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
Kane let his powers unfold, stretching out like great wings, and the full discord of the reveries bombarded him. It was easy to locate Poesy; the reveries were imploding toward her, like some great wound around which flesh bubbled and bone sagged.
Also, she was cackling. Because of course she was cackling.
Breathing deep, Kane let himself fall, etherea streaming after him. He found Poesy upon the pale stage, now strewn with shattered pillars, strutting through the aftermath of battle. Elliot and Ursula were still standing, but barely. Adeline, gray dust plastering her bloodied tutu, lay collapsed over Sophia in her ragged red dress. Poesy sipped from her teacup, savoring the implosion of Sophia’s world.
Kane snapped his fingers, sending ethereal blazes into Poesy’s billowing cape. The teacup spun from her grip and shattered on a pillar, and she turned to him with the first authentic fear he had ever seen on her beautiful face. Then it was gone, replaced by rage. She reached for her charms without a word.
Seeing him, Ursula let out a weak cheer before falling into Elliot.
“Go!” Kane called to them as readied another attack. The power of the crown was immense, so hard to control that Kane knew with certainty that even a stray thought could destroy, transform, or create. This was the power he needed to defeat Poesy, but he needed his friends as far away as possible. “Run!” he screamed, the flares from his hands amplified to glaring beams of rainbow that cut the air itself.
Poesy twirled between them like a darting fish, her cape undulating behind her. Her charms flashed open into fragments of reveries that crashed over Kane in tidal waves of texture, sound, and sight. Kane was overtaken by a misty forest, its humidity clingy in his throat, its babbling streams tickling under his ears. Kane tore it apart with a clap of his hands and entered another reverie: a colonial battlefield mobbed with zombies. Rotting teeth sunk into his shoulder, his wrist, but the power of the crown told him this world was immaterial and his to destroy. He let his glow burn bright, eating through the hordes of zombies, and punching him into the next reverie. And the one after that. And after that. Kane flashed through them, as brief as an angel falling through the film of every new world, until finally he surfaced back into the collapsing void.
Poesy was waiting to face Kane upon the stage. She wrenched a glowing palm down, dropping a deluge of acid rain out of the cracked sky. Kane let his own consciousness rise to meet the rain, unfolding each drop into a cloud of butterflies.
“Your precious Others have fled, and your tricks are catastrophically clichéd.” Poesy sneered, and the butterflies turned to scorpions. Kane blinked and the scorpions burst into confetti.