For once, Lazy Zera, I ask of you: be as merciful with yourself as you are with everyone else.

It's still hard, to accept his love at the drop of a hat, without doublethinking or flinching away. Maybe it'll always be hard. But at the very least, I'm trying. I'm trying to make it work, this time, instead of running away.

The little room has a slot for a window, the bright sunlight squaring through no bigger than a peg. I stand on my tiptoes to see out of it, and feel a support beneath me as Lucien picks me up by the waist with his broad hands and lifts.He smirks up at me, "Is that any better?""A little." I feign disinterest, peering through the window.

Lucien ignores her and pulls me flush to him, my waist against his, my forehead against his. Malachite makes a discontented noise and struggles to face his chair away in the small room,

I breathe deep, for maybe my last breath, and say, "Please, trust me. Wait for me."It's a promise, and a cry, and a prayer.It's unfair to ask him. Selfish.But maybe I've earned a little of that, at the end of all things.

Somewhere between the days and nights that passed of his crying beneath the boughs of the white tree, Malachite found the jewels--her necklace and her bracelet. But not the ring. And that gave him the only hope he could cling to. Her ring--she still had it, maybe. She had said to wait for her.So he would.He would, until the end of the world again.