“Bastard!”

Drey was fast. It was her first surprise. There was exactly one person faster, and that, too, was as much of a shock.

He was ruthless, cherry oak sending bursting boom after boom sailing in the man’s direction. His eyes were sharp, his movements ever sharper. His brief skills on display in Velrose were nothing. Octavia had never seen this side of Renato before, unflinching and unhesitant as he was to challenge a man with blood so freshly staining his fingertips.

The eruption of violence that encircled her on every side was blinding and overwhelming in the most literal sense. Cadence was a catalyst, and those that served to defend their employer did so with little remorse. Octavia couldn’t necessarily blame their hostility, and yet it was unforgivable all the same. They really were armed, if not to a far lesser degree than Drey himself. It didn’t make their own assault any less skilled, any less deadly, any less targeted towards vital organs or throats.

As to how they intended to obey Drey’s request for a bloodless brawl in such a manner, she couldn’t fathom. The Maestros were at each other’s backs, defensively and offensively all at once. Should she bother to count, and should she include one boy with only a humble knife to show for his bravery, they were outnumbered by--at the utmost minimum--forty-five to six. It made little difference.

She’d never heard them harmonizing before, complementary and beautiful atop one another’s wrathful melodies. The cacophony was chaotic and organized all at once, and their every note lined up flawlessly. Octavia had never truly stopped to consider the literal sounds of desperate combat--her radiant performance amidst wondrous flames in Velrose was an outlier. They were admirable and terrifying all at once, and every overlapping song was splendid.

The dichotomy between the will of fire and a soul of ice meant little. They were excellent together, bursting crystal and scorching flames more than enough to besiege all who sought to draw near. Neither Viola nor Harper left fear seeping into their songs, quickly assailed time and time again by spearing blades and honed edges as they were. Every thrust and slash never made it far, and they hardly needed to backpedal. He incinerated where she froze, and her frosted wrath rained down where his inferno faltered. Not one scratch befell their skin. They were perfect. They carved the only gap that mattered.

A spirit of wind was unbending, unhesitant in every strum. Her stormy melody was divine, streaming and gusting along her skin with such fervor that stray embers and flakes of ice were caught in her gales. Josiah was emboldened by her tailwinds, maybe, and he sprinted without hesitation of his own. Their footsteps fell into sync almost instantly. Where he was free to cast his eyes forward and steady his breath, Madrigal was cursed to play endlessly. She didn’t so much as slow her pace, her fingers flying along every string. It was the forsaken girl alone who rested carelessly in their sights, and not once did the Maestra sprawled out on the cold marble below stir. Josiah ran ever faster.

And that left a face somewhere between a shadow of ire and a grin of confidence, skillful hands erupting again and again. He needed her light. For who he was after, Octavia would give him all she had.

Renato’s power was, up close, incredible. She’d witnessed it under stranger circumstances, the strength of sound lost on training alone or heavy blows against violet. Now, he was out for blood. His wrists were a blur, his bursts almost deafening at such a range. They were far from the earth-shattering explosions she’d been cursed with in the forest, tempered and restrained by comparison.

Really, “restrained” was subjective--each boom surely would not have spared human skin. It was equally incredible, then, that Drey could keep up with what he couldn’t see. His blade was flat against nothing. Time and time again, the blunt steel captured the explosive power of the strength of sound outright. The fierce ringing born on collision was disorienting and piercing, unavoidable all the same. For what he couldn’t deflect, he somehow managed to evade. Under no circumstances did it deter Renato.

He was amazingly athletic. His acrobatic prowess was perhaps the one thing more impressive than his physical offenses, and yet he claimed his momentum as a weapon still. Renato was forwards, backwards, skywards, and downwards time and time again. In every conceivable direction did he invert and tumble, throwing his full body weight down onto skilled hands and pushing hard into the open air. His height aloft was well-deserved, and what further inversions he could claim left him blighting Drey with every bursting boom that could besiege the man from on high.

He, too, could evade, although with far more style and fervor. Once, twice, thrice did he tumble in reverse, remorseless steel often slashing futilely at where a Maestro had been moments before. Even in combat, he was every bit as unpredictable as Octavia had learned him to be. She didn’t dare take her eyes off him.

Drey trailed the boy with his own gaze, fixated and sharp much the same. “And with whom do I have the pleasure of doing battle?”

