Mark moved before anyone else could react.

  The chainsaw-blade was in his hand—except it wasn't massive anymore. At giant size, it looked like a regular sword, proportional and deadly. He crossed the distance to the Keeper in three strides and drove the blade through the giant's mouth, pinning it shut before a sound could escape.

  The Keeper's eyes went wide. His hands came up, grasping at the blade, but Mark was already twisting, forcing the giant backward, off-balance.

  "Out," Mark said. "Now."

  Martin stared. His hand had gone to his hip—instinct—but no gun had appeared yet. "Did you just—"

  "He's not dead. Move."

  The Keeper slumped against his throne, unconscious. The blade slid free with a wet sound. No blood—just the faint shimmer of something that might have been dream-stuff leaking from the wound.

  Maggie hadn't moved. She was still standing where she'd been, eyes distant, hands trembling at her sides.

  "Maggie." Mark's voice was sharp. "We need to go. Now."

  She blinked. Looked at him. Nodded slowly.

  They ran.

  · · ·

  The corridors blurred past. Mark led, blade still drawn, checking corners with practiced efficiency. Martin followed close behind, his gun now manifested and held low. Johnny bounded alongside them in dolphin form, echolocation clicking.

  Maggie trailed at the back. Locke stayed with her, pressing against her leg every few steps.

  "Hey." Johnny had shifted back to human, matching her pace. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "You okay? You seem... different. Not good different."

  Maggie kept walking. Her eyes were fixed on something far away.

  "Maggie?"

  "I remembered everything," she whispered.

  Johnny's brow furrowed. "Remembered? Remembered what?"

  Before she could answer, Mark stopped. He turned, looking directly at her, and she realized Locke had gone still—guilty, somehow. The husky had told him.

  Of course he had. They were connected.

  Mark walked back to her. His expression was unreadable, but his voice was steady.

  "Not now," he said. "Whatever you're feeling—the pain, the anger, the grief—you need to push it down. Keep it contained. We're in hostile territory. If you lose control, if you manifest something, we're all in danger."

  Maggie's jaw tightened. "I know."

  "Do you?"

  "I said I know."

  Mark studied her for a moment. Then nodded. "We'll talk later. Focus on the mission."

  He turned and kept moving. Martin glanced back at Maggie, confusion evident on his face, but didn't ask. Not yet.

  · · ·

  The dungeon was deep beneath the castle.

  They found it by following Johnny's echolocation—he could sense the hollow spaces, the places where the stone gave way to emptiness. The giants they passed hadn't been alerted yet. Most were sleeping or wandering aimlessly, too slow to notice the group moving through the shadows.

  The cell was at the end of a long corridor. Iron bars thicker than Maggie's arm. And inside—

  Jack.

  He was small. At their giant size, he looked like a child—curled in the corner of the cell, unconscious or sleeping, dressed in rags that might once have been clothes. His face was gaunt. His hair was matted and grey.

  And his arms ended at the elbows.

  Maggie's stomach lurched. She looked away, then forced herself to look back.

  "Jeez," Martin breathed.

  Mark was already working on the lock. "He'll recover. The Dreamscape heals most things, given time. But it'll take a while."

  "What did they—" Martin started.

  "Don't ask questions you don't want answered."

  The lock clicked open. Mark pulled the cell door wide.

  Bells began to ring.

  The sound echoed through the castle—deep, resonant, urgent. Somewhere above them, voices started shouting.

  "The Keeper's awake," Martin said. His gun came up. "We need to move."

  "Maggie." Mark gestured at Jack. "Can you carry him?"

  She nodded. Stepped into the cell. Knelt beside the broken figure.

  Up close, he looked even worse. The stumps of his arms were healed over—smooth, scarred—but the damage was old. Decades old. He'd been like this for a long time.

  She gathered him in her arms. He weighed almost nothing.

  "Why did you have to keep stealing?" The words came out before she could stop them. A whisper. Barely audible. "Why didn't you stop at the gold coins? Why did you have to go back?"

  Her arms tightened. Jack's ribs creaked.

  "No more," Jack gasped, eyes flying open. "Please. No more. I'll be good. I won't take anything. Please—"

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "Maggie." Mark's hand closed around her wrist. Firm. "Let go."

