His hand began to slip.

Oh, just curse his luck.

Below him, Erik snarled, “Let go—I said, let go of me!”

He gritted his teeth, willing his mechanical arm to stay together. “Not on your life.”

If Robb had been looking down at his older brother, he would’ve seen a strange look pass over his face. Not quite surprise, and not anger.

Something akin to pity.

Because Erik felt his hand slipping out of the glove Robb held. He felt gravity and death grip him all at once, and oh, oh Goddess, was he terrified. Not that it mattered. Nothing he could have done mattered just then.

Gravity pulled, and his fingers slipped out of his glove. One moment he was grasping onto Robb’s hand, and the next air, and he was falling, and falling, and falling, leaving Robb dangling from the railing of the garden, holding his black glove.

Robb screamed, but he couldn’t let go—all he could do was watch, but by the time he turned his eyes down, his brother was already at the bottom.

No, his mind reeled. No, no, no—

He tore his eyes away, reached up with his other hand to the railing, and hauled himself up, Erik’s glove still in his hand.

Don’t think, don’t think right now, he told himself, pocketing the glove. He expected some emotion—anything—but his heart beat harder the closer he came to Di, who was still facedown in the grass. He quickly knelt down beside his friend and went to shake his shoulder, when his wound sparked and Robb winced back, shielding his face. He gritted his teeth and tried again.

“Di,” he said, thinking that it was a good sign that his eyes were closed.

That meant he was alive, right? Or as alive as Metals could be.

People died with their eyes open.

“Di, I need you to get up,” he added a little more urgently, as the telltale sound of boots in synchrony began to echo up the stairwell from the underbelly of the garden. He knew that sound like his own heartbeat by now. Messiers were terrifying, but they were not subtle. The Messiers would come and kill them—he was quite sure of it. Mellifare didn’t seem very pleased that they had tricked her.

Robb cursed to himself and looped an arm under Di’s shoulder, pulling him to his feet. His head lolled against his chest.

Robb dragged Di toward the edge of the garden—the same edge his brother had fallen from. He’d give his left arm for a comm-link to call Jax. Viera had fried his when she’d electrocuted him, and he felt the burn puckering the side of his neck. He wasn’t sure how he had survived that, but he thought it might have had something to do with his mechanical arm—it had absorbed some of the shock.

At the edge of the garden, he heard the Messiers break out into the thicket of moonlilies and roses before he saw them. They crept through the bushes, surrounding him.