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The attack is ending. I can tell already. The pressure is releasing, the tears in the walls closing, the Hollows losing their direction and beginning to wander and then to my surprise, they begin to dissolve, coming apart at the edges like smoke. Around the room the students who are still standing are standing very still, looking around them in absolute shock, their gowns and tuxedos splattered with green-black gore and blood.

Wellspring is covered with someone’s formal coat near the north wall.

And then I see Hester, half of her face freckled and pale and staring up at nothing but when her head is turned, I realize the other half has been bitten clean off, leaving only teeth amongst the tissue.

Ambrose is being lifted by Harken and two other students, Nelle walking beside him with her hands still pressed to his chest, blood running over her hands. Avelene reaches him at the door to the corridor and takes his hand and walks with him and I have no idea if he’s going to survive or not.

Sable is sitting against a column near the dais, her hair down, her hands in her lap, her formal dress torn at the shoulder. I give her a faint smile when she looks up at me but she’s too weary to give me one back.

Caranthis stands at the center of the room, directing people to safety. He looks at me once, just once, and looks away. I suppose that was his way of saying I did a good job staying alive.

Baz is still holding me.

“I need to go home,” I tell him.

He pulls back to look at my face in shock. “Home as in your room or the island?”

“The island. We’ll go tomorrow. First ferry.” I press the heel of my hand against my eye, letting the exhaustion flow through me. “I…need to see my mother.”

He looks at me for a long moment, reading whatever is on my face. I don’t tell him what I saw in the veil, about the plague-dead and the vast beast. I can’t, not yet. What I need is to see Mother. There’s something about all of this that makes me think she could help in some way. Either that or something else has me on edge. All I know is that I have to see her right away.

“First ferry,” he says, and helps me up.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

SATURNA

We’re on the first ferry out of Mortua before dawn.

There are no other passengers at this hour, just the salty old captain at the wheel, a man who has ferried students and faculty across the Strait of Veils for long enough that nothing surprises him. He’s certainly not surprised to see us again.

I haven’t slept. Baz hasn’t slept. We at least managed to get changed into our regular clothes but we obviously didn’t do that great a job of cleaning up because Baz licks his thumb and runs it down my cheek.

“You missed a spot,” he says.

I put my hand up and find the place he cleaned, feel the dried edge of it still there, and wonder whose blood that was.

The water is dark grey and the islands ahead are a fuzzy line on the horizon. I watch them grow larger and think about everything that happened between last night’s attack and this morning’s ferry.

After the attack, Caranthis had us in his office within the hour, where Baz, Sable, and I sat across his desk and answered his questions. The conversation was long and careful and nobody said anything outright about what any of us were. Caranthis asked about Renata. We told him about the paper, the dance, what she said to Baz. How she murdered him. He listened with an expression of mild interest, then had the Mortis searched from the water gate to the top tower.

She was gone. No sign of her. We figured as much. Her rooms were searched but in a way it’s like she was never there at all. She had been teaching like she’d always meant to flee at some point and nothing of importance was left behind. Certainly there was no evidence of Baz’s belongings.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” I say aloud, to the water and to Baz. “She can’t kill you again if she’s gone.”

The ferry captain turns and gives us a look of profound unease and then turns back to his wheel.

Baz almost smiles. “Well. When you put it that way.”

“Even if she comes back,” I begin but then stop.

Because what I want to say is, even if she comes back and kills you, I’ll go and get you again.

But that’s not true anymore. Not after what Sable told me.

And it’s a hard truth that Baz has to hear.