by Shelby Bach
All of our friends froze. You would have thought an enchantment had turned them into stone.
Chase drew himself up to his full height and scowled, defiant, but he didn’t fool me. He stilled his wings with visible effort—a last-ditch attempt to make them disappear.
Rapunzel glided around the couch and the dropped jaws of all the kids sitting there. She paused just long enough to shoot me a look that clearly said, Are you coming? Then she began to cross the fifty yards that divided us from the Fey.
I went with her, even though I didn’t exactly remember telling my legs to move.
The Fey soldiers noticed. The one in green armor gave a shout. The rest of his comrades fell into line beside him. Behind them, some older nobles were leaning against the wall, half-collapsed with exhaustion. The knights couldn’t seriously think we were going to attack. Maybe they remembered me from that time I chewed out Prince Fael.
“Welcome to Ever After School, Fey of the Unseelie Court.” Rapunzel swept out her skirts in a swift but unmistakable curtsy. “We offer you sanctuary.”
Then she glanced at me. I gave it a try. My curtsy was wobbly and awkward, but it was the first curtsy I’d ever tried. “Welcome,” I echoed, glancing at Chase.
His eyes locked with mine. He hasn’t lost that trapped, defiant look or his wings. All I really wanted was to tell him how glad I was that he was all right and how much he’d scared us. I wouldn’t mind a hug, either, but that would have to wait until we were sure nobody would try to fight anyone else.
The newcomers weren’t expecting curtsys. The knight in green armor narrowed his eyes. I think he suspected a trick. A noble in the back straightened up. He was the oldest Fey I’d ever seen—with steel gray hair and tiny lines around his eyes. He nodded deeply to Rapunzel.
“We thank you,” he said, “and we accept.”
Some of the tension went out of the Fey, Rapunzel, and especially Chase.
Rapunzel held up the ointment. “I am one of the nurses. Which one of you bears the worst wound?”
The old Fey gestured to someone on his right, and Rapunzel hurried over. The knight in green armor didn’t look super happy about it.
I stepped toward Chase.
The relief of seeing him safe spread through me slowly. It was too hard to believe he’d come out fine. The Snow Queen’s attack on the Fey courts had been almost twenty-four hours ago. Hours of worry had built up inside me, but they empited out as I looked him over. His left forearm was one big bruise. Besides that, he was okay. He was alive. He was safe.
I couldn’t speak for a second, and I think he knew.
“Hey,” he said, very gently.
Lady Aspenwind curtsied to me. Her hands left dark smears on her skirts. “A pleasure to see you again. My son tells me it is your birthday. Please give your mother my congratulations.”
I never got a chance to answer that.
“You lying idiot!” Kenneth shouted behind us. “You told me anyone could jump as high as you. You never told me you had wings.”
The triplets whooped.
We only had a few seconds. Our friends were going to mob us, demanding answers.
I leaned in. “They’re orange. Reddish in the middle, tangerine at the edges. Kind of like leaves in fall. It’s a good look for you, actually.”
“Right. Because that’s what I’m worried about.” But his mouth twitched, and he flapped his wings once slowly, keeping them around. That was good enough for me.
Ben reached us first. “I knew you liked to make an entrance, but you’ve just taken it to new heights.”
“Dude, all the flying jokes you could crack, and you went for that? I must have really shocked you.” Chase’s grin grew even wider when the triplets caught up.
“You can fly, right?” said Conner.
“Duh,” said Kevin. “Wings aren’t just for show.”
“But you can do magic, too, can’t you?” Kyle asked.
I knew Adelaide was happy to see him, but she didn’t look like it. She shook her long hair back and scowled, arms crossed. “Rory knew, and I didn’t?”
She probably wasn’t the only one who’d had that thought. I looked around for Lena.
The last member of our Triumvirate was all the way across the courtyard in front of the Director’s amethyst door. She must have followed my advice and went for help. When the Director charged toward us, Lena trailed behind her slowly, hanging back.
She wasn’t okay.
“I need to go check on Lena,” I told Chase.
