by Shelby Bach
“Calm down, Mildred. We’ll get it back.” Gretel emerged, leaning hard on Daisy. I couldn’t see where she was hurt, but her dress was spotted with blood. Mom hurried over to help her. “We’ve blocked off the back exit. They’ll have to come through here to reach the portal.”
Adelaide stumbled outside and turned back to fire off three quick shots through the doorway. Something shrieked. The rest of the archers in our grade darted out. “That’s all of us and all the ice griffins, too.”
“That leaves the wolves,” Kyle told me.
Wolves didn’t always use a portal to get home. “Do they have those cuff things?” I said, helping Tina to sit in the grass. Her lashes were melting. One eye was half-open.
“I disabled them,” said Gretel. “It took all the sorcery I possess.”
I waved my last comb at them. “I say we seal them in, and then we take care of their exit over there.” I pointed toward the student apartments, where Chase had said the portal was. They all glanced that way.
The Director went as white as Tina. “No,” she breathed. “Not here.”
I didn’t recognize Likon at first. I’d never seen an ice giant shrunken down to a mere seven feet. He leered at me, and I wondered why Solange was so attached to blue-skinned villains with bad dental problems.
Someone else glided through the portal after him. Her long pale blond hair was braided into a coronet under an icicle crown. Her first step onto the EAS courtyard frosted the grass white in a twenty-foot circle around her. My heart stopped.
The Snow Queen.
blinked and Likon rocketed up five feet. In another breath, he was as tall as the wall behind him. By the time Adelaide spotted him and screamed, he was his usual height—huge and blue and coming straight at us.
A one-eyed wolf loped in behind the Snow Queen, his sides matted with dried blood. Ripper. Then an old green-skinned woman with a metal cane and an eye patch, followed by a green-skinned man who was just as ugly as she was. The Searcasters, who immediately started to expand to their usual giant selves.
A lumpy figure flew through on wings the color of concrete. He grew as he soared toward the prisons. Ori’an.
My body felt the fear that showed on the Director’s face, and Adelaide’s and Gretel’s. I was too petrified to even scream.
We were out of time. The pillars would reach full size in a few seconds. We were really outmatched now. We needed to get the Water of Life back, and we needed to get it back now.
The Snow Queen had raised a hand toward a pack of our metal dragon dummies, and a sheet of ice grew around them, trapping the moving statues mid-snarl. That wouldn’t keep her busy for long.
“How many wolves are left in there?” I said.
Gretel recovered the fastest. “Ten to fifteen.”
I could take that many. I’d taken a hundred once. “Okay, here’s what I want us to do—”
“Aurora, it’s all over.” The Director couldn’t drag her gaze off the Snow Queen. “You don’t know what she’s like. The second she entered this place, the battle was lost.”
Screams rippled through the courtyard as the Searcasters grew two stories tall, then four. Ripper bounded through metal wolf statues, scattering more as he got bigger. This was bad. But we didn’t need our grown-ups to give up. We needed them to be brave. Courage was catching as much as fear was.
They were all looking at me, the kids in my grade. If I freaked, the way the Director was freaking . . . “The battle isn’t as important as the war,” I said, as evenly as I could. “We need the Water—”
A huge blue leg bigger than the Tree of Hope’s trunk sprouted four feet from us, so close that Daisy screamed. Likon could have stepped on any of us in that instant, and we couldn’t have done anything about it.
He stooped in the doorway of the Director’s office. “Shut up, you beasts. I’m not Ripper. I can’t understand you when you speak over each other,” he told the wolves in a surprisingly soft voice. “Now, where is the Water Her Majesty wants?”
We had all taken the same giant-slaying seminar. I turned to the triplets. “Knees,” I reminded them. “Archers, go for the eyes.”
The stepsisters nodded and notched arrows on their bowstrings. Adelaide’s hands shook as she reached for her quiver.
I would go for the Achilles tendon. Likon couldn’t take the Water back to his mistress if he couldn’t walk. I was pretty sure.
“You’re not going to—” Mom said, her voice faltering.
