“No. Just a tree. One of many, in a barren forest of red. It glowed faintly pearl, faintly rainbow, but it was just a tree. I dreamed of it, and it—it didn’t speak, per se. But it stood there, and I watched it, and it made things happen in my head, feelings that weren’t mine. Places I’d never been to. Moments I’d never see.”

“It wasn’t…it wasn’t covered in stained glass, was it?”

“Like from the Hall of Time?” he muses. “No. Though I suppose even that’s gone, too.”

He stares into the water, the perfect dark reflecting his own face back at him. I can see the destruction in his head, playing out in the iron memorization of his home, his city. He knew every street, every street urchin. He knows what Vetris looks like destroyed without even having to try.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “About Vetris.”

“You shouldn’t be.”

“I got her the Bone Tree. I—”

“You know my sister by now. You know how determined she is. She would’ve gotten it one way or another. And my father—” His next inhale comes sharp. “Vetris has no idea how to fight against valkerax. No one does. No one but the Old Vetrisians, and they’re long dead and gone.”

“The beneathers,” I try.

He thinks about it, then nods. “If we could get their aid—if I could speak to the ancestor council, I might persuade them. But—”

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.”