The house might have been gone, completely destroyed, until there was no sign that it ever existed, but the outside world, the one that hadn't betrayed me, was still alive and well.
The moat still shimmered under the morning sun, calm and unbothered, as if it had just been waiting for this to happen all along.
Tink sat at the edge of it, one leg in the water, tossing pebbles like skipping stones. Snowflake dozed beside him, tail curled around a patch of daisies that somehow hadn't burned. The two of them were sunbathing like it was any other day.
The bridge still stood.
The heads on the shelf were still intact.
And the cage, the one holding the heart Dimitri had given me when they had all disappeared that night, still beat gently in the windless air.
Like I said, what belonged to me would always be mine.
