Kane pulled Dean into a roofed market of barking vendors. They passed ladies in hoopskirts linking arms with other ladies in crystalline armor. A fleet of scaled children darted past their knees, chasing a small bird the color of fresh grapefruit. The air here was full of fluttering petals and the smell of frying bread. The joy of this place was palpable, but just beneath the surface Kane could still sense the remnant rage of his sister as she felt the final straw of Kane’s betrayals. If this reverie held the brightness and warmth of a dancing flame, it was because of the gnarled, black wick of anger smoldering at its core.

Horns sounded, and as though choreographed, the crowds moved in a single direction. Kane and Dean moved with them. Ahead rose the pearly castle adorned in its crenellations and spires. The crowds pushed through a yawning gate, into a corridor, and up another flight of stairs, then out into the harsh brightness of the gardens Kane remembered. They were very much ripped right out of the Helena’s reverie, though their original richness had been amplified into outright obscenity. Now, the garden existed as the floor of an immense arena, and flung up from each edge were rows and rows of lacy, wicker benches. Dean and Kane, along with every other character, crammed into the seats, sitting just as the light of the garden darkened. Something was starting.

“Have you found Sophia? What about the Others?” Kane asked.

Dean’s eyes shimmered with green as he tried to peer through his powers.

“I can’t see anything clearly, yet,” he said. “But…wait. Do you feel that?”

A rumbling worked up through the arena, and the crowd cheered. Then, from the garden floor, there was a commotion.

“It’s…” Kane squinted.

He saw the pink outfit before he saw anything else, and his relief at seeing Ursula alive was immediately cut off by the blade of her predicament.

Ursula and Elliot stood at the garden’s center. Ursula wore her tattered wedding dress, and Elliot his shredded tuxedo. Their costumes from the original reverie. They stood back to back as two creatures circled them: the rose-gold spider and the diamond serpent.

Kane’s world narrowed into the shrinking space between his friends and those precious predators.

“They’re being forced to fight the hatchlings from Helena’s reverie,” Kane cried. Dean clamped a hand on his leg, holding him still.

“Wait. Look. Are they winning?” Dean asked.

Kane made himself watch. Even in the absurd outfit, Ursula’s was uninhibited power on the battlefield. In the span of a few seconds, she’d somehow climbed atop the spider and detached a bladed leg, tossing it to Elliot. He caught it, maneuvering a sweeping slice as the serpent struck at him. It twisted away, its severed fang rolling into a bed of magnolias.

“Yes.”

“Then we leave them.”

“What?”