Sepha went to her room and stuffed her clothes into her knapsack. She was a drop of water in a wave, inescapably caught up in something much bigger than herself. But now she had to run away, a breath of wind against the storm, to keep the undead magician from ripping her country apart.

The magician had taken advantage of her so thoroughly, and that abomination of a contract was only the beginning.

At the thought of it, her contract—that smooth, hard thing beside her heart—began to ache. It was a pulsing reminder that, regardless of her feelings on the matter, she was magically bound to create an innocent human with her own body and to give it to a monster, thereby sentencing thousands of other innocent people to death. Because she’d willingly agreed to do it.

Wicked! laughed the snide voice. Stupid, wicked girl.

Sepha tucked her axe—the axe from the Willow—into her knapsack and heaved it over her shoulder, threw open the door, and pounded down the stairs.

Her tether told her that Ruhen was in his room. If she was lucky, he’d be too preoccupied to notice her leaving. If she wasn’t lucky … she’d have to evade him somehow.

It was already late afternoon when Sepha burst from the lobby of the Ten. She sprinted toward the IAD doors, half afraid that if she slowed down, she’d lose heart and decide to stay despite everything. She’d nearly reached the doors when she heard a scurrying tread behind her. Not Ruhen’s.

She whirled around and saw, to her surprise, Fio.

He stopped a few paces off, his chest heaving, and stared at her with his eyes wide, eyebrows raised. The look on his face—one of surprise, of hurt—pierced her so sharply that she couldn’t even pretend to be imagining it. He couldn’t feel, but he did feel, and right now, his expression was enough to still her heart.

Selfish. She was so godsdamned selfish! She’d been so intent on leaving the Institute that she hadn’t spared a single thought for Fio.

Fio, who’d been a spare. Fio, who was her responsibility. Fio, who’d been her constant, albeit silent, companion for weeks.

“Come on, Fio,” she said, and his mouth turned up in a relieved grin. Somehow.

Together, they descended the stone steps outside the Institute and ran to the train station. The trains passed by every hour, and only stopped if there was someone waiting on the platform.

Sepha leaned against the wall of the train station, trying not to think. She cast her eyes down the tracks to the left, then to the right, looking for a train.

It was afternoon, maybe almost evening, but it was too dark for the hour. The clouds that had been looming all day were charcoal and pewter, and they weighed heavily in the air.

Sepha was leaving the Institute, and a storm was about to break.

After a minute or two, Sepha spied a train in the distance, trailing cotton-balled smoke as it hurtled toward her.

A relieved sigh.

A rumble of thunder.

Then three things happened at once: the clouds broke, and a wall of rain swept toward Sepha and the Institute; a sharp pain pierced Sepha’s right hand; and Fio emitted a loud, animal shriek.

Sepha jerked her head to look down at Fio.

He looked terrified. Somehow.

But the undead magician—

Sepha turned, but he was nowhere to be found. A false alarm, maybe?

The train barreled into the station, squealing loudly as the engineer heaved at the brakes. All she had to do was get on the train, and she’d be gone for good.

But there was something—

There came an explosion so loud that it drowned out the sound of the torrential rain. From the direction of the Institute, a fireball shot so high into the sky it would be visible for miles—a mockery, a dare.

Sepha was running before she’d decided to do it. Fio trailed behind.

Sepha ran her fingers along her holsters, checking to make sure they were fully stocked with ingots, alchems, and ammunition.

They were.

A swift surge of gratefulness rose up in her. Destry had given her holsters, had taught her how to fight, and had lately even allowed Sepha to practice transmuting a revolver when no one but Ruhen was around. This time, Sepha wasn’t defenseless, not by a long shot.

Sepha heard a crackling, whooshing sound that grew louder every second, compounded intermittently by loud explosions. When she charged back through the IAD doors and into the courtyard, she finally heard the screams.

“Fire!” someone was screaming. “The library!”

The courtyard, slick from the pounding rain, was in total chaos. The library was positively dripping with fire. Hungry red-orange light erupted from every window, burning so hot that rain turned to steam around it.

A crowd of people stood, silhouetted against the flames and drenched from the rain, helplessly watching their most precious resource burn. Sepha let her knapsack drop to the stones and spun around, looking from one likely hiding place to the next. Fio cowered behind her, clutching the inside of her knee with a small, heavy hand. Afraid, impossibly.