He followed my gaze and spotted her, then the Director. “I’ll catch up when I can.”
I slithered through the crowd, letting the Director pass me, and reached Lena. “Want to go talk somewhere?” I asked. I waited for the accusations to start, but Lena just nodded. She had that intense, determined look she got when she was trying to figure out a tricky invention.
We went to her house. She handed me her keys so I could unlock the door, and we shuffled inside. I waved hello to George and Miriam watching a movie on the couch. Lena just headed up the stairs to her room.
By the time I got there, she was sitting on her bed. She’d worked most of it out.
“Chase is the Turnleaf,” she said. “Not Jack’s father or Jack’s grandfather?”
I nodded, pulling her desk chair beside the window and settling into it. Before this, Chase had let her believe he was descended from a Turnleaf. Inheriting the title was one thing. Becoming one was much rarer, and even if the rest of our grade was still clueless, she knew what it meant. She knew that Turnleaf was what the Fey called someone who rejected the chance to live among them forever and decided to join the human world instead.
“When? It’s not in the history books,” Lena said.
“He was five.” I didn’t mention how many years he’d been five.
Lena was aghast. “And his parents just decided that for him?”
I shook my head. “It was Chase’s idea.”
Lena was silent for almost a whole minute, her eyes wide behind her glasses. I knew what she was doing. I’d done it too. She was examining her memories of Chase—of the loud, bragging show-off who liked to boss us around whenever we had a battle. She was trying to match up those memories with the Chase I knew—the kid who had changed the course of his life when the rest of us were in kindergarten.
“How long have you known?” Lena asked.
I told her. I told her the answer to every question she asked me, and she asked tons: Why hadn’t the Canon told us? How had Chase gotten a whole room of important grown-ups to swear a Binding Oath? How long could Chase use his wings before they stopped being invisible? Was that woman outside his sister or his mother? My tongue never stumbled over a response. Now that the secret was out, the Binding Oath I’d sworn didn’t bother me.
Eventually, she asked, “How old is Chase exactly?” She clearly knew more about how Fey children aged than I had.
“She doesn’t know,” said a voice at the open window. “Neither do I, actually.”
Lena and I both jumped. Any other time Chase would have laughed at us, but he just waited outside, his wings a blur behind his shoulders, his face drawn and weary. “Can I come in? We were fighting most of the night and flying most of the day. If I have to fly much longer, you’re getting a front-row seat to my first crash landing.”
Lena waved him in. She looked a little wary.
“Thanks.” Chase swung himself inside and leaned against the windowsill. The tips of his wings nearly brushed the low ceiling. “It took me forever to get away. You guys missed a four-way fight between me, Amya, the Director, and Rapunzel. Basically, the Director’s okay with them staying here, but not with Rapunzel offering sanctuary before it was approved. Then King Mattanair said he would accept our help, but he couldn’t let the Unseelie fight while the Snow Queen still has Prince Fael. Well, unless it’s self-defense like it was today. It nearly morphed into a five-way fight then.” I was about to ask which one of the nobles was Fael’s
dad, but then he turned to Lena. “Don’t be mad at Rory. She tried to convince me to tell you at least five thousand times. It got annoying, actually.”
Oh. That was why he’d rushed over.
“I’m not mad,” Lena said slowly, but she did sound kind of freaked out.
“Oh. Good,” Chase said. I waited for him to start giving us a play-by-play of rescuing his mom, but he started rubbing his face—hard, then harder.
“Chase, you’re okay, right?” I asked.
“No,” he said shakily. He could fill a room with his long limbs and huge gestures. It was hard to watch him curl up like that, nearly doubled over beside Lena’s window, like he was trying to make himself small. “Amya called me on my M3 at the end of that mission in Idaho—”
“Your mom has a M3?” Lena asked. I shot her a look—now was not the time to interrupt.
“I gave her one. For emergencies.” He didn’t look at us. He was shuddering. “She called me and told me the Snow Queen had come. She said that she was going to see Cal. She only called to say goodbye.”
