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Back Reverie
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

“Adeline,” Kane begged. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Then her eyes went wide as her hand found something in Kane’s coat. Sophia noticed and pulled Adeline away, snatching the item from her. It was the small velvet pouch with the stolen charms that Dean had given him, and Sophia thrust it at Kane with heartbroken triumph.

“Don’t. Don’t open it,” Kane managed, but Sophia was dumping the charms into her hand. Kane saw what she saw: Artifacts. History, smuggled from a lost era. And proof that her own brother had never been worth her hope.

“I wanted so badly to be wrong about you,” Sophia said.

“It’s not real!” Kane pushed himself onto his side, then gained a knee. Spit fell from his numb lips.

“Don’t,” Adeline warned.

But Kane couldn’t lose his sister again. She had told him once that she was a smart girl, and that she could stay lucid if she knew she was in a fake world. Kane curled himself into his reckless desire to free her, and the selfish desire to save himself. He needed to not fail her again.

“None of this is real, Sophia. It’s a reverie. You’re in a reverie,” he cried.

The lights flickered. The forest flinched.

“Reverie.”

Sophia said the word as though trying out a new language, one with words that scalded the tongue. Kane saw the lucidity settle behind her gaze as she took in her false world, her sharp mind reorienting itself. But it didn’t last. The airships had finally found them, and their hurricane breaths swept Sophia back into her fantasy.

Except now the reverie was twisting. Kane could feel it building.

“Sophia, this is your world to control,” he shouted over the winds. “You can make it stop.”

But Sophia was lost to reasoning. She clutched the charms in one hand. Her other hand pushed the gun between Kane and the advancing soldiers. “You lie, Kane. You’re always lying!”

Shock waves rippled out of her, into the fabric of the reverie. Kane felt the agony of his sister as her fantasy began to turn acidic in her mind. He felt, physically, the ripple pass over him, and his uniform became that of a soldier.

“Kane,” Adeline murmured. “The charms.”

The charms smoldered in Sophia’s grip. If any of those reveries were activated…

Kane crawled toward Sophia. “You need to give those back. They’re not safe. I was protecting you from them.”

“What are they? A trap? Incendiaries? Nano-tech?”

She wasn’t waking up, so Kane dove into his knowledge of the reverie. Of tropes. He attempted a reasonable tangent. “They’re dangerous to the Committee. A secret weapon developed by Headmistress Smithe that I stole for you.”

“Headmistress?”