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Beside it, as spotless and untouched as the service bell, lay Devere’s pistol. The very same pistol he’d brandished at me.
Adair looked up, saw me behind the counter, spotted the shining bell, and lunged.
I grabbed the gun, cocked the hammer, aimed, and looked into the fae’s eyes as he froze at the end of the sights.
Iron rounds. A pistol to the heart or head. Devere had known this day would come. He’d given me the knowledge to kill Adair.
Adair’s eyes widened.
“You don’t deserve forever.”
I lowered my aim, pointing it over his heart, and fired. The gun boomed, and the recoil jolted down my arm into my shoulder, jerking me back. Adair reeled, and as though time had slowed down, I saw precisely how a patch of blood bloomed on his chest and how his legs crumpled under him.
He lay sprawled on the floor, not breathing, eyes open. As cold and empty as the dolls he’d made.
I clutched the pistol close to my chest.
I expected Adair to move, to get up again, to turn the world inside out. But nothing changed. I stood in the midst of an old toy store, its toys and warmth long gone.
I couldn’t do this alone. Not again. I didn’t have it in me.
Could I go back? Was there a way to find Devere again?
The simple wooden clock still ticked, but nothing happened when I picked it up. Magic wasn’t coming to save us this time, because in the real world, magic didn’t exist, and neither did Devere.
I dropped to my knees beside the doll and brushed a few silk strands from the doll’s blank wooden face. What a fool I’d been to think love was enough. I’d been too long trapped in dreams, where the impossible came true. Reality and dreams could never mix.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I would have shown you the world.” I touched his chest, seeking the tick-tock of his heart, but it was cold and silent. “I would have lived with you in dreams.” I cupped his face and stroked his cheek. The doll Jacapo had made to replace a lost son, and my one true love. It was absurd. It was fantasy and madness tangled together, but it was also love. I’d had it, and I’d lost it. But to have had it at all was a wonder in itself.
“It is I who does not deserve you,” I told him, then closed my eyes and placed a final kiss on his thread-lips. “Be free, Devere. Wherever you are.”
I clambered from the shop and stumbled back down the quiet street. Minerva’s people slept in their homes, dreaming dreams, a little safer now that Adair was dead. There were things to be done. I should alert the authorities, tell the police… Elisabeth’s and Adair’s bodies would need to be recovered, although I had no idea how to explain any of it.
Tomorrow. I’d report it all tomorrow.
At home, I placed the pistol on the bedside table, stripped off my filthy clothes, washed while lost in thought, and fell into bed. When I closed my eyes, would Devere be waiting?
I did not want to dream again if he wasn’t in them.
It seemed wrong, that someone so full of life would never have one.
I turned my head on the pillow and eyed the pistol.
Tomorrow. I’d face the harsh reality tomorrow. Tonight, all I wanted was one more dream of the toymaker’s son so I might say goodbye.
* * *
I woke the next morning to brilliant sunshine and the clatter of carriages down Minerva’s streets.
I dressed mechanically, without thought, and wandered back up Minerva’s main street.
I’d learned through the many go-arounds and multiple lives—at least those which I remembered—that it was often when you believed all was lost, when you were on your last breath or you’d uttered your final prayer to whatever god you believed in, that true magic revealed itself. A magic that resisted science. Real magic.
When I walked up the main street and turned the corner to find the toy store was as vibrant and alive as it had been in my dreams, true magic was the only explanation.
My steps slowed, and my stomach dropped. Was this another illusion? Another dream? No, the sunlight, the noise, the people, the smells, they were all too real to be a dream. I approached the storefront and smiled at the boy with his father peering in the window. Real or not, it felt right. The World of Toys belonged here in Minerva.
The child bounded through the door, towing his father behind him. I tentatively followed, catching the door before it could strike the tinkling bell. Customers drifted about the bright displays. The fire wasn’t lit, but it didn’t need to be. The shop was warm enough from the sunlight pouring in through its vast windows.
