand doesn’t move. Doesn’t give. It just hangs there, my fingers working into his clumsily. Doesn’t he feel it?

He glances down, and I see his eyes widen. But still, his fingers don’t move.

“Is…is something wrong?” I ask.

“No.” He pulls his hand out of mine. “I’m just tired.”

Cold, slow horror crawls into my lungs. The teleportation of the four of us from the airship all the way into the village. And then the water snake, winding and enormous.

“Lucien, your magic—”

Suddenly, he pulls his whole body away from mine, and his hawk eyes harden. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” I step in, the water feeling like tar. “What else makes you lose function in your body? Surely you weren’t poisoned when I wasn’t looking?”

Lucien turns, bracing his hands on the rock wall like he’s going to pull himself out of the pool. But he just hovers there, clutching on to the harsh, wet rock, to the cracks and crevices of it, one hand limper than the other.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” A plead tinges my voice, and it’s so strange. Uncomfortable and pinching like a brand-new pair of shoes.

“It’s my magic,” he asserts softly.