BooksBarbecue
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

She dragged a nail down Kane’s jaw to clutch his chin.

“And finally, you reveal that this loom is not a thing, but a person. It is you, Mr. Montgomery.”

Kane stopped struggling.

“You are my vessel,” she continued, “my instrument, my own little DIY big bang. And to think! Ms. Abernathy nearly ruined everything by throwing you away from me. It’s a good thing I had the sense to let your sister keep me captive, knowing you’d come for her. You see? I’m not just beauty. Beneath it all, I’m everything else, too.”

Kane heard the words, but he did not understand them. They slid through his head like little silvery fish. Poesy’s breath cooled the tears pushing down his cheeks, the sweat prickling his temples.

“I’ll admit I miscalculated before.” Poesy swept behind the throne. Kane couldn’t look anywhere but forward, at the crowd of stilled onlookers. All of the ballroom’s motion strained against Poesy’s titanium will. “Teasing open the loom in a human boy always risked that he may one day turn his power against me, and so I created this device.” She returned to block Kane’s view of Sophia, who had finally reached Adeline. “It’s a crown, yes, but it is also a prison. This crown does not give power; it takes it. It accesses a person’s deepest potential, focuses it thousandfold, and allows me to use it however I please. I hear it is very painful, losing your lucidity this way. The last time I put it on you, you made quite the mess, swallowing whole the entire watercolor world of Maxine Osman, and Maxine within it. And then Ms. Bishop had the audacity to try and remove it! I wasn’t counting on that, either. Kudos to her. But this time your friends cannot help you. So long as you wear this crown, you are mine. My Pandora’s box. My grail. My muse. Mine, Mr. Montgomery, to imagine into reality anything I demand.”

“I won’t,” Kane said. “I won’t do it.”

Poesy pouted. “It’s a shame you won’t create for me willingly. I think you’d quite like what I have in store for this sorry world.”

She kissed his cheek, then sunk the crown onto his head. It fit like a charm, the pressure against his scalp tracing his scars perfectly. It felt familiar. It burned.

“Sweet dreams, my loom.”

Kane’s mind went a blistering white, like the heaven-hot edge of a cloud about to uncover the sun. And then he was elsewhere, cast into the crown’s oblivion. His body, his mind—his everything—no longer his. Whatever became of him, it belonged to Poesy now.

• ∞ •

Beyond