Alice closed the door quietly behind her, and at the soft click of the latch sliding into place, her chest felt like it wanted to cave in. Solitude wasn’t a relief or a comfort, but instead it stole her armor away and left her brittle. There was no one to pretend for anymore, so it was nearly impossible to retain control.

It hit a lot harder now, somehow more real than when she had been in the middle of it. In the silence around her, she heard screams. Behind her eyes, she saw lifeless bodies and red rivers. Her heart felt heavy with spilled blood and beat a little harder, a little slower. Breathing was more of a struggle than it should have been. She didn't cry for them. They had been little more than strangers, and she couldn't remember their faces clearly. It was the sheer loss of life that left her feeling hollow and knowing that she might have been able to prevent it.

She should have sought comfort rather than allow herself to be swallowed up by all that pain and violence, but she found herself avoiding Nick and Teagan. To them, it was a story passed from one student to another, the most exciting thing to happen since the Soul Eater incident a decade ago. They wouldn’t understand, and they shouldn’t have to. No one should be forced to watch that much blood spill and have to find a way to move on with their lives. There was only one person whose company she craved. Even if she was still angry with Luka, at least he would understand, and she needed to know that he was okay.

She needed to know that he, at least, was okay.

There were four steps between her door and the bed, but it might as well have been miles. She forced herself to make the journey, despite her straining chest, because maybe sleep would help. If only the horrors would still for long enough. She rolled onto her back and started at the ceiling, but everything was stained with the memory of blood.

Avoiding was not, of course, the same as hiding, and she had made no effort to be hard to find. So it was only a matter of time before Nick and Teagan spilled into her room, and she had to concede that maybe a distraction was better than wallowing. She stood up when Teagan entered and clung to her. Teagan caught her in a hug as Nick entered behind her.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

“No,” Alice allowed, because her armor hadn’t resettled yet.

"You were there?" Nick asked, and she nodded.

"What happened?" Teagan asked.

She pulled away from Teagan and looked at them both. They looked concerned, and she realized that she didn't actually know how much they knew. She took a deep breath to explain, but the words wouldn't come.

"I can't," she said. "I don't have the words. It was… It was unreal.“

“Our mentors didn’t say anything,” Nick said. “Only that it was a large operation. The rumors have been indecipherable, but it was about the virus?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “We found the Rogues, and Hadley arranged a raid. It was... bad.” It didn’t feel adequate, but there would never be an adjective that could contain it all. She struggled to inhale. Her chest was so heavy. "I still don't know what happened to Luka."

Nick rested a hand on her shoulder. "What do you need?"

Luka, she thought. He was the only one who might be able to take these feelings from her. He carried guilt like a crown, and she needed to know how he kept his head high under its weight.

“I don’t know,” she said instead.

“Do you want to be alone?” Teagan asked.

“No.” She did, a little, but it wasn’t going to be good for her. “No, but I’m not going to be good company.”

“That’s okay.” Teagan scanned the room for her laptop. It was set aside on her desk. Teagan touched it lightly and looked at her. “Movie?”

Alice nodded.

They all settled into her bed, balancing the laptop between them. Alice already knew the movie before it even started playing. The one they had watched so many times, they could act out the script between them. When Teagan first introduced her to it, it felt like a friendship test, but even if she hadn’t been sure about the dark humor at first, it had grown on her. Whether it was circumstance or merit, it had managed to make its way to the top of her favorite movies. It was a comforting ritual, the normalcy of it, like it could be any night. Except that she still felt cold. She still expected to find blood on her hands. Screams were still echoing through her mind.

When there was a knock on her door, she startled. They all looked toward it, waiting for it to open. When nothing happened, Alice untangled herself from the bed and her friends and went to open it.

Her breath caught at finding Luka on her doorstep.

"Alice," he started, and whatever he was preparing to say next was cut off when she hugged him. She hadn’t realized just how much space the fear that he was dead had taken up in her heart until it was gone. He didn't fold into the hug, but he didn't tense up either. He put his arms around her and lightly rested his hands on her back.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling back. “I didn't know what happened to you. I didn't think… What are you doing here?"

He took a small step away from her. "I have the cure."

She stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. "You did it," she said. She didn't know how, but she had no doubt he had beaten the Academy to it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be here. He would still have been wanted for treason.

"I did," Luka said. Just like that, a weight lifted off her chest, and she could breathe a little easier. With everything else that had happened, being infected had fallen to the back of her mind, but the anxiety had still been there. It was over now. She would survive because Luka hadn't given up. He had done what he needed to do to get the job done, and it had worked. If only he had told her about it, included her, allowed her to help, maybe she wouldn't be left feeling more relief than satisfaction.

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"You can cure me?"

"That's why I'm here."

He held out a hand to her. When she took it, he closed his eyes. His skin felt cold, even though it seemed strange for a Healer to have bad circulation. She had no idea how it actually worked, if healing magic was a constant thing, unlike her own magic. Her magic was instinctual, too, though. And if healing magic constantly made tiny tweaks, it wouldn't even register. There were still so many things she didn't know, and she didn't even know what her future held anymore. She didn't know what would happen to her. Or to Luka. She focused back on him and watched lines form between his eyebrows as he concentrated. She felt the magic, but faintly, like a warm shimmer through her body. She didn't feel the virus lose its hold on her; she didn't feel any different. Not when the magic seemed to end, nor when Luka blinked his eyes open.

"That's it?" Alice asked. "It's done?"

"That's it," Luka said.

He backed away, as if his work here was done, and he was prepared to take off. To disappear from her life.

"I saw what you were doing, you know," Alice said, and he stopped. "I knew you hadn't given up. You had only given up on getting the cure as an employee of the Academy, right?"

