Lilly steeled herself against the sharp pain in her thigh and shoulders, then locked eyes with Stevia, whose gorgeous features were elongated in that of perfect surprise: her dark, hawkish eyes were narrowed, her mouth was agape, and her hair had tumbled out of its braids from the force of the solar wind. 

Then Lilly ran. 

She didn't know what else to do, because if she stayed in the training room Stevia would question her and call her murderer, space thief, dangerous, violent.  Sadness swallowed her whole; no part of her body, soul, or spirit was left behind. 

The second she got into the Private dormitory, she collapsed to her knees and bent double. She heaved her lungs out, gasped out staccato-sharp cries, clutched at her hair. She just murdered someone. She'd brought down something dangerous and violent and the wind did not simply hurt Lydia, it killed her. Lilly killed her. 

She was in so much trouble. 

Her chest constricted. She tried to pull in air through her mouth between cries, but the oxygen felt sticky and unwilling to satisfy her respiratory needs. Pressure crushed her chest. She was hot all over, dizzy, reeling, shaking. Her mind scrambled to put her thoughts in order, but she couldn't pull herself together. Her head pounded, and the pain in her shoulders and thigh dulled so that all she felt was suffocation and the throb of her heart in her throat and temples. 

"Lilly?" 

Max's voice. Right in her ear. He sounded as if he'd spoken from a mile away. 

His hands were on her shoulders. Why weren't her lungs working? What was she doing on the floor? What was wrong with her?  

Dying, she thought. I'm dying. 

"I can't—" she gasped as Max's fingers dug harder into her shoulders, "I can't breathe! I can't—" 

Max's face in front of her went blurry. Her fingers and toes tingled. She bit out a sob of frustration and desperately tried to regain control of her breathing, but she couldn't. She couldn't. 

Oh crap, she'd just murdered Lydia, and now Stevia knew her magic, and— 

"I think you're having a panic attack," Max said, voice muffled from Lilly's attempts to draw breath. "Breathe with me. Lilly? Lilly, you're hyperventilating. You're hyperventilating—Lilly!" 

"I think I'm dying," Lilly heaved, hands splayed over her chest. Sweat beaded along her browline, poured down her back. "And I—I—I can't—" 

Max shook her, hard, so hard her teeth rattled. "You can breathe. It just feels like you can't. Breathe with me: in. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Breathe like that until it stops hurt—oh, you're bleeding. I'm going to get you some bandages from the bathroom. Just...stay here." 

Lilly shook her head as Max stood up. "You have to hide me," she whispered, coughing. "Please." 

His eyebrows dipped into a furrow. "What? Why?" 

Her arms and legs trembled as she tried to get to her feet. She staggered; Max's hands shot out to balance her before she hit the floor. 

"Stevia knows about my magic," said Lilly quietly, "and I just killed someone." 

Max didn't say anything. His eyebrows merely dipped deeper as he put one arm around Lilly's shoulders and let her use his other arm to lean on for support. They staggered past the crackling fire fountain and into Max's room, where they both sank onto Max's unmade bed. Lilly didn't care that they were half-friends or that there was a wall with a face on it that gasped an exaggerated and prolonged "Ohhhhhhhhhh! A girl!" She wrapped her arms around Max's neck, buried her face into his chest, and sobbed, "I messed up, I really messed up. I-I-I killed Lydia." 

They sat there for a long time. Max whispered, "In and out, in and out," rain tip-toed lightly on the roof, and fire hissed from the fireplace. When Lilly was finally able to gulp in a breath that didn't make her lungs want to scream, she drew back, pulled the covers onto her lap, and asked, sniffling, "Why aren't you doing stretches with Josey?" 

"Ah, well...someone stole the laces from my shoes last night. I'm pretty sure it was Wyx getting back me for telling him he was a tiny flightless useless sidekick. Josey saw my shoes during breakfast and said I can't train until they have laces in them. Safety reasons. I had to come back and get another pair."

"Why would you call Wyx a tiny flightless useless sidekick?"

Max shrugged. "He called me a stupid ogre and growled at me like an animal. Lilly, um...you're getting blood on my bed." 

"Oh. Crap." Lilly swung her legs out of his bed, wiped her eyes, and shrugged off her long-sleeved shirt, having layered it atop her training shirt because summer mornings in Bria Hungary were always chilly. She wrapped the sleeves of the shirt around her wounded thigh.

"I'll take them to the laundry pit for you," Lilly offered, running a hand over the damp red spot on his covers. 

