That had seemed utterly impossible five minutes before, so impossible I’d just laughed at the idea, but now it was only a low and trivial hurdle when the alternative was letting it have Orion instead. I was really good at killing things. I’d find a way. I even had a plan laying itself out in my head, the clockwork machinery of strategy ticking coolly away in the background of my mind where it never stopped after four years in the Scholomance. We’d fight Patience together. I’d kill it a few dozen lives at a time, and he could pull the mana out and feed it back to me, and together we’d create an unending killing circle between us until the thing was finally gone. It would work, it would work. I had myself convinced. I didn’t let go.
I didn’t let go. I was pushed off. Again.
Orion did it himself. He must have, because maw-mouths don’t let go. The mana I was pouring into the summoning spell was coming out of the graduation supply that was still unending, as if everyone in the school was still putting mana into our shared ritual. But that didn’t make any sense. Everyone else was gone. They were out of the Scholomance, hugging their parents and telling them what we’d done, sobbing and treating the wounds they’d taken, ringing all their friends. They weren’t still feeding me power. They weren’t meant to be. The whole idea of our plan was to sever all connection to the school: we wanted to cram it full of mals and break it off the world and let it float away into the void like a putrid balloon full of writhing malice, vanishing off into the dark where it belonged. It had been going when Orion and I had made that last run towards the portal.
As far as I knew, the only thing keeping it anchored to reality now was me, still clinging to the line of mana coming out of the school. And the only person left in the Scholomance to feed me that mana was Orion. Orion, who could capture mana from mals when he killed them. So at least in that moment, he must still have been alive, still fighting; Patience hadn’t swallowed him up yet. And he must have felt me trying to drag him out, but instead of turning round and helping me to pull him through, he drew away from me instead, resisting the summoning. And the horrible sticky mouthing over my hand pulled away, too. Just as if he was trying to do the same thing my dad had done, all those years ago: as if he’d reached out and grabbed a maw-mouth and pulled it away, letting it have him instead of the girl he loved.
Except the girl Orion loved wasn’t a gentle, kind healer, she was a sorceress of mass destruction who on two occasions had already managed to shred maw-mouths apart, and the stupid bloody fool could have tried trusting me to do it again. But he didn’t. He fought me instead, and when I tried to use my summoning hold to force him to come, abruptly the bottomless ocean of mana ran out from underneath me like he’d taken the plug out of the bath.
In an instant, the power-sharer on my wrist turned cool and heavy and dead. In one more, my wild profligate spell ran sputtering out of gas, and Orion slid out of my grip as if I’d been trying to hold on to a fistful of oil. His outline in the scrying pool vanished into the dark. I kept desperately groping for him anyway, even as the image began fading out at the edges, but Mum had been crouching beside me all along, her face stricken with worry and fear, and now she grabbed me by the shoulders and threw all her weight into shoving me over and away from the puddle, likely saving my hand from being cut off at the wrist as the spell collapsed and my bottomless scrying well returned to being half an inch of water pooled between tree roots.
I went tumbling and rolled back up onto my knees in a single smooth motion without even thinking about it: I’d been training for graduation for months. I threw myself back at the puddle, fingers scrabbling it into mud. Mum tried to put her arms around me, begging me desperately to stop. That’s not why I stopped, though. I stopped because I couldn’t do anything else. I didn’t have an ounce of mana left. Mum caught me by the shoulders again, and I turned and grabbed at the crystal round her neck, gasping, “Please, please.” Mum’s whole face was desperation; I could feel her longing to get me away, but then she shut her eyes a moment and with shaking hands reached up and undid the chain and let me have it: half full, not enough to raise the dead or burn cities to the ground, but enough to cast a message spell to scream at Orion with, to tell him to throw me back a line and let me help him, save him. Only it didn’t go through.
I tried and tried, shouting Orion’s name until the crystal and my voice were spent. I might as well have been shouting into the void. Which was where the whole Scholomance had presumably now gone. Just as we’d so cleverly, cleverly planned.
When there wasn’t even enough mana for shouting, I used up the very last dribbles for a heartbeat spell, just trying to find out if he was still alive. It’s a very cheap spell, because it’s stupidly complicated and takes ten minutes, so the casting itself makes almost all the mana it needs. I cast it seven times one after the other without ever getting up off my mud-soaked knees, and stayed there listening to the wind blowing in the treetops and birds making noises and sheep talking to each other and somewhere in the distance a little running stream. Not a single echoing thump came back to my ears.
And when at last I didn’t have mana left even for that, I let Mum lead me back to the yurt and put me to bed like I was six years old again.
* * *
The first time I woke up was so much like a dream that it hurt. I was in the yurt with the door open to let in the cool night air, and outside I could faintly hear Mum singing, the way I had in all my most agonizing dreams for the last four years, the ones that always ended in a jolt when I tried desperately to stay in them for a few minutes more. The truly awful part of this one was that I didn’t want to stay in it. I turned over and went back down.
And when I couldn’t sleep anymore, I just lay on my back in bed staring up at the billowing curve of the ceiling for a long time. If there had been anything else to do, I wouldn’t have gone to sleep in the first place. I couldn’t even be angry. The only person available to be angry with was Orion, and I couldn’t stand to be angry with him. I tried: lying there I tried to think of every savage cutting remark I’d have made to him if he was here right now. But when I asked Orion what were you thinking, I couldn’t make it come out angry, even inside my own head. It was just pain.
But I couldn’t grieve him either, because he wasn’t dead. He was busy screaming while a maw-mouth ate him, just like Dad. People do like to pretend maw-mouth victims are dead, but that’s just because it’s unbearable to think about it otherwise. There’s nothing you can do about it, so if someone you love gets eaten by one, they’re dead to you, and you might as well pretend it’s all over. But I know, I know from inside, that you don’t die when a maw-mouth eats you. You’re just being eaten, forever; for as long as the maw-mouth lasts. But knowing didn’t help. I couldn’t do anything about it. Because the Scholomance was gone.
I hadn’t moved when Mum came in a while later. She put a small tinkling handful of things into a bowl, saying softly, “There you are,” to Precious, who made a squeak that meant gratitude and started cracking seeds. I couldn’t feel sorry I hadn’t thought about her, small and hungry. It was too far away, and I was too far down. Mum came and sat down next to my camp bed and put her hand on my forehead, warm and gentle. She didn’t say anything.