The axe slashed down.

As the old princess fell, Agatha’s vision fogged with tears, her heartbeat dragging to a crawl.

In the fiery hell pit of the forest, a war stopped.

Even Lancelot and Rafal held their blows, watching Cinderella hit the ground only a few feet from Gavaldon’s shield.

Merlin turned from nursing injured Ravan. The wizard’s body went stiff, his eyes flying to Agatha.

Shell-shocked, both she and the wizard wheeled towards the shield over Gavaldon.

A young boy stood inside the protective bubble, watching them.

He was no more than seven or eight years old and held a storybook open in his hands.

Agatha recognized him immediately.

Jacob.

Honora’s youngest son.

He watched Cinderella dying on the other side of the thin shield, her slumped position matching the changing painting on the last page of the fairy tale in his hands.

The rewritten book slipped out of his fingers and fell to the grass.

Behind him, Agatha glimpsed a mob of shadows, led by a tall, broad man, racing towards the young boy from Gavaldon’s square. She could hear Stefan calling out Jacob’s name, telling him to get away . . .

But it didn’t matter now.

The holes in the shield over Gavaldon were magically expanding and bleeding into each other, growing bigger, bigger, bigger—

All at once the shield exploded with an ear-splitting crack, detonating in a blinding flash of white light that jolted the Forest like an earthquake. Heroes young and old spilled to the ground, as stymphs careened headfirst into trees, exploding on impact. Agatha spun from the sizzling glare, her body thrown to the dirt as she covered her eyes.

Then the light seemed to fade.

Little by little, she peeked up through her fingers and saw twinkles of white raining over the Reader World like stars.

The shield between the Woods and Gavaldon was gone.

In the Woods, the heroes were slow to get up . . . but the zombies were already unfurling to their feet. . . . Agatha couldn’t see Tedros anywhere—or Merlin or Lancelot, for that matter—

She swiveled back to where the shield had been. Jacob had been subsumed into the throng of villagers who’d swarmed in to save him. Honora gripped him hard against her waist, his elder brother, Adam, under her other arm, as she herded them into the safety of the crowd.

Staring at the firelit battlefield, the oldest Elder quivered at the fore of the mob, too frightened to discern who was friend and who was foe. He held out his hands in surrender, backing against his people.

“Every four years you ripped our families apart. You took our children! Isn’t that enough?” the Elder pleaded. “We’ll do anything you want. Please don’t kill us—”

“I have no intention to kill you,” said a cool, hard voice.

Agatha’s spine tingled.

Slowly she turned, along with the villagers, to see Rafal, standing alone inside the boundary of the Reader World.

“Well . . . except for him,” he grinned.