by M. A. Larson
“Grab that branch. I’ll not let her freeze to death,” said Basil. He and Evie lashed together a crude stretcher from branches and vines while Maggie watched the shadows for the witch. Once they had loaded her on, he took the front and Maggie took the back.
“Good luck,” said Evie.
“What do you mean? You can’t—”
“We’ll never make it back with a witch on us. I’ll be all right.”
Maggie’s head shook slowly from side to side. Her mouth was open, but no words came out.
“Come on, we’ve got to go!” said Basil.
“Be careful,” said Maggie. Evie nodded, and her friends moved out.
Once they were gone, she assessed her environment and her options. The witch had gone silent. She could still be lurking or she might have followed the others, which would be disastrous. There was no obvious cover anywhere, just an endless fortress of ancient wood. She needed some sort of advantage.
A demonic cackle rang out, and her options were instantly reduced to one: escape.
The jagged black stone loomed above. She scrambled up the side with the climbing techniques the dragons had taught her and moved swiftly to the top. The view wasn’t as vast as she’d hoped, but there was something out there amidst the pale green spikes of the treetops. Something that at once gave her hope and made her blood run cold with fear. Something that was entirely out of place in the middle of the forest, and yet had been waiting there centuries for this moment to arrive.
A crumbling tower.
THE GRANITE TOWER sprouted from a muddy knoll, thick and draped in star-leafed ivy. The battlement crowning the octagonal walls, well over seventy feet above, was badly deteriorated. Great hunks of stone lay strewn across the forest bed next to moss-filled craters. Twisted, leafy vines reached through cracks in the mortar as the forest slowly reclaimed what man had built.
Black magic crackled from the trees. Evie dove, rolling behind one of the broken stones. Behind her, the dark spell splattered against the earth. She sprinted through the tower’s arch and took the spiral stairs three at a time, nearly choking on the moldy air in the shaft. At the top, dim daylight awaited. She scanned the tower roof for somewhere to hide. Ivy curled over the battlement like spider’s legs. One entire corner of the roof had fallen away, leaving a yawning hole where a rogue pine tree poked out. Huge bricks of granite lay scattered across the roof, green with moss and lichens. Everything was crumbling.
She spotted a section of wall that had tumbled into a natural arch and ran for it. But before she could climb inside, a voice came, soft and calm.
“Hello, Nicolina.”
She wheeled to find Countess Hardcastle standing near the top of the stairs. “Mother! We’ve got to hide, there’s a witch out there—”
“This tower is all that remains of Pinewall.” She looked out over a forest being swallowed by fog. “The keeps, the castle . . . all gone, returned to the earth.”
“What?”
“A once mighty kingdom reduced to a single heap of stone.”
Evie didn’t move. Her eyes tracked Hardcastle as she ran an elegant hand along the ruins of the battlement.
“Things crumble when witches come. It’s nicer this way, don’t you think? Peaceful . . . quiet . . . lifeless.”
And you’re not what you seemed to be, either. “The staff are out there. They’re watching.”
“Are they? Or is it, perhaps, a Pennyroyal benefactor, a trusted friend of Princess Beatrice herself, who is looking after this part of the forest?”
Evie’s heart began to race. No help would be coming. Her eyes darted across the roof looking for any sort of advantage.
“I must say, Nicolina, I never expected this. I offered you land, title, family, all the gold you could ever want. And you threw it right back in my face. We could have avoided all of this so easily.”
“My name is Evie.”
Hardcastle studied her, incredulous. “You really don’t know who you are. And that bloody pie was my first attempt at a memory curse. It seems I have a gift.”
The wind howled, throwing rain like darts of ice.
“How did you manage to stay alive that day? I watched you both eat the pie. Sent you off to such an active hunting ground, where your father died just as he was meant to. And yet . . . here you are.”
“Why?” Nausea and panic swirled inside her, the same uncoiling sensation in her stomach that she had had on Hardcastle’s terrace when she learned the truth about her family. And now that truth seemed to be crumbling as well.
