“We’ll look into it,” Chevalier said. “Legend’s chasing. If he can do enough damage—”

Narwhal was already shaking her head. She didn’t seem to think he could.

It wasn’t my place to make this call. I couldn’t wrap this up. Not in the condition I was in.

I left them to it. I dropped down to the ground, and released Rain.

I saw him hold his wrist.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Broken, I think,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a trick we can use too often.”

He’d had his hand stuck through the biggest opening I could provide while still protecting him, and I’d either let the teeth crush bone or something had hit his hand, and the forcefield hadn’t given him leeway.

I felt a pang of guilt, and tried to push it away. There were protocols, for Simurgh fights. We weren’t supposed to dwell on guilt.

But the fight was done. She’d escaped.

Sveta was leaning against the wall, struggling to hold herself together.

“Keep your distance,” she said. “Don’t—”

The tendril lashed out. I caught it with the Fragile One’s forcefield hand.

She jumped, startled at that, and immediately reacted with more lashing out, more grabs. I caught them, deflected them, let others grab me. I moved a fistful of caught tendrils into one hand and held them, making my steady approach.

“We did it,” I told her. “If we get through tonight, this is fixable.”

“I’m dangerous.”

“Not to me,” I told her. “Remember? We hung out all the time. You can’t hurt me.”

Her tendrils weren’t so much for striking as they were for grabbing and squeezing. My forcefield broke if struck, but held up to grabs and squeezes with little difficulty.

“Can I?” I asked, as I got in close enough to have her in arm’s reach. “Hug you?”

“Can you?” she asked.

I nodded, reaching out—before wincing, my fucking collarbone.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding more like Sveta and less like panic distilled. “Yeah, I thought so. You idiot.”

“We did okay,” I said. “Rain did well. You got Dinah. Now we have more to do.”

“You need medical care,” she said. “So does Rain, looking at him.”

More like herself by the second, stern, mom-ish. Like a good mom who cared. As the agitation dwindled, so did the shifts in her tendrils. It still wasn’t great, but… yeah.

“We can get that downstairs,” I said. “Do you want to, uh, ride in the Fragile One?”

“The Fragile One.”

“My forcefield. Or are you confident?”

“If Rain keeps his distance, I think we’re okay. Maybe keep an eye out for me?”

I nodded.