First came a shot of a stadium full of people dressed in powder blue and silver—my kingdom’s colors. They were eating junk food and cheering loudly, no doubt for some type of sporting event.
Next I saw SJ’s glass Pegasus figurine from our room back at Lady Agnue’s. It was swiftly flying across the grounds.
Finally there was the woman. That mysterious woman with her teal zip-up and ambiguous whispering. She looked me in the eye, repeating her message: “Remember the dragon.” Then I woke up.
I was in a dungeon cell with SJ, Blue, Jason, and Daniel. Nadia had put us here to await the hour of our public execution—high noon.
I wasn’t sure what was worse: waking up in the prison of the person who had literally been trying to kill me, or waking up in a prison with three people who figuratively looked like they wanted to kill me.
Daniel and I were the only ones on good terms now. I hadn’t seen the rest of my friends since Adelaide and I knew I had some explaining to do.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked, sitting up on the cold stone and rubbing my head.
“Well, I’ve filled the others in on the main plot points of our adventures,” Daniel said. “Everything from Goldilocks, Germany, and the Pied Piper, to retrieving the final item from the Cave of Mysteries.”
I looked over at Daniel thankfully.
“SJ, Blue, and Jason told me where they’ve been,” Daniel said. He tilted his head toward my friends. “Guys, care to recap?”
My friends begrudgingly obliged.
After failing to find Daniel and me on Adelaide’s shores, they had, in fact, decided to head to the Valley of Strife. As I’d predicted, they’d believed that Daniel and I would make our way to the Cave of Mysteries in the hope of reuniting with us and attaining our final object to break the In and Out Spell.
Not knowing Arian’s exact position on the beach meant that being in the air could put them at risk for being spotted. So—unaware that Daniel and I had been captured—they’d chosen to leave our Pegasi behind in the stables of Adelaide Castle. As an alternative means of transportation, they’d “borrowed” regular horses from the stable and used them get to the magic train. From there they’d taken the train as close to the Alderon border as possible before remounting their steeds and crossing into the kingdom.
It had been a treacherous endeavor in more ways than one. For starters, SJ was terrified of horses. But she’d swallowed her fear and kept up with Blue and Jason. Past that, they’d discovered a variety of monsters waiting inside Alderon’s In and Out Spell border.
It was a good thing my friends were so skilled—Blue with her knives, Jason with his axe, and SJ with the marble-sized portable potions she’d invented and fired via slingshot. Had they been any less capable they probably would’ve been killed no fewer than six times.
Unfortunately—skilled as they were—they only made it halfway across the Valley of Strife before their good luck ran out. They ran into a group of antagonists who’d seen Arian’s “Wanted” ad. These antagonists had several powerful witches in their ranks and my friends never stood a chance. They were easily captured and delivered to Arian.
“Did you tell the others about Mark?” I asked Daniel when they’d finished.
He hadn’t.
When I explained that I’d seen Mark in one of my visions, SJ, Blue, and Jason looked utterly relieved. While there were still questions about why he was gone and what the deal was with his file in Arian’s bunker, the confirmation that he was alive and that we would be reunited in the future made the others relax a little. For a moment, their anger dissipated. Sadly, that moment came and went. The revelation was a good distraction, but it by no means made them forget the grudge they bore toward me. I still owed a pretty hearty explanation.
But—much as I had been longing to make things right with them—I simply couldn’t do it in that moment. I knew the confrontation was coming. I could feel it like an approaching avalanche. But I was still trying to absorb everything Nadia had told us. There was a lot to process and we didn’t have much time left before her forces came to take us to our execution. My number one priority was finding a way out.
My friends had managed to free themselves from their shackles by the time I woke up—utilizing the very lock-picking skills that’d helped save us from the Therewolves back in the Forbidden Forest. My shackles were off too, so I figured one of my friends had taken them off while I was unconscious.
Aside from being shackle-free we were pretty stuck. The underground cell had no windows and the front wall was completely sealed off with the exception of a napkin-sized porthole in the door.
