Of Enemies and Endings

by Shelby Bach

  “Jailbreak. Our target was the Fey royalty, but while we were there, we went ahead and let out everybody.” He tried to play it cool. That only lasted two seconds. His grin took up half his face, fat lip and all. “It happened to us. So, I thought to myself, why can’t it happen to the Snow Queen too?”

  “Since when?” I said.

  A small, wiry body slammed into me. When she wrapped her arms around my waist, I felt her metal hands. “Lena? How did you even get inside?” I whispered, ignoring the pain that flared in my ribs. I hugged her back.

  “I told you, Chase,” Lena said fiercely. “She didn’t know you were trying to trick the Canon. She’s not that good at lying.”

  I sheathed my sword. My head was still throbbing, so I was having trouble keeping up with this conversation. “You were trying to trick the Canon?”

  “Weren’t you?” Chase said. “Everybody was watching us when we left the meeting, and then you shouted that we were planning on leaving. We had to throw them off. A big, ugly fight in the middle of the courtyard was a genius . . .” He drifted off. “Lena’s right. You didn’t know. You were serious.”

  And Chase hadn’t been. He had lied so well that he managed to fool me. It had been a long time since that happened. We really had drifted apart this summer.

  “Told you!” Lena knelt next to Istalina and pocketed her wand. “So, they’re all still alive. I’ll go ahead and send them back to the dungeons.” Lena pulled a brassy-green ring out of her pocket. She slid it on Istalina’s finger. The witch vanished, and Lena moved toward the other two. “I enchanted these to send them straight there. They’ll be a little cramped, their whole clan in one cell.”

  “Poor cramped killer witches. I’m all torn up over it.” Gently, Chase grabbed my chin and tilted my face to examine the side that had hit the comb bar.

  “What?” I said, wondering if Rapunzel’s glass vial was bright enough for my blush to be visible.

  Chase took my hand, the one with the light swinging from it, and he held it close to my face. I jerked away, grimacing in pain. “Sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he actually meant it. “I had to check. Lena, I think Rory has a concussion.”

  Lena gasped. We were alone in the hallway. She’d already gotten rid of the other witches without me noticing. Well, a concussion was one explanation for being so disoriented.

  Chase grabbed my right arm, the one that hurt less, and secured it around his shoulders. He helped me down the hall. The glass vial bobbed and weaved, making shadows dance down the corridor. The path curved up ahead. “We brought some Water of Life.”

  Wow. The Director’s rationing didn’t count for much. EAS had used a ton of it during the week. We would be lucky if we still had some left over by the end of the day.

  “You stole the Water from the Director?” I said, determined to prove that I wasn’t as dumb as I’d been acting. It did not help that my stomach was doing somersaults. Either my head really was spinning, or being pressed up against Chase was having a very embarrassing effect on me.

  “Didn’t have to,” Chase said gleefully.

  “Rapunzel left us some in my workshop,” Lena said apologetically. “I kind of didn’t mention it to the Director.”

  “Or to me,” I pointed out.

  “She was supposed to tell you,” Chase said.

  “I was going to!” Lena said. “But first I had to tell her about the letter, and then we got to talking about other things, and then Gran came in . . .”

  Another figure stepped around the corner. Kyle. He didn’t have a scratch on him, but blood stained his shirt collar, like he’d had a very close call earlier. “What kind of other things?” he said, like he knew exactly what we’d been talking about in Lena’s room.

  She launched herself at him, threw her arms around his neck, and started talking so fast that my poor, bruised brain couldn’t make out any words.

  “The rest of the Wolfsbane clan was guarding the prisons,” Chase said conversationally. “He got turned to stone.”

  “Ice. Stone. Kyle, you’ve been enchanted a lot this week,” I said, happy he was okay.

  “Only for like five minutes.” Kyle passed a bottle to Lena, with strange metal symbols trapped in the glass. It was even smaller than the little jars she used to make temporary-transport spells, and through it, you could see an eyedropper attached to the lid. The Water of Life. Rapunzel hadn’t given them much, but the fight in the dungeons must have been intense. It would take dozens of wounds and enchantments to go through that bottle one drop at a time. “And the witches only got me once. Paul got turned to stone at least three times tonight.”

