I was starting to believe that it was going to work. I didn’t want to; I was fighting hope away as fiercely as Orion was fighting mals. But I couldn’t help it. The golden seconds were counting away—Liesel had inscribed the timing midair in letters of fire so we could all watch them going. When they reached the two minute mark, that was when I’d stop singing and strike the final blow instead. Only seven and a half minutes left, only seven minutes left, and then Aadhya was calling, “El!” and I looked over and found her: she was almost at the front of the swiftly moving queue. She was smiling at me, her face wet with tears, and in their shine I wasn’t a glowing marvel after all, I was just me, just El, and I wanted to climb down and run to hug her, but all I could do was smile back from up on the platform, and as she took the last few steps forward, she pointed at me and then held her palm against her face: Call me! Her phone number, and Liu’s and Chloe’s and Orion’s, were all inscribed on the thin bookmark that held my place inside the sutras. I didn’t have a phone, and neither did Mum, but I’d promised I’d find a way to call her, if we made it—

And then, the promise was different. It was only if I made it: Aadhya took the last few steps up the dais, and she went through the doors, and she was—out. She was out, she was safe, she had made it.

I knew all the faces going out now. Some of them didn’t like me; Myrthe stalked past without looking towards me, chin up and mouth tight, except as the last kid in front of her went, and she saw the gateway seething right in front of her, her whole face crumpled into sobs and she was fighting to keep her eyes open even while she ran headlong out, and I was glad, I was glad for her, glad that she’d made it, too; I wanted them all to make it. I’d missed Khamis going, and Jowani and Cora; they were already gone. Nkoyo blew me a kiss with both hands before she ran up the steps and out. I didn’t spot Ibrahim, I’d missed him going out, but I saw Yaakov go past with his head bowed and rocking slightly, wearing a beautiful worn prayer shawl whose fringe was shining with light, his lips still moving even as he walked, and when he passed me, he looked up and I felt a warmth like the feeling of Mum’s hand stroking over my hair, calming and steadying.

The New York seniors were coming up: Chloe waved wildly to catch my eye and put up heart-hands in the air before she went through, and right behind her, Magnus gave me a thumbs-up, condescending to the last, and I didn’t even mind. I’d got them out. I was going to get everyone out. There were only maybe a hundred kids left in the queue—ninety—eighty—no one left I knew, except Liesel going hoarse and Liu beside me playing steadily on, the guiding notes I couldn’t hear but felt in my feet, and Alfie and Sarah and the rest of the London seniors—who should have gone by now; I knew they’d got a higher number than New York in the lottery. But they’d all stayed back, to help Alfie hold the aisle for everyone else.

I wouldn’t have expected it of them, of enclave kids; they’d been raised to do the opposite, to get themselves the hell out. But they’d also been raised on the party line, hadn’t they: they’d been told, just like the school itself, that Manchester and London and their heroic allies had built the Scholomance out of generosity and care, trying to save the wizard children of the world; and maybe just like the school, it had sunk in more than their parents might have wanted. Or maybe if you only gave someone a reasonable chance of doing some good, even an enclave kid might take it.

I didn’t know anyone else, but we were coming to the very end of the line, and the last group of enclavers, going to Argentina; they’d drawn one of the lowest numbers of the lottery, but they hadn’t kicked up a fuss and demanded to be jumped ahead, or else; and because they hadn’t, none of the other unlucky enclavers had been able to complain. There were four of them, and they went through single-file and fast, one after another, except the last one recoiled screaming—the first screaming I’d heard for a while—as a maw-mouth came rolling in through the gates.

There wasn’t any question about where it had come from, horribly. The boy from Argentina who’d just gone out of the portal was caught, struggling and screaming, begging for help, for mercy, to be let out, in absolute and familiar terror, as the maw-mouth went on gulping up his body, even as it came through.

I must have stopped singing. I don’t think I could’ve kept singing. It wasn’t a very big maw-mouth. It might even have been smaller than the last one, the first one, the only one I’d ever seen or touched before—the one that would keep living in me for every last minute of the rest of my life. It only had a cluster of eyes, almost all of them brown and black, fringed with dark lashes, horribly like the eyes of the boy being swallowed, and some of them were still conscious enough to be full of horror. Some of its mouths were still whimpering faintly, and others sobbing or gagging.

But it was going to get bigger. It caught three other mals even before it was all the way inside, and reeled them in and swallowed them—even before it had finished engulfing the boy, despite their own thrashing; they didn’t have enclaver-quality shields to hold it off. And the boy would go too, soon enough; as soon as the last of his mana ran out.

“Tomas, Tomas!” the Argentine girl was sobbing, but she wasn’t trying to reach out to him. No one tried to touch a maw-mouth. Not even other mals, not even the mindless most-hungry ones, as if even they could sense what would happen to them if they did.

There was bile climbing up my throat. Liu was still playing; she’d thrown a quick horrified look up at me, but she’d kept going. Alfie was still holding the aisle, with all the London kids behind him, even though surely all they wanted was to flee out the gates, to run for more than their lives, because the worst thing a maw-mouth did was never kill you.

I’d asked them all to help me, and they had; I’d asked them to be brave, to do the good thing that they had a chance of doing, and I hadn’t the right to ask them to do it if I wasn’t going to do it myself. So I had to go down to the maw-mouth. I had to, but I couldn’t, except past it, far down the hall, at the barricade, I could see Orion’s head turn round. If I didn’t go down, he’d come. He’d leave the barricade, let the tidal wave of mals come in behind him, and come for the maw-mouth, because Tomas was screaming, screaming in rising desperation, as the maw-mouth’s tendrils began to creep inquisitively up his chest, towards his mouth and eyes.

I stepped down from the platform and crossed the dais. The last kids in the queue parted to let me through, staring at me as I went, and the shimmer of the alchemical wards ran like water over my skin as I went through it. The mals were still coming through the portal, but they were parting in a wide circle around the maw-mouth, which had paused perhaps for a little digesting, and to feel around inside the scorched outline that Patience had left behind, as if it was considering where to make itself at home. It was like a tiny little inkblot inside that monstrous outline. It couldn’t have had that many lives inside it yet. And I had my own shield up, Mum’s simple brilliant shielding spell that she’d given away to everyone in the world who wanted it, and all it took was mana that you’d built yourself, or that a loving friend had freely given, and Orion was still pouring power into me like a waterfall.