It’s a command. An imperative. Our head floods with flashes of burning forests, of burning houses, of burning people. Flashes of lightning splitting the earth, of seas demolishing mountains, of broken bones and yellow fat and gray organ sacs spilled, burning wood and stone, rubble. All of it rubble, the flesh-kind and not-flesh-kind. And it never stops. Never pauses. Like a million chain link of memories that aren’t mine or even Varia’s. Ruin.
This thing in us wants ruin.
But we invited it in, didn’t we? We’re going to use it, aren’t we?
It is our tool, not the other way around.
We get to our feet, the snarling and snapping of a thousand valkerax behind us, and we hold close the only thing we have left. A face. A sweet, apple-cheeked face with a mass of mousy curls, standing strong even as the images of death and ruin flash behind it.
We look over at the Bone Tree, no longer swaying in an invisible wind. It’s perfectly still. And beside it, faintly and like a ghost, is another tree. One I know but Varia doesn’t. One that I can see but Varia might not.
Like a trick of light on water, this tree wavers in the air. It’s a mirage made of glass branches, glass roots, glass leaves, moving gently in some unknowable breeze.
The Glass Tree.
TOGETHER AT LAST.
In a stunning turn of events, my body wakes up before my brain does. And my mouth wakes up before the both of them.
“Old God’s great hairy shit in a bush—”
“Whoa.” A voice, and a hand instantly trying to press me down. “Whoa there, Six-Eyes. Calm down. You’re safe.”
I blink, and from the offending swathe of bright light carves shadow and color. Deep ruby-red eyes, ears so long and pointed they droop a little, a mouth that always looks slightly entertained. And three new, angry red claw wounds across a nose, ripping the corner of a mouth up. No pain in my body. I’m not hurt. But he is.
“Malachite!” I inhale. “What are you—” The room’s strange, too much stone and blue velvet. I’m in a too-soft bed. “Where are we?”
“Some city. We’re taking a break after all that horseshit, that’s all I know. Hold on.” He lifts one finger, rummaging around in his chainmail back pocket and pulling out a hastily scrawled piece of parchment. He clears his throat excessively and reads: “‘Zera, I wrote this for you because Malachite likes to twist my words to his liking.’”
“Lucien.” I exhale a half laugh, leaning back on my pillows. Malachite trundles on with all the emotion of a carriage wheel.
“‘We’re in Breych. It’s a small Helkyrisian city just on the border.’” Malachite pauses, making his own addendum. “And is full of boring things like books. ‘Varia’s alive,’” he continues. “‘I’m sure of it. Fione and I are fine—I’ve gone to speak with the sage, and she’s conferencing with the local polymaths. We’ll be back soon with a plan. In the meantime, please rest. Yours, Lucien.’”
“Is he really fine?” I press, zooming my face into the parchment. “Is Fione—”
“Don’t ask me how.” Malachite grunts as he crumples up the parchment and lobs it smoothly out the thin stone-cut window. “But he managed to cushion our fall with whatever scrap of magic he unbelievably had left. And by some stroke of rune-crusted luck, we ended up hitting one of Breych’s many safety nets.”
“Safety…nets?”
He sighs. “Knowing you, you won’t get it until you see it for yourself.”
He stands from the chair at my bedside and heads for the window, and my perfectly healed body follows him, the holes and tears in my clothes funneling cold air onto my skin. It’s so bitterly cold—far colder than Cavanos ever gets, even in the dead of winter. The beneather motions with one long hand to the window, and I stick my head out.
“Vachi-godsdamn-ayis.” I breathe a white-cloud swear.
It’s the city of towers I saw on my hike up to the Bone Tree, but real and eye level. It looked so small when I had Varia on my back, like a toy set for a child, and now it’s looming all around me, on every side. Towers. Dozens upon dozens of towers, built straight off the stone of three mountain ridges, stately and yet placed in chaotic, half-baked rows. Some towers are grand and huge, with gargoyles carved in bone-moth likenesses and steeples of gold and lapis lazuli, while others barely look sturdy at all, their wooden supports rickety and their stone sills sagging with thick beards of moss, the roofs gabled simply in green and purple tile. Between the three close ridges runs a dizzying spate of rope bridges back and forth, some wide, some thin, but all of them connecting the towers. Sunset peeks out from between two towers, catching the diamond glass of their roofs.
And between the ridges? Between the towers? Nothing at all. Darkness. Hundreds of miles of drop, an abyss, yawning all around the city. I squint—not quite right. Threaded over the shadows of the crevasse I can see tawny strands. Woven. Purposefully. Huge beams of wood jut out from beneath the towers every which way, planted all along the stone ridges and supporting an intricate web of nets that spans the whole city, like a last halo of salvation, as if a massive spider’s carefully woven a web around it. The wind whistles viciously, and I pull my head back in to avoid the shards of ice.
“The people here felt the explosion,” Malachite says. “And the quake from the falling valkerax.”
“Were any of them hurt?” I blurt.
He sighs. “Do you two have to do that?”
“Do what?” I blink.
“Ask the same question right in the exact same spot. You’re either the same person or meant for each other.”
He means Lucien. Heat tries to tickle my cheeks, but I won’t let it.
“No one in Breych got hurt,” he finishes wearily.
“Fantastic. How long have I been out?”
“Seven halves.”
“Good!” I throw my hands up. “Not enough time to miss anything important. Where can I get clothes?”
“Here.” Malachite walks over to a dresser, throwing me a drab-yet-functional mustard dress and a heavy black wolf-fur covering.
“Ugh.” I wince. “The colors.”
“Bright, clashing shit seems to be the order of the day around here.” He opens his own leather covering to reveal a pink tunic with a mess of magenta ruffles. We both burst out laughing, the sound quickly swallowed up by the dour stone. The silence isn’t oppressive, but it’s there, echoing shards of reality back at us. A reality that’s changed so quickly, so brutally.
Varia’s gone. She has the Bone Tree. The valkerax.