When he crashed to earth once more, he hardly needed to catch his breath. “I’m Renato Bell, and I am the greatest damn Maestro you’ll ever meet.”

Whether the brandished blade was a display of a stance regained or simple intimidation, Octavia was unsure. “You would fight so strongly for Octavia’s sake?”

“I’ll fight anyone who hurts the people I care about, yeah,” Renato answered plainly.

He left little room for conversation. Already, his hands were moving, and already, cherry oak was exploding. Drey moved much the same, ruthless steel following suit. Octavia was outright afraid to breathe, lest she shatter what made Renato perfect.

Mostly wordless as his actions were, his intent had been made clear with confident words just minutes before. She knew little of Drey’s stamina, and this was her first true taste. Ideally, it would be her last. Of what she knew of Renato, his own reservoir was strongly impressive. The forest alone had spoken to that much, and he proved it to her here with every last tumble and burst. It was a war of attrition, by which he who faltered would lose their life. If a violin touched her shoulder, it would be two Maestros versus one outside of such a world. In Drey’s fatigue, she could claim the kill if Renato didn’t beat her to the punch. She would’ve strongly preferred to, and she hoped he’d understand.

There was an alternative ending to the war, should exhaustion swallow the wrong combatant. She refused to entertain it. Octavia was left physically and desperately shaking the idea out of her head.

It left her watching, struggling to focus with all she had on every traded blow and skillful block. She praised the songs at her back and the powerful boy before her eyes, her concentration ensured in the most fragile peace possible. What window she could seize would be short, if Drey’s sickening proficiency with the blade spoke to his recovery time. She was still planning exactly how she’d do it. She could go for his eyes. She could go for his throat. She could go for his heart, maybe, although she feared her light would fail to run him through. It would be a trial by fire.

“Not bad, man,” Renato jeered, two little halves of cherry oak never once stilling their explosive assault. “Never thought I’d see the day someone kept up with me. Let’s see how long you can pull that off, huh?”

And Drey, as such, dodged and countered with aplomb. It was a cycle, by which the boy left the conservator evading every unforgiving boom that found Octavia’s braids wavering from afar. Still, for all his highly-impressive inversions and stolen momentum in reverse, there was very much a gap that closed ever more with each passing second. From here, to Octavia, it was crystal clear. To a Maestro in the heat of battle, eyes firmly forward and wrists well occupied, it was most definitely less so. She couldn’t call out to him. She couldn’t warn him aloud. Striking distance was not out of the question, and Octavia was left to pray Renato realized the circumstances.

“You are arrogant,” Drey replied, his own movements never halting in turn. “You, too, do not know of the insurmountable cruelties of this world. You are but a child yourself.”

“Damn, isn’t that even more embarrassing, then?” Renato pushed. “You’re getting your ass handed to you by a kid.”

“Tell me this, then, Renato. Would you fight your fight until your last breath? Would you cling so strongly to your beliefs that you would lay down your life?”

Renato laughed. “What the hell kind of threat do you think you could possibly pose to me? You really think you’re hot stuff, huh? Look at you. You’ve got nothing on me. All you can do is dodge.”

If he was being calculated in his taunting, it didn’t show. It came off as cocky. Her heart pounded. She believed either one, and she very much hoped it was the former. When he tossed one split-second glance over his shoulder, she nearly missed it entirely. He winked with a grin she knew all too well. Octavia gripped the bow tightly, hunting for whatever opening he fought to bless her with. So too, did she pray once more from the bottom of her heart that he knew what he was doing.

Josiah’s singular swear was audible well across the room.

To Renato’s immense credit, his concentration was unshakable. Not once did his eyes leave his opponent, even in the midst of the outburst echoing off every wall. Octavia wasn’t immune. She couldn’t help it. She regretted it.

Josiah really did try. Surrounded by spilling scarlet on every side, the pristine marble below was far from such beyond Cadence’s body alone. He didn’t struggle against the same, splattered with the Maestra’s blood as he thrust his palms harshly in tandem over the wound. It meant little, and Josiah was cursed with only seeping suffering for his efforts. Ever more red oozed between his frantic fingers, trickling down the fragile fabrics of what had once been attire so lifeless in another way. Cadence was motionless. It was a cold floor. It was no place to perish, and his cry of aggravation clicked in the worst way. He gritted his teeth, his breaths labored as he relaxed his muscles at last.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he called to her with a shake of his head. So, too, was his voice shaking in just the slightest. “She’s gone. He went right through her heart.”

