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“Where the hell is Franz? Joanne? Sam needs help.”

“I’ll check, Magdalene, and you need to be looked after as well, those hands are in bad shape.”

Magdalene glanced down at herself and the bleeding fingers and the abrasions on her wrist actually surprised her, she didn’t feel any pain.

“Adrenaline.” Franz’s voice jolted her out of her own thoughts.

“About time.” He looked warily at her, clearly afraid of her clipped tone.

“The guys said they checked on her and she was fine, so I had to look after the children… Ma’am.” It wasn’t his gruff addition of the title, both reverential and fearful, that saved him from all the choice words she was biting back. Him helping the students first was all good and important but placing a firefighter’s medical opinion over checking for himself didn’t speak well of him. Magdalene clenched her jaw and tried to keep her face impassive. He cleaned his hands with alcohol and gave her another wary look. “Got here as soon as I could—”

“Not soon enough.” She growled and he almost shrunk away from her. God, she had no time for inefficient people. “Get to work then. She’s hurt.”

“She’s not the only one. I’ll clean you up after I examine the patient.” He gestured at her hands, then as she stared him down, cursed under his breath, got his leather bag and did what she’d ordered him to do.

Sam opened her eyes during the examination and something must’ve filtered through as Alden and Franz were arguing over the course of action, words like “helicopter” and “airlifting” flying around. She tugged with surprising force on Magdalene’s elbow.

“No helicopters, please, Magdalene, promise me. I’m okay, I don’t want hospitals…” The pallor was not as translucent on the beloved face and fear was adding it color. It was also adding a particularly pitiful note to Sam’s voice when she continued, “Please, please, I’m scared of helicopters…”

Franz pointed his light into her eyes yet again and was cursed out for his efforts. Alden looked like he was both afraid to approach too closely and would have to be dragged by dogs if anyone tried to send him away. And Magdalene, the one who was holding Sam’s hand in her rather torn up ones, knew in that moment she’d give her the world. With the doctor’s permission.

The next hour was a cacophony of voices and worry and Magdalene sat dazed and pained counting Sam’s heartbeats. Alden and Franz argued in the background and Sam pleaded her case a few more times, adamant even in half-sleep. In the end, Franz’ expertise and Sam’s stubbornness prevailed. She’d be taken to the island clinic and examined again, but the doctor was certain she was mostly fine and would need bed rest to recuperate along with some followup observation.

Later, when she finally allowed Franz to clean and bandage her hands and Sam was resting peacefully under a blanket someone had rescued from the dorms, Magdalene watched the school smolder. The firefighters were trying to put out what was left of the Viridescent wing, now that the entirety of the structure had collapsed to their level. At least they’d contained the fire from spreading to the other structures surrounding the Main Hall.

Alden, no longer crying nor breathing like a heart attack was in his immediate future, walked up to her, his hair and face dirty, full of ash and grime.

He had actually been useful, making arrangements for the girls to be taken to shore or housed on the island while waiting for their parents to arrive to take them home.

Magdalene sat motionless, holding Sam’s hand, thinking that she herself had relinquished her duties with absolute ease once it was clear that everyone was safe. She almost smiled at how potential loss and death put some things into perspective. She’d striven to be Headmistress of Dragons all her life. Now she cared only for Sam’s rest.

“Everything has been taken care of, Headmistress.”

Maybe it was the fact that he had actually been helpful, that he’d stood up and handled things for her, or that his face lit up seeing Sam’s, now clean of blood and peacefully sleeping, but something in Magdalene relented. After all, this was not her battle, and ultimately, she would do what Sam would ask of her regarding this man. For now, though, she could be magnanimous.

“I think under the circumstances, you can call me Magdalene.” She pointedly looked at her own hand holding Sam’s and then back at Alden.

He held her gaze for a long moment, then wearily lowered his lanky body to the ground next to her. He didn’t make another attempt to touch Sam, and Magdalene was glad of it.

“And so this is it, Magdalene?” He gestured to the school with a sweep of his arm, and for a second she thought she had gleaned a strand of sadness on his face. “This is how it ends?”

She wanted to laugh. What was it about this man that always got up her dander? And yet, again, his words were what snapped Magdalene from her indecision, even if she hadn’t acknowledged that she’d been faltering.

In all honesty, she simply hadn’t given a second thought to Dragons. The school had almost taken her life, moreover it had almost robbed her of something that was much more dear to her than her own existence. Dragons almost snatched Sam away from her, and as far as Magdalene was concerned, it could rest in smoldering piles of rubble for ages.

Except, here was Alden, burying the beast, throwing handfuls of dirt on its coffin as it was lowered into the grave, and Magdalene’s heart was at war with itself again. Sam’s fingers twitched in hers, and she knew the school was central to Sam’s very being.

And dammit, as she raised her eyes to the blackened, once-white stone walls, staring at her like a charred skeleton, stripped of flesh and skin with the glare of the fires still eating at it, her heart bled for it. She loved this place. Loved it thirty years ago, loved it months ago when she’d done everything to save it from bankruptcy, and loved it now despite its murderous intent.

A line from an old quote popped in her mind, poetry and long-held grudges running into each other, blurring the almost forgotten words of the greatest Irishman.

“Things fall apart, Stanton.”

He inhaled sharply next to her, and his ensuing unexpectedly hoarse chuckle jolted her. When she turned to him again, he himself seemed surprised at his laughter.

“Of all the people and all the places to be quoting Yeats’s poem about the Restoration, I don’t know why I didn’t expect it to be you, Magdalene, nor would I have ever thought it would be here, at Dragons.” He pulled a thoroughly sooty handkerchief out of his pocket, and she sensed he did it more to stall for time than to actually wipe his face. There was no telling which was dirtier anyway.

Finally, he returned his focus to her. “I guess I should stop making assumptions where you are concerned. And thank heaven for that and for you.” He nodded towards Sam, clearly alluding to her efforts to save her earlier. But Magdalene was having none of this sanctimonious nonsense.