Red light shoots across the room in a brilliant swirl, curling around me like a tendril. A white hot pain crawls up my legs and pulls me to the floor, knees hitting the ground with a thud. I look up. Aurelia's eyes are glowing—burning—with an anger I have never seen, the archangel trembling beneath the weight of unrivalled fury. When she speaks again, her voice is dangerously low. "You, of all beings?"

The pain snakes its way round my throat. "I—"

Light shrouds her fists like a halo. "You, of all people. I expected you to understand the treason behind selling another's trust." She lets out a shuddering breath. "An angel from Boros. A soldier of the Legion."

"G—guildmaster—"

"You with the spirit I admired, the integrity I saw. The one I knew would keep going even if her comrade fell. And there you went, exceeding my expectations. I believed in you, Mikaela."

Believed. The word sounds so hollow for all its weight.

"Just like my trust, signing that contract destroyed the trust of Boros, of Dimir, of Selesnya, of Ravnica's nine other guilds. You betrayed the Gateless who look to the Guildpact for aid."

"I wasn't—"

"The first thing we teach you to serve is justice!" Her voice is a strike of lightning.

As the glow surrounding her begins to grow, I get to my knees and pull myself back. "Guildmaster. I promise, I—"

"I don't want to hear it."

"Aurel—"

"You knew better, Mikaela."

Something begins heating up the room, and I look up to see flames licking at her fists. Panic grapples at my insides. "Aurelia," I breathe, "please, don't—you'll hurt—"

"I'll make you see what it's worth."

"Aurelia, they're going to get killed if you—" The heat rises to that of an inferno. "Please." Desperation seizes my nerves as Aurelia's eyes ignite like embers and her entire being burns brighter than the afternoon sun. "Aurelia, listen to me please I'm begging you please don't—"

A deafening explosion sounds mere seconds after I look over my shoulder yelling a desperate "Stay behind me!" Through my peripheral vision I see Heccan and Iracun duck into a crouch, then the blow rains down on me as my wing muscles stretch and my back angles itself to protect the rest of my body.

The same blinding pain paralyses me from head to toe. My body almost crumples, but something pushes back against it from the inside and blossoms with a comforting warmth. I open my eyes to see a golden light reaching outwards, a dome-shaped shield extending in front of me and round my back, protecting whatever's behind me from harm.

Though the pain ebbs away, the strain comes again and again at full force as my mind conjures barrier after barrier to fend the attacks off. My focus begins slipping in and out, holes forming on the surface of the barrier as the pulse begins to lighten and the push begins to fade. My eyes meet Heccan's just long enough for me to tell them to run, and the two candidates flee through the doorway as my last bit of energy drains.

The second explosion sounds as the shield shatters around me, catching bits of the fire and falling, burning, to the floor.

As I find myself pinned down, gasping like a fish out of water but almost paralysed everywhere else, a part of me is relieved. Heccan and Iracun should be safe. If they haven't gotten out of the building, they'll be out of the explosion zone. A laugh works its way through my staggering breaths. At least Elijah had some sense.

Elijah. Unable to help myself, I laugh again. All of a sudden, it feels right to have a clenching in my chest and an ache behind my eyelids as something inside me is warmed but crumbling all the same. At least he had the sense to get out of this mess. Elijah Karsur, the young man with too much commitment to sit back but too little to follow through, and now I'm glad the latter paid off and that he'll never get to witness this scene.

It feels right to cry, though I don't, and the tears remain locked in the back of my throat.

And then I hear it. "Mikaela Gav— whatever the hell your surname is!"

My breathing quickens. As it drops into something shallow, my vision slips out of and back into focus.

"I swear to Razia—the moment I find you in this hellish place you're going to see the worst of me."

I hear a string of frustrated curses amplifying in volume, his voice strained, and then the figure of Elijah Karsur appears in the doorway. For less than a moment, our eyes meet, and then my vision turns to fuzz as his figure moves closer.

"Mikaela, what the hell?"

I feel calloused fingers brush against my forehead, pushing my fringe out of the way. Once again, my eyes clear, revealing an image of Eli fumbling desperately with his satchel. I let out a short chuckle. "Hell sounds about right."

"For Razia's sake—"

"Stop swearing on the name of my parun, Eli."

"I'll swear on whatever the hell I want till you get off the ground."

"That's not—" My breath hitches into a cough. "—nice."

He gives me a pointed look. "I'm never nice."

Elijah goes back to digging through his satchel, then gives up, pulling it off round his head and shaking its contents onto the floor. A scattering of amulets comes crashing down. He tosses the bag to a side and rifles through the pile till his fingers close round a green stone that's already started glowing. Taking my hand, he presses the therastone into my palm.

From between my fingers, it begins glowing more brightly, and some of the pain in my chest begins to fade. Just a little, but enough to make things bearable.

"It should work. I mean, it did when you burned me alive."

I hold the stone closer to my face, the green glow shifting in my vision. Like an hourglass, its shade tells me the exact amount of time I have left, and the answer is not incredibly long. A sudden fear grips my chest. Death has never been so assured. I've never seen it written or spelled out in front of me before now, and the feeling is strange and scary but I push it away for a smile. Reaching out with my free hand, I intertwine my fingers with his and give it as hard a squeeze as I can. "Hey, Eli," I say, steeling my nerves for what's coming. "Good news for you: the one who tried to kill you is finally about to die."

Elijah's grip around my hand tightens to a bone-crushing point. "Mikaela Gav—"

I chuckle. "Gavreel."

"Mikaela Gavreel, you're not. You're better than that. You're not going to die after earning nine signets, saving my ass twice and kicking it multiple times. One shot isn't enough to kill you. Okay? It's not." Breathing heavily, he runs a hand down the length of his face. "You're not. You're not going to die."

Even as he says the words, the last shreds of what's holding me together begin to slip from my grasp and my eyes struggle to stay open. "A therastone," I murmur in explanation. "It doesn't...save lives."

His grip on my hand shifts, the clutch becoming more desperate. "You made it work."

"It worked with my magic."

"Use it, then."

I smile a little, shaking my head. "I'm not injured, Eli. Well, maybe just a little bit."

He pushes a hand through his hair. "For Razia's sake, I don't speak angel."

"The blow Aurelia inflicted on me would've been healed by the stone in an instant," I say, more breath than words leaving my lips. "But the second I saw her get angry...that one would've burned Boros to the ground. I...exhausted it all on a shield. That's why the stone isn't...working. I can't work it."

Elijah's eyes cloud over with something more than pain. "You idiot."

I laugh, and it hurts. All over. "I guess...now we know. One can cease Aurelia's fury with an angel's life."

Cold seeps through my veins as the last shreds of warmth ebb away. Elijah's hand, for the first time since I met him, is warm against mine. Now I'm crying, the bittersweet sting of longing and relief in the heart of my palm.

Slowly, the lights fade, the anchor in my grip never once letting go.