That forest, too, was ablaze. And, as I looked, so was Ginger’s blue forest, the bushes in Adrian’s craggy world, and the deep red meadow in Lilac’s realm.
What had I done?
I spotted a handful of ghosts in my peripheral vision. Five children. Four of them stood together, staring at Oberon. Cecelia said something—I don’t remember what it was—and lunged for me, but the boy next to her caught her and pushed her toward Oberon.
The four of them lunged for him, sobbing, grieving, beating at the ground around him.
I looked to Vivi, who stood apart. In the firelight, she looked much older than I was. She looked tired.
She met my eyes. There was no kindness in that gaze, no sympathy, no anger, nothing but unending, terrible exhaustion. She nodded a greeting to me as she began to fade.
“Thank you,” I said with my last breath.
Thank you, she said. They were the first words she’d said in years.
She faded into mist, gone alongside her murderer.
I looked away from where she had been, away from the fire, away from Oberon’s broken body. There, in the distance, was the roof of the mansion. Beyond it was the sky, bluer than blue.
There was nothing left for me, so I let go.
Death enveloped me and I sank into it gladly
XXXIV
Okay, take a deep breath. I’m okay.
I know you’re curious, but I’m not going to tell you what death was like. That’s a secret we all learn when we’re good and ready, and if you’re reading this, I can promise you that it’s not your time yet.
I will tell you what it was like when Lilac brought me back. That’s something you’re probably never going to experience, so it’s more worthwhile to tell you about that. Besides, what is more miraculous than feeling the sun on your face for the first time? What is more perfect than breathing air when you don’t know how to breathe yet?
Coming back to life is not like remembering something you’ve forgotten. There isn’t that familiarity to it. It’s all new again, but only for a brief moment. Then it doesn’t feel like remembering at all, and you start to think you may not have died at all.
I definitely died.
Coming back to life also means a lot of tears. Lilac was crying, for one thing, both over my resurrection and about her sacrificing ten years of her life (which, frankly, was not worth it—ten years of her life would be infinitely more valuable than a hundred of mine). Then there was Indigo, who had propped my head up on his knees.
That kiss was full of tears, but that was forgivable. It was more than forgivable.
Ginger and Adrian stood over me, half relieved and half enraged. I waved off Ginger’s rebuke about the danger I’d put myself in and let Indigo help me sit up.
“Thank you,” I told Lilac. “Thank you.”
She hugged me as hard as she could and fought back tears.
“Now,” I said, trying to collect myself between breaths, “how the hell are you all alive?”
Indigo refused to let me go as I stood, so he rose with me.
“We were nearly gone,” he explained, “but I think Oberon’s death reversed it. It took a while, but we found you. And then Lilac managed to—” he cut himself off.
“You were almost too dead for me to bring back,” Lilac admitted. “It was almost an hour before we found you.”
And I only have ten years, I thought. Twenty-eight seemed a reasonable age to die back then. It doesn’t seem that far away anymore.
Adrian interjected. “What the hell did you do to our worlds?”
I glanced around through the portals. Indigo’s forest was only a little more destroyed than it had been before, but Lilac’s meadow was gone. Adrian’s world’s cliffs had been blackened and scorched by the flames. Ginger’s blue forest was shot through with charcoal, and there, in my world, were the remnants of ancient redwoods, cut through with forest fire.
“Big magic,” Lilac grumbled. “Never do that again, please.”
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t object.
Ginger squeezed my arm.
“I think it’s time for a shower,” she said. “And then we can regroup.”
I wanted to object—I wanted to sing, to run, to fly, to celebrate the life Lilac had graced me with—but she was right. We were all covered in grime, blood, ash, smoke, dirt, seasalt, and bruises. All but one of those could be washed off.
We headed back for the mansion.
“So,” Adrian started. “You tore through five worlds. You broke the barrier to the clearing. And you set our worlds on fire. That seems like more than one act of big magic.”
I shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You’re not worried—”
Ginger slapped a hand over his mouth.
“We’ll think about it later,” she said. “We’ll handle this all later. I want a shower and pizza and a night without someone trying to test me or kill me.”
For all the terrible things that had happened in the last week, none of those bad memories clouded the comfort of the mansion. Even though Oberon had trapped us inside, I didn’t fear returning.
He was dead now.
And...so was Mint. Artie Lincoln.
I paused on the threshold and glanced back to the clearing. There, tiny against the huge burned trees, was the man who had formerly been both Oberon and Mint. Artie Lincoln and a man who hadn’t said his name.
Indigo wrapped an arm around my waist. The others continued on upstairs, leaving muddy footprints behind on the pristine floors.
I closed my eyes and let the soft spring air trace my face. When I turned back to Indigo, his eyes reminded me too much of Oberon’s.
It would take a while to work through that. Both of us had a lot to deal with now. The aftermath would hurt nearly as much as the ordeal itself.
We would handle it, I told myself. Nothing could be worse than dying.
“He wasn’t all that bad,” I said. “Mint, I mean.”
“How can you differentiate
