by Shelby Bach
“Now you look like you’re going into high school,” Amy said. “Well, except for that glass thing.”
I rolled my eyes. “I won’t wear it to school.” I would put the vial in my carryall. I just didn’t want to leave it for a while. It had saved my life that morning.
“Hopefully your face will heal before then too.” Mom gasped. “It’s only three and a half weeks away! We still need to enroll you someplace.”
“I’ve already looked up a few places in San Fran,” Amy said.
“Do we want to stay in San Fran?” Mom replied.
“Well,” I said, deciding to go for broke on the hint-dropping front, “if we’re living here, then I can really go to school anywhere.”
Amy shot me a look that clearly said, Please be joking.
Mom just looked thoughtful. “Maybe. This place has grown on me, but if we stay, we’re getting a real house and moving it into the courtyard. This apartment is way too small.”
“If we stay?” repeated Amy, horrified.
“Your dad’s moving back to L.A. tomorrow morning,” Mom said, which probably explained why she was even considering moving here. It didn’t matter. Now that my family knew about the Door Trek system, I could visit him, Dani, and Brie whenever I wanted. “He wants to shorten his commute. Apparently, some studios are showing interest in his screenplay.”
Mom gave me a list of invitees who hadn’t confirmed yet, and she practically pushed me out the door in a way that screamed, I need to prepare a surprise. I bet it was cake. I sincerely hoped it was coming from the Table of Never Ending Instant Refills, not from Mom’s oven.
As soon as I left, I pocketed the list. It could wait. I needed to check on something.
The library door was locked, and I was trying to decide whether or not to track down a dragon scale and try Chase’s unlocking spell when the bolt slid back.
Busted. I’d been hoping Rumpelstiltskin was still in the infirmary.
But Chase opened the door. He grinned. “I thought it was you. Great minds. Come on in. I hear you’re having a party.”
“My mom is having a party. I’m just one of the people she invited.” I stepped inside. “How did you get in?”
“You’ll never guess.” Chase headed back to the only table in the room. The current volume was open on top of it.
“Um. Back door? Fey unlocking spell?”
“Not even close.” Chase lifted up a key. “Sarah Thumb made Rumpelstiltskin give it to me. She said being deputy Director didn’t have many perks, but letting Characters read their own Tales was one of them.”
The illustration on the open page showed Ripper tearing after a winged fighter, but it was Chase’s face in the picture that trapped my attention. He didn’t look smug or even afraid. He looked calculating and determined—he’d always been that way, but very few people noticed. “You wanted to read yours?” I asked.
“I thought Dad had convinced them to pretend I was a ‘Giant-Killer’ after finding out about the pillars,” Chase admitted. “Having a Sleeping Beauty for a son has been kind of embarrassing for him.”
I remembered the meeting when Jack had stared anywhere but at Chase. “Jerk,” I said pointedly.
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Chase’s eyes dropped to my collarbone. During my nap, the mark from the Snow Queen’s hand had darkened to purple, and the outlines of her fingertips peeked out above the neckline of my blouse. “The Snow Queen’s good-bye gift. She had to try to kill you one more time.”
I remembered Solange’s face the second before she pushed me.
“Maybe. But if she hadn’t pushed me, I would have been right there when the magic ripped her apart.” No matter what she’d been trying to do, I owed my life to Solange. That was a weird thought.
I wasn’t sorry she was dead. I was sorry she had lived like she had—first lonely, then with so much cruelty.
We were silent for a moment. I toyed with the glass vial. Chase folded and unfolded his arms. He felt awkward, being alone with me. For some reason, that made me feel less nervous.
He nodded at the book. “Yours is the one after mine.”
I flipped the pages, and there it was: “The Tale of Rory Landon.” I turned to the end.
I read:
She returned to her home with a vaguely unfinished feeling. Other Characters were lucky. They ended their quests with their happily-ever-afters outlined in neat terms, backed up by dozens of similar Tales that had come before. She had a life she hadn’t expected to keep. Making the most of it seemed like an overwhelming responsibility. She had gone from having too few choices to having too many.
