It was hard, keeping his mouth shut. He wasn't just worried about Ellini and his girls. He was worried about what was going to happen next. There were so many combustible elements in this situation, not least the branches crackling merrily above their heads. Matthi was angry, Ellini was angry, Robin was leaning lazily against the nearest gargoyle, ready to fan the flames for his own advantage.

And she had asked him not to fight, not to argue. How was he supposed to watch this unravel without getting involved? By pursing his lips and sticking his fingers in his ears?

But there was something holding him back. Well, he liked to think his devotion to Ellini was holding him back, but there was something else. This situation – the sight of her blood – should have made him more nervous than it did. 

But he had seen her as they'd been running across the lawns to the source of the disturbance. He had seen her with the smoke at her back, her hair uncoiled and draped over one shoulder like a black, shimmery python, and an expression that was – god, how to describe it? Not haughty or confident or threatening, just – composed. Serene. Otherworldly. Whatever you did, that look seemed to say, she would deal with it. And, equally, whatever you did, you would never matter.

This vision – revelation – whatever it had been, didn't make him any less anxious as he knelt beside her. It didn't lessen his desire to snatch her up in his arms and run off somewhere safer. It just... quieted him. It gave him the self-possession to keep silent – which, as it turned out, was a very good thing.

"Well," said Matthi, with prickly cheer. "While we're waiting to see whether any of our number 'as been murdered, can we address the logic behind keeping Anna alive?" She kept glancing at Ellini's bleeding arm, and it seemed to be goading her on.

"We – we should be finding out who let her go," said Ellini. "That's our priority."

"And when we do, we'll be punishing them rather than the knife-wielding maniac?"

"This wasn't supposed to happen..."

"No shit it wasn't supposed to 'appen!" Matthi shouted. "It can't be allowed to 'appen again!"

"Give her a break," said Robin. "She's had all these romantic liaisons and marriage proposals to contend with – is it any wonder her mind's not on the job?"

There was a chilly silence. As usual for Robin, this last remark was an attack on everyone. Elliott didn't want to hear about the liaison, Jack didn't want to hear about the marriage proposal, and Matthi didn't particularly want to hear about either. 

"My mind is on the job," said Ellini at last.

"And if," said Robin, spreading his hands innocently, "in the course of acquiring a husband, she decides to let a strange man into the Academy, well..."

Elliott bristled. "You can't be suggesting that I let her out? Why would I do that? I don't even know who she is!"

"No one thinks it was you, Elliott," growled Matthi. "This poisonous git aint got nothing better to do-"

"But, if it wasn't him, it must have been one of your beloved girls, mustn't it?" said Robin, with an expression of good-natured puzzlement. "Unless you think it was that choir-boy Danvers. Either way, it sounds like somebody's betrayed the sisterhood. Always happens, ladies. Way of the world. Women stick together until they get a whiff of a wedding-ring. "

They should have shouted him down. They should have just moved closer to the building – it wasn't as though he could follow. But Matthi must have been feeling suspicious, because she turned to Ellini instead of Robin, and said, "Are you marrying-?"

"No!" said Ellini. She had raised her hands in a pacifying gesture, but the fires overhead were getting hotter. "How could you think-? I said no."

"She said no because you brainwashed her!" Elliott retorted, his eyes still on Robin. Ellini shut her eyes and shook her head, but he went on. "You made her think it's not heroic enough to be a loving wife in a quiet town!"

Somehow – Jack was never sure why – the words 'loving wife' made him wince.

Robin was laughing now. There was no stopping him when he was in full, cruel, horrible flow. He turned to Ellini, and said, "Here, Ellie, if a man's so important to you, I'll throw my hat into the ring." He tossed a red-gold ring into the grass at her feet, as though he was expecting her to stoop and pick it up. Behind him, the fire was blazing. The carriages on Headington Hill had stopped. People were starting to point. Robin must have been able to feel the heat at his back, but he kept on laughing.

"Marry me and you won't have to give up your day job," he smirked.

It was such a contemptuous gesture. He had meant it to be, of course. He had wanted to ensure Ellini could only see it as an insult, not a genuine offer, because she couldn't laugh at an insult – or anyway, not this kind.

But Jack knew him better. It was an offer. And – typical of Robin – an offer that ensured its own refusal by the manner in which it was asked. He was too afraid of being rejected to risk being accepted.