While everyone else’s weapons had been confiscated upon incarceration, my wandpin was still tucked in its hiding place. The antagonists hadn’t found it, or at least they hadn’t known it was a weapon. I was grateful to have the sparkly thing on me, just as I was grateful that the flower from the Cave of Mysteries remained shoved tightly in my boot.
Alas, neither helped me in this situation. Which was surprising, for I could usually rely on my wand to get me out of most predicaments. But no matter what weapon I morphed it into, it barely made a scratch on the cell door.
I found this frustrating. My wand was unbreakable, and its magical sharpness and strength made it able to cut through just about anything. This was the first time I’d encountered such a problem and I really couldn’t understand why. I placed my hand on the deep black stone of the iron-lined door. The moment I did, I was overcome with dizziness. My thoughts warbled like there was static in my brain. I felt faint, as if I’d just run a marathon.
I quickly removed my palm from the stone. The moment I did, clarity returned.
Although common sense told me to give up, I decided to transform my wand into an axe and take a few more swings at the door. Common sense was not really a luxury I could afford right now.
“Crisa?” said Blue, trying to get my attention after my sixth swing.
I ignored her and kept hacking away at the door. “Ugh! Why! Won’t! You! Open!”
“Crisa,” Blue repeated.
“I’m a little busy, Blue,” I replied.
She shrugged. “That’s fine. I’ve just got an actual way for us to get out of here. But that’s not important. You keep doin’ what you’re doin’ and let me know when you’ve got a sec.”
“Wait, what?” Jason said.
I stopped and turned around. “One more time?”
SJ, who’d been leaning against the wall up ’til now, put her fingers to her temple to try and suppress a headache. “Blue, what are you talking about?”
Blue grinned, full of self-satisfaction. “I’m talking about this!”
She reached into her boot and pulled out a small green speck with her index finger and her thumb. It glowed with a bright green hue like the butt of a seasick firefly. We all moved in to take a closer look.
“Blue. That’s a pea,” Daniel said.
“Correction,” she practically sang with pride. “It’s a magic pea. The missing one from the Treasure Archives at Lady Agnue’s to be exact.”
SJ looked like she was going to have stroke. “You stole it?”
“Blue, really?” Jason commented.
“Of course not,” Blue responded. “I’m mischievous, not a delinquent.”
“Then why do you have it?” I asked, morphing my axe into a wand again.
“I thought it was stolen along with the corset, the lamp, and the mirror.”
“Do you remember that morning after the break-in at school when everyone was being herded back to class?” Blue asked.
I thought back to the morning in question. All the students at Lady Agnue’s had gathered in the hall of the Treasure Archives, astounded by the shattered cases and stolen artifacts. After a few minutes our teachers began corralling us away from the scene, but I remembered Blue ducking into the crowd and disappearing for a moment before rejoining us.
“I was checking out the damage when I saw it lying on the floor by
the cases,” Blue explained. “People thought it was stolen, but it must’ve fallen to the ground when the other items were taken. It was just too small for anybody to notice. So I picked it up. I figured I’d hold on to it for a little while to study and then put it back when I was done. You know how nuts I am about fairytale history and the objects in those cases. So I figured, what would be the harm? It’s not every day that we actually get to experiment with famous magical stuff like this, and since people already thought it was stolen I knew no one would care.”
“Blue, that was unethical,” SJ chastised. “You should have turned it in to Lady Agnue the moment you found it.”
“Well, in a second you’re going to be glad I didn’t because we’re going to use it to get out of here.”
“Blue,” I repeated for emphasis. “It’s a pea. Magic or not, I doubt it’s going to help us against stone and iron.”
“Shows how much you know.,” Blue scowled. “Look, I realize that most people don’t care about old fairytale junk, but I actually do the reading assignments at school and I can contribute more to this situation than a useless weapon and a sarcastic comment.”