She shuddered. Regaining her focus was miserable. She wondered if Cadence suffered, for how quick the blow had been. Still, even now, she heard their songs. She felt every gust, witnessed every ember, heard every crackle of every icicle plaguing the air. They didn’t falter, for what had come to pass. It was the worst time for pride, and she still felt it burning in her heart on their behalf.

“You better stay focused, man!”

They were words not meant for her, a taunt meant only to bite and disrupt. Still, it drew Octavia’s attention immediately. Her heart was pounding, her blood rushing through her ears in equal measure. Her fingers trembled around the bow, and she strained her eyes with such fervor that it nearly made her dizzy. By comparison, Renato didn’t appear even slightly exhausted. His breaths were even, his momentum flawless, his every flick and slash and burst perfect and controlled. He was still phenomenal. He was still very, very vulnerable to the gap.

He had less of it. With each passing second, it grew ever more narrow, and she was still forced to pray upon pray that he came to the same conclusion. Octavia began to sweat, her eyes darting with mild panic to every last advancing movement Drey claimed. Keeping up was the least of his concerns, for how he’d managed to match Renato thus far. She wasn’t the only one who could seize a window. Renato couldn’t give him one. Under no circumstances could Renato give him a chance.

“Renato,” Drey began, “what would it take to convince you to lay down your weapons? What would convince you to return home, to begin anew in a life without violence?”

Renato scoffed. “Oh, screw that. I’ll be damned if my life hasn’t been anything but. You’re crazy if you think giving up now will solve anything. You’ve got a hell of a lot of blood on your hands. I wouldn’t be sayin’ that kind of thing if I were you.”

She could trust in the boy’s reflexes. She could trust in how quickly he could dodge, should it come to that. With each passing second, it grew ever more clear that it was, definitely, coming to that. It was a simultaneous gamble. Calculated as she hoped him to be, she assumed he knew of the opportunity. She assumed he knew of the danger, just as much. For how Renato would be forced to evade both steel and radiance in tandem, given what she’d offer up in such a tiny timeframe, she liked to imagine she knew him well enough to trust in that.

Octavia didn’t need to kill Drey in one shot. She could make him stagger. She could exploit the recoil. She could singe him, sear him, burn him bit by bit. She, too, could wear him down. The burden was not on Renato alone, and she would prove it the moment she had the opportunity. She would return the favor in full. She tensed, bracing against the marble below.

“So, then,” Drey continued, “as long as you can fight, even if it costs you your life, you would still choose to do so?”

He laughed. “Damn right. I’ll keep fighting, just like this, right up until the day I die. I promise you, that day isn’t coming any time soon.”

She inhaled. She exhaled. She pressed the bow so hard against the strings that she feared she might snap it in half. Octavia watched, and she waited, and she chased the man with her eyes. She wouldn’t miss. She couldn’t miss. It didn’t matter how many times she needed to try.

“And you mean what you say?” Drey spoke calmly, his eyes narrow.

Renato answered with a grin she knew well. “You know it, old man.”

Drey embraced silence, briefly. His hands never stilled. His movements never halted. It was only his words that hesitated to escape his lips. Eventually, they were free.

“So be it, then. You have my apologies.”

Octavia hardly had the time to blink. She didn’t have the time to move. Not one note could erupt from Stradivaria’s strings, nor could one drop of radiance spill from her blood. Drey was fast where Renato was not. He surged forward where Renato was still. Steel shimmered twice over where cherry oak was left to kiss the floor, clattering weakly one after another to the cold marble below. Renato staggered. Drey didn’t.

Where once had been taunting and teasing came only silence, a grin stolen from lips that so rarely offered anything but. It was far from the only thing Drey stole. Each respective thud that heavily collided with chilled marble was twofold in turn, unfamiliar and unnatural. For a moment, Renato’s eyes were upon Drey’s alone. When they fell, it was a slow descent to meet his rising arms. They trembled all the way up.

Where cherry oak had been so lovingly cradled twice over now lay nothing. In its place, beyond wrists that had flicked and slashed and battled so viciously, all that burst forth was infinite red.

He didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He didn’t breathe, nor could he stand. The wide eyes tethered only to his barren wrists and cascading blood pooled with naught but abject disbelief. The lacerations were perfect, precise, and clean. They were symmetrical in every way, uniform in a fashion that spoke to total control of a gleaming sword. His confusion was nearly as profuse as his exsanguination, spilling scarlet outright excessive as it stained the marble at his feet. So, too, did it more or less drench his clothes.

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As he crumpled to his knees, his face was hardly immune to the same, his head crashing against the floor with a violent thud of its own. It was unfortunate, the way his glassy gaze came level with his own hands so distantly resting. Even now, they were in position, ten fingers inwardly curled and readied for an explosive assault. Instead, it was only his veins that were explosive, by which he could do little more than stare and bleed. He stared, and stared, and stared, the dulling light in his eyes irrelevant.

Octavia couldn’t move, in her own way. Stradivaria slipped from her shoulder slowly, her horrified eyes darting back and forth between a Maestro and a murderer. The latter brandished his blade for a second time, although there was little left to intimidate. Specks of scarlet splattered onto the once-pure marble below, ever more dyed permanently red as the night grew deeper. He had the nerve to look her in the eyes. He had the nerve to pierce her soul with a gaze so soft. He had the nerve to flee, his footsteps echoing harshly off the marble as her skin burned white-hot in his wake.

Her breaths were labored. She trembled, her eyes clinging to a boy on the last vestiges of consciousness. His own were hardly open, still fixated on his distant and useless skin resting beyond his reach. When they slowly fell shut at last, it left only those who called SIAR home confused in the aftermath of Drey’s flight. It left some still violent, granted, besieged by much the same songs as they struggled in their own ways. She could always give chase. The rest of her heart was tethered to the floor, somewhere deep in the dual rivers of red that gushed forth forever.

Her words would’ve been lost aloud. Renato’s devastation was discovered by wandering eyes. Madrigal made the worst sound Octavia had ever heard in her life.

She’d almost screamed that hard, once, beneath the crushing news of autumn red stolen too soon. Even upon shores she’d yet to understand, Octavia had maybe done so on more than a single occasion for the same immaculate girl. It paled in comparison to the sorrow and terror that erupted from Madrigal’s throat, a haunting echo that crashed endlessly against every wall of SIAR. The institute fell still beneath her pain alone, every last blade and every valiant melody beaten into silence in the wake of suffering far greater.

She was sprinting. She was screeching. She was sobbing, staggering with every step. Her grip around Lyra’s Repose was iron, her cries of his name and denial mingling forever. Maybe she would never stop screaming again. Maybe Octavia would never forget that noise as long as she lived.

Madrigal collapsed to her knees, utterly immune to the blood pooling around her skin and stinging her dress. Where his eyes were shut and his breaths shallow, her shoulders were heaving and her gaze was frantic. Her tears collided with his bursting scarlet time and time again, splashing deep into the endless wells of red surging twofold on either side of the boy. They were the only thing more eternal than Madrigal’s sorrow, the harp still trembling fiercely in her grasp.

The reprieve shattered. Blades once still found their momentum once more. It was red of their own they sought, and they nearly got it in several ways. The Maestros were collectively hesitant, and it was almost their downfall. Trembling grips around keys and equally-shaky breaths left them stealing steps in reverse. Their eyes darted over their shoulders as they split their attention between half-hearted songs and a boy who could no longer offer up the same.

So distracted was Octavia that she nearly didn’t notice her own vulnerability until her salvation was through. The whoosh of crisp crystal sailing well past her ears was all that shook her from her daze. Once more was Stradivaria on her shoulder. It was the first time her light was let loose in SIAR, and she did so with remorseless rage.

Not a one would touch them. Not a single one would breach, nor would they claim a drop more of innocent blood. With gritted teeth and narrow eyes, she let starlight surge through her racing heart and blast fiercely through her own trembling fingers. It wasn’t enough to simply let her radiance wash over the strings, as she’d done time after time. She pushed and pressed, a bursting nova of her own as the wrath of the sun wrapped them up in full.