Where was he?

Destry and Henric materialized from the smoke and the rain, and then, following the tether’s pull, so did Ruhen. But Sepha couldn’t spare them a glance, because the library was burning. Burning because she’d dared to leave, dared to spoil the magician’s plans, and he knew this would make her come running back.

But where—

There he was, atop the Institute’s tall outer wall, looking straight at her. The magician snarled in the red-orange light. Without a moment’s hesitation, she sprinted toward the wall. “Stay here, Fio!” she shouted over her shoulder.

Her tether told her Ruhen was following, and she could hear Destry’s boots slamming against the ground.

Destry snarled, “Stay here, Henric!”

Henric’s half-hearted protestations faded into silence.

In the semidarkness, Sepha found the stairway that led to the top of the wall and sprinted up it. The magician-homunculus—who had tricked her and stolen her future, who was planning on murdering thousands of people—was not going to get away. She would fight back. She would kill him dead.

Death, after all, was one way out of a magical contract. And she didn’t have to be the one who died.

She rocketed to the top of the wall and, reaching into her holster for an alchem and an ingot, charged straight for the homunculus. His form was outlined in the red of the firelight. He watched amusedly as she barreled toward him.

Then he shouted something unintelligible, and his body froze up in the rigor of his magic. An electric-red fire shot out at her, blindingly fast and screaming as it came.

Sepha didn’t have time to think, so her body thought for her. In a movement she recognized from the morning evolution, she ducked low, her legs wide, and twisted to avoid the reaching fingers of the strange fire. Her feet skidded along the top of the wall, which was drowned in an inch of rainwater, and she toppled over as her boot caught on an uneven stone. She landed face-first in the water and rolled away from the next attack before she even knew it was coming. It hit the stones with a sharp sound, slicing deep into the wall.

“Get up, get up, get up,” Sepha chanted as she forced herself to kneel. Her clothing was soaked, and water was streaming down her face, making it nearly impossible to get her bearings. She dropped her alchem onto the wet stones, tossed an ingot into it, and placed her fingers just so. The alchem pulsed. She snatched her revolver from the alchem’s center.

There were two pulses just behind her, and Sepha knew that Destry and Ruhen had transformed weapons of their own.

Sepha leapt to her feet, loaded the gun with bullets from her holster, and whirled around. Where had the magician got to?

There!

As Sepha aimed her gun, Destry and Ruhen sprinted toward the magician.

The magician grinned and shouted something unintelligible. The stones near Destry’s feet blasted into the air, but Destry, faster than he’d expected, had already passed them.

They had him surrounded now, with Destry pointing a knife at him from one side and Ruhen aiming an enormous staff from the other, each of them several feet removed from the magician. And, not least, Sepha, near the outer edge of the wall, with her revolver aimed straight between his eyes. She cocked the gun.

The magician shouted again, and the fire in the library, which was only a dozen yards off from where they stood, redoubled, sending a ball of flames blasting over them. Sepha, Ruhen, and Destry all ducked, shielding themselves from the searing fire, and the magician used their distraction to shout another attack.

Moved by some shared instinct, Sepha, Ruhen, and Destry all twisted away. Sepha felt a whoosh as the magician’s attack soared past her. Then she rolled to her knees and took aim again.

Destry was faster. She cocked her arm and threw her knife. Her aim was true, and for a moment, Sepha’s heart lurched with pride.

But then some protective magic deflected the knife, and it clanged uselessly to the ground.

No.

No!

He was right here, and Sepha couldn’t let him survive, couldn’t waste any more time on this godsdamned joke of a contract.

Sepha took aim. And pulled the trigger. Again and again, until she’d unloaded all of her bullets at the homunculus.

Each one pinged against his invisible shield and ricocheted into the torrential rain.

Sepha swore and fumbled with her holster, looking for more bullets. She heard Ruhen roar and felt him launch himself toward the magician, who shouted something unintelligible in response.

An invisible force grabbed Sepha as easily as if she were a doll and dragged her toward the wall’s edge. She screamed and scrabbled for something to hold onto, but it was useless. The force was too strong, and she was utterly powerless to stop it. The homunculus’s magic pushed Sepha to the wall’s edge, then tipped her even farther.