Then she remembered what a friend had once told her: So much of a Character’s life is unknown. One’s Tale only sheds light on one small part.
Perhaps everyone experienced this unfinished feeling. Perhaps she wasn’t alone in it.
Well, of course I didn’t know what to do now. No one was here to tell me what I should focus on next.
“Do you want my opinion?” Chase asked when he was sure I had finished reading. “Or should I pretend I haven’t read it?”
“I miss Rapunzel,” I said. I missed Hansel too, but not like I missed her. She’d told me I could do good things with my life. Unfortunately, Solange thought she was doing good things too.
“I know you do.” Chase did know. He missed Cal as much as I missed Rapunzel. That almost made it worse, because suddenly, I realized I would miss her forever like Chase would miss Cal forever. The giant chasm her death had carved out of me would never seal up, not completely.
“I don’t know who I am now that my Tale is over,” I whispered. “Solange must have felt the same way, and what she decided to do was become the Snow Queen.” My voice rose. I hadn’t told anyone else, not even Rapunzel. But she’d known. She put it in her letter. “I want some of the same things she wanted. I want to make a difference. I want to help people like Matilda and the Living Stone Dwarves. I don’t want them to be stuck in the forgotten corners of the world either.”
“Rory, let’s tone down the freak-out for a second,” Chase said, sounding way more calm than he had any right to be. I’d basically told him I was turning into a villain. “What you’re saying is that you have some stuff in common with the Snow Queen—the stuff that people actually liked about her. That doesn’t mean you’ll become her. Lena and I wouldn’t let that happen.”
That was true. Solange had lost her Triumvirate. I still had Chase and Lena. We could be more like Maerwynne, Rikard, and Madame Benne. We could change things together.
“You have to stop me if I become more like her,” I told Chase fiercely. “You have to promise.”
“I’ll swear a Binding Oath,” Chase said, and my panic subsided. He’d taken down the pillars. He could stop me too, if I became terrible enough. “But not right now. We’ll fight over the wording for hours, and we have a party to go to in a few minutes.”
Oh right. The party.
Slowly, I started to feel better.
I had so much more than Solange had ever had. I had so many more people who cared about me. Maybe it was enough to change history.
“You know,” Chase said, studying me, “I think I like your new outfit.”
My cheeks betrayed me. They blushed so red that I was sure my face was stuck that way.
“What? I can’t tell you you’re pretty?” Chase said.
I couldn’t exactly help what my face did. “I just wasn’t expecting it!”
Chase groaned. “Look we don’t have to, like, date or anything right away if you don’t want to.”
“Date.” Our first kiss woke him up from a sleeping enchantment that was supposed to last a hundred years, and he wanted to date?
“Yeah. Go to see a movie and other human stuff,” Chase said. “I’ve always wanted to try that.”
“Do I get to pick the movie or do you?” I asked.
“There’s more than one?” Chase said. Oh wow, he really was clueless. “But don’t change the subject. We ha
ve to get a few things straight.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, and Chase looked pleased that I was joking around again. “I sense some oversharing in my near future.”
“Yep. Unavoidable. First . . .” He held up one finger. “If I ever say a last-minute quest is too dangerous, assume that I’m lying.”
“Got it.” This wasn’t so bad.
“If I ever say the Director is—was—right, assume that I’m lying.”
It was still hard to believe that she was gone. “No problem.”
Chase sucked in a big breath, leaning against the table, his arms folded. “And if I ever start acting like I prefer another girl over you, assume that I’m under an enchantment, and figure out a way to break it.”
I froze.
I was not brave the way Chase was brave. My own feelings scared me sometimes. I was afraid to even acknowledge them, let alone talk about them.
“Rory?” Chase said, terribly resigned, like he expected me to run from the room or something.
But for him, I would learn.
“Okay,” I said, and he looked relieved. If I were a tiny bit braver, I would have added, Same here, but I wasn’t quite there yet. “Was it a lie? What you told me about your dream?”
