Laylee Layla Fenjoon was no longer present.

At long last she’d detached from the hinge in her head that kept her anchored to the world around her, and now she floated along, apathetic and unhurried, impervious to the attempts of her companions to reengage her emotions.

She was, in a word, dying.

She was really and truly expiring now, and she could feel the transformation happening within her. She could practically hear the illness rampaging her fleshy corridors, snapping nerves and crushing organs underfoot. Her hands shook with impunity; her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. Her motor controls were quickly deteriorating, and though she saw the faces of her companions and heard the sounds of their voices, she’d lost the strength needed to push her words in their direction, and so she’d left her body on autopilot, trusting something else to steer.

Laylee had stood up inside of her skin and crawled into a quiet corner of her mind, taking refuge in the steady thrum of some distant, unknowable hum as she waited, with bated breath, for everything to be over. The pains of death came in intervals: sometimes in crashing waves, other times in gentle whispers. Ancient instinct alone moved Laylee’s feet, one in front of the other, as they walked along the icy streets; something somewhere inside of her was remembering to be human despite her best efforts to forget.

She’d thought she had more time than this.

She knew the illness was spreading quickly, but she’d figured she had a few days before it dissolved her completely. Something had happened in the last hour to aggravate her condition, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Mental exhaustion? Inescapable frustration? The overwhelming anxiety that inhaled her last reserves of strength? Laylee didn’t know the answer, but I do, and I will tell you now: Yes, it was all of those things, but it was something greater than that, too. Laylee was sick in more ways than one; she was undergoing a combined physical and emotional demolition, the consequences of which were simply too much for her young body.

And anyway, it didn’t matter now.

Laylee had abandoned completely the idea of hurrying back to her corpses; in fact, she no longer remembered why she’d wanted to return to them in the first place. It was a frozen, hateful place that she called home, where nothing awaited her but the emaciated remains of a decapitated life. She didn’t want to die there—not among the dead and the decay.

No, she thought.

She would die here, among the living, where someone might catch her body as she fell.

I REALLY DON’T CARE FOR THIS PART

Alice and Oliver didn’t know what to do.

Something terrible had happened to Laylee—they knew this much for certain—but what it was they did not know, because the mordeshoor had ceased to speak. Panicked, they decided the best thing to do would be to take her home—to return her to the safety of familiar shelter—but when Alice touched Laylee’s arm in hopes of getting her attention, Laylee jerked away, her hands shaking violently as she attempted to steady herself. Oliver, alarmed, ran forward to help, but Laylee recoiled again, feverish and off balance. Alice tried to seek help from passing strangers, but people yelped and hurried away, faces pulled together in revulsion, too steeped in fear and superstition to help even a dying mordeshoor.

Alice and Oliver were devastated.

The two friends from Ferenwood had no way of knowing what Laylee was thinking at that strange and terrifying time. They could only attempt an assumption: Laylee was sick, yes—this they already knew—but they did not (and could not) accept that she was dying now; not here, not in this moment. But—

What if it was true?

If Laylee was, in fact, dying, how were they going to help her when she was refusing to be helped? How could they save her when she was refusing to be held?

And here, dear reader, was the real complication: Alice and Oliver did not know how to help her because they did not yet understand one critical thing—

Laylee’s greatest adversary was herself.

Alice and Oliver were familiar with sadness and grief, but they were strangers to the kind of suffocating darkness that could corrode a person—the kind of sadness that was a sickness, the heartache that could colonize lungs and collapse bones—no, they did not understand this brand of pain, and so it was not their fault for not knowing what to do. But they’d left Laylee to the clutches of her own mind for too long and the mordeshoor, unmoored, was spiraling into despair. The children meant well, they did—but they were out of their depth.

And Laylee, now swallowed whole by the disquiet that had devoured her limb by limb, could not see the worry in their faces or the anxious looks they passed between them. Laylee’s heart had been hermetically sealed in a reckless effort to protect it; she saw herself alone and impenetrable, a drifting body drowning at sea, and she allowed herself to sink straight into darkness, blind and unaware of the many arms reaching out to save her.

Alice and Oliver could only hurry her along as best they could.

The sun was nearly setting now, and they were due to meet Benyamin any moment. Perhaps, they hoped, he would have a better idea of what needed to be done.

All the wonder of Whichwood that had been so enchanting upon first arrival was now maddening and ridiculous. The crowds were so densely packed that Alice and Oliver could hardly move sideways without stepping on someone, and it was all they could do to push themselves through the throng without losing Laylee in the process. It was getting harder to see clearly from moment to moment; daylight had been decanted into darkness and the smoky, dusky concoction meant only that the icy night air would soon enshroud them. Quickly now, they pressed on from whither they’d come, forging toward the hamam where they’d promised to reunite with Benyamin before dark.