Love always does.

“Zero,” Fitz said quietly. “We’re done staying with this idiot. Put down the knife and come with me.”

“Zero!” Aristedes said sharply.

I could all but see the strain in the air as the sorcerer doubled down on his influence-working, struggling to force the boy to do his will. He shouldn’t have bothered. It was over. It had been over ever since Fitz chose to walk back into that room.

Fitz walked over to Zero and put a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. “Z,” he said quietly. “I can’t make you do anything. So you tell me. Who do you want looking out for you? Me? Or him?”

Zero looked searchingly at Fitz. Then at Aristedes.

“Don’t listen to him,” Aristedes said through clenched teeth, spraying spittle. “Without me, you won’t last a day on these streets. The Fomor will take you all.”

“No, Z,” Fitz said quietly. “They won’t. It’s okay. We’ve got help.”

Zero blinked his eyes several times. He bowed his head.

The old knife in his fingers clattered to the concrete floor.

Another dozen knives and pipes fell to the floor as the other boys released them. They all went over to Fitz and gathered around him.

“I’ll kill you,” hissed Aristedes. “I’ll kill you.”

Fitz faced the crippled sorcerer and shook his head. Then he did what was possibly the cruelest thing he could have done to his former mentor.

He turned away and ignored him.

“Zero,” Fitz said, “we need an ambulance for the father now. Call nine-one-one. Don’t move him—let the ambulance guys do that.”

Zero nodded and pulled one of those cheap, prepaid cell phones out of the pocket of his oversized jacket. He ran for the door, presumably to get a better signal. Within the next few minutes, rough but serviceable medical supplies had been brought out, and Daniel’s wounds had been cleaned and bound tighter than he’d been able to manage on his own.

Aristedes tried to get a couple of the kids to pay attention to him, but they were following Fitz’s lead. They ignored him. So the sorcerer just sat and watched it all in stunned silence.

Maybe I should have felt a little bit bad for the guy. As far as his world was concerned, he had just died. Only he was still alive to see the unthinkable—a world that existed without him. He was a living, breathing ghost. Maybe I should have felt some empathy there.

But I really didn’t.

Butters stirred and sat up groggily as Fitz finished up tying a second pressure bandage to Daniel’s leg. Michael’s son let out a short grunt of pain and then breathed deeply several times. He was still shaking and pale, but his eyes were steady. He met Fitz’s gaze and said, “Thank you.”

Fitz shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. You two were the ones who beat him.”

“The father was the one who beat him,” Daniel corrected him. “He knew what would happen to him when he came here. And he knew we’d come after him.”