“Leave,” Reynolds snapped, “now.”

She started to speak, but silver sparked as he slashed at her with the blade.

Isobel flinched away. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that the gym had returned to normal: empty, dark, and soundless.

Reynolds was gone. The Nocs, too.

She’d emerged from the veil. Now fully awake, she’d rejoined with both her physical body and with reality.

Her limbs tingled, alive with the electric sensation of pins and needles. Though her arms stung where the crows had clawed and pecked at her, her flesh bore no wounds.

The doors leading outside still hung wide before her. White sunlight streamed through. Winter’s chilling breath blew over her, wafting across the parking lot, stirring a layer of tiny pink petals.

Isobel wrestled to her feet to survey the scene before her.

It had happened again. The dreamworld had met with reality—blended.

Hurrying through the doors, Isobel saw that the small blots of pink she had imagined into being covered the windshields of parked cars, the cracked asphalt, and the sidewalk, too.

She glanced toward the gym again.

She knew Reynolds was still there, fighting in the veil. Or had he fled, leading the Nocs away?

The Nocs.

Pinfeathers . . .

Could he truly be back from the dead? But, then, had he ever really been alive?

Isobel wrapped her arms around herself, over her midsection where that clawed arm had held her. She recalled how, after Varen had written her name in his sketchbook, drawing her into his story and binding her to the link he’d created, she’d been able to see the Nocs in the real world.

After Isobel had burned the sketchbook, though, she’d also severed her ties to the dreamworld, and that had to be why she could no longer see the ghouls. But like Varen—whose ability to project into reality broke all the rules—Pinfeathers had always been the exception. What one can do, Pinfeathers had cryptically told her the night he’d appeared in her living room, so can the other.

So why, if the Noc had been restored, could she not see him now? Had he already gone? Vanished back into the dreamworld, leaving Isobel on her own?

She switched from foot to foot, hesitating. Unsure of what to do next.

Reynolds had told her to leave, but . . . where did he expect her to go?

For an instant, she thought about trying to re-enter the veil. Knowing what waited for her on the other side, however, she dared not. Her spirit wouldn’t stand a chance against all those Nocs. And she’d already jeopardized so much. She’d endangered herself and Reynolds—the only source of knowledge she had on how to break the bond between Varen and Lilith.

But she hadn’t been able to help herself. She’d had to show Varen her true nature. Show him that, like before, what he believed was a lie. And now, now she knew for sure that he still cared for her. She’d seen it in his face the moment he’d wrapped his arms around her ghost double. Yet she hadn’t done enough. Not even draining the darkness from his dead world and replacing it with light and life had been able to convince him that she’d returned for him yet again.

There was more to Varen’s darkness, it was clear now, than could be sifted through from within. More than the empty suit and the doll and the lullaby and the pieces of him that she’d found in the dreamworld. More at play in all of this than just her involvement.

You’re going to need more in there than backflips and cute tricks, Pinfeathers had said to her moments before she’d come face-to-face with Lilith for the very first time. Isobel had no doubt that the Noc had been right, like he had been about so much else, and that she would soon find herself confronting the demon once more.

When that happened, she would need Varen by her side. On her side.

Isobel knew that she had never been part of Lilith’s original design. Even before Isobel and Varen had grown close, Lilith had preyed on Varen for a reason. Not just for his ability to create, the demon had once said, but also for his capacity to destroy.

According to Lilith, Isobel had entered Varen’s life as a distraction. But when Varen’s feelings for Isobel had grown stronger, protecting her from the Nocs, Lilith had been forced to switch tactics. So she used Isobel as a catalyst to ignite a dangerous fuse within Varen, and in so doing had awakened his powers, transforming him into a new link.

His darkness didn’t end in the dreamworld, though. Nor did it begin there. There were pieces here, too. In the very reality Varen had so desperately sought to escape.

Varen had been drawn to the woodlands because of the peace they promised. Because unlike his life, the dreamworld was something he could control. And because Lilith had represented all that was missing for him in this existence.