Twenty-Five

Entering the gray world was like going blind. Everything lost its definition. There were no edges, no shapes, no shadows. Just flat and endless gray.

Gray, and the People Who Look Away. Mrs. Prosper was picking herself up, dusting off her skirt. Mr. January stood leaning on his cane and glaring at Eleanor, still held in Katie’s tight grip. Her breath rasped as Katie’s fingers squeezed her throat, and she grabbed at the woman’s wrist, trying to break her hold.

“What have you done?” Katie snarled.

“Open the door, sister. We are running out of time,” Mr. January said impatiently.

“I can’t. They’ve done something to seal us off,” Katie said.

Eleanor struggled to breathe. Katie held her just off the ground, so her toes barely touched. The gray around them was slowly starting to take shape—the faintest suggestion of tree trunks rising from the formless color.

She had to get out of here—but she couldn’t. She was as trapped as they were.

“Then unseal us,” Mr. January said.

“I can’t,” Katie growled. She dropped Eleanor and gestured sharply. The gray seethed over Eleanor’s wrists and ankles, turning solid and pinning her in place. Eleanor gasped, her lungs greedy for air, and then broke out coughing. Katie looked down at her in disgust.

“Don’t just stand there. Do something,” Mrs. Prosper snapped. “Time is moving again. If midnight comes, we’ll have lost our last chance.”

“Ticktock, little sister,” Mr. January chided. “Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I would suspect you didn’t want to get home.”

Katie scoffed, but Eleanor saw the brief flash in her eyes—old fear, old hatred. This Katie had never escaped the Pallid Kingdom, but she’d wanted to. They all had, once. The difference was, this Katie remembered what it had been like to be free. If only for a little while. A few hours of kindness.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe Thea wasn’t completely gone, Eleanor thought—maybe she could still be saved.

“It’s no matter,” Mrs. Prosper said, rolling her neck. “If we must move on, we will. We’ll find some other way.”

“Says the woman who already squandered her chance. I’m still in the game,” Mr. January said.

“I’m only saying it doesn’t hurt to start thinking of next steps,” Mrs. Prosper said.

“You made a deal,” Eleanor said, drawing their attention to her. Her voice was hoarse, her neck still sore from Katie’s fingers. “You promised you wouldn’t try to open that door again, if we won.”

“That door. I’m sure we can find another way in,” Mr. January said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“And in the meantime, I have always enjoyed a touch of vengeance,” Mrs. Prosper said, her smile small and cruel. “We never promised not to harm your friends and family, did we? Oh dear. You really should have been more thorough when you struck that deal.”

Eleanor shuddered. There were so many things they hadn’t thought of. But if they’d had a month to craft the perfect bargain, she was certain the People Who Look Away still would have found a way to worm through some loophole.

She could feel the gray all around her. Everything she would have to strip out of this place. She could do it even if she was inside, she was sure of it.

She would be destroyed, too. But there was no way around it. She couldn’t let the People Who Look Away hurt her family, or Pip’s and Otto’s families.

“None of this matters, because we haven’t lost yet. I am going to find a way out of here,” Mr. January said. He looked expectantly at his sisters. “If anyone cares to help.”

“I will. Our sister can guard the one prisoner she managed to capture,” Mrs. Prosper said, voice dripping with scorn. She stepped toward him, arms crossed.

Together, the two of them set off into the gray. Eleanor could hear them long after they disappeared—they were still arguing over whose fault this whole thing was.

The gray mist was receding as the world got more real. As it faded, a huge shape came into view, looming in the distance. The door. Not the small, simple door that led back to Eleanor’s own world, but the door from the gray to the Pallid Kingdom. It was huge, towering in the distance. Chains lashed it shut—thirteen chains, each secured with a heavy lock. Thirteen locks that needed thirteen keys.

Eleanor shut her eyes. She flattened her hand as best she could against the cold ground. It was gaining texture as the gray world spun itself into something like a forest. It had been like this the first time they were here, too. The longer she stayed, the more real it would become. And the weaker she would get. It wasn’t a place where humans could survive very long.

Eleanor set her jaw. She’d save them. Her parents. Her friends. Naomi. I wish I’d gotten to see you dressed up like a pumpkin, she thought, before reaching for the essence of the gray world. She felt it, cool and lifeless, pooling around her. All she had to do was let the gray flow out of this place, and there would be nothing left. No gray. No life.

Nothing.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she whispered, and she let the words sing along every bright cord that was bound to her. To Otto and Pip and her mother and Jack and Naomi and Jenny and Ben.

“What do you think you are doing?” Katie said, looking over. She leaned down, grabbing Eleanor by the throat again and hauling her upright. The gray bands around Eleanor’s wrists and ankles slid free. Her concentration broke. The sense of the gray slid away from her. “You were trying to Empty this place?”

“I have to stop you,” Eleanor choked out, wrapping her hands around Katie’s wrists to try to break her grip.

“You’d die, too,” Katie said, leaning close.

“But everyone else would be safe.”