  She looked down. Her arms were crushing him. She could feel his bones shifting under the pressure, could see the terror in his eyes—

  "He's not the one who killed your father."

  The words hit her like ice water. She released Jack immediately, stumbling back. The thief fell to the ground, gasping, curling into himself.

  "You're angry," Mark said. His voice was quiet but urgent. "All the pain came back at once. I understand. But Jack didn't do anything to you. He's just a thief who made bad choices and paid for them a hundred times over."

  Maggie's hands were shaking. She could still feel the pressure of his ribs against her palms.

  "If you need to hurt someone," Mark continued, "direct it at the giants. They're coming. They deserve it more than he does."

  Footsteps thundered above them. The bells kept ringing.

  Maggie looked at Mark. Then at Jack, still trembling on the ground. Then at the corridor behind them, where the first giant shadows were beginning to appear.

  Something cold settled in her chest. Not calm—fury, compressed into something dense and sharp.

  "Give him to Johnny," she said. Her voice didn't sound like her own. "I'll clear the way."

  She walked past Mark without waiting for a response. Past Martin, who was already taking aim at the approaching giants. Past Johnny, who was shifting into his largest human form to carry Jack.

  Locke fell into step beside her.

  The first giant came around the corner. Maggie didn't slow down.

  · · ·

  She didn't remember most of it.

  There was noise. A lot of noise. Gunshots—Martin's weapon barking in controlled bursts. Barking—Locke, savage and focused. The buzzing scream of Mark's chainsaw blade tearing through something large.

  And her own fists, hitting things. Breaking things. The crunch of impact, the give of flesh, the satisfying thud of bodies hitting stone.

  She remembered fragments. A giant's face, surprised, before her fist connected. Another giant, reaching for her, stopped by Martin's shots to the knee. Locke slamming into a giant's chest, jaws snapping. Johnny—massive now, whale-sized—bowling through a group like they were pins.

  And Mark, somewhere behind them, blade singing through the air whenever something got too close to Jack.

  Then they were outside. The gardens. Golden light filtering through beanstalk leaves. The sounds of pursuit fading behind them.

  Maggie stood in the middle of a flower bed, breathing hard. Her knuckles were split. Her arms ached. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten there.

  Mark appeared beside her, pulling vials from his pocket. "Drink this. It'll reverse the growth."

  She took the potion without question. The world expanded around her—or she shrank into it—until the giant flowers were giant again and the houses loomed overhead.

  They were small again. Human-sized. Jack was a normal adult now, still unconscious, still broken, cradled in Johnny's arms.

  "Johnny." Mark's voice was clipped. "Take him to the Woke settlement. They'll help him recover."

  "Wait."

  Everyone turned. Maggie was staring at Jack.

  She walked toward him slowly. Johnny shifted, uncertain, but didn't back away.

  Jack's eyes were open now. Watching her. The fear was still there—raw and primal.

  "Why?" Her voice cracked. "Why did you keep stealing? The gold coins were enough. You could have stopped. You could have been free."

  Jack flinched. "I... greed. It was greed. I saw the goose, and I wanted it. And then the harp, and I wanted that too. I couldn't stop myself." His voice dropped to a whisper. "But I regret it. Every day. Every single day for decades. I'll never steal again. I swear. Please. Just let me go."

  Maggie stared at him. Part of her wanted to believe him. He'd suffered enough. More than enough. The stumps of his arms were proof of that.

  But another part of her—the part that remembered her father bleeding out on the pavement, that remembered five prior convictions, that remembered the car crashing and her mother screaming—that part wanted to punish someone. Anyone.

  The words came out before she could think them through.

  "WHENEVER YOU STEAL—" Her voice rang out, sharp and clear, the declaration forming in her chest before she spoke it. "—YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO RUN FOR TWELVE HOURS."

  Something locked into place. A contract, binding itself to reality. She felt the drain—the same thing she'd felt in Wonderland. But this thread was different. Not to a monster or a tyrant. To a broken man. She could feel him at the other end—his despair. The connection was too close. Too personal.

  Jack's eyes went wide. He'd felt it too. Felt her.