Her fingers flew and her skin burned, scathing brilliance aloft and wispy. It was as thick as it was aflame, gleaming far too brightly and perfectly white-hot. She let it encircle, just as she let it spiral. They were the center of a solar system born of her song, loaded with ire as it was. She could’ve screamed. She very, very much wanted to, and she wondered if the stars would’ve been born of her cries.

Her efforts were not fruitless, nor did she assume they would be. Her heat was intolerable, and that was how she wanted it. Every assailant staggered, repelled by the fury of the sun birthed in such a cold place. No blade could touch her, for how cruel steel would surely melt in the face of her luminous melody. She’d earned them precious breathing room, a galaxy centered around desperately-needed breaths and exhausted eyes. Royal Orleans and Silver Brevada were yanked from panting lips, their Maestros outright gasping for air with reddened faces to show for it. It was one more way she’d failed. It was one more thing that left her burning brighter and playing faster.

Josiah didn’t hesitate, once more soaked with red from his knees downwards. The simple knife he’d offered to wage war with was made useful at the cost of his attire. It was with careful slashes that flannel sleeves became ribbons, uneven and jagged as he pulled them taut. They made for haphazard tourniquets, bound tightly around two wrists that even now continued to gush profusely. He tugged tighter. He was rewarded with the same. Where Renato’s breaths grew ever more shallow, Josiah’s quickened in turn.

“He shouldn’t be bleeding this badly,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “Even if Drey severed an artery, this is way too much. Cadence was the same way.”

“Then why?” Harper asked, still struggling to catch his breath.

“I don’t know,” Josiah answered hurriedly. “I’m honestly not sure.”

Viola’s own breaths were labored in much the same way. “How do we stop it?”

Two of Josiah’s fingers came to press firmly against Renato’s neck. “He’s still breathing, but I’m worried he’s going to bleed out at this rate. I don’t know what to do.”

Attempting to speak in the midst of her song was difficult. Octavia did it anyway. “Is it possible Drey did something?”

Josiah paused for a moment, never once tearing his eyes from Renato’s wrists. “I wouldn’t put it past him. Poison on his blade, maybe, or an anticoagulant. With what they’ve got here, I can see him pulling something like that.”

Harper’s voice shook. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know!” Josiah snapped. “I don’t know what to do! I can’t make it stop!”

Madrigal was louder than him. Madrigal was louder than all of them, and it took effort to talk over her at all. She couldn’t be blamed, grief erupting from her throat in audible forms Octavia had never imagined it could take. At the very least, Priscilla had passed well out of sight of Octavia--an ironic relief, given where she currently stood. For Madrigal, her first love was left to slowly die before her eyes. Were it Octavia, she would surely be screaming the same way. Maybe she should’ve been, and yet all she could offer up were the tears that stung her wide eyes.

She squeezed them shut. She couldn’t look anymore, for what was to come. Cadence had been enough. Priscilla had been enough, even. Renato, of all people, deserved better. He’d been here for her sake, after all. This might’ve been an even worse way to die--Cadence’s demise was instant, hopefully. Speechless as he was, she wondered if he was in pain. She wondered if he was afraid. She wondered if he knew at all. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this. This wasn’t happening.

Child, listen to me.

She’d never heard that voice in her life.

It was feminine, foreign, unfamiliar in every way. She jolted.

“Stradivaria?” she tried aloud quietly. She earned nothing. She’d doubted it instantly, regardless.

Child, please, still your tears. You must listen to me.

Madrigal was still louder than the voice in question, pain and agony taking audible precedence over calm and composure. Tears be damned, Octavia’s blurring eyes darted to each Maestro in turn. Not one flinched. Not one looked away from the suffering boy still bound to the floor. Not one made the slightest indication of the words that plagued her head.

If you wish to save his life, you must listen to my words. Please. Calm yourself.

They weren’t meant for her. Her eyes drifted to Madrigal, Lyra’s Repose still pressed tightly to her chest in a trembling grasp. Hot tears claimed every string, challenging the sprawling red below with expansive sorrow. She cried, and cried, and cried, and never once did her desperate grip on the instrument falter.

Lyra.

“Madrigal!” Octavia cried.

Her sharp shout was enough to draw the Maestra’s attention, devastated eyes boring deep into Octavia’s own. For one brief moment, she caught a shaking breath in wavering silence. It didn’t keep her shoulders from heaving, nor her tears from spilling excessively.

Do you wish to save him?

