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“You’ll thank me one day.” Jareth gri
He vanished into the first bedroom, pouring as he went.
Kas went to chase after him, but his legs slipped out from under him, sending him sprawling on the marble.
I fell on him, pulling and yanking with all my strength. “Get to your damn feet!”
He coughed on his hands and knees, his lungs sounding rotten and full of carcinogens. “I have to try to...” Cough. “...stop him!”
“It’s over, Kas.” With strength I’d cultivated climbing granite and feldspar, I managed to get him to his feet. Slinging his arm over my shoulder, I turned him away from the stairs and toward the front door.
Kas fought me. “What about Jareth? He’s trapped up there.”
“He’ll get out.”
I knew that without a doubt. He wasn’t suicidal. Just very, very vengeful.
I might not be able to read him, but I’d picked up on signals that he wasn’t as cool as he played. Being back in this valley had slowly driven him mad.
Now, he’d snapped.
And he would dance on the ashes he left behind.
Something exploded in the kitchen, rocking the house with an earthquake, sending the roar of fire and billows of smoke even worse.
Windows cracked and detonated, tinkling upstairs as a huge ball of fire appeared at the top of the landing.
Wherever Jareth was now, he must’ve successfully poured liquor through each room, giving the fire a perfect path to destroy.
Everything was burning.
All of it.
Every decadent, monstrous inch was burning.
“Kas, please!” I pulled again as another explosion shuddered the house.
Rubble fell over our heads, marble cracked, the painting of the valley fell off the wall and crashed onto the floor.
It snapped Kas out of wherever his mind had taken him.
He stood strong, he blinked with awareness, he grabbed my arm and ran.
He ran with me trailing him like a kite, pulling me out the front door, making me fly with his speed beneath a new moon and stars. My backpack bounced, and my legs tripped trying to keep up, but Kas never let me go.
He was inhuman in strength and stamina as we raced through the gardens, only slowing when we were far enough away not to be harmed by shrapnel.
Another explosion boomed.
Kas slammed to a stop and turned, breathing hard, coughing harder. Letting me go, he braced his hands on his knees, sucking in as much fresh oxygen as he could while his face glowed with fire from Fables.
I gasped as I looked behind us at the once ivy-covered, secret-shrouded camouflaged house.
It was no longer part of the landscape with its leaf-filled gutters and wildflower-dotted roof. It was ablaze. A beacon to anyone miles away that something awful happened here. Something that went on for far too long, hurt far too many children, and only now paid for its crimes.
Wiping away my stinging tears, I tried to focus and imprint the sight of Fables to memory as windows on the second floor exploded in a shower of glittering glass, letting furious flames dance up the windowsills and into the night. The fire flickered out the front door, letting us know that the library was devoured, the games room, the dining room, all the books, the plants, the tapestries—
All of it is burning.
“Fuck, Jareth...where are you?” Kas wiped his mouth, leaving a streak of black soot. He stepped toward the fire, only for me to place a hand on his arm and stop him.
“He’s fine,” I croaked, swallowing the grotesque taste of smoke.
“He might’ve gotten stuck. He could’ve fallen or—”
“He’ll be okay.” I balled my other hand with animosity toward Jareth.
Even now, even while watching his entire home buckle beneath roaring fire, Kas was more worried about his blood-adopted brother than his own future.
That was what Jareth hadn’t understood.
He’d thought he was doing Kas a favor by destroying something that had once been a prison. Yet he hadn’t seen what I had.
Yes, Kas stayed because of his amnesia and lack of ease around society.
Yes, Fables had allowed him to sink into his mind and slowly suffocate beneath unresolved horrors.
But he’d also stayed for them.
He’d stayed to protect his family from ever being hurt again. He’d stayed because he felt closer to them in a home they’d shared than somewhere else far, far away. He stayed because he was loyal to the end. Loyal even if it meant he’d gone slowly insane.
Dropping my hand down his arm, I slinked my fingers between his.
He looked at me, his lips twitching into a bewildered half-smile. “How the fuck did this go so wrong so quickly?”
I shrugged, squeezing his hand. I wanted to say something wise and comforting, but I had nothing. Instead, I forced a low laugh, saying, “Jareth happened.”
Kas snorted, then coughed, struggling against his smoke inhalation. “Maybe I shouldn’t have welcomed him with open arms.”
“If I remember correctly, you gave him a right hook instead.”
He winced. “True.”
