“This isn’t supposed to happen!” Ursula ducked as a chair hurtled by, shattering a mirror behind her.
“Forget it!” Kane screamed back as the beetle dug through the banquet furniture. The reverie had all but forgotten about his silence. “Just forget the stupid book!”
Ursula caught the next thrown object—half of a table still swathed in linen. “It’s not stupid,” she groaned, pivoting in her dress and tossing the table back at the beetle. “It’s my favorite Lorna Osorio book. Kane, move!”
Ursula’s shield formed tightly around Kane just as the beetle charged. He expected to ricochet away like a pinball, but the beetle bounced right onto its back. Its gold legs combed the air, clicking angrily.
“Anyways,” Ursula was saying. “There are hints of the occult in Lily, but it’s just symbolism.”
“Ursula, let me out!”
Ursula waved away the shield and kept explaining. Kane leapt onto a wrecked table, locked his eyes onto the chain that held up a swinging chandelier, and fired off a single ethereal flare.
The chandelier exploded into spears of crystal that plunged into the beetle. It wasn’t much but it did sever an entire leg, which spun toward Kane, as big as his body and still twitching. He stopped it with his foot and looked at Ursula, proud.
“And anyways,” she was saying. “The character Helena is playing would never betray the real Johan. I bet Elliot said something.”
“She’s a lesbian.”
“What?”
“Helena is a lesbian. Or at least lesbian-ish. I don’t know. But definitely not straight.”
“But Katherine—”
“Her too. And so was Maxine Osman, I’m guessing.”
Ursula shook her head in awe, the whole world recalibrating in her eyes. Tentatively she pointed at herself. “So, am…I…?”
Kane took her hands. “Ursula. It doesn’t matter. We need to find my sister.”
Resolve hardened in Ursula’s eyes. Then, panic. In a blur of tulle, she grabbed Kane by his waist and hurled him backward. Then she was slashed away, the beetle ramming into her at full force. Only the flash of pink magic assured Kane she’d put a shield up in time as the beetle carried her right through the ballroom wall, then the wall beyond that, then the wall beyond that. Guests ran, screaming, as the château shook.
Kane sat up among the shattered mirrors, staring into the dust and smoke after his friend. Silence congealed around him. He closed his eyes and focused on the fabric of this reverie, feeling for the seams he’d been able to sense when he unraveled Benny Cooper’s world, but his mind couldn’t get a grip. This reverie was still too strong. They were trapped here, with only one choice: survive.
Kane looked at his hands and the pale glow of etherea beneath his fingertips. What power did he have? What could he do besides unravel and destroy? He looked down into the fractured depths of the glass strewn around him. He found his eyes, filled with shadows as the remaining chandeliers swung. The world around his reflection seemed to close him in a silent, deadly grasp.
Then Kane felt a sticky strand of hair loop over his ear. Swatting at it, his hand came away dotted in small orbs.
Pearls? They were clustered on a web of pinkish-gold wire, still warm from whatever had produced it.
Kane had one second to wonder: What else hatched from an egg?
He didn’t let himself look up. He just shot both hands directly upward, releasing a jet of rainbow etherea that collided instantly with something that had been looming just above him. Then he launched himself sideways, glimpsing the creatures many legs as they punched after him. Massive, its abdomen sat like a bulbous egg among the nest of eight lethal legs, its entire form furred and rose-gold-colored and shivering with pearls as it rounded on Kane.
“Helena, listen to me!” Kane cried. “I know you’re in there!”
The spider launched up into the spacious heights of the ballroom, nimble atop a network of wires that unspooled from its body. It gathered itself right above Kane, poised.
“Helena, please!”
It leapt downward, balling itself up and unclenching all at once, a hand meant to crush Kane. Kane didn’t want to, but he had to. Right before the spider landed on him, he unleashed a burst of ethereal energy using both hands. The magic burned from his entire body, stabbing up through the spider and ripping it apart.
Kane hissed, every nerve coursing with clarity. His body pulsed, especially his temples. He felt the raised lines of his burns, and in the remains of the mirror was his reflection, winged in ethereal light. It buoyed him, pulling him upward, as though he had mastered not just light, but lightness itself.
A rumbling pulled Kane back to earth, with just enough time to duck. The far wall exploded, and in crashed the beetle with Ursula riding atop it. The gargantuan bug slid and swung, but somehow Ursula stayed put. And somehow, so did her dress. She threw a shield out ahead of the beetle’s path, and the pair rocketed toward Kane.
“Kane! Jump!”
He tried to, but his new levitation was hard to control. The next thing he felt was something grab him—Ursula, he thought—and all at once he was clutching the beetle’s curved horn as it flailed. He held on for dear life.
“Don’t let go!” Ursula cried. The beetle screamed, and suddenly its shell popped open like a car hood. Clear wings veined in cerulean shot out, beating in rapid motion as the beetle took to the sky.
Kane closed his eyes, fighting not to vomit as the beetle flew straight up and through the ballroom’s skylight. A cloud of razored glass tore over him, but there wasn’t time to feel the pain before the beetle crashed back down, tossing him onto a roof eaten through by fire. Ursula was at his side a second later.
“Kane! Your powers! Can you fly?”
“Fly?”
The gardens smoldered below them, an impossible escape. The beetle turned and charged, but Ursula was ready to block the guillotine slice of its horn. She stopped the attack with a shield before catching the horn in her bare hands.
Her voice came gritty and urgent. “Are you ready to jump?”
“Are you nuts?”
Ursula did something with her feet beneath her tremendous skirt, perhaps to brace herself, because the next thing she did was hoist the beetle straight into the air. It gave a few stunned clicks as it reached the upright point of momentary balance.
“Kane,” she wheezed. “Scoot to the left, will you?”
Kane did just that. As the beetle’s wings shot out again, Ursula brought it down in an epic backward bend that crushed its own wings beneath it. The château shook, the roof buckled, and Ursula dove for Kane, wrapping him in a hug as they hurtled off the edge.