Madrigal nodded fervently, her curls bashing her in the face in the process. Octavia didn’t dare look away. There were others who did the same, albeit with far more confusion etched into their gazes.

It will not be without consequence. Are you certain?

“I don’t care,” Madrigal sobbed. “I’ll do anything.”

Harper’s words were as slow as they were puzzled. “Madrigal, who are you--”

Then you alone shall have my spirit.

Madrigal played.

Trembling fingers did little to stem a perfect melody, crafted between dripping tears and soft cries. The latter were blighted by the volume of her song, as gentle as it was powerful. It was a sound unlike any Octavia had ever heard from Lyra’s Repose. So distracted was the Maestra that she had to outright remind herself to play, willing her own brilliant song to continue. She feared clashing with the crystalline ballad that tinged the air. It hardly mattered, given the way a delicate harp was somehow louder than her.

Every note was indescribable, ethereal, nearly divine. It was a fresh and chilling warmth that was as disorienting as it was welcome, pulsing through her blood with every strum. Once more was the room at a halt, Maestros and not frozen and speechless. Knives were uselessly aloft and eyes were drawn to what could not be seen. She didn’t need to see it to feel it in every part of her body, every careful pluck reverberating through her skin.

And still, Octavia saw it anyway. Never in her life had she witnessed wind with her own eyes.

It was a gale for two alone, a storm that narrowed the world to a dying boy and a broken girl. It was perfect, swirling and surging as it battered Madrigal's curls and Renato's own in turn. If the whipping winds bothered her skin as her dress beat upon her again and again, she didn’t show it. If the sky were to collapse on her, she surely wouldn’t flinch. Madrigal's song would be eternal, equally viridian and stunningly beautiful beneath every pluck.

Her winds glowed, her melody radiant in a different manner entirely. It was the most gorgeous green Octavia had ever laid her eyes upon, whirling and twisting in the most gentle of vortexes. She played faster, and so, too, did the luminous hue spin just the same. Madrigal was the eye of her own tempest, with yet one more enveloped in the hurricane that was her song.

Every pluck left behind red of its own, and Octavia initially believed her to simply be too close to Renato’s own blood--still more or less steeped in it as she was. Still, it was most definitely her fingertips, soft tugs upon copper leaving leaking scarlet in their wake. Where relentless tears had once burned the strings, it was now another fluid of a different agony entirely that painted Lyra’s Repose. Even her tears, upon further inspection, weren’t immune to the same. Crystal droplets of sorrow were now dyed deep crimson, and they streaked much the same as they slid down her face. Octavia thought to cry out, perhaps to beg for the girl to stop. She didn’t dare. She doubted Madrigal would.

If she was in pain, Madrigal made no indication of such. What ragged sobs left her throat and what bloodied tears dripped steadily from her eyes spoke only to a wounded heart. The Maestra didn’t so much as flinch. Her movements were stronger, her strumming more powerful, her every note resonating more harshly upon the open air. Even for Lyra’s Repose, it wasn’t normal. And still, Madrigal’s song was perfectly viridian, perfectly even, perfectly beautiful for one person alone.

She unraveled her storm, slowly. It was a shocking sight in its own right, strands of rippling winds given visual form and blessing the open air. Thin and rope-like, every little string of shimmering viridian drifted to meet scarlet wounds, laying claim to weeping wrists. Her gathered gales unwound with skill and precision, layering neatly and tightly over where once had been hands in steady rows of threaded green. Like mesh, they clung, bandages born of gusting love that battled yet more blood behind. They were simply too strong, and the way by which Octavia failed to process the sight made them no less powerful. Not once did the dual barriers falter, nor did they wilt. They were ceaseless, glimmering, startlingly solid.

And where Renato offered no blood, it was Madrigal who bled instead. It was her fingers yet more, and her tears still. It was her lips, newly blighted, as she coughed several times over. Red trickled down the edges of her mouth, and she played onwards regardless. Her agony was absent, if she felt any of that flavor at all. Her song, by comparison, was eternal. What she paid for in blood, she gave up in love one thousand times more.

Once more, Octavia didn’t dare insist she cease her song. The way by which Renato’s breaths were stronger and deeper was not lost on her, still less than lucid as he was. It hardly mattered that his eyes were still closed and his words were still absent. Whether or not he was conscious at all was debatable. Octavia's own heart was slowing, and it was wonderful. Her respective song had been extensive, her fingertips pulsing and burning with her own storm of starlight, and yet her muscles barely ached at all. He mattered more. Both of them did.

