Of Enemies and Endings

by Shelby Bach

I slipped my ring over my finger. I immediately stumbled over the EAS courtyard grass. Lena was crouched low, her eyes very wide and her arms shielding her head.

  Smoke clogged the air. A cough scraped my throat. Just above us, the Tree of Hope was in flames. A Draconus melodius blew another stream of flame and blackened more leaves. Two squadrons of goblins cheered it on.

  Chase was right. EAS, our last safe haven, was under attack.

  he Snow Queen hadn’t trapped us in that tower to kill us. She’d trapped us to keep us out of the way.

  The air was full of screams and shouts. Ice griffins screeched. Another Draconus melodius sang its eerie three-note song much too close, but I barely heard.

  George, Kenneth, and Miriam battled goblins less than twenty feet away. Beyond them, a tenth-grade squadron had taken on some wolves. Darcy riddled the furry heads with arrows, and her twin brother Bryan finished them off with his spear.

  It didn’t make sense. The Snow Queen’s forces couldn’t be here. They couldn’t get in.

  Lena shook me to snap me out of my stupor. Four green-gold dragons closed in, stinking of sulfur. They seemed so much bigger than the one Lena kept in the dungeon for its scales. Their yellow teeth glinted. They swatted at Kyle, and he went tumbling, his spear spinning out of his hands and rolling across the grass.

  The nearest dragon dived toward us.

  The runner’s high flowed into me. I punched the underside of its chin. The gust of the West Wind’s ring hit it, and the great scaly head jerked back. Stunned, the dragon stumbled to its knees. My sword thrust forward, piercing through the scaly hide into its heart. The dragon toppled, dead.

  A bowstring twanged. The dragon to our right fell too, Adelaide’s arrow sticking out of its eye.

  The last two dragons reared, screaming their outrage. Chase jumped from the Tree of Hope’s lowest branches. His sword flashed. The biggest dragon’s head hit the ground, and Chase landed hard beside it. The last dragon blasted a fireball, but Chase had already moved. He ducked between its forepaws and stabbed it through the throat. Then he swung himself up into the Tree again with a grunt.

  “This not-flying crap is getting old.” Dragon blood had splattered across his face. He wiped at it with his T-shirt. “God, this stuff stings.”

  “Should you be in that tree if it’s burning?” I said, feeling more like myself again. “We need a plan.”

  “First, we get away from the dragons.” Lena pushed me away from the scaly bodies, her retractable spear tucked under her arm. “Because they’re going to—yep!” Flames rippled over the dead dragons. “Combust.”

  Standing slowly, Kyle winced and pressed a hand to his ribs. Lena scooped up his spear and handed it back. “Thanks,” he said. Then he threw it at the ice griffin swooping down at us from above. The spear nailed the beast right in its feather-covered heart. “There are so many of them.”

  “These are all the Snow Queen’s forces,” Chase said, completely ignoring the fire crackling on the other side of the Tree. “This is everything’s she’s got. They’re clearing the way. She’s keeping the pillars close to her, and she’s planning to lead them in last.”

  He sounded so sure. He usually did, but I didn’t see how he could sound so confident about this. “How do you know what she’s planning? And how can a giant fit through a portal?”

  “She’ll shrink them,” Chase said. I opened my mouth to ask something else, but Chase cut me off. “Rory, please. I don’t have time to explain. Just trust me.”

  Well, he had known about the vines.

  “Is that shrinking thing even possible?” Kyle asked in an undertone.

  Lena nodded reluctantly. “She had to transport the giants to your house somehow. Shrinking someone that huge would take a lot of power, but it’s possible.”

  “We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m looking for the portal. There! Over by the student apartments.” He pointed, but all I saw were dozens of trolls in hockey masks. Three squadrons of spearmen had stopped them in their tracks. My dad held the line in the second-to-last row, wearing only a helmet for armor.

  We had to end this quickly, before anyone got hurt. Hansel had been our general. He would have known what to do, but he was gone. I had to settle for someone who was supposed to be in charge. “Where’s the Director?” I asked.

  “I can see her. She’s in front of her office, holding off some wolves,” Chase said. He paused a second to deal with a swooping ice griffin, cutting off its head before it knocked him off his branch. “Defense first. The Snow Queen’s forces are concentrating on getting into the library, the training courts, the dungeon, and the Director’s office.”

  Now I knew why he’d given me the temporary-transport spell to the weapons closet. He wanted me at the training courts.

  “She’s after the Director?” Kyle asked.

  “No. After the Water of Life,” Chase said, “which the Director keeps in her office. Kyle, Adelaide, get as many kids from our grade as you can, and help her beat them back. Our numbers will take a blow if we can’t heal ourselves.”

  “On it.” Pressing a hand to his side, Kyle took off, picking up an abandoned spear. “Conner! Kevin! Paul!”

  Adelaide was on his tail. Without breaking her stride, she squeezed off a shot at a wolf who’d turned her way. “Vicky! Daisy! Candice!”

  “The dungeon is a no-brainer,” Chase said. “The Snow Queen will want to free the prisoners we’re keeping in there. I’ll grab some spearmen and gather the Itari fighters. We’ll rout them as fast as we can. Lena, do you remember the back way into the library?”