"Forget it. I'll do it later. What happened?" 

Lilly told him about how Stevia pulled her aside on her way to breakfast this morning, about Melissa and Lydia, Lydia's game, and how Lilly had stupidly indulged in Lydia's game because she wanted to know about her father. She recounted the details with a quivering voice and shaking hands. T

he pressure in her chest and the fast patter of her heart had only just receded by the time she finished. 

Max propped himself against the head of his bed, balancing the knob of his skull against the edge of the iron headboard. Without looking at her, he said slowly, "So...she had snakes that were about to bite you, and if you fell down she would have taken you back to her hole in who-knows-where. She also said she'd murder your cousin. So you killed her." 

"...Yes."

He spread his hands out diplomatically. "Then it was self-defense, you lobster-smelling abomination." 

"...Lobster-smelling abomination?" 

Max smirked. "Too lame?" 

"Pathetically lame." Lilly sniffed. "Even if it was self-defense...how am I going to explain that to Stevia and the Board Members? How am I supposed to tell them all what I can do without getting Melissa in trouble?" 

"Uh...no idea." 

Lilly closed her eyes. 

"But," Max went on, sliding off the bed and beginning to pace the length of the dormp, "we can always just make a plan. I used to have panic attacks when I was little, and my mom would always have me write out a plan." 

"I'm not in the mood for plan-making." 

"What are you gonna do? Hide forever? That's even more pathetically lame than lobster-smelling abomination, you lobster-smelling abomination." 

"Okay. Okay. Let's see." Lilly dragged a hand across her face. She'd sobered enough so that her thoughts could form cohesive steps; she could make a plan. Plans were good. "First...we can wrap my thigh nice and tight with bandages. Then we can...you can talk to the Board Members about that psychic Wyx mentioned. She could know a lot about the beasts and the magical dimension. We need more answers before we do anything else, and the major problem at hand is the Storm." 

"Actually..." Max stopped pacing and laced his fingers behind his neck. "Zander, Kaitlynn, Wyx and I talked to Instructor Kamaria at breakfast. She said the Board Members knew of the psychic and went to her last night after you told them about the magical dimension. The psychic asked for something they weren't willing to give." 

"Did Kamaria tell you what the psychic asked for?" 

"No. But if the Board Members aren't willing to give it up to stop Storm, it must have been important. The grumpy old hag's a no-go." 

"We can go. If she wants something, we'll give it to her to the best of our ability. We'll find out about the magical dimension. You can tell the Board Members." 

Max scoffed. "Two issues: One, we're not allowed to leave Elliott Way, so if I tell the Board Members what they found out from the psychic, I'll get in trouble. Two, what makes you think you'll be willing to give the psychic whatever she asks for? What if she asks for your life? Or a family member's?" 

"I only have three family members that I know of. One of them's been kidnapped by Storm. The other two are far away from here. If she's a psychic, she'll know I won't be able to get to them, and if she asks for my life, well...we'll just wing that part." 

"That's a terrible plan!" 

"That's what's going to make this a super fun adventure." 

 "Yeah, 'cause mortal danger is so fun, you ambitious cockroach." 

Lilly breathed a laugh. "Ambitious is a big word. I didn't know you were capable."

Max paused long enough to show her a tiny ghost of a smirk. "Now that was actually a good insult."

"And I think yours are getting worse. Max, we have nothing else we can do. I just killed someone. The Board Members probably already know by now that I can steal from space; my best bet is to get out of Elliott Way before they arrest me. We have to at least try, don't we?" 

Max scoffed again and crossed his arms. After a long moment, he sniffed, "Fine. Everyone's in instruction periods, but did you ever notice that service door in Treasurer's Place? It's right next to the last window on the dish pit side. We can go out that way and nobody will see us." 

"Wyx said the psychic's house was on the other side of the city in the valley, so we could ask around, see if anyone knows." 

"Before we go to the psychic and after we get into the city, we can get breakfast." 

Lilly threw a pillow at Max. "We don't have time for breakfast!" 

"There is alwaysssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss time for breakfast!" 

Both Lilly and Max jumped and whirled to the wall beside Max's bed; the stony face licked his lips and winked. The wall sang again in a high-pitched vibrato, "ALWAYSSSSSSSS TIME FOR BREAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEAEKFASSSSSSSSST!" 

Lilly giggled, and Max threw the pillow back at her. "I agree with the wall. You can't face cannibalistic psychics that hold the answers to saving the world on an empty stomach."