  Lena unscrewed the bottle and turned to me. Liquid sloshed around the bottom, only a few drops left. I hesitated. I wanted to get healed. Apparently, now that I actually did have Companions on my Tale, all the adrenaline was leaking out of my system. It left me with lots of pain. But the quest wasn’t over yet. “You can’t give that to me.”

  “That’s what it’s for,” Lena said.

  “We’d better save it. In case someone gets seriously hurt again,” I said. Chase’s back muscles tensed under my arm. Maybe he hadn’t planned on half-carrying me through the Snow Queen’s basement. “Is that okay with you?”

  Chase gave me a look. “If you get any worse, we’re overriding that order—Tale bearer or no.”

  I decided not to protest. “Deal.”

  Lena’s gaze slid from me to Chase and back again. “We’ll start checking to see if the Snow Queen has laid any more traps for us. You guys need to talk.” She looped her arm through Kyle’s and marched out.

  After a second, Chase and I started after her. Much slower than before.

  I broke the silence. “You’re mad at me.” Again.

  “I’m not,” said Chase, obviously mad. His face was even turning red. Oh great. If I could see that, then he definitely had noticed my blushing earlier. “I’m just going back over everything you said in the courtyard, now that I know you meant it.”

  “It was a fight,” I said flatly. We reached a staircase, one of those awful twisting ones.

  Chase let my arm go and switched sides, so that I could hold on to the wall to steady myself. “Not to me! I didn’t mean any of it. Everything I said was for the Director’s benefit.”

  I looked him right in the eye. “Not everything. Not the part about it being nice knowing Adelaide liked you. You meant that.”

  He didn’t argue. He stepped in front of me and walked ahead, ready to catch me if I fell. We took the stairs really slow.

  “Do you know what Iron Hans said about you?” Chase said finally.

  “When did you see Iron Hans?” I said, confused.

  “I called him on the M3 earlier,” Chase said. “We needed a fast ride from the Portland portal to here. Lena thinks she has almost figured out how he can send the Dapplegrim from Atlantis to here and back.”

  “I thought they refused to go in the snow,” I said.

  “Lena adapted the heating spell for humans.” Chase shot me a scowl, like I was changing the subject on purpose. “Iron Hans says you constantly underestimate me.”

  “I meant what I said at the beginning of our fight too. The part about you being awesome.” Because I was annoyed, I almost added that I was considering taking it back now, but it wouldn’t have been true.

  “No, you underestimate the way I care about you,” Chase said, “and it’s getting old.”

  I limped down another step. If my legs had worked a little better, I might have tried to outrun this conversation. “We never talked about it,” I said in a small voice.

  Chase’s eyes blazed. “You didn’t want to. Geez, Rory, it’s like you think I’m the same kid you met in sixth grade.”

  “I do not.” I didn’t think the Chase I’d met back then ever really existed.

  “But you treat me the same sometimes.” Now he sounded more upset than angry. Something twisted in my chest, hearing how much I’d hurt him. “That’s not okay.”
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  “It’s not okay. And I am sorry.” Apologizing sounded so feeble. If I hadn’t doubted him, then I might have noticed something was wrong sooner. We could have told someone outside the Pounce Pot’s influence, someone who could figure it out. He wouldn’t have spent the whole summer enchanted. “But you can’t just assume I know stuff, Chase. I can’t read your mind.”

  He snorted. “Seems like it sometimes.”

  I almost didn’t tell him the next part. I didn’t want to bring her up again. “You know, Adelaide was using the Pounce Pot.”

  “Not shocked,” Chase grumbled, but I knew he kind of was.

  I wanted to tell him that he’d seemed like a stranger lately. He’d only say it was the enchantment, but that wasn’t it. Something new was opening up between us, and it was like Chase had a map and I didn’t. I never recognized any of the landmarks like he seemed to. I hadn’t even realized that there were landmarks until we went on Miriam’s Tale.