I didn’t meet her eyes. If I did, she would know that this was the most dangerous thing we’d done all day. “Mom, I need you to take the Director back to the safe house. We can’t protect you and do this, too.”
This time Mom didn’t argue with me.
“No. No. You must flee,” said the Director, as Mom and Gretel led her away.
Likon thrust his arm into the Director’s office, but he could only fit it in partway. His elbow got stuck in the door frame. He couldn’t reach any farther, no matter how much he pushed, no matter how many cracks appeared in the wall around his arm.
Someone was going to die again. I couldn’t stop it. I’d spend my whole life—what was left of it—remembering this moment and wondering what I could have done differently.
But I couldn’t think of another plan. The Director had been right. The Water could save so many lives.
“Enough of this.” Likon withdrew his arm and gripped the edge of the roof. With a grunt, he yanked. Bits of stone and plaster rained down as the roof ripped free. The blue giant held it aloft while he shoved his head inside the Director’s office, like a normal-size person might peer into a heavy chest.
It was time. The Snow Queen was still distracted. She’d finished freezing the metal dragons, and she’d turned her attention to a flock of ice griffin statues. Both of Likon’s hands were occupied. If we hit now, his grip would slip. The roof could do way more damage than we ever could. “N—” I started.
“Stop!” shouted a light, musical voice that didn’t have any business on the battlefield. “Rory, no!”
I hadn’t expected to find Rapunzel in the air, flying on her purple carpet. Her long silver hair fluttered out behind her, the braid unraveling in the wind, as long as a banner. “It’s not worth your lives,” she said.
It was easy to change my mind. I’d practically been begging someone to stop us. “Get clear,” I told the kids in my grade. If we were letting Likon have the Water of Life, we might as well move out of the pillar’s reach.
The Searcasters pushed forward. The burning Tree of Hope was in General Searcaster’s way so she tore it out, totally unfazed by the flames licking up its branches. The pop I heard when the roots gave wasn’t natural. Magic, I thought in a distant way, watching her toss it aside. It bounced off the roof of a Tudor and landed on the brick house besides Lena’s, cutting the top story nearly in half.
Likon reached inside the Director’s office. He pulled out a crate that rattled with glass bottles, and he cradled it in his humungous blue hand.
It had to be all right, if Rapunzel said so. It had to.
The blue giant dropped the roof. It crunched back into place. Splinters drizzled over our heads.
Rapunzel swooped down. The carpet circled me, so close that its fringe brushed my arm, but she didn’t land. “There wasn’t time to gather them all. I was forced to choose. I hope I chose right.”
I stared at her. Either she wasn’t making sense because I was still in shock over the whole giant-kills-tree episode, or she was telling me the kind of thing that only makes sense afterward.
“There you are,” said a cold voice, as musical as Rapunzel’s. I turned and met glacier-blue eyes. The Snow Queen had noticed me—No, not me, I thought, following her gaze. She’d spotted her sister, and she approached with a swift, deliberate tread. Fifteen feet away, ten. “Likon,” said Solange.
Whatever vision Rapunzel might have seen about today, I’m sure getting swatted out of the air by a giant hadn’t been part of it. Her eyes widened.
She leaned back, and her carpet launched into the sky. But Likon’s reach was too long. He caught her in his fist.
Rapunzel didn’t look afraid, not at first. Only confused. “Rory, it doesn’t happen like this,” she said, like that was supposed to be comforting.
But it had happened just like this. George Searcaster had trapped Hansel in exactly the same way, and I’d been helpless to save him, too.
I’d never worried about Rapunzel dying. Stupid of me, I know. Solange had cared about her once, long ago. That didn’t make Rapunzel safe.
The Snow Queen’s smile was tiny but growing slowly, like I was the person she’d most hoped to see. She took one final step and stopped, and the grass under my sneakers crackled with frost, bleached white. My next shaky breath came out in a white plume.
“Do you know why I have come, Aurora Landon?” she asked.
I did know. I understood intimidation. The Director had learned it from someone, after all.