She was leaning precariously over the brink. Her toes barely touched the wall. Her willow pendant swung forward and she was paralyzed and up too high. Gods! Too high!

Her revolver slipped from her hand. It fell, and fell, and fell.

Sepha’s heart was beating so frantically that the force of it punched through her veins, made her ribs vibrate, kept her lungs from filling with air. The ground was far, infinitely far away.

What if, just for a second, I forget that I’m not supposed to fly?

That windmilling panic howled in her ears, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t shout, couldn’t move—

Behind her and out of sight, Ruhen and Destry fought. The magician was shouting. A double-pulse, an explosion, an electric sound, and some swearing. Another explosion.

Then the force that was holding Sepha up let go.

Sepha felt the sudden swoop of weightlessness and fell.

The tether stretched and then tightened.

Ruhen caught her ankle, and her fall came to an abrupt halt. Her body swung forward like a pendulum bob, and her head banged hard against the wall.

For a terrifying, disorienting moment, the world was reduced to rain-slicked bricks and the curved horizon where the wall met the ground. Rainwater streamed from Sepha’s chin to her forehead, and it felt like drowning and falling all at once.

Ruhen hoisted her up, and Sepha pressed her hands against the bricks, scrabbling for purchase in the seams.

“Is he gone?” Sepha asked, her voice thick and stupid, the moment her feet were planted on the top of the wall.

“He’s gone.” Destry’s voice was dark.

“Fire’s out,” Ruhen said, and there was a brooding note to his voice that Sepha had never heard before. “You all right?”

“I’m—”

“That can wait,” Destry snapped. Her boots splashed in the rainwater as she strode past them. She didn’t look at Sepha. “Get her back to her room. Wait for me there.”

Ruhen grunted in assent, and with one hand tight around Sepha’s elbow, he led her off the wall-top. Sepha glanced at the library. It was horrible—hollowed out and burnt up. She looked away and spotted Fio, who’d fetched her knapsack and was dragging it behind him, following her.

Ruhen walked Sepha to her room, wordless and stewing. Water dripped from the tip of his nose and splashed onto the floor, and he blinked and looked down at his sodden clothes. “I need to put on something dry,” he muttered, then turned and walked away.

Sepha let Fio into her room and closed the door behind her. The tether unspooled as Ruhen went down to his room on the first floor. Fio faced the wall while Sepha peeled off her wet clothes and put on fresh ones.

She felt shaky, like all of her inner bits were shifting and tumbling and separating. Beads strung few and far between.

The tether shortened again.

“You ready?” Ruhen asked through the door.

“Yes,” Sepha said. Her voice came out too quiet, but he seemed to hear her.

He opened the door, closed it behind him, and stood just inside the threshold. “Are you all right?” he asked, looking her at her in short, furtive glances.

Sepha nodded. A lie.

“Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” For the barest second, Ruhen’s lips wobbled. He pursed them together.

“I’m fine,” Sepha said, and Ruhen let his breath out in a shaky huff.

Barely a second passed before he exhaled again, slower this time, and propped his fists on his hips. Looked to the side. Shook his head.

“What?” Sepha asked.

“You knew he was up there.” It wasn’t a question. “The homunculus magician.”

She nodded.

“Why did you go after him?” Ruhen asked. There was something dark in his voice. “Why did you run up there without even saying anything?”

Sepha swallowed. “I wanted to stop him.”

“You could’ve died.”

“I know.”

“You could have died, Sepha.” He was glaring at her now. “You could have died, and Destry, too.”

“You could have, too!” Sepha said, glaring back. “Are you the only one who’s allowed to die?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Wouldn’t you have done the same thing, if you knew he was up there?”

Ruhen clicked his tongue. “Of course I would.”

“Then how can you expect me to do any differently?”

“It’s not that,” Ruhen said. He advanced two steps and then stopped. “You aren’t careful, Sepha. One day, you might run into trouble, and no one will be there to save you. And what’ll happen then?”

“I’ll save myself, that’s what’ll happen.”

“Like you did at the Wicking Willow?”

Both of them inhaled sharply, as if the shock of Ruhen’s words had knocked the wind out of them.

