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"Absolutely."

But underneath the joke, my stomach had dropped clean through the swamp floor, because if the Guardian was part of whatever ritual Margaret and her mystery Witch had performed all those years ago, then the Guardian shall fall had just gone from an omen I could ignore to a sentence with Kai's name written all over it.

And I was not having that. Not even a little. Not ever.

Barney, predictably, recovered his voice first. "We should fall back. Strengthen the wards, regroup, figure out…"

"Stronger concealment," Zelda said, already halfway into planning mode. "I can layer a new Spell by tonight if…"

"No," I snapped.

Everyone stopped.

I felt it the second I said it — the way the whole clearing seemed to shift, like the swamp itself was waiting to see if I meant it.

Oh, I meant it.

"I'm done hiding."

"Martha…"

"She already found me, Barney. Four months of concealment Spells and combat drills and blank pages, and she found me anyway, the second it mattered." I looked around at all of them — Kai, muddy and solid beside me; Barney, journal shaking in his hands; Zelda, silver residue still clinging to her fingers. " I'm done sitting in this swamp waiting for a dead woman, an underground woman, a prophetic notebook, Fate—with her awesome boobs and rainbow hair—or anybody else to tell me what happens next."

Nobody interrupted.

"Margaret closed that Door. Margaret's tomb is under Hoopingarner House. That's where Zelda heard the voice." I took a breath, and for the first time in four months, it didn't feel like I was waiting for permission to let it out. "So that's where we're going."

Kai smiled.

Not the reckless, adrenaline-soaked grin he wore after a good fight. Something quieter than that. Something that told me he wasn't smiling because any of this was safe.

He was smiling because for the first time since this whole nightmare started, I wasn't reacting to somebody else's plan.

I was making one.

Barney opened his mouth — to object, probably, out of pure habit — and then stopped cold, staring down at the journal as if it had bitten him.

"Barney?"

He didn't answer. A page near the front had started to change. Not new ink crawling across blank paper the way it had before.

Old ink. Words that looked like they'd been sitting on that page for decades, quietly hidden, now surfacing like something invisible had finally decided to stop covering them up.

He read it once. Then again, lips moving silently the second time through. Whatever color he'd had left in his face after the last hour drained clean out of it.

"What?" I demanded without a speck of remorse.

He turned the journal around.

There, in handwriting older and shakier than the rest, in ink that looked like it had waited fifty years to be seen, it said:

MARGARET DID NOT REFUSE THE CROWN.

Nobody moved.

New words rose beneath it, slow and certain, like the journal had been saving the worst for last.

SHE USED IT TO CLOSE THE DOOR.