“Blue, I never said—”
“Forget it,” she cut me off. “Look, here’s what I’m getting at. Everybody knows that this magic pea from The Princess & the Pea is famous for giving the female protagonist in the story mega injuries while she was sleeping even though the thing was buried beneath, like, a hundred mattresses, right?”
We nodded.
“Okay, well no one ever bothered to ask how. They just wrote it off as magic and never figured out exactly what kind. But not me. This pea—like every other magical object—has a very specific function. And in the pea’s case it’s propagating energy disturbances. While it may not look like much, this itty bitty veggie is enchanted to send out powerful shock waves when it hears trigger words and then turn back into an ordinary pea when it hears a stop command.”
SJ’s mouth dropped open like a surprised goldfish. “I cannot . . . I mean that is just . . .”
“Total genius? Yeah, I know. And you thought being brilliant was your specialty.” Blue smiled smugly. “I brought it on our quest because I thought it might come in handy at some point. Right now, I think it’s just what the doctor ordered.”
“Why haven’t you used it before?” Jason asked.
“For starters the pea has some restrictions. It takes eight hours to recharge. Aside from that, the Adelaide tunnel system and Therewolf lair were both structurally unstable. Using the pea there could’ve buried us all. Here though it should work fine.”
“That’s great, Blue,” I said, “but why the heck did you let me hack away at the door for so long if you had this up your sleeve, I mean down your boot?”
“For one, you looked like you had a decent amount of rage built up, so I thought I’d let you channel it out a bit. And second and more importantly, there are a few issues between us that need to be addressed before we can get out of here.”
I grimaced, feeling the weight of everything that I wanted to tell them. Why was confronting archenemies so much easier than confronting friends?
“Is this really the time and the place?” I asked, the stress rising inside me. “We’re trapped in a dungeon.”
“Which is exactly why it is the perfect time and place,” Blue countered. “You run from us and the truth everywhere else, Crisa. And I’m tired of it. There’s nowhere for you to run here so you’re going to talk to us whether you want to or not.”
I turned to SJ. “Will you reason with her please?”
“No, I do not think I will,” SJ said. “Blue is right. We are all tired of your behavior and will not stand for it any longer. You tricked us in Adelaide, Crisa. When we were at Ashlyn’s you did not tell us your whole plan. You only opened up to us partially so that we would forgive and believe you. You told us what we wanted to hear and did the exact same thing you have been doing for weeks—you pushed us away. You did not trust us. And you got captured as a result. Well, now is where we draw the line. You either give us one impressive explanation or we end this here.”
“End what here?” I was almost too afraid to ask.
“Our friendship,” Blue replied. “We’ve given you multiple chances to make amends and you keep lying and pushing us away. And like SJ said, we’re tired of it. If you don’t want to trust us—if all those years of friendship mean nothing to you and you’d rather be in this alone—then just end things. We can agree to work to escape this castle together, but once we get out of Alderon we can go our separate ways if that’s what you want.”
“Of course that’s not what I want!” I exclaimed, horrified at the idea. “But it’s just . . . those people out there are trying to kill us. I know I owe you guys an explanation, but can’t it wait?”
“No,” Jason said bluntly. “It can’t.”
I looked to Daniel. “A little help please?”
He shrugged. “Sorry, Knight. They’re right. The only reason you and I aren’t at each other’s throats the way we used to be is because I got you to be honest with me in the genie lamp. Evidently the only way to get anything out of you is to trap you in enclosed spaces.”
I resisted the urge to bang my head against the wall. “Fine. I give. Go ahead,” I said. “What do you guys want from me?”
Jason crossed his arms. “That’s just it, Crisa. All we want is you.”
“Um, hello? I’m right here.”
“No, the old you,” he clarified. “The you who doesn’t push us away. The you who doesn’t obsessively keep things to herself and lie to us. You’ve been acting weird for weeks now. We’ve all been cutting you a fair amount of slack, but Adelaide was the last straw. We gave you a second chance and you still kept us in the dark and went ahead and did whatever you wanted.”
