And then I see it, bobbing through the smoke, weaving between the embers like a needle stitching through fabric.

The bone moth.

Death is a winged creature who won’t leave you alone—not until it gets what it wants, a passage from the spellbook reads, one I’ve recalled over and over in my mind.

It’s beautiful, I realize for the first time: a rare white moth from some deep part of the forest.

But it doesn’t flutter closer to me, it quivers just past my shoulder into the trees, where Oliver is moving quickly toward me. But he stops short when he sees me looking up at him.

“The bone moth,” I say aloud, finally understanding.

It draws closer to Oliver, hovering, meeting his gaze.

“The moth was following you,” I say. “Not me.”

Its wings flutter softly, paper-thin like fabric brushing together. Flammable. And then it lifts up, higher into the trees, and shivers out toward the center of the lake—escaping the flames, disappearing into the eerie golden light. It was never following me. Never a warning of my death. The moth had been a warning that death was in my home, death kissed me in my room, death slept beside me with his hands against my ribs. Death kept me warm.

I was wrong about the moth. And I was wrong about him.

Oliver moves closer to me, and maybe I should back away, sprint up the shore, but I let him come stand beside me, his shoulder just barely touching mine.

Another burst of déjà vu pours over me. He looks just like he did the morning after I found him inside the Wicker Woods. A boy about to set off on a journey—or perhaps he is a boy who has just returned from one. Weary and threadbare, with aching feet and sore shoulders, but with wild stories to tell. Of the places he’s been and the vast oceans he’s seen. Villains he narrowly escaped. A boy who left and then returned. Who came back.

Except now we might be at the end of the tale. Ash spilling down around us. The moon above stained a savage shade of red from the flames—a blood moon.

I hold the spellbook to my chest and close my eyes, squeezing them shut so tightly I might be able to blot out the sky and the fire and everything that couldn’t possibly be real. But when I open them, Oliver is still there. Standing beside me beneath the crimson moon.

“Did you drown?” I ask. The words come out a syllable at a time—tasting strange on my tongue, like sandpaper and wax. Like fairytales. A thing that cannot be true.