It felt like the time the trolls beat him up on the Snow Queen’s balcony—all I wanted was to stop him from hurting, but all I could do was watch. “She shouldn’t have said that,” I whispered.
Chase shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing, disagreeing, or just trying to think. “I told her I refused to let the Snow Queen kill her and Cal. I said she couldn’t put me through that. I said she had to hang on till I got there.”
He’d convinced Lady Aspenwind to keep fighting. He was probably the only person who could have, but he shouldn’t have had to.
“I couldn’t get her out alone,” Chase said. “You would have been my first choice as backup, Rory, but I was afraid the Director would try to stop me if I contacted anyone at EAS before I got to the Unseelie Court. So I used one of my temporary-transport spells to Iron Hans’s place.”
“I’m kind of shocked he let you use your boon and went with you,” I said.
“Didn’t he say he refused to fight with us in the war?” Lena said.
Chase hesitated. “Actually, he said no. I couldn’t convince him to come until I swore on my life that I’d help him turn human again.”
Lena and I glanced at each other. I had the feeling she was thinking exactly what I was thinking: Chase hadn’t used one of his boons. He’d given one.
And he wasn’t bragging about it.
“You know how I got that dirt to make temporary-transport spells to Atlantis?” he asked me. I nodded. He’d started making temporary-transport spells to visit his mom almost immediately after Lena invented them. “Well, I made sure to get the dirt about a half mile away from the court. I didn’t want the Unseelie to see me coming. But I don’t know what would have happened if I’d gotten dirt any closer. The enchantment that blocks stuff—what do you call it?”
“The warding hex?” Lena and I said together.
“That. They’d cast one by the time we got there,” he said. “Iron Hans and I fought our way in. The temporary-transport spells and my M3 were useless. Well, not completely,” he said, with a hint of his usual grin. “I threw the mirror at a troll’s face. I’ll need a new one. Sorry, Lena.”
“Done,” she said, although on any other day she would have reminded him that the mirrors didn’t grow on the Tree of Hope.
“We found Amya in the throne room,” he went on. His voice was gravelly with exhaustion, and the more he spoke, the hoarser he sounded. “These goblins were coming at King Mattanair pretty hard, and Amya was helping the royal guard protect him. It took us at least half an hour to push the goblins back and seal the door.”
“But how did you get them all out?” I said, scooting Lena’s chair closer to him. The throne room was in the heart of the palace.
“Well, we almost didn’t,” Chase admitted. “I thought about just grabbing Amya and leaving the rest. Especially Himorsal Liior. He didn’t want to retreat, and he definitely didn’t want to split up to do it, no matter how many times I told him that small groups were our best bet. If all of us wore a glamour, nobody but us would know who was the king.”
“Did Iron Hans convince them?” asked Lena.
“No way,” Chase said. “They still hate Iron Hans. He volunteered to smuggle out the fliers who couldn’t keep up. You know, those kids and Lady Eyira—you saw her wing, right? I think he volunteered just so he wouldn’t have to deal with the rest of them. King Mattanair made the rest leave. He issued a direct order, and he put himself in my group. We fought our way up to the roof. It was still dark then, and cloudy. I thought we’d lose them, but there were so many ice griffins up there. They practically covered the sky. Do you have any idea how much harder they are to slay from the air?”
Lena and I shook our heads, but I don’t think he even noticed.
“Iron Hans had made it to that stairway—you remember it, Rory?” Chase asked. I did. It was carved on a steep cliff and led down to the beach. The only way I’d ever managed to climb it was on a Dapplegrim’s back. “He borrowed one of the royal guards’ bows and all of their arrows. He took out half the flock,” Chase said, his broken voice full of awe. “Then Likon would have gotten us, but Amya got him first. The tendons behind his knees. He left a crater in the beach where he landed.”
Wow. Chase clearly didn’t get all his fighting talent from his dad.
