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Yet Lehabah did not move. “Lehabah,” Bryce said, the name an order.
Lehabah said softly, sadly, “You won’t make it in time, BB.”
Bryce took one step up, pain flaring up her calf. Each movement kept ripping it open, an uphill battle against the synth attempting to heal her. Before it’d rip apart her sanity. She swallowed her scream and said, “We have to try.”
“Not we,” Lehabah whispered. “You.”
Bryce felt her face drain of any remaining color. “You can’t.” Her voice cracked.
“I can,” Lehabah said. “The enchantments won’t hold him much longer. Let me buy you time.”
Bryce kept moving, gritting her teeth. “We can figure this out. We can get out together—”
“No.”
Bryce looked back to find Lehabah smiling softly. Still at the base of the stairs. “Let me do this for you, BB. For you, and for Syrinx.”
Bryce couldn’t stop the sob that wrenched its way out of her. “You’re free, Lehabah.”
The words rippled through the library as Bryce wept. “I traded with Jesiba for your freedom last week. I have the papers in my desk. I wanted to throw a party for it—to surprise you.” The bathroom door began warping, bending. Bryce sobbed, “I bought you, and now I set you free, Lehabah.”
Lehabah’s smile didn’t falter. “I know,” she said. “I peeked in your drawer.”
And despite the monster trying to break loose behind them, Bryce choked on a laugh before she begged, “You are a free person—you do not have to do this. You are free, Lehabah.”
Yet Lehabah remained at the foot of the stairs. “Then let the world know that my first act of freedom was to help my friends.”
Syrinx shifted in Bryce’s arms, a low, pained sound breaking from him. Bryce thought it might be the sound her own soul was making as she whispered, unable to bear this choice, this moment, “I love you, Lehabah.”
The only words that ever mattered.
“And I will love you always, BB.” The fire sprite breathed, “Go.”
So Bryce did. Gritting her teeth, a scream breaking from her, Bryce heaved herself and Syrinx up the stairs. Toward the iron door at the top. And whatever time it’d buy them, if the synth didn’t destroy her first.
The bathroom door groaned.
Bryce glanced back—just once. To the friend who had stayed by her when no one else had. Who had refused to be anything but cheerful, even in the face of the darkness that had swallowed Bryce whole.
Lehabah burned a deep, unfaltering ruby and began to move.
First, a sweep of her arm upward. Then an arc down. A twirl, hair spiraling above her head. A dance, to summon her power. Whatever kernel of it a fire sprite might have.
A glow spread along Lehabah’s body.
So Bryce climbed. And with each painful step upward, she could hear Lehabah whisper, almost chanting, “I am a descendant of Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers. She is with me now and I am not afraid.”
Bryce reached the top of the stairs.
Lehabah whispered, “My friends are behind me, and I will protect them.”
Screaming, Bryce shoved the library door. Until it clanged shut, the enchantments sealing, cutting off Lehabah’s voice with it, and Bryce leaned against it, sliding to the floor as she sobbed through her teeth.
Bryce had made it up to the showroom and locked the iron door behind her. Thank the gods for that—thank the fucking gods.
Yet Hunt couldn’t take his eyes off the library feed, where Lehabah still moved, still summoned her power, repeating the words over and over:
“I am a descendant of Ranthia Drahl, Queen of Embers. She is with me now and I am not afraid.”
