Kane got the red journal up a moment before. He had no idea if his plan would work, but he never felt Adeline’s blade touch his skin. It had instead stabbed into the creases of the journal’s magic pages with only a brief, jittering resistance, its lethal tip plunging through the journal’s portal and far, far away from Kane’s heart.

“Did it work?” Adeline whispered.

They turned to Poesy just as she began to scream. She threw Dean away from her, revealing a shock of red spreading open on her stomach. The other red journal, which Dean had been holding open behind his back, had directed Adeline’s ivory blade away from Kane and right through Poesy’s glittering guts. Poesy pitched and twisted, gripping her new death with clicking, breaking nails, and Adeline gave the blade one final shove.

Kane’s plan had worked. Elliot would be so proud.

Poesy reached for her bracelet and the charms that could heal her, discovering too late that Dean had snatched it from her wrist while she held him.

“Impossible,” Poesy screamed.

“Improbable,” Kane said, and before Poesy could summon back her teacup, Kane clapped his hands. The bright tension of his full focus exploded against Poesy’s ringing domination, atomizing the teacup’s shattered pieces and slicing through the reverie’s curdled atmosphere. The Cobalt Complex shimmered through the gaps, the edges between the two words glowing neon as they ripped over one another. Reality itself was going to be torn apart if Kane could not overcome her.

“I am your worst nightmare,” Poesy promised.

“Not anymore.”

The sickening, dizzying power of Poesy’s control faltered, and Kane knew what to do. He curved his power around where Poesy stooped, imprisoning her bristling magic. Then he turned his mind toward the rest of the reveries. He knew that Poesy’s power came from manipulation, but without the material of others there was nothing for her to bend, to break, or to borrow. This was her end.

Kane drove his consciousness up and out, into a surreal maelstrom like so many silver needles slipping through thickly knitted knots. First he found his sister and his friends, battered but alive in a pocket of Ursula’s magic. Reassured, he focused on the rest. The crown he wore opened a dimension of omniscience within him that felt, for just a few seconds, fathomless. Limitless. He felt—no, knew—how simple it would be to destroy these worlds entirely. Instead, he set himself to the impossible task of feeling for their edges. Their breaks and seams. Every story had a beginning and an end. Every sky had a horizon. Every tale had its twists. Kane combed himself through it all without flinching. He felt first resistance, then the utter bliss of separation, and finally the relief of their lovely unraveling.

But one knot remained.