They simply ran. Heedless of the pedestrians that stared at them. Despite how constricting Zivon’s suit jacket felt on his shoulders, how his shoes rubbed his heels. He ran, barely keeping up with Clarke—who usually could barely keep up with him. He ran until the Blackwell house came into view, until he heard his friend’s fists pounding on wood, until the door opened and he could skid to a halt on the polished floors.

He expected Eaton. Perhaps even the captain. But it was Lily who stood in the entryway, gripping the latch. Lily, her eyes empty. Her dress stained.

Clarke’s breath heaved in and out, words barely finding purchase in the air. “Ivy. They said—Ivy.”

Lily’s lips parted, but no sound emerged. Her fingers moved from the latch to the door itself, gripping it with white fingers. Even so, she swayed a bit.

Clarke gripped her by the shoulders, panic turning his usually smiling face into a mask Zivon scarcely would have recognized. “Where is she?”

Lily shook her head. A wisp of hair had slipped free of her chignon at some point, falling directly before her face, but she didn’t even bother to move it aside.

A guttural cry tore from Clarke’s throat. He dashed away from her, toward the stairs neither of them had ever dared to go up, the ones that would lead to the family’s bedrooms. Someone would probably stop him—Mrs. Blackwell, the captain, a servant. But that didn’t seem to occur to him.

Lily still stared at where he’d been. “She’s . . .” Her voice was so faint Zivon could have convinced himself she hadn’t spoken at all. She swallowed, blinked. “Gone.”

“No.” Zivon whispered it.

From above them, Clarke screamed it.

Lily’s eyes slid shut, and he feared she was going to topple, so he did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her to his chest with one arm and urged the door closed with the other. “Lily. My love. What happened?”

She trembled in his arms, if tremble was a fitting enough word for the violence of her shaking. “We sent word to Daddy as soon as we got her settled. It moved so fast, though. So fast. She must have been hours trying to get home. I don’t know—she was fine this morning, but her lips were blue already when she got here.” A sob overtook her, and her fingers gripped his lapels. “There was nothing I could do. She was gasping for breath, and there was nothing I could do!”

“Milaya.” He held her tightly, far more tightly than he usually would have dared, but he couldn’t fight the thought that she’d fall to pieces if he didn’t.