“You did the right thing.” I kissed his soot-covered cheek. “Punching him and welcoming him. And who knows, maybe he was the one who needed to do this. Burning Fables might not be about you at all but entirely about him and his issues.”
His forehead furrowed in thought. He looked back as the fire continued to burn, explode, and melt everything it could.
We stood there for a while, the night sky full of glowing orange smoke. Trees guarded like sentinels, black and ominous. Hopefully, the flames would not leap the distance across the garden and catch fire in the branches.
I swallowed hard.
If that happened, we would all die tonight. Not just ghosts and monsters but every animal who shared this national park.
With my heart thumping, I looked at the veggie patch where Kas and I had planted seedlings, and he’d taken me against the wall.
Would that burn?
How safe are we?
How long until we know if the entire park will go up in cinders?
I lost track of time as fear trickled through me.
Who knew what the time was? Close to nine o’clock, probably, after the evening of drinking and sex. How had that evening turned into this? What on earth were we going to do once Fable burned to dust? We were stranded and homeless and—
My stomach rumbled as yet another explosion happened inside. Some other liquor stash perhaps, or heater oil, or forgotten gasoline.
A rustle sounded behind us, ripping Kas around with his bared teeth. His long hair and soot-covered body looked as menacing as a bear. “Jareth?”
“Yeah.” Jareth stepped out of the darkness, his own backpack that he’d been wearing when he’d first appeared from the cave on his shoulders. Ash decorated his face and hands, and the whiff of caustic smoke trailed after him as he came closer.
Nodding in my direction, he shrugged out of his bag and let it thud against the ground. Coming to join us, he stood next to Kas, bumping shoulders. “I’m not going to say sorry.” Jareth coughed, his words slightly slurred from all the alcohol he’d ingested before sharing it with carpets and drapes. “It needed to happen.”
“You didn’t need to destroy brick and mortar,” Kas muttered. “It wasn’t guilty like they were.”
“That’s what you don’t understand, brother.” Jareth shook his head. “It was. It was entirely complicit in keeping us hidden. If I didn’t destroy it, who’s to say it wouldn’t be used again when you finally left with Gemma?”
Kas stiffened as he flicked me a look. He didn’t reply, but his eyes shadowed with pain.
I gave him a quick smile and another hand squeeze before following Jareth’s lead and shrugging out of my heavy backpack.
Jareth gave me a small nod before dropping to his haunches and sitting in the grass. Dew had already formed, making everything wet and chilly. Hopefully, if the atmosphere had dampened the forest, then the fire would be contained and not damage anything else tonight.
Kas sighed and practically collapsed next to him.
I followed, wincing as damp coldness soaked into my jeans, highly aware of how vulnerable we were now that we had no shelter in which to get warm. No blankets in which to huddle. No fireplace in which to set a controlled, cheery blaze.
I sighed heavily, wrapping my arms around myself.
Jareth sighed too, glancing at Kas.
It seemed we all had to sigh, releasing the fear and panic, adrenaline and shock of what’d just happened.
Twenty minutes passed while we all watched the biggest bonfire I’d ever seen. The roar of the fire settled into more of a crackle and hiss instead of explosions, methodically chewing through everything in its path.
Jareth tapped a cigarette out of his packet and lit it with a match.
I waited until he’d inhaled, narrowing my eyes as he coughed against smoke from Fables and smoke from tobacco. My tone was sharp. “I’m not going to point out how unhealthy it is to add tar to your lungs after walking through a house fire, and I’m also not going to care that you have a few burns up your arms, because frankly, you deserve them. But I am going to ask what happened to your lighter.” I smiled thinly. “Did you drop it?”
He tensed, throwing me an a
I hadn’t been expecting him to gift up a part of his history. It made me want more.
Immediately.
Shifting a little, I opened my mouth to ask what’d happened to him. To understand how he could be twisted into something so different to what they’d twisted Kas into, only Kas beat me to it.
“You never got free...did you?” Kas balled his hands on his knees, his legs bent and caging his body.
Jareth froze. A few heavy seconds passed before he shook his head and sucked on his cigarette. “No.”
“Any of you?” Kas kept his stare on the fire, his features full of torment. “Did any of you get away?”
“Quell was the only one who managed to run.” Jareth coughed. “That I saw anyway. She might’ve been caught after.”
“After?” Kas cringed.
“After they took us.”
“Where? Where did they take you?”