“Malora needed royal blood to get into the Academy. Your royal blood.”
Evie blinked away the rain, struggling to understand. “King Callahan was . . . my father?”
Hardcastle paced, edging ever so slightly toward Evie, like a snake approaching a frog. Something about her had changed. The features that had always seemed so rigid and smooth, the subtle smile that contained so many secrets, had begun to slacken. She looked haggard, as though her body itself were deteriorating.
“And everything I had so carefully planned was rendered meaningless when the Queen decided to throw out centuries of tradition and allow the lowborn to enlist.”
“Malora is your daughter. You married my father so you could pass her off as me. As the daughter of the king. It was the only way to get her into the Academy—”
“Mother?” Malora stepped onto the rooftop, her slate eyes sharp and edgy. “What’s going on?”
“Malora! What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know . . . Something told me to come . . .” Her graceful features curled into a mask of fear. “What’s going on?”
“She’s a witch—”
“SHUT UP!” roared Hardcastle. Her pale skin mottled gray, a flash of the horror that lay beneath her facade. Evie dove behind a stone and slowly peered out.
“What’s she talking about?” howled Malora. “Mother, why would she say that?”
She doesn’t know, Evie realized. She doesn’t know what she is.
“I WANT TO KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON!”
“Malora, please—”
“ARE YOU A WITCH?”
“Yes, of course, and so are you!”
Malora let out a forlorn wail. It echoed through the rain like the last howl of a dog, alone and dying.
“This was to be our year, my darling! All our careful planning come to bloom . . . but then she turned up. And even my wolves couldn’t kill her.”
Evie clutched the dragon scale so tightly her knuckles went white. It was Hardcastle, not Malora, who had tried to kill her and Remington that night. Malora was guilty of nothing more than being born badly.
“The Sisters . . . Calivigne . . . all of us have been watching you since you first crawled out of the cauldron. Don’t you see? You are our great hope! It’s been inside you all along, waiting to come out!”
Malora reeled in agony. She couldn’t catch her breath, and her skin had gone ghostly white.
“You will be the ultimate warrior of fear trained as the ultimate warrior of love! A hero with a heart as black as night! A Princess-Witch!”
Malora’s devastation was so pure and raw that Evie’s heart burned for her. Nothing that had happened—not the fight with Anisette, not the destruction of the gown, not even the wolf attack—was Malora’s fault. She was a witch who had been tricked into thinking she would be a princess, and the result was a girl who never felt comfortable in her own skin. Where she knew she should have felt kindness and compassion, she found only anger and confusion and turmoil.
She lurched free of her mother’s hands and staggered back against the battlement. Evie saw what was happening and bolted from her cover. She threw a shoulder into Hardcastle, knocking her over a pile of stones, then lunged for Malora just as she pitched back over the wall.
Her fingers locked around her
sister’s hand, and the weight jerked her into the stone. She tried to reach down with her other hand, but if she let go of the wall they would both fall. Under the relentless rain, Malora was only moments away from plummeting to her death.
“Please . . . just let me go . . .” She dangled limply from Evie’s hand, the rind left rotting after the fruit has been eaten. There was nothing left in her eyes. No fight, no life, no hope.
“Malora, listen . . . I spent my whole life believing I was something I’m not. Never feeling good enough. Never understanding why. I know what you’re going through because that’s exactly what she did to you.”
Malora’s delicate hand slipped another inch, down to the knuckles. Tears streamed from her eyes. “It’s not fair . . .”
Evie reached for a tangle of vine growing up from a crack in the stone. She tore some loose and dropped it over the side.
“Take the ivy! TAKE IT NOW—”
And her hand was empty. Malora flailed for the vine as she plunged down the tower. She grabbed a fistful and slammed into the stone, then began to swing wildly. The tender green vine sawed against the granite.
“Hold on!” Evie pulled the ivy up hand over hand, carefully, before it could snap. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned to see . . .