  “Wanna hear the other thing Iron Hans says about us?” Chase asked after a few more stairs.

  “Can it wait? I’m still processing the first one,” I said.

  “You’ll like this one better,” he said, almost smiling. “He said that the biggest difference between us is that you assume that if you screw up enough, we won’t even be friends anymore, and I assume that no matter how much I screw up, we’ll be all right in the end.”

  I peeked at him. “The end” as in the end of the Snow Queen’s reign, or the end of the summer, or the end of us going to EAS, or the end of something even bigger?

  “Are you guys coming?” someone called up the stairwell. Vicky, I think. “We can see Rory’s light. We know how close you two are.”

  “There is a war on, you know,” said Kevin.

  Chase rolled his eyes. “We’re going to talk about this more later, but are we good for now? At least until we make sure we don’t die?”

  I nodded. We were definitely good. Better than we’d been in months.

  We made our way down the last few steps.

  The prison door had been busted off its hinges. A breeze whistled through it, and once Chase and I reached the floor, I spotted why. A hole gaped in the middle of the prison hall, as big as Amy’s car. Wow. I guess I knew how our fighters had gotten inside.

  The others were waiting.

  Nine in all. The triplets. The stepsisters. Paul Stockton. Daisy. Plus Chase and Lena. No one else had ever had nine Companions on their quest before. They had taken the time to dress for the cold. Every single one had on a coat, unlike me.

  Lena held up a jacket, a regular gray one that was kind of worn. “Remember the spell the dwarves put on Hadriane’s polar bear cloak? I borrowed it. This should keep you warm.”

  I shrugged on the jacket, thrilled to see everyone, practically giddy. “Hey.”

  They didn’t look so excited to see me. Mostly, they just stared.

  I definitely looked as horrible as I felt then.

  Chase cleared his throat. “How did the rest of the jailbreak go?”

  Conner ripped his gaze off me and turned to Chase. “The prison’s empty.”

  Tina couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice. “What did that to you, Rory?”

  “The Snow Queen was keeping an army of ice statues in her entrance hall,” I explained. “That was the way I came in.”

  Chase’s whole torso had begun shaking. I wasn’t sure if I should worry or not.

  “And what? They all tackled you?” asked Kevin.

  “One of them was the same shape as Genevieve Searcaster,” I said, trying to see Chase’s face and figure out what his deal was. “Same size, too.”

  “She tackled you?” whispered Lena. “I mean, attacked you?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. I used the combs to lock them all in. They won’t be bothering us.”

  Chase was laughing. “And you didn’t think to mention this until now?”

  “Concussion,” I reminded him, and now I was laughing too. Laughing with Chase. The world was slowly pulling itself back together again.

  “Rory, you have to stop being so competitive,” Chase said, grinning. “Just because I organized a jailbreak doesn’t mean you have to neutralize an entire army.”

  I decided not to answer that. “So, where’s that door? The pale one?”

  “This way.” Lena led the charge down the dim hallway. Chase was still helping me, but I felt steadier now.

  “I’m thinking that Rory is winning this one, though,” Vicky said. “I mean, she took out that army single-handed.”

  “Hey, I personally gave the Seelie and Unseelie royals rings of return and sent them back to EAS. That means I single-handedly mobilized the entire Fey army,” Chase pointed out. “I’d say Rory and I are even.”

  I smiled. EAS’s odds had gotten a lot better since we’d reached the palace.

  “Here it is.” Lena had managed to open the door made of pale wood. Beyond it was another dark corridor. Everybody else went ahead, their weapons drawn, their M3’s held high, with their flashlight functions shining all the way into the corners.

  “All clear?” Chase asked.

  “Clear,” Paul called back.

  “Yeah, I don’t sense any spells,” Lena added. It was news to me that she could do that now.

  With the kids in our grade parading down the hall and the lights from our magic mirrors bobbing up ahead, the corridor grew almost cheerful. It didn’t even really feel like a quest. More like just another field trip.