There came a point when her song at last overpowered Madrigal’s own, although not from lack of effort on the latter Maestra’s part. The gusting melody that had inexplicably blessed her with viridian and cursed her with crimson slowed, never quite stilling as she continued to strum with bloodied fingertips. What was once a surging storm eased into a gentle breeze, calming and comforting along the cold marble. Renato never surrendered his glow, twofold and secure as his wrists were bound by glimmering green. Even now, not one drop of blood breached either one.

“Octavia.”

Viola’s voice startled her, given how focused she’d been on the two Maestros below. Her eyes snapped to the Maestra at her side instead.

“We’ll take care of this,” she continued. “You need to get going.”

“Viola?” Octavia murmured.

“Don’t let Drey get away. We’ll handle things here,” she insisted.

“It might be a trap,” Josiah added. “Please be careful. He could be trying to separate you on purpose.”

Octavia shook her head. “I have no doubt. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to take him down.”

Harper nodded. “Be safe, okay? We’ll cover you.”

Octavia winced. They’d already burnt themselves out enough. “Will you be able to?”

To her surprise, he grinned. “Never better.”

He proved it almost instantly. The trumpet rose to his lips with little hesitation, and the inferno he brought forth was enough reassurance in and of itself. The bursting flames that erupted from the bell were enough to spear well across the room, his rationed breath absurdly powerful. Surging oranges and scarlet rose to kiss the ceiling, stray embers left abandoned as they drifted so near to Octavia’s skin. In the face of a heat she hadn’t expected, she outright flinched. So, too, did those on the left.

“We’ve only been holding them back,” Viola added. “We’ll start taking them out.”

The flute that came to kiss the Maestra’s own lips cursed the air with the exact opposite, frosted and dangerous in a different way entirely. Sharp, unforgiving crystal speared high, bursting forth from the already-chilled marble below and spearing ever upwards. Just as such, it burst well across the room, towering and crystalline in the most resplendent of barriers. Glistening magnificently behind roaring flames as it was, the wall was beautiful at the worst of times. The radiant chill that scalded the air was startling in its own right, and Octavia flinched once again. So, too, did those on the right.

Somewhere in the midst of frost and hellfire lay room for escape, unhindered by that which would scorch or freeze her where she stood. The northeastern corridor was clear, and she could not be mistaken as to the path of the murderer’s flight. She tensed. She lowered Stradivaria. Her eyes fell to Renato, still just as silent and just as motionless.

Josiah was there. The clinging green still clung, shimmering and pulsing splendidly each time Octavia looked. It didn’t keep him from binding the boy’s wrists more naturally, thick gauze packing and settling cleanly over the glistening wounds. He wrapped Renato’s wrists one after another in bandage after bandage, pulling taut with deft hands and careful eyes. The way by which not one glow of viridian slipped through the pristine cracks was surprising. Josiah still found time to meet her eyes with the absolute weakest of smiles.

“Go. You can do this. Don’t look back.”

She did what she could to return his smile, half-hearted as the effort was. Her eyes flickered to Madrigal at his side, her movements at last ceased and her song at last silent. Blood once flowing had caked her skin by comparison, trails previously trickling now dried and flaking. Each twitch of her fingers and minute movement of her hands finally left her wincing in pain, subtle as it was. She met Octavia’s gaze wordlessly. It was all Octavia could do to nod.

You should not hear my voice, child.

It wasn’t Madrigal’s voice that offered her any words at all. She’d already heard it once tonight.

You are interesting. Could you be the one?

“Octavia, go!” Josiah called.

His words were not those in her head, feminine and still so hauntingly unfamiliar. They were enough to snap her back to reality, and she turned sharply on her heel. She clutched Stradivaria, struggled to slow her pounding heart, and stole the deepest breath she could.

Her light had faltered, and so, too, had she. Her failures were evident, and she knew them well. There were those who fought beside her, and those who suffered on her behalf. She wasn’t perfect. Unlike Priscilla, she never had been, and never would be. Still, for more than the reds of autumn alone, she could fight. She could love. She could hate. She could run.

And she was so, so good at the latter.