“Sepha, I—” Ruhen started, but stopped when Sepha flung up a hand and turned away. She stalked toward her large window, intending to look out over the sea. But it was dark outside and bright inside, so all she could see was her own bedraggled reflection, and behind her, Ruhen, looking helpless. She closed her eyes.

He wasn’t wrong, Ruhen. She’d needed to be saved tonight, just like at the Willow. Cell Two-Seven. The train.

You’ve learned how to fight, said the snide voice, but you’re still useless.

Determined footsteps. The door opened. “Sit down, both of you,” Destry said, instantly in command of the room. She shut the door behind her and took the seat by the desk. Sepha and Ruhen both sat on the side of the bed, removed from each other by a few feet. Although Destry’s order hadn’t been aimed at him, Fio sat on the floor beneath the window.

Once they were settled, Destry said, her voice harsh, “Was that the same magician from the train?”

The poster from the mess hall doors flashed behind Sepha’s eyes. Admitting even this much would mean Destry could rightly kill her. But Destry seemed to know the answer anyway. There was no point in lying anymore.

“Yes,” Sepha said, and Destry’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, if you could tell us that,” Destry said, her voice slow but hard, “maybe you can also tell us what in all After just happened.”

Sepha blinked. “What?”

Irritation flashed in Destry’s eyes. “Neither of us is stupid, Sepha, so don’t act like it. Ruhen told me you’re mixed up with a magician, but I never would’ve guessed it was this one who’s been giving you trouble. Not until tonight. Tell me what you know.”

Sepha’s gaze snapped to Ruhen. “You told her?”

The look Ruhen gave her was equal parts guilty and desperate. “Not everything, Seph—”

“Gods, we don’t have time for this!” Destry snapped. “He told me you’ve got some troubles with a magician and I’d better not let anything happen to you, as if that were a possibility in the first place. And based on your actions tonight, it’s clearly this magician he was talking about. You’re betrayed, Ruhen’s sorry, you both have feelings, I’m sure.” She glared at Sepha. “Your magician has destroyed my library and probably killed some of my alchemists, so Sepha, tell me what you know. Now.”

Destry crossed her arms and slumped back in her chair, breathing hard. Ruhen was staring at his hands in his lap. And Fio, as ever, was silent and watchful.

Telling the truth could get Sepha killed. But hiding the truth might have gotten other people killed tonight. Might get more people killed in the future.

It was time. Regardless of what might happen, it was time.

“I tried to transmute the straw to gold,” Sepha said. “It didn’t work.”

Ruhen swung his head toward her.

Sepha swallowed. “I thought I was going to die. But then he showed up. The magician-homunculus. He offered to save me.”

“At what cost?” Destry’s voice was hard.

“He said he’s the soul of a dead magician, called back from the After,” Sepha said, rushing to explain before they heard the worst of it. “He doesn’t like being inside a homunculus. He said he needed a new body.”

The room went still.

“He asked me for my firstborn child. Said I’d have a baby in a year if he turned the straw to gold. I got him to agree that I could substitute an alchemically created human body, if I got it to him in time. I didn’t know it was impossible. He must have.”

“Sepha,” Ruhen groaned. “Tell me you didn’t—”

“It was the only way,” Sepha snapped, not looking at him. “He turned the straw to gold and now I owe him a body. I’ve been trying to figure it out fast enough that the contract wouldn’t force me to have a baby. But after today, after reading that book, I know it’s impossible.”

“Life cannot be alchemically created,” Destry murmured to herself. “Are we sure that’s true? It’s not like anyone has tried, not since—”

“I’ve tried,” Sepha interrupted. “It didn’t work.”

Destry and Ruhen both leapt to their feet. “You tried?” Destry cried.

“I said it didn’t work!” Sepha said, raising both hands. “I didn’t try to transmute a whole body. I tried to transmute a heart.”

Ruhen swore and eased back onto the bed, closer to her this time. Their knees touched.

“What happened?” Destry breathed, sitting on the edge of the seat.

“The heart I transmuted was dead. Rotted. I would’ve tried again, but I was interrupted. I haven’t tried since.”

