Ophelia slept, finally, an hour past midnight, under a healer's draught strong enough that Nana had stayed to watch her breathing rather than trust the draught alone, and Fenna didn't wake again at all — not dead, the healers were careful to tell me, just gone somewhere none of their craft could follow her to, the whisper stopped and nothing left behind to say where it had taken her instead. I left both rooms with a phrase lodged behind my ribs like a splinter I couldn't work free. Not the eighth. Not yet. It has to be given, not taken.
I found Krix exactly where I expected to, in the alcove off the scribes' hall, and this time he didn't jump when I came in, which told me he'd been waiting.
"You heard," I said.
