I ignore the barest swelling of my chest. “Right. So. What does this little thing mean?”

“Someone who knows you made this spell,” he muses. “They knew you’d come here, and you’d feel a specific emotion in this approximate area. It’s tailored to you, and only you. Very delicate work—and a very powerful witch.”

My heart hammers. “Nightsinger?”

He pauses for a moment. “No.”

“How would you know?” I frown. “You’ve never met her.”

“I’ve felt her,” he says. “Through you. No, this is someone much more powerful. And with help from someone else, someone who knows you very well.”

“Y’shennria,” I breathe. “This is her sign to me. Can you do anything with it?” I pause and give him a knowing look. “Something that won’t hurt you?”

“Perhaps,” he agrees. “Go find Malachite and Fione, and I’ll think of something.”

I have the creeping urge to refuse, thinking it some ploy to get me away so he can do risky magic again. But he just stares at me, and I know I have to go. I have to trust him. If we don’t have trust between us, we have nothing.

When I get back with Mal and Fione on my heels, Lucien is sitting by the rose, stock-still, his hands folded in his lap. He looks comfortable, but there’s a sheen of sweat on his temple, and his grimace is one of pain.

“Is he all right?” Fione asks.

“He’s not doing that overexerting thing again, is he?” Malachite reaches out to shake Lucien’s shoulder when a voice cuts through the air.

“I wouldn’t touch him if I were you.”

All three of us whirl, Malachite’s unsheathing blade ringing, the rapid clicks of Fione’s crossbow cane unfolding, and my claws piercing out through my flesh instantly, bloodied and over-ready. I freeze at the figure standing on the pile with us, velvet purple cloak billowing around them. They lower their hood, and all it takes is seeing that gorgeous mass of fluffy hair pinned with amethysts to know.

My claws jerk back in, my eyes wide. “Y…Y’shennria?”

Her dark face with its high cheekbones lights up, softly and all at once. “Zera.”

Her voice. It’s the same. Cool, precise. It echoes even now in my head as it always has, teaching me, reminding me of the rules.

In Vetrisian court custom, one does not embrace. Unless one is family.

I run, unthinkingly—scrabbling over the pile, bricks and wood flying, my arms reaching for her through the swirling dust.

And she catches me, hands and all.

Scarred neck and all.

Smile and all.

…