Quentin realized what was going on. He’d been given a do-over. He was back on the edge of that meadow in the forest, but this time he was going in. There was more to life than being fat and safe and warm in a clockwork luxury resort. Or maybe there wasn’t more, but he was going to find out. And how did you find out? You had an adventure. That’s how. You picked up a golden key.

“Let me see it,” he said.

Satisfied that it wasn’t lethal, or at least not instantly, Bingle passed it to Quentin. It didn’t buzz, and it didn’t glow. It didn’t come alive in his hand. It felt cool and heavy, but not cooler and heavier than he imagined a golden key should feel.

“Quentin,” Julia said. “There is old magic on that key. A lot of it. I can feel it.”

“Good.”

He grinned at her. He felt elated.

“You do not have to do this.”

“I know. But I want to do this.”

“Quentin.”

“What?”

Julia offered him her hand. God bless Julia. Whatever else she had lost she still had a hell of a lot of human kindness inside her. He took her hand, and with the other he felt around in the air with the key. Maybe if he—? Yes. He felt it click against something hard, something that wasn’t there.

He lost it for a second—he waved the key around but couldn’t find it. And then he had it again, the clack of metal on metal. He stopped with the key resting on it, then pushed and it slipped in, ratcheting past an invisible tumbler and fitting firmly. Experimentally he let go of it. It stayed there: a golden key suspended in midair, parallel to the ground.

“Yes,” he whispered. “This.”

He took a breath, tremblier than he wanted it to be. Bingle did an odd thing, which was to place the point of his sword on the ground and drop to one knee. Quentin gripped the key again and turned it clockwise. Running on instinct, he felt for a doorknob and found it—he could picture it in his mind’s eye, cold white porcelain. He turned it and pulled and an immense cracking, tearing sound filled the room—not a terrible sound, a satisfying sound, the breaking of a seal that had been intact for centuries, waiting to be breached. Julia’s soft hand tightened on his. Air rushed from the room behind him out through the crack he was opening, and hot light flooded over him.