But Sumi was a silent skeleton, wreathed in shadows and rainbows, and Rini was disappearing an inch at a time, fading away according to the rules of her reality. If they left now, they couldn’t save Rini. They could only leave her to be unmade, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but a memory.

(Would even that endure? If she had never been born, if she had never existed, would they remember her after she disappeared? Or would this whole madcap adventure be revised away, filed under things that never actually happened outside of a dream? What would they think had happened to Nadya, if Rini faded completely? Would they think she had found her door, gone home again, another success story for the other students to whisper about after curfew, hoping that their own doors would open now that someone else’s had? Somehow, that seemed like the worst possibility of all. Nadya should be remembered for what she’d done to help them, not for what people invented to fill the space where she wasn’t anymore.)

“No, thank you,” said Cora primly, and she spoke for all three of them, for Kade, standing stalwart and steady, for Christopher, shaking and pale.

He didn’t look well. Even Rini looked better, and she was being written out of existence.

“I didn’t think you would, but I had to offer,” said the Queen, leaning back in her throne. A chunk of her dress fell off and tumbled to the floor, where a butterscotch mouse with candy floss whiskers snatched it up and whisked it away. “I ask again: how is my old enemy here? What’s dead is dead.”

None of them said a word.

The Queen sighed. “Stubborn little children find that I can be a very cruel woman, when I want to. Did it have something to do with this?” She reached behind herself, pulling out Christopher’s bone flute. “It’s an odd little instrument. I blow and blow, but it doesn’t make a sound.”

The effect on Christopher was electric. He stood suddenly upright, vibrating, the color returning by drips to his cheeks, until they burned like he had a fever. “Give it to me,” he said, and his voice was an aching whisper that somehow carried all the same.

“Oh, is this yours?” asked the Queen. “It’s a funny color. What is it made of?”

“Bone.” He took a jerky step forward, knees knocking. “My bone. It’s mine, it’s made of me, give it back.”

“Bone?” The Queen looked at the flute again, this time with fascinated disgust. “Liar. There’s no way you could lose a bone this big and still be whole.”