No one noticed as he dashed behind the pillars, up toward the throne. No one heard his footfalls. The only sound was sourceless music, like in the conservatory, and the precise scrapes of knives on porcelain. The sounds of looming cruelty. Kane reached the side of the throne’s stairs, doing his best not to look at Poesy’s mutilated body. He focused on Sophia, who focused on Adeline with increasingly frantic terror.

“Please,” Sophia begged. “Please don’t do this to her!”

Kane realized she was begging the reverie to spare Adeline. He had seen this before, but it had been Helena. The reverie was beyond Sophia’s control by now, acting out what it thought best. Punishing those that threatened it.

Adeline’s knees shook. Her resolve was strong, but her body was going to fail her. She leapt straight up as the dancers blended the air beneath her. Sophia cowered on her throne, her sobs punctuating the quickening music.

“Stop! Stop it!” she cried.

And then it happened. Finally—terribly—Adeline made a mistake. One tittering scuffle and suddenly one of the blades smattered the crowd with red. Adeline kept dancing, a ribbon of blood flowing down her ribs and into her tutu, dying it pink.

Adeline said nothing, but twirled, dipped, and twirled again, increasingly unsteady. More red bloomed at her shins, then at the back of her neck. The crowd applauded appreciatively.

Kane crept up the stairs, behind the throne. Everyone, including Sophia, was focused on Adeline. When Kane pulled the teacup from the bracelet it grew to its proper size, cradled in his palm. He held it out, shaking, every particle in his body begging him to think of another way to stop his sister. He squeezed his eyes shut, then risked a glance to the stage. There was, in sticky profusion, red everywhere. The image of Adeline burned bright: wobbling, achingly lovely, atop those bladed shoes. She was looking right at Sophia.

No, right at Kane. She was watching him, failing on purpose so that he could have this chance. Seeing that he understood, she smiled, but it was wiped away as she finally collapsed. The room filled with the sounds of stabbing.

Kane’s choices narrowed to just one. Adeline had been wrong; they were going to lose Sophia, after all.

He flicked the teacup with his nail.

And everything.

Stopped.

The teacup swallowed Kane, taking him down into the curves of its dizzying power. He felt as though he himself was the vibration radiating from the china, as though he himself was the sonic frequency tearing through the reverie and painting itself across every particle. Kane became not a who, but a where. He was everywhere, his consciousness in every thing.