  "Maggie." Mark's voice was cold. "What the fuck are you doing?"

  She didn't answer. She was staring at Jack, at the horror on his face, at what she'd just done to him.

  "Johnny." Mark's tone left no room for argument. "Take him. Now."

  Johnny hesitated for only a moment. Then he was gone, shifting into dolphin form, Jack clutched in a way that defied explanation, disappearing into the sky.

  Silence.

  Maggie stood there, hands at her sides, something wet on her face. She reached up. Tears. When had she started crying?

  Martin moved first. He approached her slowly, the way you'd approach a wounded animal, and guided her away from Mark, away from the flowers, toward a bench at the edge of the garden.

  "Sit," he said quietly. "Just sit."

  She sat. He sat beside her.

  For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Maggie stared at her hands—the split knuckles, the blood that was already fading as the Dreamscape healed her. She could still feel Jack's ribs against her palms. Could still hear him begging.

  "I arrested a lot of people," Martin said eventually. His voice was calm. Conversational. "Thirty-two years. You see things. The worst of people. The worst of what people do to each other."

  Maggie didn't respond.

  "The hardest cases were always the families. Victims' families. They'd come to the station, or to court, and they'd look at the person who hurt them and you could see it in their eyes. The rage. The grief. The need to make it make sense." He paused. "It never makes sense."

  "He had five chances." Maggie's voice came out raw. "Five convictions. And they let him out every time. And then he killed my father."

  "I know."

  "And then—" She stopped. Swallowed. "There was an accident. After. My mom was driving, and we were fighting. She kept saying I needed to move on, that Dad would have wanted me to be happy, and I—" Her voice broke. "I told her she didn't care. That she was trying to forget him. We were screaming at each other, and she didn't see the truck, and—"

  The words died in her throat.

  Martin didn't push. He just sat there, solid and present, while Maggie's breathing hitched and her shoulders shook.

  "It was my fault," she whispered. "I distracted her. If I hadn't been yelling—"

  "No." Martin's voice was firm. "That's not how it works. Accidents are accidents. You were grieving. She was grieving. Neither of you were thinking straight."

  "But I—"

  "No," he repeated. "You were a kid who lost her father. You were allowed to be angry. You were allowed to not be okay." He paused. "Is she—do you know if she's okay? Your mother?"

  "I don't know." The admission hurt more than anything else. "I don't know if she's alive. I just remember the crash, and then—" She gestured vaguely at the world around them. "Here."

  Martin put his arm around her shoulders. Not tight—just there. An anchor.

  "You didn't kill her," he said. "You were a passenger. Whatever happened, it wasn't your fault."

  "But I was there. I could have—"

  "No." His voice was firm. "You couldn't have done anything. You were in a car accident. That's trauma, not guilt."

  Maggie leaned into him. The tears came harder now—ugly, ragged sobs that she couldn't control. Martin held her through it, steady and quiet, asking nothing.

  Eventually, the sobs faded. Maggie's breathing evened out. She pulled back, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

  "Sorry," she muttered.

  "Don't be." Martin's voice was gentle. "You needed that."

  They sat in silence for another minute. Then Martin shifted, looking out at the gardens.

  "You know what might help?"

  "What?"

  "Going somewhere else. A different story. Something that isn't—" He gestured at the beanstalks, the giant houses, everything. "—this."

  Maggie considered it. The thought of staying here, where she'd almost killed an innocent man, where she'd cursed him for crimes that weren't his—

  "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, that might be good."

  She stood. Her legs were shaky, but they held. Martin rose with her, and together they walked back toward Mark.

  He was waiting for them, Locke at his side. His expression was guarded as he looked at Maggie—not hostile, but assessing. Measuring.

  He didn't ask if she was okay.

  "Martin suggested we go somewhere else," Maggie said. Her voice was steadier now. "A different story."

  Mark nodded slowly. "Probably for the best." His eyes didn't leave hers. "But let's try something that won't trigger anything."

  It could have been cruel. It wasn't. Just honest.

  "Good luck with that," Maggie said.

  Mark turned, starting toward where they'd left the trailer. "Yeah. That's what I'm afraid of."