“Or it won’t. That’s the thing about etherea; it’s a terrifically erratic magic, making and unmaking worlds in the blink of an eye. And that’s what’s happening in this town. A well of etherea has sprung up, and the excess magic is now everywhere, and restless. It must take shape. To do so, it has started using people with uniquely vast minds, casting its power through the prism of their imaginations and creating their interior worlds as entirely new realities.” Poesy considered her own words. “Though they’re not very good realities, are they? Oh, well, I suppose there’s nothing to be done about other people’s bad taste.”

Kane fought to digest Poesy’s words. It was like chewing potpourri. His mind turned to the unraveling last night, and that horrible reverie. He still felt the echoes of its anguish, its chaotic fury at having come undone. It had wanted to survive, and it would have killed to do so. Kane’s teacup clattered in his saucer as he began to shiver. He didn’t want to drink any more.

“So what you’re saying…” Kane fumbled his way through a question that had only just begun to take shape. “Is that etherea is manifesting peoples’ dreams?”

“Dreams!” Poesy grimaced around the word, like it was caked in salt. “Such deeply impractical things. I won’t suffer the association. No. The phenomenon of the localized paracosm, or what you have shorthanded to reverie, could never originate with something as ephemeral as the dream. No. They come from the depth, the core, the marrow of the mind. The subconscious! The subcontinent, made real in phantasmagoric majesty!”

This monologue seemed very prepared. Kane let Poesy finish, gave a respectful and wide-eyed nod, and then countered with: “But this is impossible.”

“Improbable,” she corrected.

“I mean it’s unbelievable. Like, unreal.”

“So what?” Poesy snapped. “The unreality of something is no reason to dismiss it. Sometimes reveries—and dreams for that matter—are more real to a person than the reality they serve to distract from. I would expect you of all people to understand that.”

Poesy’s tone was cutting, such a fine blade that it was beneath Kane’s skin before he even saw it flash. But he kept his chin up, and his eyes on her. “I do understand that. What I meant is that these reveries shouldn’t be here. They’re wrong.”

Poesy’s frigid stare broke into a laugh that filled the empty library, and Kane finally took a breath.