Hey!" I turned, crossing my arms and glaring. "I was talking to him!"Tybalt eyed me with amusement, which just made me glare harder. "No, you were inciting him to stab you with a toothpick. Again, the difference is small, but I think it matters.

None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you're wearing--which are several years out of style if you're trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you're trying to hold fast to your recent past--and not either one of us. 'Real' is a four-letter-word, and I'll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof.

The math would be true, and that's all she's ever asked from the world.

She's going to change the world, remake it in a better image than the one it's made in now, and no one's going to stop her. Not her parents and not her teachers and certainly not the Alchemical Congress

She's not going to bleed for long. She doesn't, no pun intended, have it in her. And when she stops breathing, so does he.

If Dodger were awake, she'd happily tell him exactly how much of her blood is on the floor. She'd look at the mess around them. She'd calculate the surface area and volume of the liquid as easily as taking a breath, and she'd turn it into a concrete number, something accurate to the quarter ounce. She'd think she was being comforting, even if the number she came up with meant "I'm leaving you." Even if it meant "there is no coming back from this."Even if it meant goodbye.

If this is where it ends for one of them, let this be where it ends for both of them. Let this be where it ends for good. No one—not even him— walks the improbable road alone.

There's so much blood, and it doesn't matter that he knows the words, all the words, for everything. The numbers are taking her away. He can't reach them without her.

He feels the gold in his own bones respond, reaching for the gold in Dodger's, yearning to reunite.