They’d blood walked to find me. Blood walked to bring me back. “We did what you showed us.” Nick says. “Didn’t know if it would work… had to try.”

“You and Sel… came after me? Even though you didn’t know how we’d get back out?”

“We had faith,” he says quietly. “That you’d know how to get us all out safely.”

“And if I didn’t?”

We look at each other for a long moment, then to Sel, and back to each other. When he finally speaks, Nick’s voice is warm enough to wrap the three of us together, a bond of its own. “Then the world would be broken in more ways than one.”

My eyes water. “Sel needs help. I don’t know how—”

Someone clears their throat, and our reunion on the plane of the living is broken.

I realize that we are in the middle of a field at night.

Standing around us in a loose circle are faces I recognize, and many I don’t. Greer and Pete, Felicity and Sarah. Other Scions and Squires in crystalline aether armor. Mixed between them are Gill and Samira, even.

There are four other people that I don’t recognize, each holding a crystalline sword that points my way. One of them, a young woman, stares down at me with an expression I might call hate, except that she doesn’t know me and I don’t know her. She scowls at me, then Nick, then pivots on a heel to stalk off into the distance, spine stiff with rage. “Let’s go.” The others lower their weapons and follow, but I have a feeling I’ll be seeing them all again.

“Where…” I croak, cough, try again. “Where is Alice?”

59

I’VE NEVER SEEN someone in a coma. Never seen Alice this still.

I’ve been watching her for over two hours now, after William healed my own injuries, and nothing has changed. Each inhale is a quiet draw of breath, more movement than sound, and each exhale is just as silent—but accompanied by a wisp of blue aether drifting slowly from her lips.

While Gill and Samira brought me to Alice and William, Lark and Nick moved a still-unconscious Sel to one of the Keep guesthouses separate from the main building.

“I don’t know if I did the right thing,” William whispers. “I don’t know.”

“You saved her.” I blink away tears. “You saved her, William… after I…”