Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
“You’re not nothing,” Kane said. “And nothing is not what I need. What I need right now is help getting my friends and Sophia out of here, and then a way to summon the loom and end this. I don’t know what comes after that, but I know I want you there with me. We can find out together, okay?”
“Are you sure?” Dean’s pale gaze searched Kane’s face for an answer, as though Kane hadn’t just given him one. “Are you sure that I’ll be here?”
“Why wouldn’t you be?”
“What about Poesy? What are you going to do when you find her?”
“Kill her,” Kane said automatically.
Dean backed away, the small muscles in his jaw jumping. His hands drew into a knot at his chest.
“Then I might not be here,” he shouted over the music. “It’s her power that’s keeping me from unraveling. I don’t know if I can live without her, Kane. I don’t know if I’ll still exist.”
And Kane grasped, for the first time and with utter devastation, the price Dean was paying to help him. If Dean was truly reverie-born, if his existence was truly rooted in Poesy’s power, would he unravel with the rest of her creations when Kane took her down?
“But if you summoned the loom, you could command its power,” Dean offered. “You could create something. We could create something, and get far, far away from her. You wanted to, once, for me. You don’t have to kill her. You don’t have to destroy the loom.”
Couples bumped into Kane, who had gone still. Lasers combed the mist as the music jumped in his blood. He saw none of it, felt none of it. He was alone in his mind as Dean’s words recalibrated his entire world.
On the bridge, Dean had told Kane they used to talk about what they would create with the loom’s power. Kane had found this as innocent as any of his usual daydreams. But now the nature of Dean’s origin shifted the daydream into a dire focus. Derailed it completely. Dean had revealed their true motive for hunting the loom; not creation for creation’s sake, but creation as a means of sanctuary. Against Poesy’s remarkable power, Dean’s last resort was to use her own plan against her, and Kane had wanted the same. An eternal fantasy to hide away in, forever.
Kane felt the shadow of who he used to be drifting beneath the surface of Dean’s words, a faint reflection that was undeniably his. He was, as it turned out, more like Poesy than he wanted to admit. They both were.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kane said. “I don’t even know how to unravel this mess. Only Poesy is that strong.”