  “Yes, but what does she want in there?” Then Lena’s eyes widened. “Oh. Information.”

  The current volume of ongoing Tales. My Tale.

  Chase squinted toward the library. “The trolls look like they’re using a battering ram against the door, so someone probably locked it from the inside. It won’t hold for long. Try to get the information out if you can. But if you can’t, you’ve got something in your little bag of goodies to handle them, right?”

  Lena hitched her carryall higher on her shoulder. “Right.” She ran off, skirting around the trolls and disappearing down an avenue of brick houses.

  I knew what was left. “What’s going on in the training courts?”

  “Not the training courts. The safe house.” Chase jumped down with a thump.

  Fear washed over me, icy even with the flames at our backs. The staff students. Dani. “That’s where they put our families,” I said, understanding. I sprinted along the courtyard wall. I could use any door to get in, but I wanted to look at what I was walking into first. Chase fell into step beside me.

  “And the Unseelie king,” he said. I really wished he would tell me how he could suddenly read the Snow Queen’s mind. “Hansel thought the safe house would be easier to defend against an attack with just one entrance, but that backfired. The Snow Queen’s villains have bottled it up. The magic dummies can’t get through.”

  “I’ll break them out.” I would make sure everyone in the training courts was safe too.

  But he wasn’t worried about the dummies. “You have to convince the Fey to fight. Tell them the Snow Queen expects them to. The Seelie and Unseelie heirs aren’t in any danger from what the knights do in this battle.”

  “We need everyone we can get, don’t we?” I said.

  “We need more than we have,” Chase admitted. Over his shoulder, I noticed a troll spot us and beckon to a couple of his buddies. They charged.

  “Duck,” I said, and Chase obliged.

  With my left hand, I punched so hard I felt the troll’s hockey mask shatter and my knuckles split. Chase slid his sword under the armor of the second one, and I smashed my hilt into the temple of the third. Then Chase shoved my head down. A fireball sailed above us, so close I smelled burnt hair and swatted at my ponytail.

  Then Chase straightened and ran, tugging me around ranks of goblins. “You can’t go alone. You’re in the most dang
er. They have orders to mob you on sight. You need someone covering your back. Maybe George is around.”

  “How do you know?” I slipped through a side alley, and then I saw her. My mom, backed up against the wall of a brick house, where seven trolls had cornered her. Orange blood dripped off her blade. She must have gotten at least one.

  “You’re the mother,” grunted the troll closest to her, the one wearing a full suit of armor. He had a spear. One jab, in the heart or throat, and I would lose her too.

  I’d never seen that look on Mom’s face, not in real life or in any of her movies. The fury in her eyes could peel paint off the walls. It could stop traffic on the highway. It would even make the Snow Queen take a step back.

  “You won’t touch my daughter,” Mom snarled, and she swung, hard. The troll blocked. His spear’s shaft broke under the blow.

  “So that’s where you get it,” Chase muttered, but I was already running.

  The head troll struck again, and broken spear or no, it was Mom’s sword that fell to the ground.

  “Be tame, human, and we won’t hurt you.” The troll smiled around his tusks and turned to the others. “Take her back to the portal. Put her in the dungeon. Her Majesty will reward us with feasting and with land, for a hostage such as—”

  I leapt and punched. The head troll crashed to the ground. The rest recognized me. They stampeded forward, spears and swords raised.

  “See? This is what I meant about them mobbing you,” Chase said, coming up behind us. A troll swung at Chase, a beheading blow. Chase ducked. The blow landed on another troll’s neck instead.

  “Yeah, yeah, you told me so,” I said. The head troll had scrambled to his feet. He peeled the helmet off his head and roared.

  I couldn’t waste such a great opportunity. I dashed forward, stepped into his guard, and smashed my hilt squarely between his eyes before he had a chance to close his mouth. He didn’t get up that time.

  Another troll stabbed toward my middle. I caught the shaft, just under the spearhead, and wrenched it out of his hand. I swung. The spear whistled through the air and shattered against two trolls’ heads. They crumpled to the grass.

  “Rory?” Mom said, breathless.

  I whirled around. “Are you okay?”

  Mom looked surprised. “I’m not the one who went on a quest this morning.”

  “Watch out!” Chase pointed to our left.

  A trio of trolls were glancing between me, Mom, and Chase, and the alley between the houses, obviously trying to decide whether to attack or escape. Well, I wasn’t going to let them go for reinforcements. “Got ’em.”

  I smashed one into the ground with so much ring-powered force that the dirt cracked around him. A second stabbed at me a few times, but after the Itari lessons, I dodged too well—he nabbed his ally in the heart instead of me. He cursed. I kicked him in the stomach. He doubled over, and a snap kick to the chin knocked him out.

  All of Chase’s opponents were down too. He knelt beside one of them, his sword stuck through the fallen troll’s breast plate.

  “We good?” I asked.

  Chase yanked his sword free and popped up, grinning. “I’m always good.”