“Seriously, what is up with that?” Blue interjected angrily. “I mean what is so hard about letting us in? We’re your friends, Crisa, and you’ve been treating us like strangers—acting like a . . . like a . . . ugh, I don’t even know the right words.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration and stomped to the other side of the cell.
I exhaled deeply and morphed my wand back to pin form, stashing it away. The avalanche hit. The truth flooded every part of my soul and all thoughts of Nadia and the antagonists were washed away. Everything I’d been feeling—everything I’d wanted to tell my friends since my conversation with Daniel in the genie lamp—was finally ready to flow free.
“That’s fine, Blue,” I said. “Because I do know the right words. I’ve been acting like a proud, stubborn, insecure jerk and . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s a bit of a long explanation,” I continued. “But the short version is that I was scared. I never wanted to admit it to you guys. Heck, I never wanted to admit it to myself. But it’s the truth. Not trusting you was never about you; it was about me. It was about me being deeply, indescribably afraid of what you might think of me if I conceded that I needed you.”
“Why would you be afraid of that?” SJ asked.
“You guys know how the rest of the world sees me—as a weak princess, a damsel incapable of being a hero. The last thing I wanted to do was give you a reason to agree with that perspective. And asking for help—admitting that I needed it—felt like showing weakness. So I pushed you away. Even if I knew it was stupid and dangerous and reckless, I just couldn’t risk you guys thinking of me the way everyone else does. It hurt too much, the idea that there’d be no one left to see me as something other than an inept protagonist who can’t exhibit any admirable character traits.”
I raised my right hand—the hand with the blurred watering can mark on it. “I mean look at this. Not even that stupid watering can thought I had a single strength worth taking. This blur is just a constant reminder of how bleak and up in the air my chances are of becoming any of the things I want to be . . .”
I let out a sigh with a shake of my head. The memory of the pain these thoughts once caused me was so
reness in the back of my neck, like an old injury you still felt on a rainy day.
“Since our journey began I have been so riddled with doubts like this,” I confessed. “And every day those doubts grew around me to the point that I felt I would be swallowed whole. Believing that I could still change the way you saw me was my only lifeline. It was the sole saving grace keeping me going. So . . . I needed to hold onto it with everything I had.”
I looked at each of my friends. SJ and Jason seemed to soften, but Blue remained stiff and resentful.
“Crisa, that just isn’t a good enough reason to forgive and forget everything you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve deceived us repeatedly. Back at Ashlyn’s I looked you in the eyes and gave you a second chance and you threw it in my face. Since we started this mission you’ve misled us about how much you knew at every turn, you’ve come up with plans designed to trick us into going along with them, and—”
“And you have almost gotten yourself killed!” SJ chimed in crossly. “Repeatedly!”
I wrung my hands anxiously. “I didn’t though. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Crisa, of course it counts for something. But that isn’t the point,” Jason replied. “We’ve been friends for years. Do you have any idea what it’s like to watch someone you care about continuously come close to death like that?”
“Is that an actual question?” I was surprised by the anger in my tone. But I realized it wasn’t anger; it was frustration. “How do you think I feel whenever I have nightmares about the future? You think it’s easy for me to hear and see all that stuff—all those people and things that are going to put you guys in harm’s way? It’s not. That night before we went to Adelaide I had a dream that Arian gave his men orders to kill you if you stood in the way of him getting to me. And that’s hardly the first time I’ve envisioned something dark. Every time I shut my eyes I worry over what fresh horrors the night will bring. The only good thing that can possibly come of the nightmares is that I sometimes get a heads-up about what’s coming for us and I can use that information to protect you, like I did on Adelaide. And I have to protect you. Not because I think you guys can’t take care of yourselves, but because I care too much about you to risk anything else. I realize lying wasn’t the best way to go about it, but I had to do whatever I could to keep you safe.” I clenched my fists. While I regretted a lot of things I’d done over the last few weeks, I didn’t regret this motive behind many of the choices I’d made. “That’s just what friends do,” I said.
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