A witch. It was Hardcastle, but with none of her cold elegance. The witch’s bones were sharper, and covered in a fine film of pale, blistered skin. Her yellow eyes were scribbled with blood vessels. A small bloom of black smoke swirled in front of her chest.
“If you do this, you’ll kill her, too. Not just me,” said Evie.
“I have my orders as well. Calivigne suspects you to be the Warrior Princess. And you are to die.”
Evie looked down at Malora, dangling like prey in a net. Her heart ached for the girl who had once been both her enemy and her sister. Tears began to fall, not for her own death, but for the death of the girl hanging from the wall, so alone and shattered apart inside.
“Then do it. I won’t let her go.”
Hardcastle’s arms, bone-thin and streaked with veins, rose. Her lips cracked open into a sinister grin as her black magic began to billow and churn. Suddenly, the spell blasted forth, tearing the air apart with a deafening ripple . . .
But nothing happened. Evie opened her eyes and saw tendrils of smoky black magic splashing away, as though a wall stood between them that neither could see. It’s like a shield protecting me . . . but not only me—Malora as well. It is compassion.
“I won’t let you hurt her anymore!” shouted Evie. She pulled up the vine until Malora’s hand appeared in the crenel. Hardcastle shrieked in frustration as her stream of black magic suddenly splattered to the floor.
“How dare you use my own daughter against me!”
Evie hauled Malora onto the roof and they both collapsed against the wall. She pushed the long black hair out of her stepsister’s face. “Malora . . .”
“Don’t touch me!” She shoved Evie away and sprang to her feet, then raced into the mouth of the staircase and disappeared down the tower.
“So,” said Hardcastle, “found our compassion, have we? No matter. You’re still the same coward you were as a child . . .”
She trailed off as a long creak sounded deep in the forest, followed by the sudden snap of wood. Ancient trees slammed to the earth with dull explosions, each louder and closer than the last. Evie scrambled behind a block of stone just as a colossal talonwood pine pounded into the tower, knocking Hardcastle onto her back. She clung to her stone, worried that the impact of the falling tree might finally topple the last remnant of Pinewall. As the talonwood crashed to the ground, something out there among the treetops caught her eye. The white-green head of a dragon.
“Father . . .” He was alive. After all this time, alive.
Hardcastle didn’t move. Her yellow eyes darted between the dragon’s head looming over the battlement and Evie, who had emerged from behind the stone.
“Father . . .” She stepped toward him. “But you’re dead . . .”
“How can I explain what’s happened?” growled the dragon. “What I’ve done?” Even as rain streamed down his scales, his voice remained a scorched rumble. “It was I who killed the king that day, but only to protect my daughter from his blade. As he sought to protect you from me.”
Evie’s knees quaked as she neared the wall. This was her father, of that there could be no doubt. Still, something wasn’t right. I don’t care, she thought. I don’t care, because he’s here and I thought I’d never see him again.
“When your sister brought you back to the cave . . . I’ve never felt such guilt. I made a vow to your father, the man who loved his daughter as much as I loved mine, that I’d look after you as best I could.”
Go to him, she thought, but still she didn’t move. Go to your father. Her hands began to tremble uncontrollably. Her mind and heart knew what they wanted, but some mysterious instinct kept her away.
“Come, my daughter. Come back to your home.”
Ghostly words trickled up from the hidden recesses of Evie’s memory in the soft voice of Princess Hazelbranch: “Mirrors show what our eyes can’t see. Mirrors reveal the truth.”
Her hand shot to her waist, to the small lump in the pocket of her dress. She fished out the Pennyroyal compact and clicked open the lid. With shaking fingers, she angled the mirror toward her father . . .
And he wasn’t there. Nor was the stone floor stretching out to meet him. She began to sob, crushed by the awful truth of her father’s return. He was nothing more than a witch’s trick. One step more and she would plunge off the side of the tower to her death.
“I’m sorry, Father . . . I know you’re not real, but I believe your words are.”
His eyes softened with heartache and love, only for a moment, and then he disintegrated into the roiling sky like volcanic ash.