Katie scoffed. “You think you’re a hero. You think you can save everyone, but you can’t.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Eleanor said. “I wish you could have stayed with us.”

“I wish I had never met you,” Katie spat. Their faces were so close that Eleanor could see every fleck of gray in her eyes. Around them, the formless gray flowed in meaningless patterns. “I spent centuries destroying every part of me that had ever loved or hoped or dreamed of something different, and then you went and plucked her out of the past. She’s still in here. Her story, and mine. So I have to remember. All that sickening optimism. How she adored you. How you failed her. I stopped hurting a long time ago, Eleanor, but now it hurts all over again.” Her voice was ragged as torn paper, and with each sentence her fingers tightened more around Eleanor’s throat.

Katie’s teeth were bared, her face drained of blood. Hatred blazed in her eyes.

No, not hatred.

Pain.

Spots appeared in Eleanor’s vision, blotting out Katie’s misery-twisted face. Eleanor wanted to tell her she understood. She knew why Katie had turned herself cold and cruel and uncaring. Cold and clear as glass.

She was afraid to shatter.

Eleanor tried to speak, but she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t make a sound. She was getting weak as she struggled to breathe, and Katie hadn’t let go. Sometimes you have to shatter, she wanted to tell Katie. But even a shattered heart can heal.

She couldn’t say it. But she could show her.

Her hand fell into the bag at her side, and the book seemed to leap into it. Eleanor closed her hand around Katie’s wrist. Wander had said she would know who this story was meant for when the time came. And now she did.

Wander’s story flowed into Katie. Not unwriting her, but adding to her story, fitting into the gaps. The words spiraled up her arm, so fast that Eleanor only knew what they said because she’d read them already.

The princess cut herself off from the world, for fear that it would hurt her. And so when her parents vanished, when she was left alone, she did not weep. When famine came across the land and everyone suffered, she did not despair. When the rains came again and the valleys and fields rang with celebration and feasts, she did not smile. She was as cold and clear as her glass heart.

Katie stood frozen as the words sank into her. Eleanor didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. Not yet. Into Katie flowed the lovers’ first meeting. The slow awakening of the princess’s heart.

The battle. The poison. The knight, dying. The princess, weeping.

Shattering.

Healing.

She didn’t stop, not until the final words snaked around Katie’s wrist and vanished.

She knew when she had first spied the knight across the river, she ought to turn away. But if she could go back to that moment, she would do it again. She would shatter again. Because such love was worth shattering for, always.

Katie’s hands went slack around her throat. Katie’s face was pale, her breath quick.

Once upon a time, there had been three children. They weren’t evil. Not yet. But their world, and their parents, taught them to be.

Taught them to hide their true faces. To lie. To turn on each other. To stop themselves from caring, because everyone they cared about was just another weakness to exploit. They’d been shattered, every one of them. But being shattered wasn’t the end.

“You don’t have to be this way,” Eleanor whispered raggedly. “I know you, Thea. I know who you were supposed to be, and this isn’t it.”

A tear glittered down Katie’s cheek. “I remember you,” she whispered. “But it was so long ago, Eleanor.”

“It was only a few hours ago,” Eleanor replied, half-pleading.

A fragile thread stretched from Eleanor to Katie. It was a strange thing, three strands wound together. Two gray and cold. But one, holding the faintest shimmer of gold.

“People are complicated. They can contain lots of stories. That’s just one of them,” Eleanor said. “You can choose who you want to be. You’re not just Katie Rhodes. You’re Thea, too. And you’re the girl who shattered, and kept going.”

Katie touched a hand to her chest as if to feel the beating of her own heart. “I’m still the Katie who hunted you. I have been wicked, in my life,” Katie said, her expression blank and lost.

“You get to choose your story,” Eleanor said insistently.

Katie fell back a step. She looked upward, tears leaving glimmering streaks down her cheeks. “I don’t want this to be my story. Anger and fear and cruelty.”

“Then change it,” Eleanor said fiercely. “Choose something else.”

“But what will you choose, Eleanor?” Katie asked, looking at her with a distant expression. “You were about to destroy this world. And all of us in it.”

“It’s the only way,” Eleanor said.

Katie drew close. She reached out slowly, and took Eleanor’s hands in her own, staring down at them. “You aren’t that person, Eleanor. You aren’t a destroyer of worlds. This isn’t the ending you’re meant for. If I get to choose my story, so do you.”

Eleanor gazed up at the massive door that loomed behind them. Twelve locks hung open. Only the thirteenth remained. An idea sparked in her mind, and she sucked in a little breath. Once, she had wondered if the way to stop the People Who Look Away wasn’t to beat them, but to help them. Maybe she’d been right after all.

“Eleanor?” Katie asked quietly.

Eleanor looked at her. “Can I trust you?” she asked.

Katie’s lips parted. Her brow creased faintly. And Eleanor saw the moment she made her decision. “Yes,” she said—and the threads between them blazed with brilliant light.

Eleanor smiled. “I think I can save everyone,” she said. “But I need your help.”