  Chase helped me forward, but I almost didn’t need him to. Not anymore.

  The fear had left me. I was practically floating.

  “You know, mood swings are a symptom of a concussion,” Chase said, “but usually people get bummed, not happy.”

  So maybe I shouldn’t have been grinning. Something worse than the Wolfsbane clan could ambush us back here, and we still didn’t know what exactly we would find behind that door.

  But I’d been alone, and now I wasn’t. After this awful summer, it was enough to make anyone happy.

  “Found another door!” Lena called from the front. “Rory, is this the one?”

  The other kids cleared a path so I could see.

  It was chestnut brown, and the doorknob and hinges were black instead of silver. “No.”

  Shoulders slumped and weapon stances drooped. No one said anything, but they were probably thinking that the Director could be right. This could be a decoy, made by the Snow Queen to keep us out of her way during the invasion.

  It was nice of them not to say it.

  “Well, it’s locked.” Lena looked pointedly at Chase.

  “If the Snow Queen is really trying to keep us out, a simple unlocking spell isn’t going to open it.” But Chase pressed a hand on the door and whispered in Fey anyway.

  It clicked under his palm. He twisted the knob. The door swung open.

  Not a corridor this time. A windowless square room, barely big enough for all ten of us to fit inside. Cut into the white wall directly opposite us was a door of ancient black wood, fitted with silver hinges.

  “That’s it.” I had expected my heart to stop with fear when I saw the door in person, but it didn’t. Instead, it sang with excitement, drumming a jig against my ribs.

  “Okay,” Chase said. “Like we talked about. Front guard enters first, then me and Rory and Lena, then rear guard.”

  The others started moving into position. Maybe everyone else had talked about it, but I had no clue what he meant.

  Then it hit me. “No, I have to go in alone.”

  Everyone paused and looked at me.

  “Five minutes,” Tina told Vicky. “That’s how long they lasted without arguing. Pay up.”

  “We’re not arguing about this,” Chase said, scowling. “Because Rory can’t expect us to just wait out here while she walks into another trap with a concussion.”

  “Not even ‘walks.’ ” Even Kyle was frowning. “Limps.”

  They thought I had a choice.
“Look, I would love to have you with me for this part, but you won’t make it through the door.”

  Chase just folded his arms and shot me a look that clearly said, I’d like to see you try and stop me.

  “No, really.” I pointed. “Look again. Around the frame and under the doorknob. It’s a one-key safe.”

  “Ooooh,” Lena said, going over to look at it. “I’ve never seen one in person before.”

  Paul leaned closer to Vicky. “Should I know what that is?”

  “Basically, it’s a door that only lets one person pass through,” said Kyle. “They’re really complicated to set up.”

  “Not just that,” Lena said. “It takes thirty-seven months to create one. It’s been less than a year and a half since the Snow Queen got out of prison. She hasn’t had time to make a new one.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t known that. “Well, Rapunzel made me one at EAS. To keep the Pounce Pot safe.”

  “Rory, if it’s a one-key safe, it must be enchanted to only let the Snow Queen in,” Chase pointed out. “What makes you think you can open it?”

  “I think because the key for this one is having an Unwritten Tale,” I said. Rapunzel hadn’t picked that quality when she made my one-key safe, but when Solange had made this one, she’d probably assumed she would always be the only bearer of an Unwritten Tale.

  “The one-key safe uses the most unusual thing about you to identify you,” Lena explained to the others, catching on fast. “The safe must identify the Snow Queen by her magic—the same magic that has been hanging around her since her Unwritten Tale. The magic around Rory is nearly identical. I’m sure the Snow Queen would have made a new, more specific one if she’d had more time.”

  “And you don’t think the Snow Queen just moved it?” asked Daisy sarcastically.

  That hadn’t occurred to me. It should have.

  “No,” Kyle said slowly. “Think about it. If you had a safe only one other person could open, would you move it someplace where anyone could get at it?”

  “Rory’s right,” Lena said. “She can fool the safe.”

  For the first time ever, being like the Snow Queen felt like a good thing.