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Back Reverie Save as PDF
Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

Kane’s heart was a stinging, pulsing liquid in his ears. He found Ursula’s knee, dug a hand behind it, and pulled. As he did, the spider—just as re-formed as the beetle—scampered into the clearing. Its pale green eyes locked on Kane. It bent, ready to spring atop them.

Helena pulled Kane close, and something cold and metal around her neck stabbed into his arm.

The spider leapt high into the air. Its legs spread a claw across the sallow moon.

Kane had only one breath between him and death. One chance. No snapping fingers, no sparkling hands. Just one move left to make. It was too late for him and the others, and maybe even for Helena, but maybe he could convince fate to spare his sister.

As the spider landed atop Kane, he grabbed the whistle from Helena’s neck, pressed it to his lips, and let his last breath go.

• Twenty-One •

Finders Keepers

The whistle made no sound. It made silence. A thrilling, halting silence that pinned the reverie in a single instant.

Humid air brushed Kane’s matted curls. He was looking right into the glistening space between the spider’s furred fangs, two of its legs already hooked under his arms. But the spider did not bite. It was petrified. Kane sat in a cage of unmoving legs atop the ruined gazebo.

Beside him lay Helena, one such leg digging into her thigh. The reverie had halted, but her blood flowed freely around the rose-gold dagger. She touched it, gingerly, knowing it was a mortal wound.

“H-h-help me,” she whispered.

Kane untangled himself from the spider, amazed that it let him. He spun around, stunned at the whistle’s work. Everything was still. No wind, no drifting ash. Even the mist of the gardens hung in frozen, marbled curls around the inert beetle. And it was quiet. Faintly, Kane could make out a distant creaking, as though they existed in the hull of a great, rocking ship.

Kane couldn’t remove the spider on his own.

“Help!” he called. “Somebody!”

“Here!” It was Adeline. Kane ran for her.

“Where are you?” His voice was flat in the stilled air.

“Over here!”

“Are you okay?”

“Sort of.” But the long pause before her answer told him something was wrong.

He turned a corner and came upon the serpent, its body frozen in a tight knot.

“In here,” Adeline called, and Kane saw her just barely among the looping, diamond body. She’d been caught, about to be consumed when the whistle froze the reverie. The viper’s jaws were already unhinged, just inches from her head.

“Well,” Adeline said. “Blow it up.”

He tossed two bolts into the beast’s body, exploding it in glittering bursts that quickly froze. Then he pulled Adeline from the levitating rubble, turning them both bone white with dust. She held on to him longer than he sensed she needed to, and then a bit longer after that.