“That . . .” My throat was dry. “That’s not . . .”

“No?” One clawed finger tapped my forehead, and I recoiled. “Is there not a monster in there that you fear, Kiki Kallira?”

Tears filled my eyes. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know everything about you. I could not have broken into your world and taken it for my own if I didn’t know you as well as I do.” He circled me, his hooves quiet as snow. “You cannot vanquish me because I am you. I am the part of you that you fear most.”

“No! It’s not true!”

“That is why you chose this story,” Mahishasura said. “That is why you feel you must take this world back from me.”

“At the end of the story, you lost,” I found the nerve to say.

“Did I not come back? Am I not here now? That is what frightens you most, is it not? You fear that no matter what you do, the monsters will always be here.” He stepped closer, until I had to tilt my head right up to look into his wicked eyes. “And they will,” he said. “I will.”

19

A bison demon pushed me into a cold, damp cell and slammed the heavy gate shut. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered, watching the demon walk away.

“Kiki!”

I whirled around just in time for Pip to rush across the cell and slam into me, hugging me tightly. “You’re okay!” we both cried out at the same time.

“They put me in here a little while ago, but I didn’t know what had happened to you,” Pip went on.

“They took me to Mahishasura first,” I said.

Pip’s eyes went round. “What did he say?”

“He . . .” I couldn’t say it.

I stepped back and huddled into myself. I wanted desperately not to think about what Mahishasura had said to me, so of course it was the only thing I could think about. Was he right? Had this world, this Mysore, just been a canvas on which I’d painted my messy, anxious brain? Maybe it had never only been a way to escape my own head, but had also been a way to take out the parts of me I hated and put them somewhere where they could be beaten.

Mysore had been perfect before Mahishasura. I had been happy before my brain had turned on me. Had my version of Mahishasura always been just a cruel manifestation of whatever it was that made me lie awake at night worrying, and biting my nails until they were ragged, and having weird, terrible thoughts about unlocked front doors and murdered mothers?

Was I my own enemy?

The worst part, of course, was what he had said at the end. You fear that no matter what you do, the monsters will always be here.

Exhausted, I sat down on the floor of the cell and hugged my knees to my chest. All the noise in my head had given me a headache.