Chase’s shoulders hunched, defensive. “We need to get that straight too. Top of the list of stuff I don’t ever lie about? My dreams.”
He would tell me the rest of it if I asked him. I knew he would, but I didn’t.
I hadn’t always noticed how handsome he was, but I did now. His hair had been bleached blonder by the sun, his eyebrows startlingly pale on his tan face, his eyes green and magnetic. He was even handsome when he was scowling at me.
I wanted to step closer, stand on tiptoe, and kiss him. Maybe afterward, I would say, There. I claim number three. Chase would argue with me. He would say it was just the second one, and we would probably bicker for a while about it. Then Chase would offer to fix it. I’ll make it three, he might say, an instant before he kissed me again.
Just imagining made me giddy.
Too bad I was a coward.
I thought we had so much time, Chase had said during our duel in the training courts, and now we actually did.
It would be a shame to waste more time waiting, though. “How about tomorrow? We’ll see if we can agree on a movie we both like.” He would need to figure out how they worked anyway, if a studio did pick up Dad’s screenplay.
Then it finally showed up—the happiness I’d thought his Tale would give him.
Chase’s smile blazed brighter than the Snow Queen’s heart. I could get used to putting it there.
A little while later, we went to the party. I never did get around to finding the people on Mom’s list, but once we stepped out of the library’s front door, they were all in the courtyard anyway.
For a moment, they didn’t notice us, and I could see them all.
The spearmen in our grade looked like they were reenacting Chase’s fight with the pillars for the others. Conner played Chase, directing his brothers and Paul around. He wouldn’t make a half-bad Itari fighter if he ever decided to take up the sword. Kelly and Priya had front-row seats. Darcy and Bryan looked on with identically skeptical expressions, like they didn’t believe a word of it. Melodie glanced between them and the workshop door, like she was worrying about an experiment-in-progress. Ben was barely watching. He kept glancing at the girl beside him. She hopped with excitement, and her crazy braids bounced around her shoulders.
“Whoa,” Chase said. “Chatty made it. Lena must have figured out how to give her legs.”
The dwarves had come too. Forrel, Ima, and Iggy watched, smiling lost, distracted smiles. They must have been thinking of Hadriane.
Sarah Thumb circled around the Tree’s trunk, like she was hoping someone would invite her to stay. Amy’s eyes followed her, and I could tell she was debating about whether or not to take pity on the Thumbelina character. Dad and Brie sat on a blanket, Dani between them, kicking her feet and squealing in the way she did when she was excited. Mom was holding the cake that was supposed to be a surprise. The layers were a little lopsided, definitely homemade, but at least she hadn’t written any embarrassing messages in the icing.
We started across the grass. Chase and I were holding hands. I wasn’t sure which one of us had grabbed the other, but I wasn’t letting go and neither was he.
The others would spot us in a second.
“Whatever you do,” I said, grasping Rapunzel’s vial to keep it from banging against my knee, “don’t eat Mom’s cake.”
“Don’t worry. Lena warned me already.”
“You can’t tell her, though. She’ll just get embarrassed and say she was distracted. Oh, and she’s trying to figure out what high school she’s going to send me to.”
“That’s a good question. What high school are we going to, Rory?”
I was used to my heart pounding when I was scared. I wasn’t used to it thumping so hard when I was happy. It knocked against my ribs like it wanted to fly out and visit the people I loved most in the world. “So you’re coming too?”
Chase pretended to be hurt that I’d even asked. “Just make sure they have nice long breaks. King Mattanair has invited me back to the Unseelie court to give more Itari lessons. I’m supposed to teach Fael,” he added gleefully. “I’m thinking about making them run laps during the workshops without using their wings.”
Wow. As my teacher, Chase had gone pretty easy on me.
At least one Fey hadn’t gone back to Atlantis yet. Lady Aspenwind knelt at the base of the Tree, her head bent close to a girl with extra-long braids. “What’s your mom doing with Lena?”
“Teaching her Fey magic, looks like,” Chase said. “Humans can’t replicate it, though—not even sorceresses . . .”
Lena was the first to spot us. “Rory! Look!”
