She moaned in pain, nearly dropping Syrinx as her leg gushed blood into the water below.
Hunt had been so focused on the head wound he hadn’t seen the n?kk slash her calf—where the flesh visible through her leggings remained half-shredded. Still slowly healing. The n?kk must have dug its claws in to the bone if the injury was so severe the synth was still stitching it together.
Bryce said, “We have to run. Now. Before he gets out.” She didn’t wait for Lehabah to reply as she managed to get upright, carrying Syrinx.
She limped—badly. And she moved so, so slowly toward the stairs.
The bathroom door heated again, the metal red-hot as Micah attempted to melt his way through.
Bryce panted through her teeth, a controlled hiss-hiss-hiss with each step. Trying to master the pain the synth hadn’t yet taken away. Trying to drag a thirty-pound chimera down a set of steps on a shredded leg.
The bathroom door pulsed with light, sparks flying from its cracks. Bryce reached the library, took a limping step toward the main stairs up to the showroom, and whimpered.
“Leave it,” the Autumn King growled. “Leave the chimera.”
Hunt knew, even before Bryce took another step, that she would not. That she’d rather have her back peeled off by an Archangel than leave Syrinx behind.
And he could see that Lehabah knew it, too.
Bryce was a third of the way up the stairs, sparks flying from the seams of the bathroom door across the library behind them, when she realized Lehabah was not with her.
Bryce halted, gasping around the pain in her calf that even the synth could not dull, and looked back at the base of the library stairs. “Forget the books, Lehabah,” she pleaded.
If they survived, she’d kill Jesiba for even making the sprite hesitate. Kill her.
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.