Perhaps, on some level, Ellini knew this, because her eyes sought out Jack's, as if to ask whether he, too, was going to insult her with a proposal. He didn't, but neither did he back away. He knew she was angry – he knew that asking her outright would be the surest way of chasing her off forever – but he couldn't just leave while Robin and Elliott were fighting over her. He couldn't turn his back on Robin, not even for Ellini's sake, and he... he felt as though being there, silent but present, would remind her that he was an option. In case she forgot. 

It was a miscalculation. At the very least, he should have looked away when her eyes sought him out. But how could he pretend he didn't want her? Even if the fact that he wanted her was the very last thing in the world she wanted to hear?

At last, she looked away, glancing first at Elliott, and then at Robin. She had a slightly plaintive look, in spite of the fires.

"Is that what you think?" she murmured. "I've been brainwashed? I need a husband to be complete? I'll leave out the suggestion that I'd betray my sisters for a man – that's too ludicrous to be acknowledged – but the rest..." She trailed off. And then, to Jack's great surprise, she stooped to pick up the ring, all the time looking at Robin with eyes like hot coals. All trace of the plaintive bewilderment was gone now.

Everything was silent, apart from the crackling flames behind Robin. A burning branch crashed down to his left, but he didn't turn – or even flinch. He wanted to see how far she would go. Jack knew him. He would think it was well worth getting roasted alive if he could get under her skin.

"I owe you all an apology," she said, toying vaguely with the ring. "I've been too nice – especially to you." She gave Robin a look of smouldering contempt. "Since nobody seems inclined to take no for an answer, let me give you an analogy. Let me set you a challenge that illustrates precisely what 'never' means. Forget that I don't want to marry any of you – oh, what am I saying? You forgot that already, didn't you? A woman can't be trusted to know her own mind. You think we're in a story? Then let me show you how story-book girls say no."

She turned to Elsie, who was looking quite small and lost without Danvers beside her. "Elsie, I want you to open a door into the deepest, darkest pit of hell – under the mountains that are already five miles under our mountains. Somewhere it would take five thousand years to reach on foot. Keep it open for five seconds, and then close it. And, when you've closed it, move it – can you do that? Shuffle it around like a card in a pack until even you don't know where it is."

"Yes, Leeny," said Elsie meekly. She stretched out a hand as if for an invisible door-knob, and when she drew it back, a wall of heat smacked into them, almost knocking them off their feet. The light of an inferno coloured them all red.

There was no time for Jack's eyes to adjust to the light. He couldn't see what scenery, if any, lay beyond the doorway. Everything was a watery, red-gold blur, with Ellini's figure silhouetted in front of it. It was tempting to shut his eyes altogether, but he couldn't do that. He forced them open and made them drink up the hellish light, just as he knew Robin and Elliott were doing. However much it hurt, however impossible the challenge was supposed to be, he was going to pay attention.

"I will marry whoever finds this ring," said Ellini. And then she hurled it through the open doorway into the flames.

For a moment, the heat dipped, and Jack had an impression of vastness – a circlet of mountain-peaks that were sharp enough to impale you. Scraps of shadow wheeling around on the thermal currents like gigantic vultures. A lake, a splash, and a second – perhaps two – in which Ellini turned to them, her eyebrows raised, to see if they were going to leap in after it.

Jack kept his eyes on Robin. If Robin leapt, he was damn well going after him, whatever it might mean. But he was unnervingly still, though he was watching Jack just as closely as Jack was watching him, because they knew each other far too well to justify a moment's inattention.

And he realized that Robin had only ever intended to place her beyond Elliott's reach. He had no hope of having her for himself. Sheer malice had inspired him, and probably always would.

The moment was gone. Elsie raised her hand to close the door, and a blistering breeze whipped at their faces. It even blew out the flames in the birch-trees – or perhaps sucked at them, as if every fire in the world had to be pulled down to that pit.

And then they stood there, blinking in the sudden dimness. Elliott was watching Ellini, and perhaps his eyes were watering more than the waves of dry heat could really account for.

"I'm sorry," she said, in a wobbly voice. "You should have listened to me."

She was just Ellini now – just the little, limp-shouldered Oxford mouse, although her silhouette as she'd stood in front of that doorway was still soldered into their retinas. There had been nothing little or limp-shouldered about that.

Elliott didn't say anything. He turned and made his way back through the ring of gargoyles, in the direction of the city centre. She didn't stay to watch him go, but Robin smirked at him, from his absurdly-casual position by the nearest gargoyle. "Bye-bye, Beethoven."