“Do you know why I waited until this precise moment—when you felt sure that the tables had turned?” said Solange. “Because the message must be made clear to you in particular, Aurora Landon. No matter how close you believe you are to defeating my forces and foiling my plans, victory will always belong to me.”
I forced myself not to check how far my mother had gotten with the Director and Gretel. I couldn’t risk reminding Solange that my family was here.
Somewhere to our left, Genevieve Searcaster laughed. “Girl, you are a fool.” The four-story-tall general touched her throat. Then Lena’s voice poured out of Searcaster’s green lips, high and girlish and just plain wrong. It said, “Up, axes! Chop!”
It was the Bats of Destruction all over again.
Lena screamed, the real Lena. I knew what she sounded like when she was just scared and what she sounded like she was hurt, and this was definitely the second.
I couldn’t see. Too many stupid houses stood between me and the library.
Then something exploded.
I started to run, forgetting who stood beside me. The Snow Queen flicked a finger. I jumped back, arms up to protect my heart, like that would do anything if she decided to put an icicle through me. But she’d only raised a waist-high wall of ice to block my path. “I am not done with you yet.” Solange swirled a finger, and two smooth bands of ice clamped around my shoulders.
I was completely trapped. This could count as winter. It could be despair too, but it felt more like panic.
The Snow Queen smiled at me. “Witness how futile your efforts are.”
Goblins ran toward us. The same ones who had been fighting Lena’s axes outside the library. One of them limped, his pant leg soaked with blood, but he carried a huge book bound with blue leather, the edges smeared with soot.
Behind him stumbled another goblin, bleeding from a dozen cuts and struggling to roll up a long, wide piece of paper. I caught a glimpse of a section marked SOUTH CAROLINA. I didn’t want to imagine why the Snow Queen needed a map of human lands.
With squawks and caws, the Wolfsbane clan thundered down the middle of the grassy street. The witches tossed out spells at a few passersby, but mostly they were focused on the portal.
Istalina stopped beside the Snow Queen. She gave a sort of curtsy, except instead of sweeping out her skirts, she swept out her wand, and bowed her head. “We are in your debt, Your Majesty. You have our loyalty now.”
The Wolfsbane clan hadn’t really liked the Snow Queen any more than the other witches. Istalina and her clan mates had only allied with Solange because she could give them a chance to kill me and revenge Istalina’s mother. Being rescued by the Snow Queen had changed their minds.
It probably wouldn’t stop at the witches, either.
Attacking the Fey courts had earned back all Solange’s usual allies, but EAS was a more impressive target. It would earn her more than allies. It would inspire allegiances.
Maybe this was despair.
The Snow Queen inclined her head “Then I welcome you back with open arms. Please return. We will speak soon.”
“Shall we kill the human child?” said Istalina. It took me a while to realize she meant me.
Displeasure entered Solange’s voice. “Does it seem that I require help in this matter?”
Istalina stepped away, straight into the ranks of the other witches. “As you wish, Your Majesty,” she said, sounding only the slightest bit disappointed. She passed through the portal after the goblins.
The Snow Queen turned back to me, her eyes narrowing. Probably deciding how to kill me.
“Not like this.” Rapunzel could barely croak the words out. Likon must have been holding her too tight.
The Snow Queen brightened. “Yes, sister. I believe you’re correct. I could kill you now, Aurora Landon—” She flicked a few fingers. The bands of ice around me contracted, pinching me so hard I gasped. “But I’ll wait. You are not worth the small magic it would take to kill you. You are not worthy of me. Besides . . .” She leaned in and lowered her voice, like she was sharing a delicious secret. “This isn’t enough despair for my taste,” she explained. “I would like to see your face when you lose someone irreplaceable.”
She might as well have pricked my heart with one of her ice daggers. She knew Mom was here.
But my mother wasn’t the “someone” Solange had in mind.
“Likon. Here, please.” The Snow Queen pointed at the ground directly between us.
The ice giant set Rapunzel down so fast that she stumbled to one knee. Solange grabbed Rapunzel’s elbow, steadying her sister.
