“Do it,” Kane said.
Adeline’s wonder turned to shock, then disgust. “What?”
“Do it, Adeline. Take my memories,” Kane repeated, looking at Sophia. At everything he was fighting for.
“I can’t.”
“You have to,” Kane said. Then, quieter: “Believe in me one last time.”
By the thrust of her jaw, Adeline understood. She wobbled toward Kane, and her eyes flared their storm-cloud gray as they peeled Kane’s mind open. There was no pain to Adeline’s telepathy, just the whistle of memories as they faded beneath her corrosive gaze. His fingers curled around his backpack strap. It was impossible to remember what he’d just been doing, but if he kept going, kept trying, maybe there was a chance he could…
Adeline’s eyes darkened, her face bright with a smile. She had found the memory Kane needed her to find. She adjusted her grip on her blade and in one, elegant dash, she crossed the stage and drove it deep into Kane’s chest.
Kane got the red journal up a moment before. He had no idea if his plan would work, but he never felt Adeline’s blade touch his skin. It had instead stabbed into the creases of the journal’s magic pages with only a brief, jittering resistance, its lethal tip plunging through the journal’s portal and far, far away from Kane’s heart.
“Did it work?” Adeline whispered.
They turned to Poesy just as she began to scream. She threw Dean away from her, revealing a shock of red spreading open on her stomach. The other red journal, which Dean had been holding open behind his back, had directed Adeline’s ivory blade away from Kane and right through Poesy’s glittering guts. Poesy pitched and twisted, gripping her new death with clicking, breaking nails, and Adeline gave the blade one final shove.
Kane’s plan had worked. Elliot would be so proud.
Poesy reached for her bracelet and the charms that could heal her, discovering too late that Dean had snatched it from her wrist while she held him.
“Impossible,” Poesy screamed.
“Improbable,” Kane said, and before Poesy could summon back her teacup, Kane clapped his hands. The bright tension of his full focus exploded against Poesy’s ringing domination, atomizing the teacup’s shattered pieces and slicing through the reverie’s curdled atmosphere. The Cobalt Complex shimmered through the gaps, the edges between the two words glowing neon as they ripped over one another. Reality itself was going to be torn apart if Kane could not overcome her.
“I am your worst nightmare,” Poesy promised.
“Not anymore.”
The sickening, dizzying power of Poesy’s control faltered, and Kane knew what to do. He curved his power around where Poesy stooped, imprisoning her bristling magic. Then he turned his mind toward the rest of the reveries. He knew that Poesy’s power came from manipulation, but without the material of others there was nothing for her to bend, to break, or to borrow. This was her end.
Kane drove his consciousness up and out, into a surreal maelstrom like so many silver needles slipping through thickly knitted knots. First he found his sister and his friends, battered but alive in a pocket of Ursula’s magic. Reassured, he focused on the rest. The crown he wore opened a dimension of omniscience within him that felt, for just a few seconds, fathomless. Limitless. He felt—no, knew—how simple it would be to destroy these worlds entirely. Instead, he set himself to the impossible task of feeling for their edges. Their breaks and seams. Every story had a beginning and an end. Every sky had a horizon. Every tale had its twists. Kane combed himself through it all without flinching. He felt first resistance, then the utter bliss of separation, and finally the relief of their lovely unraveling.
But one knot remained.
“You…” said Poesy—a buzzing in the back of Kane’s mind as he began to unravel her—“and I are…not so different, you know.”
“I know,” Kane said.
The unraveling must have hurt Poesy greatly. The sound she emitted was unlike anything Kane had ever known. Ancient and inhuman and so much more than simple sound. It was ferocity made sonic.
Then Poesy was gone, and there was nothing left but the polyphonic roar of the reveries as they spooled, one by one, into Kane’s open palm.
• Forty •
RESOLVE
Kane could have returned the reveries directly to the Cobalt Complex, but there was one more thing to do before he took the crown off for good. As gently as his bruised mind could manage, he set himself down on the manicured grass of the garden, near where Dean lay huddled.
First, he needed to apologize. Gently, he knelt by the boy and did what Dean had once. He traced an infinity symbol into the boy’s back, whispering, “Dean. You can open your eyes now. I’m sorry if I scared you.”
Dean blinked at Kane, and at the strange recurrence of the gardens from Helena Beazley’s reverie Kane had created around them. He seemed unsure of his own weight as he stood, like he expected to just float away.
“I’m…not gone?”
Kane squeezed his hand for reassurance. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“But you unraveled Poesy.”
“You never belonged to her, Dean. You’re as real as anyone. Trust me. For once, I know stuff.” Kane tapped the crown and tried out a smirk. Dean gave a sly grin back.
“Kane?”
Adeline cut through the milling guests, the grime of one reverie drifting away as her costume from the Beazley Affair wrapped around her. Trailing after was Sophia, her red dress exchanged for her golden ensemble.
“It worked!” Adeline said, wrapping around Kane. “I can’t believe you let me read your memory like that! I can’t believe that worked!”
He hugged her back, as hard as he could.
Sophia pushed toward Kane. Her eyes were sharp. She was lucid now. And of course she had questions. Kane waved them off, just happy to see his sister, but she wouldn’t let him hug her for long before asking: “Just tell me what’s real. Like, did you just murder a magical drag queen sorceress using two dream journals and a sharpened ballet slipper?”
Kane looked at Adeline, then Dean. They both shrugged. They were going to need a lot of time to debrief all this.
Kane gave his sister a playful punch to the shoulder. “Just gay enough to work, right?”
Sophia’s serious interrogation cracked into a familiar grin, the old refrain bringing relief to her confusion. Adeline let out a wry groan, and Dean looked very embarrassed about it all.
“But why are we back here, Kane? You have all this power, so why are we in Helena’s reverie?” Adeline asked.