“The Door Trek door back to EAS was clear on the other side of the continent. We met up with the other fliers. We probably could have gotten here faster, but some of us were injured.” Chase stretched, like he’d just remembered how stiff he was. “I haven’t flown that long in forever. My wings are completely out of shape. The kids never would have managed. Good thing they went with Iron Hans.” He hunched over again, his eyes on the floor. “We made it,” he whispered.
“Your mom’s safe.” I hugged him, hard. “You didn’t lose both of them.”
Chase leaned into me, his head resting on my collarbone. My heart gave a happy little flutter, and it annoyed me. I shouldn’t have been thinking about him like that earlier. It was too hard to stuff the feelings back where I normally hid them afterward.
I didn’t let him go. Not while he needed me.
He was quiet for a long moment and way too still. His shoulders jerked, and he kind of hiccuped.
I’d never seen Chase cry. I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
Lena sat on the bed, hugging her knees, worried.
Finally, Chase straightened up, and I stepped away. His eyes were dry, but a little bloodshot. His grin was shaky, but it was there. “Lena, stop talking so much,” he teased.
“She couldn’t exactly get a word in edgewise,” I said.
“I was just thinking about how nice this is,” Lena said softly.
I stared at her, stunned. Chase snorted.
“Sorry! That came out wrong!” Lena said, mortified. “Not the part where you almost died! Or the part where you basically had a secret life! But this—the three of us. I’m trying to remember the last time we all got to hang out together, without your students or Melodie or Adelaide or someone from the Canon around.”
At Adelaide’s name, my stomach plummeted to my toes. I dropped back into Lena’s desk chair and repositioned it by her bed.
Chase just looked thoughtful. “You know, in the last war . . .” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lena quietly balk. He hadn’t told her yet that he was old enough to remember the last war. “All I wanted to do was help, to be involved like Cal was. I am now, I guess, and I thought I would feel like Cal, all heroic and stuff. But mostly, I feel tired. Please tell me you guys are tired too. If you feel tired, that means Cal probably felt tired, and I was just too young to notice.”
The answer was easy. “Exhausted.” Not as tired as I might have been if I’d been flying all day, but worrying had left me spent.
“I would give an arm to sleep in tomorrow. I spend so much time alone in the workshop that I’m starting to feel like Rapunzel in her tower.”
But Lena wasn’t smiling. “Who’s Cal?”
Oh. Maybe I should have covered this part before Chase arrived.
“My brother. Well, half brother.” The grin had dried up on his face. “He was betrothed to Dyani, crown princess of the Unseelie Court. That’s how I know the king.”
Lena realized in an instant. Her eyes filled with tears. “Chase, I told the story about their deaths right in front of you.”
“It’s really okay,” Chase said cheerfully, trying to head off the crying. I wondered if she knew he was faking it for her. I wondered if she had realized yet how many times he’d done that. “Lena, come on. We were having a moment. We haven’t hung out in forever. We’re not going to spend the whole time talking about me. Rory, tell me the truth. Did I ruin your birthday?”
“No.” Well, waiting for him had sucked, but Lena was right. This was pretty nice. “If you had died, that would have ruined it.”
Chase’s smile turned real. Warmth bubbled up in my stomach, and I told it, very firmly, to stop.
“We had a cupcake breakfast,” Lena said smugly. It must have been her idea. “And we sang.”
“Ugh. I can’t believe I missed it,” Chase said. “I can’t believe I missed the fight yesterday. Rory, I’m so sorry. Adelaide—”
“It’s okay,” I said swiftly. I would let anything be okay as long as I didn’t have to hear Chase talk about Adelaide.
“It’s not,” he said. “You could have died.”
Of course I could have. But that was true for everyone, including Chase. He’d left big chunks out of his story. His first home had been invaded. He’d gotten his mom out, but how many people had he left behind? How many people had been killed—people he’d known all his life?
I tried to make a joke. “I can’t die yet. According to my Tale, I’m supposed to hold the fate of magic first.”
That backfired in a big way.
My best friends reacted like I’d slapped them with my ring hand. They jerked back. Chase nearly toppled out the window.
“Don’t say that.” Lena’s voice wobbled.