Comprehension lit up Destry’s ice-blue eyes. “Life cannot be alchemically separated. You must’ve failed because you tried to transmute part of a living person. And you got a dead heart because … because the body it came from wasn’t alive anymore.” At Sepha’s confused grimace, Destry added, “Pocket realities can’t contain life. Nothing that used to be alive, either. That heart you transmuted was from a dead magician.”

Ruhen swore again and buried his face in his hands.

Sepha tried her best to ignore him.

“So anyway,” Sepha said, forcing her voice to be even, “the magician tricked me with his contract. I’m going to have a baby, and he’s going to get it. And I think I know what he’s trying to do.”

Afraid to see Destry’s expression, Sepha looked up. But where she’d expected to find disgust, Sepha only found sharp intensity. “He wants my baby because it would be an alchemist. Which would mean that if he lived inside my baby, he could do alchemy as well as magic. And that way, he could—”

“Call up an army of magicians and take over Tirenia,” Destry finished. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes flicking back and forth as she assembled hundreds of pieces of information into one cohesive whole. “Two weeks ago, Thuban told me most of the recent attacks have been led by a homunculus who could do magic. And it makes sense, because the recent chaos has nothing in common with typical Detenian uprisings. He’s trying to weaken Tirenia ahead of time, so it’ll be ripe for the picking when he calls up his army.”

Fio suddenly stood and exited the room, looking grim. Sepha spared half a glance to watch him go without her telling him to. She spared half a thought to wonder why in all After he was able to do it, but then she stopped herself. Fio was not her problem right now. He was not necessarily a problem at all. He was just … a puzzle. For her to solve at a later time.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Sepha said, looking at Destry but meaning it for Ruhen as well.

“Well, you might’ve saved us a lot of trouble if you had,” Destry said. Ruhen stayed silent. “But I understand why you didn’t.”

“How did he find you?” Ruhen asked after a tense moment, letting his hands drop into his lap. “How did he know you needed help?”

“All he said when I asked him was ‘Wicking Willow,’ whatever that means.”

Ruhen made a soft sound of comprehension. Sepha raised her eyebrows, and he said, “I’m only going by what I’ve heard, but they say Wicking Willows show up when a magician has made a sacrifice. Some magicians, the very worst kind, make human sacrifices to ask questions of the dead. He must’ve asked where there was a female alchemist nearby. One who would be desperate.”

Before Sepha could even worry about Ruhen admitting in front of Destry that he’d talked to magicians, Destry said, “That makes sense. I’ve heard that before, too.”

Sepha’s heart thudded and swooped during the long pause that followed.

Destry said slowly, to Ruhen, “But why would he—with her—”

“He can’t’ve known,” Ruhen said, to Sepha’s utter bewilderment. “Otherwise, he’d never—the danger—”

“Yes,” Destry said, frowning so intently at the ceiling that Sepha looked up at it too. “Yes, he must not have known. That could be good.”

There was another long pause. Ruhen and Destry were talking about her, which they were apparently in the habit of doing, and Sepha couldn’t work out what they meant. She opened her mouth to ask, but Destry spoke first. “But how? How did a dead magician’s soul come to be inside that homunculus?”

Sepha blinked. “I—I don’t know. I haven’t had time to find out, what with … everything.”

“That’s the first question we need answered,” Destry said. She tugged on the wrists of her gloves, tucked her short hair behind her ears, crossed and uncrossed her arms. “I have to go figure out what in all After I’m going to do about this. But thank you for telling me, anyway, Sepha. And don’t worry. As far as I’m concerned, the contract is more than enough punishment for lying to Mother. That test was an awful thing for her to do, anyway.” Destry was rambling. Destry never rambled. She fixed Sepha with a fierce look and said, “Next time you get in trouble, tell me immediately. Understood?”

Sepha nodded. “Understood.” She paused. “Should I—they probably need our help outside. I can—”

“No!” Destry snapped. Her voice was sharp. “No, you—you stay here. Don’t go out until the morning. The last thing we—er, you—need is to go out in,” she waved her hand, “all of this. Whatever you do, don’t tell Henric.”

Destry needn’t have said anything. Henric was the last person Sepha would tell. But Sepha nodded anyway and said, “I won’t.”

Then Destry was gone, and Sepha was alone with Ruhen, to whom this news would mean something entirely different from what it meant to Destry. Ruhen, who almost definitely hated her now. After a long, empty moment, she worked up the courage to look at him, and found him staring at her. Not in an angry way, but as if he, like Destry, was piecing scattered bits of information together.

