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After a moment of hesitation, she handed her sister over to me. Riini was so light. She seemed to weigh even less than she had when I first met her. Joxii looked over my shoulder, and I turned. The leaves of the poisoned elder tree fluttered, as though its branches were contracting in rage.

“We need to go,” Joxii said, but she seemed rooted to the spot. “But if we go, it will just follow her as it did before.”

“What happened?” Tallu asked.

“After we settled here, the children heard it, and they came, hoping it was an elder tree that had survived the Imperium’s fires. But it wasn’t. This was planted after the elder trees were burned. It was fertilized with the rage and pain of the elves.” Joxii wiped at her eyes. “The other children escaped it, but only because Riini gave it what it wanted.”

“A vessel?” I asked.

“Yes. It is poisonous,” Joxii whispered. “I cannot lose her. Not after we just got her back.”

Riini’s chest rose and fell, her heart beating as fast as a bird’s. She cried out suddenly, twisting in my arms, and I had to grip her tightly to keep from dropping her.

“Tallu,” I said. “Take her.”

Because I could hear something in the wind. Joxii was right. The tree was poison. But she was also wrong. It was only poison because it had been made so. It had been created through bitterness and pain.

That was not its nature.

“What are you going to do?” Tallu asked.

“We need whatever knowledge that tree has. If there’s any way to grow more creatures like the Guardian, we need it. If there’s any way to grow dark forests like this one, we need it.” I gestured around us, down toward the ground which still seethed with insects and snakes. “You said I should let you handle Kacha, but won’t it be easier with the entirety of Tavornai working against him?”

Tallu hesitated. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Everything in me wanted to push him, wanted to insist I could do it, but he had asked me to trust him with the next step, so I would. “I can do it. Will it help you?”

Tallu’s face went suddenly cold, as it had when he told me to finish off the attacking forces. It was the expression he so often showed other imperials, the expression of an emperor. “The other elder trees don’t have the knowledge?”

“The Imperium burned the other elder trees—the ones we regrew from seed—before the elves created the Guardian or anything else they used in war,” I said. “This tree was grown by the last elves that stood against the Imperium. It will have all of their knowledge about stopping an imperial army, knowledge that is now very valuable to us.”

“Find the knowledge we need,” Tallu said. “As only you can.”

His eyes sharpened when they looked at me, and I felt exposed, but also seen. I knew that when he looked at me he could see every inch of who I was, the limits of my capabilities, but also everything I could potentially be.

Tallu took Riini from me, his arms brushing mine. “You can do this.”

His words were a command, and it was true that the words of the emperor were the words of a god, because I felt his confidence in my bones. He had taken one look at me in his throne room and seen what I was. And now he looked at me and said I could do this.

I breathed out, knowing that I would have to reach out and talk to this tree the same way I did the elder trees, and knowing that I had no desire to feel the burn of poison that Riini had so easily taken to save her friends from the tree’s nature.

Closing my eyes, I walked forward, until I reached where the elder tree had destroyed the children’s bridge. I pressed my hand to the bark of the branch and closed my eyes, opening myself up the same way I would to one of the other elder trees.

Immediately I was surrounded by darkness. It ate at my vision, consuming me, and I fought against it, knowing that as soon as it had all of me, I would drown.

I gasped in air, and tried to pull my hand back, but I was stuck. The tree didn’t speak in words. It barely spoke in images or memories. It was solely relentless anger.

I thought the dragon in the Krustavian Mountains was angry. I thought I knew what rage meant. But this was something else.

There was no way I could calm it. No way to negotiate with it.

A scream tore its way out of my throat, pain and anger, and I knew if I let it go, I could burn this tree to the ground just as I had the fledgling elder tree when I had gone too far and forgotten why we were doing any of this.

No. The single thought echoed in my mind. No. I would not lose myself to rage and fury again. I would not risk Tallu’s life for the pleasurable release of it.

I wanted to find a way to save Tavornai without bringing children onto the battlefield. I wanted to escape our entanglement with Kacha quickly so that we could move on to the task of uniting the continent. I wanted to end the headache that felt like a war drum pounding in my brain.

I drew ice to me, feeling it in my soul and releasing it around me, letting it spread like frost covering an autumn forest. That ocean of magic was still there, still hungry for me to give in, but I resisted. I pushed the ice into the tree, soothing the hot ache at the center.