Arthur thinks dazedly of Proserpine, a painting they’d studied in art history. Most Persephones were wan and tragic, drawn just as Pluto dragged them down to Hell, but this one was different. She stood alone in the underworld, weighing a pomegranate in one hand, blazing through the dark like the sun itself. Maybe it was her expression, a little sad, a little fierce. Maybe it was the color of her hair: a hot, rich red, like coals, like blood, like wild poppies.
Opal walks through the Beasts and stops inches away from Arthur. “You’re dead,” he tells her, regretfully.
She smiles her sharp, crooked smile at him. “I’m not.”
Arthur’s lungs are misbehaving, filling and emptying far too quickly. He has an urge to look down at the body of the drowned girl and represses it, because if he sees her lying dead at his feet then he will fall and not rise again.
He addresses her phantom instead. “You’re not real. You’re a dream.”
“I’m not.” A faint uncertainty crosses her features. “Or maybe we both are. I don’t know, everything’s weird down here.” Opal steps forward and takes his hand in hers. Her skin is warmer than his, which it never is, but it’s real, solid. Alive. “Remember, Arthur? You came down here to save me, like a damn fool, and I followed you, like a worse one. And I’m okay, we’re both okay.”
Arthur does remember, abruptly and clearly: The Beast bending its head, laying a heavy key in his palm. The door to Underland creaking open, pouring mist into the cellar. Striking a match and tossing it, pulling the door shut behind him. Then the stairs, then the river, then the water burning against his skin. Opal running into his arms, Opal punching him, Opal making him promise to stay alive. He remembers nodding, because he was afraid if he spoke she would hear the lie.
But she came back, and he’s still alive. He’s certain he won’t be for much longer. “You have to go,” he says urgently. “This place is dangerous, evil—”
“It’s not.” That must be a lie, but as she says the words Arthur feels them becoming a little more true. The air is warmer than it was, and the Beasts are a little smaller, a little less awful. Birdsong is rising from the trees, as if dawn is coming.
Opal runs her thumb over his knuckles, warming him. “we make this place what it is. It’s just our dreams, reflected back at us.”
Arthur stands quietly for a moment, considering. Then he laughs, harshly and not entirely sanely. “You should still run, then, while you can.” He pulls his hand away, and she lets him. “All my dreams are nightmares.”
Opal’s smile turns wry and fond. “No, they aren’t.” She points, inexplicably, at his feet.
Arthur doesn’t want to look down. But Opal is watching him with that wry, warm expression still on her face, and he discovers there is very little he wouldn’t do to keep it there. He looks down.
There are no bodies or gravestones. Where there had been nothing but frozen grass, dead and tangled, there is now a small, anxious patch of green. The jagged leaf of a dandelion is caught beneath his shoe, and even as he watches a violet lifts its bent neck above the lawn. There are flowers blooming in Underland.
“I don’t—I’m not—” Arthur isn’t sure what he doesn’t or isn’t, but Opal steps closer before he can work it out.
She reaches for his sword hand this time and unpeels his fingers from the hilt. Her touch is gentle, patient. “You spent a long time alone, fighting a war that wasn’t even yours. It got given to you, and you did your best not to give it to anyone else. You did so well, you really did.” Another lie, of course, but Arthur permits himself to imagine how good it would feel to believe it. “But it’s over now. Eleanor’s gone. The war’s over. It’s time to dream your own dreams.”
Arthur’s hands feel weightless and empty without the sword. He isn’t sure how a person usually stands, what they do with their arms. “I don’t know how,” he says, honestly.
Opal steps even closer, so that their chests nearly touch. She goes up on tiptoe to lay her jaw along his and says, “It’s alright. I’ve got you, Arthur.”
She kneels on the grass—there’s more of it now, a green wave cresting like spring over the earth—and pulls him down beside her. She sets the sword between them, scarred and ugly, and lies down beside it, curled on her side. Arthur lies down with her. Their bodies are a pair of parentheses around the silver exclamation of the sword, their faces close enough to kiss.