“So, you think the contract is what caused this,” he said at last, gesturing between them.

She nodded.

“Do you think it’s because of the contract that I can’t stop thinking about you?”

Sepha’s heartbeat surged; a second later, so did her contract. “Probably,” she said, and Ruhen’s frown deepened.

“And you think the contract caused any feelings you might have for me,” he said.

This question was harder to answer for about a thousand different reasons. “I don’t think so,” she said, and Ruhen loosed his breath in a shaky huff. “But there’s no way to know for sure.”

Ruhen chewed his lip. Grimaced.

It was coming any second now. The moment when Ruhen would shout at her and storm off. “What?” she prompted, trying to hasten the moment along.

“With this, you’re careful. You’re reckless with everything else, including your own life, but with this, with your own feelings, you’re careful.”

Sepha blinked. “Shouldn’t I be? You know what the contract will make me do! And you know what he plans to do, if he gets a baby from me! Shouldn’t I guard myself against it any way I can, regardless of how I feel?”

Her head ached where she’d banged it against the wall. The library was gone, and people had probably died tonight. She had scrapes up and down her body from falling, and now this. Arguing. With Ruhen. About feelings.

Sepha chewed the inside of her cheeks. Ruhen’s glare faltered, his thunderhead eyes darkening from anger to something else entirely. He looked away again.

“You were going to leave,” he said. “I thought you were just going on a walk, or something. But you were leaving.”

Sepha nodded.

“You didn’t say goodbye.” His voice was hoarse.

“I couldn’t. You would’ve tried to come with me.”

A half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Well, you’re right about that.” He scrubbed at his mouth. “I almost didn’t catch you. He kept me away from you until the last second, used you as a distraction so he could escape. I thought you were going to die.”

His voice went gravelly at the end, and Sepha understood. He wasn’t angry. Not really.

“But you did catch me,” she said. “I didn’t die.”

Ruhen started to respond, then stopped. He sighed instead, and said, “Gods, I want to kill him.”

That made Sepha smile. “That’s what I was trying to do tonight.”

Ruhen only sighed again, and Sepha could practically hear him thinking, Reckless.

“That’s the only thing to be done, though,” he said at last. “That’s the only way out.”

“I know,” Sepha said, glad she didn’t have to explain it to Ruhen. The magician had to die.

“I want to help.” Ruhen’s voice was fierce, and he leaned close, resting one hand on her leg and circling her waist with the other. “He’s tricked you and hurt you. What he’s done to us, what he plans to do with—” he faltered and came to a stop. “I want to help.”

Sepha swallowed. Nodded. Touched Ruhen’s arm, briefly. “I’m sorry for all of this,” she said. “I’m sorry for lying so much. I didn’t know, when I made the deal, that this would happen. With you and me. And I’ve been trying so hard to fix it.”

Ruhen looked down. “I know,” he said, and looked at her again. He tucked a strand of her still-wet hair behind her ear and rested his forehead against hers. A thrill went through her, and her contract thrummed, but she didn’t pull away. She didn’t want to.

“Don’t you hate me?” Sepha asked, almost against her will.

There was a short pause, and Sepha was so tightly strung.

“Of course not,” he said at last. “I just wish you’d told me sooner. If I’d known you were indebted to someone so dangerous—I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done, other than what you did do,” she said. “You helped me.”

Ruhen sighed. He was stroking the curve of her ear almost absentmindedly, his fingertips light against her skin. “I could’ve worried more, at least,” he said, and Sepha let out a weak laugh. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Sepha rested a hand against his chest. His heartbeat quickened. “I’m fine,” she said, and it was less of a lie than before.

Ruhen traced the curve of her ear one last time and pulled away. They both had to wipe their eyes.

Feeling quite as reckless as Ruhen had accused her of being, Sepha whispered, “Will you stay with me tonight?”

It was a risk. But it was a risk she needed to take.

Ruhen nodded.

Sepha’s demons, her contract, the snide voice, and the memory of the undead magician, all thrummed and whispered and cackled.

But the smaller, truer part of her sighed in relief. As if she’d finally gotten something right.