She shouldn’t have heard those words. Even now that the party is becoming more still, silent, save for the gentle creak of branches, Mynx’s whisper should have been too low, too hushed, too easy to overlook as Reshella panicked and tried to figure out some way to help Bella, grabbing at a nearby cushion just to have something to hand. But she does. And the words are barbed, and catch her by the heart, and pull Redana back out.

[i]Lethe.[/i] The river of forgetting, marking the very edge of the underworld. In her mind it is grey, frothing, empty, vast. (Of course she knows it. For all her struggles, the deeds of the Gods have always come easily to her.) The implications of what Mynx is saying are so terrible, so awful, that her mind circles them like a ship succumbing to a whirlpool.

That if she is right, then everyone is dead already. Is that what it means? We are the breathless dead. But, no. Jas’o died. She has seen death already. So Mynx has to be wrong. (But what if she is not?) Maybe she got it mixed up. Maybe they’re [i]descending[/i] into the underworld. Silly, mischievous Mynx! (But she would never. Not about something like this.) Am I dead? (I am not dead. And even if I am dead, I still have to help Bella. Living or dead, it doesn’t matter.)

She grips the cushion tight. If she could say something, she doesn’t even know what she would say. Mynx knows when she’s lying. She doesn’t know if she could accept everyone leaving. She doesn’t know if she could bear to make everyone follow her. Dolce, Vasilly, Alexa… [i]Bella[/i]…

Bella, it hurt because she assumed you’d want to come with her. Maybe this time, if she comes to the edge of that awful river, if she doesn’t expect anyone else to come, if she can even find the courage to cross…

Her words would be useless even if she could use them. Her heart doesn’t know anything. All she understands is that she cannot, will not let Mynx turn Bella into one of these waiting trees. Bella would be so scared! She doesn’t want to be a tree! And it would be putting her back in that closet, taking the choice away from her, and you can’t, Mynx, you can’t! You can’t make everyone sleep their way through Lethe! How would they even go back? No one on board is ready! And what if Lethe eats the memories of trees, too? And what if nobody forgives her afterwards? And what if you can’t turn them back? What if you forget you made them into trees? What if Bella is leaves and flowers forever? What if she never gets to eat Dolce’s cooking again, or exercise with Vasilia, or see how Alexa will grow, and can Alexa even become a tree?

And in the name of every what if, every fear, and all the desperation in her body, Redana takes the cushion in both hands, each one at a corner, swings it back over her shoulder, and smacks Mynx in the face as if she were playing polo, so hard that the cushion explodes into feathers, and out of that explosion rears up—

A monster who Redana wants to save, too. But she’s got nothing. No dumb words, no arms and armor, nothing except her body, which is locking in place as if she, too, were a tree.

But she’s not going to run away from Bella. Not even if Mynx became a dragon to match Sagakhan. She’d stand here in her triangles and her gauzy silk and she’d just put up her fists and bop the dragon once on the nose before being eaten.

Whatever Mynx makes of herself, it can’t be scarier than Lethe. It can’t be worse than feeding Bella and Dolce and Vasilia and Alexa to those grey waters. And it can’t be worse than Redana leaving Bella behind again, again, again.