"Yes," he said. "I didn't mean for you to—"

“I know,” she said. “Look, Luka, I don’t know if I forgive you yet, but I will. I understand what you were doing, but I… I hate that you didn’t tell me.” The raid had, at the very least, allowed her to understand something important about Luka and his methods. Why working with Hadley had been such a struggle. Because Luka didn't care what he had to do to succeed. He cared about efficiency. He cared about minimizing the loss of life. If Hadley hadn't lost patience, if he hadn't pushed for the raid, then…

"I didn't know if I could trust you," Luka said.

“Maybe not, but I didn’t deserve that.” She paused, not sure what she expected. An apology? She knew her loyalties had been divided, she understood his doubts. She only wished he had been willing to test her devotion to him. “I tried, but I didn’t know enough to stop it. I couldn’t…”

"It was never going to be stopped, Alice. Both sides wanted blood too badly. Nothing you could do would have changed that.“

She nodded. It wasn’t a comfort, but it was something. "So, what happens now?"

He exhaled slowly and leaned back against the wall. "My contract is up," he said. "Whatever happens now, it's not my concern."

He looked tired. Not physically, but in every other way imaginable.

She had seen him close to passing out from exhaustion. She had watched him bleed out, nearly dead. She had sat by him while he was in a coma. Every time he had been weak, but he had never looked anything less than impeccable. It had to be a trick of his healing magic—something that ensured his physical appearance wasn't affected. But now he was leaning heavily on the wall. His shoulders were perhaps a little too slumped. His eyes were drifting, never staying in one place for too long, unable to focus.

She thought it was over. She should have seen relief in him, but it wasn't there. Maybe too much had happened; maybe those lives weighed on him the same way they did her, but maybe something else was going on.

Maybe they both had to think about their futures.

He left an opening, but she didn’t know how to fill it. She didn’t know what she wanted. He finally pushed off the wall and turned to the hallway. "I have more people to cure."

"Luka, wait." Regardless of their futures, there was one more thing she needed from him.

He stopped, and there was a heaviness to his gaze as he looked at her.

"The raid," she said, because he would understand. "How do you… move past something like that?"

He took a deep, slow breath. "You went."

"I had to. I thought they deserved for someone to… remember them, I guess."

"That wasn’t your burden to bear," he said, as if the burden belonged to him alone.

"Why not?“ Alice demanded. ”I was part of it too. My choices led to it too." No amount of reassurance would convince her that she was not partly responsible, and she didn’t really believe he felt it was entirely inevitable either.

He nodded. "Okay.“ Then he paused, picking out his words. "You have realized by now that the Academy teaches an idealized version of the world. The Council wants all mages to live in a flawless world, believing that it will put a stop to violence, but the truth is that our magic is born of smog and steel and electricity. That's what runs through our blood and fuels us. It's ambition and danger and greed. We can pretend it's beautiful all we want, but the truth is, we're prone to corruption. All of us. Instead of learning from past mistakes, the Council wants to erase them, but that only serves to make young mages ill-equipped to deal with the reality of the magical community. Because what you don’t know is that when your textbooks say that a magical creature is extinct, it means that the Agents murdered them all. You don't know that people go rogue because the Academy is holding them down, or rejecting them, or pushing them too hard, all to fit into some impossible ideal. You don't understand that heroics are punished because no one is allowed to stand out. Watching the raid was… impossible. I know you feel useless. I know you feel responsible, because it could have been prevented. We made the effort, but it wasn't enough, because it was never our choices that led there, and we could never be the ones to stop it. It's a tragedy, but the real tragedy is that the Council would rather see people die than change the way they think. So, how do you move past it? You don't. You try harder next time."

She should have known he had witnessed it, too. That his own impotence in the face of it made him angry. That he had tried and failed to stop it on both sides.

Of course, she knew that the world wasn't perfect. She had known that before she met Luka, too. But it was harrowing to hear it so plainly. It was like a summary of everything Hadley had warned her about, but it made a horrible kind of sense now. She had seen the Council kill, even if they had hidden behind Hadley Thomas. Hadley Thomas, who had told her that it wasn’t enough that children were dying, that the right children had to be dying before the Council would act.

She wondered which magical creature had been murdered into extinction and how many had. She wondered why Luka had gone rogue, which one he was. She wondered who the others were.

None of it made her feel better, but it wasn't meant to.

What it did was give her something to fight for.

“Then we try harder next time.”

She saw the flicker of surprise, but then he shook his head. "I was barely pardoned."

"But you were." She knew not to reach for him, but the urge made her cross her arms. “We can’t change the Council, but at least we can try to protect the people, right?” She stuck out her hand.

“Partners?"

“Fuck,” he muttered, but he took her hand. “Just don't get your hopes up. They're probably going to say no."

"We'll see."

"Now, I really do have more people to cure."

Alice smiled at him as he turned away. Despite everything, she felt good about this decision. It was hope, somehow, of a better future, a better Academy. There was a downside, obviously, since she was going to have to tell Ravi that she didn’t get into law school. She was going to have to find a way to meet him halfway, since she didn’t know how to stall him for another year. She didn’t know what to do when the year was up. Would she really go to law school then? Wait another three years before they could start their life together?

It was another decision, but one that could wait until she knew if the Council would keep Luka on as her mentor. If the Council did say no, she would be out of excuses. She would have to put this all behind her and pretend to want a normal life.

If they said yes, she would have one last year as a mage.

She opened the door and returned to her room. She felt lighter now. Still haunted by faceless, nameless mages, but hopeful. With another year, maybe she could make a difference. Maybe she could find a way to leave this world just a little brighter. Maybe she wouldn't have to leave with phantom blood on her hands.