Page 127 of The Toymaker's Son

I stumbled to my feet and reached for the nearby rotted armchair. All around, Jacapo’s World of Toys had become a shadow of its former glory, or rather, the glory I’d known it to be. In this world, it had been closed long ago, its toys broken by vandals, abandoned, left to rot—

I spotted a leg clad in black fabric sticking out from beneath a broken display cabinet.

“Dev!” I rushed forward and heaved the cabinet off him.

The broken toy beneath had buttons for eyes and stitching for lips. His chestnut hair was made from strips of frayed silk. His limbs pointed at awkward angles, and I couldn’t think it, didn’t want to see it—but it was too late.

With a cry, I jerked away.

My lungs seized and my heart did too. Gods, no. I clutched at my chest. I couldn’t look. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t… Devere.

Slowly, I raised my gaze up the length of the doll’s body. He’d been carved from wood and clad in the finest of clothes—once, long ago. But over the years, time had taken its toll, eaten away, rotted him down. Broken him.

“No.” I dropped to my knees. My tears splashed onto the dust covering his coat. I leaned over him and raised my gaze to his face once more. I knew grief then, like the kind Jacapo must have known when he’d realized he was alone, because dreams could not survive the real world.

“Dev?” I sobbed, hoping beyond hope that he’d wake up, like I’d woken up. But his button eyes would never see, and his stitched mouth would never smile. Devere was just another toy in a store that had once been filled with them, but was now filled with ghosts.

“My, my, look what you’ve done.”

The horror, rage, fear, and grief built to a point, then snapped—I tore off the floor and lunged at Adair with a roar that erupted from my very soul. My hands locked around his throat, and for a few breathless seconds, I had him. I’d kill him. Choke him. Rip out his damn heart so he hurt as much as I did.

Adair tore me off him, and after a sudden rush of weightlessness, I slammed into an old cabinet and tumbled to the floor among broken bits of toys.

“Silly mortal. I did warn you.”

It hurt. Everything hurt. My arm hurt from the wolves, my side from the fall, but most of all, my soul hurt, shredded with grief.

Adair crouched over Devere. He cupped the doll’s face, lolling his head over.

“Don’t touch him!” I screamed.

“This was not the ending you’d hoped for. But what did you think would happen? You are real, Valentine. Devere is not. Your father brought you here as a child, and you saw this doll. Later, you dreamed him to life, like you dreamed Hush in the dark to keep you company. All of it is the fruit of a damaged mind, a fruit I picked. From that first kiss until now, this was always how it would end.”

I gulped a sob and stood, trembling in fury. “He was more real than you’ll ever be. Bring him back. You can. You have that power.”

Adair arched an eyebrow. “As you said, Valentine, I cannot make the unreal real. I weave dreams.”

“This isn’t—” A sob choked me off. “This isn’t him.”

“He gave his life to end the dream so you might have one.”

“He… what?” I blinked. My vision swam.

“He knew this was how it would end. For you to live, he had to die.” Adair straightened and sighed. “I was wrong. He did know love. What an unnecessary waste. I’d have made him a thousand dreams. We would have had forever together.”

Forever as Adair’s slave was no life at all. Devere had despised him, and it was far from over. I scanned the shop, glancing over rusted trains that hadn’t clattered along tracks in decades, and my gaze fell to the counter.Ring for assistance,the little bell said. Strange, how that little bell still shone, whereas everything around it had faded under decades of dust and dirt.

Ring for assistance.

I could see Devere there, the memory of him, reading his book behind the counter, deliberately ignoring me. The clocks had been making a racket.

“They must chime all day and night.”

“That is generally what clocks do,”he’d replied.

Adair was talking, but I was done listening. I maneuvered around the fallen toys and rotted floorboards and stepped behind the counter, and there was the book.

The Wonder & Wickedness of the Fae.

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