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"The Between?" I repeated.

"And the Guardian can't cross," Carol went on, "because the Guardian is the one who holds the way open."

I felt that land somewhere different than everything else had.

The Guardian stands between Below, and the Queen wasn't just a pretty line carved on an old tomb lid. It was literal. The Queen went through. The Witch went through. The Guardian stayed at the threshold and anchored the whole passage. The Guardian kept the door from closing behind them.

Kai wasn't being left out because he mattered less. He was the reason I'd be able to come back at all.

I watched that same realization as it moved across his face, and for a second neither of us said anything.

Carol kept reading, and the rest of it came out in pieces, each one worse than the last. Margaret's Guardian had held the passage open while she and the ancient Baba Yaga went through. And while he stood there, alone, holding the door– the One Below had attacked him.

He'd fallen. And when he fell, the passage collapsed.

"Wait," I said.

Everybody looked at me.

"If the Guardian died and the passage closed…" I looked at Carol. "How did Margaret get back?"

Carol went very quiet. She searched. Turned pages. Turned more pages.

"I don't think she did."

The bottom fell out of the room.

That was it. That was the empty tomb, right there, laid out plain as day. Not a burial place at all. A memorial for a woman who'd walked into the Between, carrying a crown, and simply never walked back out.

No wonder history had gotten it so wrong. Nobody alive had known what actually happened. And the one Baba Yaga who had known had refused to say a single word about it, all the way to her own grave.

I felt something settle into place in my chest, hard and certain.

"Okay. New rule," I announced.

"Only one?" Kai asked.

"Don't push me."

I looked around at all of them– Kai, Zelda, Barney, Carol, and four dogs who'd all gone strangely quiet. "We are not repeating Margaret's plan."

"She saved everyone," Barney said.

"And lost her Guardian and herself." I let that sit for a second. "I'm saving everyone and coming home with my man."

Nobody argued with that either.

Carol led us deeper into the Vault, past shelves I didn't look at too closely, straight toward the door Chewy had been eyeing with deep suspicion five minutes earlier– the one with the growl behind it.

"I knew we shouldn't open that," Chewy said.

"You literally asked if you could touch everything," I grumbled at the little chocolate furball I loved no matter how obstinate he was.

"I've grown."

"In six minutes?" Arthur asked.

"Trauma changes a person."