I wondered when they had seen each other last. The end of the last war? The day Solange threw Rapunzel, bleeding, from her tower?
They really did look alike. They had the same slender build and pointed chin. Their eyes were different colors, but they both tilted up at the corners. What really set them apart were their expressions. Rapunzel looked as defiant as she did when the Director bossed her around.
Solange smiled again. This one was smaller and surprisingly sweet. She dropped her hand on her little sister’s head. “You’ve done well, Rapunzel. You have gotten us here. You can come home now.”
Rapunzel reeled back like Solange had hit her. “No,” she breathed. She glanced sideways, where the archers had their arrows trained on the Snow Queen. Now Adelaide was shaking so badly that she couldn’t keep hers on the bowstring.
I didn’t believe it. The Snow Queen thought it was fun to smear her sister’s name. I could see the lie in her suppressed glee.
But apparently not everyone could spot it.
“I knew it!” the Director said triumphantly, somewhere behind me. So much for getting her to safety. I hope Mom had managed to hide. “All of these years, I knew it.”
The last of the goblins were retreating through the portal. Ripper chewed the charm off his cuff, and his whole wolf army vanished. Jimmy Searcaster stamped hard on the portal. Silver and purple sparks fizzled out of it, the spell destroyed. Then Jimmy pulled a ring as wide as a hula hoop out of his pocket. He slipped it on and left footprints the size of cars in his wake.
Everyone was gone except Solange and her giant blue bodyguard.
“I will never return to you,” Rapunzel told her sister. “Even if I am welcome nowhere but among your followers, I will not come to you.”
“Pity,” said the Snow Queen, one eyebrow raised in a way that clearly said, I’ll believe it when I see it. Then she turned to me. “Until we meet again.”
She thrust two hands in the air. A cloud gathered, low and gray, and showered us with tiny glittery flakes. I flinched, sure that she had saved her most destructive magic for last, but it was only snow.
I looked again. Solange was gone. So was Likon.
They’d left the dragons and ice griffins behind for us to clean up.
A fine white powder collected on the battlefield. It fell onto my eyelashes and down the back of my shirt, making me shiver. It must have been enchanted to not melt. Some snow even began
to collect on the embers of the dead Draconus melodius.
“I see,” Rapunzel said, staring up at the sky. Then her eyes cut to me. “Winter.”
This definitely counted. Cold coated my insides, too. Death came after the winter in the beginning of my Tale. Chase would never have let the witches walk out of the prison; he could be hurt. Dad had been with him. The way Lena had screamed. I needed to check on them. I strained against the bands of ice around my middle. “Get me out of this!”
“Rory, I’m here,” said Mom, not hurt, just pale. One person safe. She smashed her hilt against the ice until it cracked.
I burst free and bolted. I didn’t even pause when the Director pointed at Rapunzel and said, “Arrest her.” We could sort that out later. Nobody here was in immediate danger.
The prisons were closer. The doorway had been reduced to rubble, now dusted with white flakes. Jimmy had clearly done a smash-and-grab.
I found Dad first. His shirt was streaked with soot, and an angry burn shone red on his arm. His face was grim but he was okay.
“Chase?” I gasped out, my heart plummeting down to my stomach, my toes, to the snow beginning to cover the frozen grass.
“He’s fine,” Dad said. “Well, the giant broke his arm. I got distracted for a second. He went that way with some others.” He pointed toward the library.
Chase must have heard Lena too.
I didn’t even feel my legs, sprinting down a side street, slipping on the snow, ducking through a skirmish between ten seventh graders and a leftover ice griffin. I could hear someone crying—big, wrenching wails. It sounded like Jenny.
Around the next corner, ax heads were buried in the library door. A clump of people had gathered beside it. Chase was with the triplets, his back to me. Mrs. LaMarelle was sitting on the ground, her head bent. I couldn’t see Lena.
My feet crunched over the snow. Chase turned. His broken arm must have been hurting him, but that wasn’t the kind of misery on his face. Something terrible must have happened, something we couldn’t fix. He threw out his good hand. “Wait. Let them put a cloth down first. You don’t need to see the damage.”