Like that day on the beach, she thought. Stronger together than apart.

So Nadia found the dark places of Elizabeth’s magic—from Mateo’s map, from her own spells, and from the new levels of power unfolding within her—found the jagged gaps where Elizabeth’s dark work had been stolen and filled them once more. She left no hollows behind, made everything stronger than it had been before. The ground shifted beneath them, but already she could tell everything was coming right again—

—everything except the house they stood in, which was being consumed by fire, and even now, the floor started to collapse.

They all toppled sideways. Everyone shouted out—Elizabeth, Mateo, Nadia—and then there seemed to be nothing but smoke and horrible, searing heat. Each breath burned Nadia’s lungs, and she reached out blindly for something to steady herself.

She found Mateo’s hand.

He grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. As Mateo covered her body with his, trying to shield her from the burning debris falling around them, Nadia wondered if she’d saved Captive’s Sound but not their own lives.

Mateo tried to shelter Nadia. Even though it seemed pointless, even though there was no way to run out of this place now, if he could give her a chance, buy her only a couple minutes, then he had to try.

As he cradled her head against his chest and closed his eyes tightly against the stinging smoke, he heard Nadia whispering, “Love unbreakable—hatred implacable—hope—”

The floor gave way. Or the world gave way. All Mateo knew was that there was no up, no down, only the fire and the feeling of Nadia nearly torn from his arms. And—and this strange blue light, which seemed to surround them all of a sudden.

Guess that’s heaven, he thought, just before he passed out.

When Mateo opened his eyes again, he did not seem to be in heaven, unless heaven looked a lot like a burned-out version of the caramel-corn stand.

He took a deep breath, then coughed again so hard his ribs ached. But he pushed himself up on his arms to look around. “Nadia?” he whispered.

Mateo couldn’t see her. What he did see was the smoldering ruin that had been the haunted house; it had burned down almost to the foundation. And around the ruins—firemen, bystanders, the smoke-stained remnants of the carnival in a town that seemed to be very much still here. Unless someone had been injured in the fire itself, nobody else even seemed to be hurt. Elizabeth’s apocalypse hadn’t come to pass. Nadia had won.

But had she survived?

He managed to stagger to his feet and start wandering through the debris of the carnival. There were people injured everywhere—minor injuries, to judge by the fact that almost everyone seemed to be conscious and ambulatory—but everything was so chaotic that it would be easy to miss one girl.

But wait.

She might have been a shadow on the ground with her black dress and sooty skin, almost lost in the night. Mateo ran to her, ignoring every ache and cut that told him to stop. As he came closer, the vision from his dream flooded through his mind again: Nadia lying dead at his feet.