Page 407 of Once Upon a Fable

It was too valuable to be left behind.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kas coughed. “You need to get outside. I can’t risk you getting hurt. I’ll come back in and continue fighting—”

“We fight together.” I let him go, racing to my backpack by the desk. Slinging the heavy weight onto my back, I shrugged into it and secured the straps. “Let’s go.”

Kas blinked as if he couldn’t understand if I was leaving him. He stumbled to the side, tapping his temple as if his concussion had chosenthis exact moment to make him fall unconscious.

“No. Don’t you dare!” I screamed, grabbing his hand and yanking him into a fast stumble. “You can pass out when we’re outside. Focus on me, Kas. Only me.”

He groaned and swayed, but his hand latched onto mine, fierce and awake. We tripped from the library into the foyer, running for the front door.

Smoke had found us, steadily filling the opulent foyer with haze and death.

I coughed and rubbed my eyes as they stung. My backpack bounced on my spine, and Kas tripped to one knee. He grabbed his head with his left hand, groaning in agony.

“Get up!” I dragged him forward.

I’d drag him all the way outside if I had to.

But he nodded and hauled himself to his feet, once again stumbling like a drunkard.

“Leaving so soon?” Jareth’s voice fell from above us, wrenching us to a halt.

Kas spun, and I followed, our eyes narrowed against the smoke, peering through the gray haze to Jareth.

He stood at the top of the stairs, leading toward the guest bedrooms. The rooms that Kas had kept meticulously tidy and clean for decades, immortalizing a mansion of monsters.

In his hands were two other liquor bottles. One dark whiskey and the other white rum.

Kas swallowed a howl. “Don’t. Don’t fucking do it.”

“You’ll thank me one day.” Jareth grinned. “Just enjoy it, brother. Enjoy watching it burn.” With a sweeping bow and icy laugh, he upended the bottles and strolled backward down the corridor, pouring a line of fuel into the expensive, decadent carpet.

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.