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The nightflyer unfurled its fleshy wings enough that I could see that the spine had taken her just under the heart. Maybe even gone through the bottom part of it. Brownies are a tough lot, but it was a terrible wound.

She stared at me, still alive, still trying to breathe past the daggerlike spine. I took her hand, and felt her grip, which had always been so strong, now frail, as if she could not hold my hand, but she tried.

I turned to Doyle, and took his hand in mine. He whispered, “I have failed you.”

I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “It’s failure only if you die. Don’t die.”

Rhys went to Sholto and searched for a pulse, while I held the hands of my grandmother and the man I loved and waited for them to die.

It was one of those moments when strange things come into your mind. All I could think of was what Quasimodo says as he gazes down at the Archdeacon who raised him dead on the pavement below, and the woman he loved hung and dead. “Oh! All that I have ever loved.”

I threw my head back and screamed. In that moment no baby, no crown, nothing was worth the price in both my hands.

Doctors came, and nurses. They fell upon the wounded, and they tried to pry my hands out of Gran and Doyle’s hands, but I couldn’t seem to let go. I was afraid to let go, as if the worst would happen if I did. I knew it was stupid, but the feel of Doyle’s fingers wrapped around mine was everything to me. And Gran’s fragile grip was still warm, still alive. I was afraid to let go.

Then her hand spasmed against mine. I looked into her face, and the eyes were too wide, the breath not right. They eased her off the spine, and forced the nightflyer back, and as the spine came out, her life spilled with it.

She collapsed toward me, but other arms caught her, tried to save her, pulled her hand away from mine. But I knew she was gone. There might be moments of breath, and pulse, but it was not life. It was what the body does at the end sometimes, when the mind and soul are gone, but the body doesn’t understand yet that death has come, and there is no more.

I turned to the other hand still in mine. Doyle gave a shuddering breath. The doctors were pulling him away from me, sticking needles in him, putting him on a gurney. I stood, trying to hold on to his hand, his fingers, but my doctor was there, pulling me backward. She was talking, something about me needing to not upset myself. Why do doctors say such impossible things? Don’t get upset; stay off your leg for six weeks; lower your stress; cut back on your work hours. Don’t get upset.

They pulled Doyle’s fingers out of mine, and the fact that they could pull him away from me said just how hurt he was. If he hadn’t been hurt, nothing short of death would have moved him from me.

Nothing short of death.

I looked at Sholto on the floor. They had a crash cart. They were trying to restart his heart. Goddess, help me. Goddess, help us all.

The doctors were clustered around Gran. They were trying, but they had triaged the wounded. Doyle first, then Sholto, then Gran. It should have been comforting, and it was, that they took Doyle first. They thought they could save him.

Sholto’s body jerked with the jolt of power they put through his body. I heard their words in snatches, but I saw a head shake. Not yet. They hit him again, with more, because his body jerked harder. His body convulsed on the floor.

Galen tried to hold me, tears streaming down his face, as they put a sheet over Gran’s body. The police in the room seemed unsure what to do with the nightflyer. How do you handcuff that many tentacles? What do you do when the room is charred, and the dead woman is the one whom everyone said did it? What do you do when magic is real, and cold iron burns the flesh?

I saw the doctors shake their heads over Sholto. He was so terribly still. Consort help me, help me help them. Help me! Galen tried to press my face into his chest, to keep me from looking. I pushed him away, harder than I meant to, so that he stumbled.

I went