I know, deep down, that he can’t protect me. I’m the immortal one.

It has to be the other way around.

I twist my weightless body in the air, clutching him close, covering his skull, his chest, his abdomen with all of me. The vulnerable parts. If we hit ground, I’ll be first. I have to be first.

Bone and blood exploding, like the valkerax.

I have to protect him. I’m his Heartless.

No.

I’m his.

The wind whistles cold. Malachite shouts something. And then everything goes dark, the image of Varia standing alone with the white feather in her palm burned like an emblem on the back of my eyelids.

It’s not a dream. Not really. Not the way it’s supposed to be, floaty and out of place and certain. There’s the smell of blood everywhere. Darkness everywhere. Too real to be a dream but not real enough to be my reality.

I’m looking through someone else’s eyes—two eyes, and in my heart there’s an unshakable strangeness in seeing through only two. It’s supposed to be more than two. Far more. I’m being crushed—no, not me, the person I’m seeing this through. Weight everywhere. We have to escape. A hand in my vision—not mine—reaches out into the weight, gripping, summoning, and a hot blast of fire explodes from their palm.

Light.

Light pierces through the flesh-dangling hole, and we crawl out, inch by inch, until we flop into freedom, the sunlight. The crushing weight moves from our outside to the inside. To our chest, where our heart should be.

A heart.

I can feel it beating. This is definitely not me. A mortal. They look down at their hands, golden hands with midnight fingertips shrinking, the animate darkness retreating to smaller and smaller bits until it’s gone entirely. Human nails. Human skin. Half the fingers human, the other half wood.

Varia.

And the screaming.

Gods above and below, the screaming. Like broken bells, like metal on metal, like things dying and being born and dying all over again, an endless cycle of noise. We can barely hear, barely think. We fight vomit, collapsing to our feet and staring at the mud. Dirty. Unpleasant. Pointless. The world is spinning, and screaming, and sickening.

DESTROY.

The hunger? Here, in her, too? Witches don’t have the hunger.

DESTROY.

Not the hunger. Not my hunger. This is clear, not tamed by magic or freshly consumed flesh. This will never be tamed, never be lessened. This isn’t a hunger.

It’s a wound.

DESTROY.