She placed her golden hands on the Tree’s scorched trunk. The tree shuddered, its leaves rustling, and then a few more blackened branches dropped off and rolled through the grass. Partygoers sprinted away to avoid them. Brie snatched Dani up and hollered that they should watch out for the baby, even though the branches hadn’t fallen anywhere near them.
Lena wasn’t done. New limbs sprouted out from the trunk, dipping low to the ground and then up to the sky, like the Tree was stretching out its arms. Leaves unfurled and red flowers bloomed between them, even though I’d never seen anything but green grow on the Tree before.
“The flowers were my idea!” Lena said. Lady Aspenwind clapped her hands, delighted, and that got the rest of the partygoers cheering.
“I guess she figured it out,” Chase said, sounding impressed. “God, a Character who can do Fey magic. What’s next?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t need to. Whatever came next, we would figure it out, and we would do it together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
hile I was drafting this manuscript, I dubbed it a “beast” and referred to it like that often during the revision process—sometimes affectionately, usually with fatigue-driven despair. Fortunately, with the help of wonderfully supportive people, the beast was tamed and turned into an actual book.
Julia Maguire, you proved yourself to be the most patient editor in the world. I’m sorry that I missed so many deadlines, and thank you for letting me take the time I needed to mesh all the story threads into a coherent plot. Catherine Laudone, you are a rock star for stepping in at the eleventh hour to see this book to completion. You went above and beyond the editorial line of duty; thank you for helping me make Of Enemies and Endings as perfect as it could possibly be. Chloë and Cory, this cover is MY FAVORITE! Thank you both, and thank you to everyone at S&S BFYR for putting this series into the world.
Jo—oh agent, my agent—you were my captain through the whole Ever Afters journey, and your vision, enthusiasm, and savvy have guided me since the day you first called me to tell me how much you’d loved EAS. You are the actual best, and I’m so happy to work with you. Jaida, master schedu
ler, keen proofreader, and marketing idea machine: This was the first time I ever had to promote one book while still working on the next one, and I literally could not have managed it without you keeping me on track. Danielle, Kathleen, Jess, Jackie, Suzie, Pouya, Dave, and Mackenzie, your support of the Ever Afters means the world to me—I love being part of the marvelous New Leaf gang.
Certain people in my life became the guardians of my sanity: Mom, you have given me unconditional support and encouragement through this project and many others (you are definitely NOT like Rory’s mom). Dad, you always help me look past the deadline and gain career perspective. I love you guys. Angela, you always remind me that I have a life as well as a dream, and when I was stressing madly, all the puppygrams from you and Hunny lifted my spirits. Megan, you’re the best roommate for a writer under deadline: you make sure I’m fed and you make sure I remember how many other times I’ve managed to finish a revision.
I’m also deeply grateful to individuals who have shared the Ever Afters with others: Amanda, supreme Wordbender, your unbridled enthusiasm and epic vlogs have helped me more than you know. Brenda, lady of Log Cabin Literary, you have a sixth sense for reaching out when I’m feeling down. Special thanks also go to Kevin of Middle Grade Mafia, Sherri of Park Road Books, Jenny and Earl of Green Bean Books, Mel of University Book Store, Katie of the Book Bin, and Jill of Fiction Addiction as well as the people behind Middle Grade Mafioso, From the Mixed up Files, and Green Bean Teen Queen.
Most of all though, I need to thank the readers. (I wish I could name every person who reached out to me, but sadly, the book is running out of pages!) On my website, many of you listed incredible guesses about Book 4’s title, and I have to especially thank Rachel of Random Rants by Rcubed, who coined “Of Enemies and Endings.” It makes me really happy that you named the book, Rachel, and it makes me even happier that so many of you pitched in to help me brainstorm. It gives me an excuse to brag about how awesome you are. The transition from being a private writer to a public author can sometimes be difficult, but you guys make it worth all the long hours. By far, my favorite part of the past few years has been getting to know such passionate, funny, clever, and nurturing readers. Thank you guys for being amazing. I couldn’t have finished this series without you.