Hurried steps, far more certain in their purpose than I, brought us to the front door. Though she yielded and followed, I registered resistance, too. Either she did not trust me or she somehow sensed my plan to eject her from my world and was now hesitant to leave. For what reason, I could not fathom.

The masks had gone. But I was not fool enough to believe they would not return. Now was our only chance.

I gripped the front door handle and pulled open the entrance to Moldavia, hauling Stephanie through and releasing her with momentum into the glow of her own porch light.

Stephanie freewheeled into the autumn night, her beautiful dark curls flying forward to frame her stricken face. She reached for me until the moment she stumbled down from the stairs and over her front walkway.

I kept my arm extended toward her, shocked by my own action. That, after having been so close to holding her, I’d actually let her go.

“Erik!” she shrieked. “Look out!”

But I’d already felt them. The return of the masks. The innumerable hands that gripped me and drew me backward, into the house that would forever hold me prisoner.

She charged up the porch steps, concern and terror twisting her no less lovely features.

Terror for the masks. And concern . . . for me.

Mercy. Could I believe what I was seeing? That she would again cross the threshold of this hated place, risk life and freedom to reenter its boundaries for my sake?

I kicked the door shut, blocking out the sight of that expression, so wrought with distress.

The realization that she cared what became of me, no matter in what capacity, coupled with the knowledge that I—some version of me—had done her harm, brought with it the return of the pain.

Awful and searing, it bloomed once again from the center of my chest. I cringed beneath my mask, grasping at the spot, as though that could do anything to lessen the ache while the masks dragged me backward.

My conversation with Rastin. My resolution to try to go so that she could stay . . .

My masks had borne witness to all of this. In the same way they had overhead Stephanie’s voice. The same way they had been present for all my interactions with her.

No doubt they had also relished her embrace.

They would set another trap. And keep setting them. Until they had what they wanted.

What I wanted.

But what I wanted was madness.

Madness . . .

Out of all my masks, he was the only one that floated. Like roiling clouds of smoke, his coal-colored silk robes swirled and wafted every which way, winding and unwinding about him.

He hovered above me now, twining the chandelier while Guile, Spite, Envy, Guilt, and Shame forced me down, struggling, to the floor, their collective laughter echoing in the cavernous space.

His whole visage, apart from the white and gold-filigreed three-faced mask itself, gave the impression of a blot of black ink that had been dropped into water. Through his nebulous form raged a lightning storm, jagged white illuminating the insides that, as was true in my instance, too, he did not possess.