Lilith's hands wouldn't stop shaking.

  She had both of them pressed against the side of Lysander's head, trying to hold the pressure steady the way Sister Marian had shown her, but the blood kept coming through her fingers and her hands kept shaking and she couldn't make either of those things stop no matter how hard she tried.

  Stop, she told her hands. Stop. Stop it. This is not the time.

  Her hands did not listen.

  "Okay," she said, out loud, to no one, to everyone, to the room. "Okay. It's — Sister Marian is coming. She's coming, she'll be here soon, you just have to stay awake. Lysander. Lysander, look at me."

  His eyes found her face. Slow. Unfocused. But they found her.

  "There." Her voice cracked and she pulled it back together. "There, good. Keep looking at me. Just keep looking at me, okay?"

  He blinked. Heavy. The kind of blink that was fighting gravity.

  "'Kay," he said, very small.

  She kept the pressure on his head and looked around the room — checking, scanning, because Sister Marian was coming and she needed to know what was in here, what they had to work with, how bad this was, how bad—

  Her eyes stopped.

  On the floor, half buried under debris and dust, scattered like it had been thrown or knocked or caught in the chaos of whatever had happened before she'd arrived — a book.

  A picture book.

  Destroyed. The pages torn and crumpled, some of them drifting loose across the floor. The cover bent nearly in half. But the cover was still readable, and on it, in the careful uneven handwriting of a six-year-old who had worked very hard to form each letter correctly and was very proud of each one—

  To Lilith and Eve.

  The drawing beneath it was simple. Three small figures, stick-limbed, standing in a row. The middle one had yellow hair. The ones on either side had red circles for eyes.

  Lilith's hands went very still on Lysander's head.

  "Lysander," she said. Her voice had changed. She couldn't help it. "What is that?"

  He blinked again. His eyes drifted toward the book and something in his face — even now, even here — did the thing it always did. The brightness. Faint, struggling against everything else in the room, but real.

  "Made it," he said. "Been making it. For — for weeks." He stopped to breathe, and the breath cost him something. "It's a story. About us. You and me and Eve." A pause. "There's a bit where Eve punches a dragon. I drew it really big."

  Lilith made a sound she hadn't planned on making.

  "I wanted to — surprise." His eyes were getting heavier. "So you'd have it. When you go. Something to — take with you." Another breath. Slower this time. "So you don't forget."

  "Lysander—"

  "There's a bit about the Promise too." His voice was getting quieter, the words coming further apart, but the earnestness in them didn't change — it stayed completely, stubbornly itself, right to the edges of each word. "I didn't write the word because it's a secret. I just drew three people holding hands. Is that okay?"

  Lilith couldn't speak.

  "Lilith." His eyes found her face again. Struggling now, really struggling, but finding her. "Is that okay?"

  "It's perfect," she said. Her voice broke completely on the last word and she didn't try to fix it. "It's perfect, Lysander. It's the best thing anyone has ever made for me."

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  He looked at her, and even now — even with the blood and the dust and the heavy eyes — he smiled. The same smile he always had. Completely open. Without any armor over it. Just him, just entirely and completely him, the way he had been from the very first day he'd sat down beside them in the library and told them their eyes looked like Salamanders.

  "Good," he said, satisfied. Like that was the important thing. Like that was the thing he'd needed to know.

  His eyes closed.

  His chest stilled.

  Lilith felt it happen.

  The specific, terrible, unmistakable stillness of it. The absence where there had just been presence, the silence where there had always — from the very first day — been noise.

  She sat with him in her arms and did not move.

  The tears came without warning or permission — not gradual, not building, just suddenly everywhere, running down her face in the silent way of something that had been held back and had simply decided it was done being held. She didn't try to stop them. She didn't have anything left to stop them with.

  Her hands were still shaking.

  She looked at his face. At the smile that hadn't fully left it. At the closed eyes and the small hands that had spent weeks making a picture book for two girls who were going away, drawing dragons for Eve and stick figures holding hands and a secret written in the only language he had for it.

  "You won't die," she said.

  It came out barely above a whisper. Raw and small and not a question.

  She said it again.

  "You won't die."

  And again.

  You won't die. You won't die. You won't die.

  The words kept coming — the same three, over and over, low and unsteady and absolutely certain, because certainty was the only thing she had and she was going to hold it with both hands until the world proved her wrong or gave her something better. She rocked very slightly without knowing she was doing it and her voice kept going and the tears kept falling and the destroyed book lay on the floor beside them with its careful letters and its three stick figures standing in a row.

  To Lilith and Eve.

  You won't die. You won't die. You won't die.

  Sister Marian came through the library door.

  She took in the room the way she always took in rooms — fast, practiced, medical — the debris, the destroyed Ork against the far wall, the state of the shelves, and then Lilith on the floor and Lysander in her arms and the sound of Lilith's voice repeating the same three words into the quiet over and over.

  She was already moving when the wall to her left came apart.

  Another Ork. Drawn by the noise or the chaos or the simple Ork compulsion toward things that were breaking. It was already swinging — a long rusted slab of metal in one fist, aimed at Lilith's back, at Lilith who was not looking up, who was not looking at anything except Lysander's face.

  Sister Marian opened her mouth.

  The weapon shattered.

  It stopped mid-swing as though it had hit something solid and invisible and came apart in pieces, metal fragments scattering across the floor in every direction. The Ork made a sound — confused, wrong, the sound of something that had lost the thread of what it was supposed to be doing — and then its body twisted.

  The same way the first one had.

  Grotesque. Folding inward. Warping in the quiet, awful way of something being unmade from the inside.

  It dropped.

  Sister Marian stood very still for a moment.

  Lilith had not looked up. Had not moved. Had not paused.

  You won't die. You won't die. You won't die.

  Her left eye was glowing — gold and steady, casting a faint warm light across Lysander's face — and her voice kept going, the same three words, the same low broken rhythm, like she was somewhere the Ork hadn't been able to reach, somewhere the debris and the noise and the whole ruined library couldn't reach either.

  Sister Marian crossed the floor and crouched beside them.

  "Lilith," she said.

  You won't die. You won't die.

  "Lilith, let me see him."

  The words kept going. Unbroken. Unhurried. Like Sister Marian hadn't spoken at all.

  Sister Marian didn't try again. She reached in carefully, gently, and worked around Lilith's arms — checking Lysander herself, doing what she needed to do, while Lilith's voice continued above her, steady and low and completely elsewhere.

  You won't die. You won't die. You won't die.

  She checked his pulse. His breathing. The wound at his temple. His eyes.

  She stayed very still when she finished.

  Her hands folded in her lap.

  "Lilith." Her voice was soft. "Child, look at me."

  You won't die. You won't die.

  "Lilith."

  Nothing. Just the words, and the rocking, and the gold eye glowing in the dim library light, and Lysander's face still wearing the last thing it had worn — that open, unguarded smile, the one that had never learned to be anything other than completely itself.

  Sister Marian did not look away.

  She settled herself on the floor beside them — not crouching anymore, just sitting, properly, like she intended to be there for a while — and she put her hand over Lilith's shaking ones, still pressed to Lysander's head, and she held them.

  She didn't say anything else.

  There was nothing left to say, and Lilith wasn't hearing her anyway, and sometimes the only thing left to do was hold on.

  So she held on.

  And Lilith's voice kept going.

  You won't die. You won't die. You won't die.

  The picture book lay on the floor beside them, open to the first page. A drawing, simple and careful and made with a great deal of love by someone who had never thought it might be the last thing they made.

  Three stick figures.

  Holding hands.