“To kill us all.”

“But to what end? Something terrible must have happened to you but murdering everyone won’t make you feel better.”

“It’s not for me. I will feel nothing. The inns and innkeepers shouldn’t be. I will purge their symbiosys from existence. It’s not necessary for you to understand it. Accept it as inevitable and go.”

“No.”

A deep sigh echoed through the dome. He turned, his robe swirling. “Why do you persist in being difficult? Take my gift. Get out of my way, foolish child. Do not trample on my last act of kindness. There will be no more.”

“You were an innkeeper once. You felt the bond with your inn. They rely on us. They trust us. Whatever faults innkeepers have, whatever crimes they committed against you, the inns are innocent. Does that not mean something to you?”

“Why should it? My inn was taken from me. My family, my face, they took everything, and I will leave them with nothing. I will kill every inn in the galaxy, so the innkeepers can never resurrect themselves again.”

“But you still feel the pain. You still long for the bond.” I pointed to the remains of the room at the other end of the dome. “You brought an inn here, and now it’s dying. It’s rotting and suffering. How can you stand this?”

He turned to fully face me. His bloodless lips stretched, and he smiled, showing sharp conical teeth.

“I brought it here for you.”

What?

“Do you still not see? Look around you. Does it not look familiar? Does it not feel like home?”

I stared at the semicircle of the rotten floor, the slimy walls, the remnants of the decaying furniture… There was a couch on the left. Mildew had slicked its upholstery, but some of the original color remained, a happy summer sky blue with big yellow dandelions. My mother had upholstered that couch for me when I was seven years old. I had picked out the fabric. Our dog, an old boxer, had chewed on the front leg of it, and the bite marks were still there…

Oh my God.

I saw it now. The crooked lamp—Maud and I had knocked it over when she was chasing me around the house, and we could never get the lampshade to sit straight again. My old desk. The remnants of my rug.

This was my bedroom. This was my parents’ inn. My home. He ruined my home. He was torturing our inn.

I stumbled away from him, toward the rotting floor and the magic that waited for me there. It washed over me, stabbing into my heart, and I felt the last weak pulses of Magnolia Green. The magic I had sensed, the one so desperately trying to touch me, was the lifeblood of the inn spilling from its dying core.

His voice chased me. “Do you understand now?”