No. She wouldn’t let the Story take her. She couldn’t.

Katie snapped her fingers. A light appeared, floating in the air beside her. Its light was pale and colorless. Everything was colorless—their eyes and hair and skin and clothes, and the road itself. All the color had bled out of the world.

“It won’t be long,” Katie said, almost wearily. “Two minutes, and totality will be over. You can stop running. You will become the keys to open our way home, and we will return.”

She didn’t sound triumphant or mocking, the way Mr. January and Mrs. Prosper had been when they thought themselves on the verge of victory. Instead, her voice held a note of—was it dread? Reluctance?

“You don’t have to do this,” Eleanor said.

Katie’s eyes were tiny pinpricks of light like stars. “It’s everything we’ve been working toward for centuries. We will open the gates of the Pallid Kingdom and our parents’ armies will spill out. This world and all the rest will be drowned in gray, and we will wear our crowns of silver and bone. And I will be the one that made it happen. I will be rewarded.”

Her words were sharp with hunger and longing and fear, and she stalked toward them in the darkness. Shatterblack and Rag-a-bone came, too, and Eleanor and the others drew together. Pip dropped Eleanor’s hand to bring Gloaming up, facing Rag-a-bone in a defensive pose.

Katie stretched out a hand. One fingertip touched Eleanor’s cheek. Her skin was cold. “It won’t hurt,” she said, like it mattered at all.

They were out of time, and there was no one to help them. Nothing that could save them.

Unless . . .

We need more time, Eleanor thought desperately. They had to get away from this place. And there was only one way she could think of to do it. She shut her eyes. You want me, Story? Come on. Open a road with me. Let’s walk between the worlds.

The Story answered. Something cold and poisonous and lovely flowed through her veins. Taking hold. She gasped, her eyes flying open. Strange threads of light gleamed around her like a spiderweb, and the filaments stretched out in all directions.

They were all connected. All the worlds. And she could feel them. Here at the crossroads of the Wending, she could feel every one, all at once, and all she had to do was reach out—

“The sun!” Pip cried in horror. The faintest sliver of light shone at the edge of the moon. Totality was ending.

Eleanor’s heart thudded in her chest. She could do this. She could be the world-walker and she could find a way to get out of this place.

Help us, she thought.

“No!” Katie cried, but it was too late.

Power twined around Eleanor. The world-walker’s power. Her power. She reached out blindly, grabbing at whatever threads she could.