“You’ve been studying,” came Hardcastle’s silky voice. Evie wheeled to see her floating above the stone, black smoke wafting once again. “But a student is not a princess. Nor a warrior.”
Evie staggered against the wall as panic shot up from her stomach. She stared into the depths of Hardcastle’s fluttering black spell. Without Malora there, her fear choked away her compassion like weeds in a garden. And with nothing else to protect her, no courage to be found, she had only the paralyzing knowledge that she would now die.
“Evie!” Remington emerged onto the roof, his steel drawn. He had come to save her. But a moment after having that thought, the horrible dragon’s blood vision flashed into her mind. The crumbling tower. The rain. The witch floating just off the ground. The anguish on his face as he was turned to stone . . .
“GO BACK! GO BACK!” she screamed.
He charged at Hardcastle, sword raised. The air cleaved with a horrendous crackle as a black lance of liquid magic slammed into Remington’s chest.
“NO!”
His doublet bubbled away where the magic struck him, and his face broke into a silent scream. Every muscle in his body clenched as tight as stone. At his chest, the magic began to create a patch of slate gray on his skin.
“REMINGTON!”
“And after I’ve done him, I’ll have your heart,” said Hardcastle with a sneer.
A cackle rose from the sodden forest below. Hardcastle stopped her attack, and Remington dropped to the floor. The laughter came again, a haunted sound filled with anguish and malice.
“Who’s there?” called Hardcastle. And an image of perfect horror floated gently across the battlement. It was Malora, eyes glowing yellow, a ghoulish shell of what she had once been. Her flawless ivory skin now shriveled tight against her skull, and her lustrous black hair flapped in the wind like a raven’s wing.
“My darling . . . you’re beautiful!”
Malora fixed her eyes, the bloody yellow of a fertilized yolk, squarely on her steps
ister, and the sensation took Evie’s breath away. Fear iced over her heart as Malora peered inside of her.
“This is what has been in you all along!” said Hardcastle. “This is who you were always meant to be!”
Malora still didn’t speak. Her lips spread into a smile so terrifying it drove Evie to her knees.
“Go ahead, my sweet daughter. Let them be your first.”
The tattered blue linen of an Ironbone Company uniform thrashed against Malora’s body as a gust of wind swept across the tower. Black smoke began to billow and churn before her chest. She held her arms out as though commanding the furious clouds to do her bidding, and she launched a magic of purest evil.
It slammed into Hardcastle’s chest. She soared across the roof and crashed into the battlement.
Evie looked up at Malora, stunned.
“That’s the one time I’ll help you,” said the witch. “And it’s only because you were kind to me.”
Her feet touched the stone and she went to Remington’s motionless body. She knelt next to him, studying the agony on his face, and her lips began to tremble.
“You should have been mine . . .” She glared at Evie with anger and pain. “He should have been mine!” She ran her bony fingers tenderly down his cheek. Then, with the devastating realization that her life as she knew it was over, now and forever, she rose and walked calmly to the wall.
Evie ran to Remington. She pressed a finger to his neck and felt the sweet bounce of life. Still alive . . . He’s still alive . . .
“Thank you, Malora,” she called. “Thank you.”
Malora stood atop the battlement, a muddle of fury and hatred and sympathy and love. She was beautiful, even in her torment. Even as a witch. “She made me forget everything, but I remember it now. I wasn’t ill on your birthday. I was upstairs crying in my bed because she’d locked me in. I wanted to go with you on that picnic and she wouldn’t let me.” The sisters stared at each other for a moment, neither sure what to say. Then Malora dove from the wall and vanished into the desolation of the enchanted forest.
Evie turned to Hardcastle, who leered back with yellow eyes. The woman she had thought was her mother looked small, a figure to be pitied. When she had left the cave that night, she had known nothing of the world. Now, atop this crumbling tower, she understood the true essence of a witch. A witch was the absence of everything that made a princess special. A witch could create penetrating fear with a glance, could summon darkest magic, could even turn the living flesh of the innocent to stone, but she could never muster what Evie felt building inside her at that very moment.