“I can feel you,” she reminds you, and you’re hot and cold thinking about how she knows the way you see her. How she’s tall and broad and sturdy, like a tree. Like a home. How she knows the words of decrees like a song, decrees she claimed through slyness, so smart, so willing to bend a rule, or break one, because she’s so confident in her rightness. Her goodness. How she’s brave and hot-tempered and she defends all of her people. How you are maybe her people now, and, gods, how would it feel to have her stand for you? Safe, probably. Like a roof. And how she can’t abide death, or violence, because justice is living, and it’s for everyone.

“It’s okay to cry,” she says, and it’s so simple, but you believe her. So you do. You cry and cry. And you hear Vel crying, too, and James saying, “My sweet giant, my brave seamstress,” and that just makes you cry more.

Maybe you sleep, or maybe you don’t need to. It could be the air refreshing you, or the water, or the Sweets, little blue dots of magic in the fabric of this place. This place you never want to leave because there’s a settling in your skin here. There’s a restfulness. But this is a transit place, and so soon it’s calling you to move.

“A door,” Brella says, and there it is. “Are you ready?”

“No,” you say, because it’s true and you can only be true here. A lie would shrivel up and die, a sickly thing. “What if what’s next is painful? What if it’s hard?”

“I’m here,” she says. “And so are they.”

James and Vel, and James is calmer than you’ve ever seen him, his jutting elbows and restless legs still and serene. You’re in awe of him.

“Are you ready?” he asks, or she does, and finally you can say yes because you are, you are. Because, if nothing else, this place is something to fight for.

“Through the door now,” she says. “Through the gate. One, two . . .”

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Leaving the Between was like waking from deep, dreaming sleep. Scratch couldn’t remember for a few moments where she was meant to be. Her vision fuzzed, colors bleeding together in the dim light of whatever room she’d entered. Her limbs felt heavy, her body sluggish. She needed a glass of water or a good stretch. Probably both.

Instead, she got shouting.

“They’re here. Hold them!”