The gardens smoldered below them, an impossible escape. The beetle turned and charged, but Ursula was ready to block the guillotine slice of its horn. She stopped the attack with a shield before catching the horn in her bare hands.

Her voice came gritty and urgent. “Are you ready to jump?”

“Are you nuts?”

Ursula did something with her feet beneath her tremendous skirt, perhaps to brace herself, because the next thing she did was hoist the beetle straight into the air. It gave a few stunned clicks as it reached the upright point of momentary balance.

“Kane,” she wheezed. “Scoot to the left, will you?”

Kane did just that. As the beetle’s wings shot out again, Ursula brought it down in an epic backward bend that crushed its own wings beneath it. The château shook, the roof buckled, and Ursula dove for Kane, wrapping him in a hug as they hurtled off the edge.

“Fly, Kane!”

What right did Kane have to tell her he couldn’t? He’d just watched Ursula execute a suplex against a gigantic gemstone beetle while wearing a wedding dress, atop a flaming dream mansion. The bubble-thin partition between can and cannot had popped right then. Kane imagined she was right, that he could fly. He believed her, and she believed in him.

He twisted toward the flaming garden and let loose another ethereal blast, opening a crater in the patio right before it was too late. The blast swung them up, and suddenly gravity’s grip was broken; they careened over the garden, swathed in rolling waves of ethereal light from Kane’s body.

Ursula let out a whoop. “You’re doing it! Oh my God! You’re actually doing it!”

Kane laughed with her, but their joy was short-lived. Down from the clouds like a shaft of moonlight came a creature of silence and speed. There wasn’t time to see what it was before it slammed into Kane with a haunting cry. Ursula yelled, there was a burst of pink light, and then they were falling.

Falling.

Kane’s light was gone.

He hid in Ursula’s embrace as the first branches swatted them. Wave after wave of magenta magic cradled them as they bounced through the trees, finally rocking to a stop on solid ground. Ursula let the shield dissipate, falling to her knees.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I’m okay. You?”

“Oh, super.”

“Was that a bird?” Kane peered into the sky, but it was gone.

Ursula shook out her hand. “Yeah, but it was made of like…quartz or something.”

“You punched it?”

Ursula shrugged. “I would literally punch any bird. They all suck.”

Then she stood and began to rip away her skirts.

“Honestly, I wish I could wear one of these outfits without having to end up fighting. I mean, how is anyone supposed to fight anything in this many layers?”

The air around them began to quiver with what Kane recognized as indignation.