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Patrick stopped breathing. Stopped moving at all.

The fires coalesced, flourished.

“Why?” Theodore asked, looking to Patrick on the ground, true confusion marring the terror. “Why Patrick?”

The woman’s eyes followed Theodore’s. She looked to the ground, where Patrick lay strewn, bleeding, rapt in a turmoil she couldn’t see. She looked back to Theodore with increasing wariness. “If you know where Colson is, you ought to tell us now, Mr. Shop. Or you’d be aiding the last Alchemist in the Trench.”

Theodore’s eyes widened. He swallowed.

Then, with horrible finality, he pointed one finger down to the ground where Patrick lay.

The woman’s eyes lit up. “Take them all,” she said.

And a ring of fire appeared, circling Theodore, Donny, and Patrick, its flames so tall Patrick could hardly see past them. He threw himself onto all fours, retrieved his gun. The heat made him pant wildly, made his eyes stream. Donny helped him stand, and Patrick tried to blink through the flames.

“Fuck,” Donny cursed. His gun swinging wildly. “I can’t hear shit with all this fire, Pat. Which way?”

But Patrick could hardly breathe, hardly see.

Suddenly, there was a shudder. A rapidly growing roar. Patrick looked over his shoulder in time to see a wall of water rising from the canal behind. It hurtled upward, impossibly tall. He heard suction as it was drawn from every possible corner, collecting into a giant murky wave over the Artisan forces. Its white cap teeming, tipping.

Patrick heard shouts, pounding feet.

Theodore grunted. “Brace yourself.”

And Patrick had only enough time to cocoon his head in his arms before the water walloped down. It barreled over rooftops and thundered down walls. It came down onto the street with enough force to break bones, to crack skulls onto the pavement. It came down like a hand of god, crushing all beneath its palm.

But not over Theodore, Donny, or Patrick, who existed in their own dry cupola, curtained by deluge on every side.

When the water finished its colossal wave against doors and buildings and slid off gutters, it rushed back to the canals, carrying with it misshapen men and bent rifles. It left the roofs sagging, the Coal Works steaming, Theodore’s hands and teeth shaking to holy hell.

Theodore watched those broken bodies become discarded on the cobbles or be sucked into the canals, eyes bulging. He looked at his hands, and Patrick wondered if he imagined them covered in blood.

“We need to hurry,” Theodore said meekly, as though there wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to draw from. “If they’re looking for Nina, we need to find her first.”

But Patrick lifted his working arm. He pointed his pistol directly at Theodore’s mouth and watched as all color bled from the man’s face.

“Patrick, I just saved your life.”

“Tell me if it’s true,” he said simply. The words scratched at his throat and came out tattered. “Please… tell me. Did Tanner send her to me?”

Theodore’s eyes fell to the gun, and then back onto Patrick. He seemed to be waning, just as Nina had after she’d saved Kenton Hill from an entire landslide. His energies were spent. “Tanner is the reason she came here,” he said earnestly. “But she wanted to stay foryou.”

But there were only so many people on the continent who knew what he was and what he could do. Nina had sold him to Tanner.

Nina had brought hell to Kenton Hill.

He was a fool after all.

Patrick pulled the trigger, a terranium bullet firing from the barrel, coursing through air barriers toward Theo’s teeth.

It stopped midair.

Theo recoiled away from the blast, his eyes screwed shut. It took him several moments to look through the slits of his eyes, to see the black bullet levitating before him.

“Why did you come back?” Patrick asked. “The truth, this time.”

Theo shuddered delicately. “I was angry when I left you that letter,” he said. “But by the time I reached the next town, I regretted it. I was worried you might hurt her, and I—I had to come back. Just to make sure—”