They were all searched thoroughly before they were tied up, and anything that might be viewed as dangerous was quickly confiscated, including Rini’s bracelet and Christopher’s bone flute. Cora tried not to think too hard about what the loss of the bracelet could mean for the rest of them. Surely the wizard who had given it to Rini would be able to make another one, something that would let them all go back to Miss West’s when this was over. Surely they weren’t about to be trapped behind someone else’s door, in a world that was even less right for them than the one where they’d been born. She still couldn’t think of the school as “home” any more than she could consider going back to the house where her family waited for the day when she’d be cured of all the things that made her who she was, but …

But she couldn’t stay here. This wasn’t a fantasy adventure. This was a nightmare of a candy-coated wonderland, the place the kids she’d gone to school with would have expected her to dream of finding beyond an impossible door, and she wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

The riders rode, and the captives dangled, and everything began to blur together, like the landscape was accelerating around them. That was the logical nonsense of Confection coming into play, where everything was no more than a day’s journey from everything else, no matter how fast you traveled or how big the world became.

(It felt a little bit like cheating—but then, to someone like Rini, airplanes and sports cars probably felt like cheating too, like a way to have all the distance in the world and not be forced to account for any of it. Cheating was always a matter of perspective, and of who was giving out the grades.)

Kade gasped. Cora twisted against her bonds as much as she could, craning her neck until she could see what he saw. Then she gasped as well, eyes going wide while she tried to take it all in.

In some ways, the castle that had appeared in front of them was nothing more nor less than a gingerbread house taken to a dramatic new extreme. It was the sort of thing children were coaxed to build at the holidays under the watchful eyes of their parents, getting flour and frosting absolutely everywhere. But true as that idea was, it didn’t do justice to the towering edifice of cake and cereal brick and sugar. This was no kitchen-craft, meant to be devoured with sticky fingers after Christmas dinner. This was a monument, a landmark, an architectural marvel baked with the sole intent of standing for a thousand years.