  I smiled. I had really missed him. “Well, don’t use up all your awesome in one go. Save some for the dungeon. I’ll go to the training—”

  My gaze landed on my mom’s sword, still on the ground. I picked it up. She wasn’t a bad fighter, but besides the play sword-fighting skills she’d learned for a movie a few years ago, she’d only had a few days of training. She wasn’t good enough yet, not for this battle—not with the Snow Queen putting a price on our heads.

  So I pressed the hilt of my sword into her palm instead. “You want to protect me, right?”

  “Of course I do,” Mom said, obviously surprised I would even ask.

  “Then focus on that feeling.” I made a couple passes with Mom’s blade, testing it. It was an inch or two shorter. The balance was slightly different, but it was a little lighter, too. I would be slightly faster. I could adjust. “That’s what turns the magic on.”

  “An extra Itari fighter for the day,” Chase said. “I like it.”

  Mom hesitated. “Won’t you need it?”

  “Rory hasn’t needed it all year,” Chase said, walking up behind us. “She needs you to watch her back when she goes to the training courts.”

  “Chase,” I said, starting to tell him that he couldn’t ask her to guard me—no one could send my mother into battle, not even him. Then I remembered: We were surrounded by enemies. Mom couldn’t escape fighting. Plus, if I kept her close, I could keep her safer. So I told Mom what Rapunzel had told me, years ago. “Mom, you’re probably the only person in the world who could turn the sword’s magic completely on.”

  Mom wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not. She looked both suspicious and pleased.

  “I’ll keep an eye on your dad,” Chase said, and I understood why he’d decided to take some spearmen to defend the dungeons.

  It was time to split up. We both had stuff to do.

  I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want to let him out of my sight so soon after I’d almost lost him for a hundred years.

  For a second, Chase’s look softened, and I knew—for the first time ever—that he felt the same. He jogged backward. “When you’re done, bring your forces to the portal. I’ll meet you there, and we’ll shut it down.”

  “Be careful,” I said, hating how my voice cracked.

  “Always,” said the kid who had climbed a tree on fire less than five minutes before. Then he dashed down the alley.

  I sighed. “This way, Mom.” We ran past two dragons blasting flames at the library’s locked door. It didn’t seem like they were making a dent, but still, I wished I had time to check if Lena was okay. I hoped she’d gotten Rumpelstiltskin and the book out.

  Mom was white-faced when I tugged her down a path between a row of mismatched condos, magically pasted together after Lena had transported them. “Just a second while I take a look. Afterward, we need to find a door for a temporary-transport spell,” I told her. I peeked around the corner.

  Villains had lined up outside the training courts. I expected them to seem seedier, scarier, but besides one guy in a mask and another guy with tusks who obviously had troll blood, they all looked like regular guys. Most of them were even wearing jeans. Only a few of them had put on armor.

  I counted at least a dozen outside, but more were fighting in the hallway between the courtyard and the training courts. I watched long enough to see them change shifts. Four ugly guys, a severe-looking woman, and Torlauth stomped out, looking frustrated, sweaty, and sadly uninjured.

  Well, Torlauth did have a new scar around his eye. I hadn’t given that to him, but the Snow Queen might have punished him for losing his duel with me.

  He wasn’t in charge. The guy with the mask and short black hair was giving the orders, gesturing for six more fighters to enter the hall.

  Eighteen or more. Probably more.

  I eased back around the corner.

  Mom was waiting, the blade in her hand, up and ready. “Did they see you?”

  “No.” Not yet.

  “I found an unlocked door,” she said, pointing to the one on our right.

  “Great. Thanks.” A few minutes with me, and I already had Mom breaking into other people’s houses. I was a bad influence. “You be the lookout. I’ll set up the spell.”

  I thought having Mom with me would make me more on guard, not less, but I didn’t hear the goblins creep up on us. I was concentrating too hard on painting an unbroken line around the door frame. Then something crashed behind me.

  I hurtled down the condo steps, but Mom didn’t need me.

  With the sword’s magic, she moved like a stranger—fluid, graceful, and fearless. Fury blazed from her face. I don’t know if the goblins recognized us, but they definitely underestimated her. One was still smirking when she slashed the blade across his chest. The other onl
y managed to get in one good thrust before Mom parried and ran him through.

  “Oh,” she said in a tiny voice. She looked at what she’d done, at the bodies at her feet. Then she glanced at the sword. I knew that feeling. “I’m not sure I like that.”

  “It gets easier to control.” I returned to the doorway and finished the last stripe. I set down the jar and the paintbrush and muttered the spell. I had only used temporary transports to escape. This was the first time I’d ever used one to enter a fight. “Let’s go.”

  We stepped through the threshold. The weapons closet was dark and crammed with empty racks. All the staffs, spears, and bows were being used.

  “Are you sure you don’t need your sword?” Mom whispered. I couldn’t tell if she was nervous about what we’d find in the training courts or about what the enchanted blade might make her do if she held on to it for much longer.

  “Yes.” Then I turned the doorknob and went out.

  All the dummies were lined up near the entrance. Every once in a while, one of them would take a step forward, clunk against the metal statue in front of it, and then step back. Obviously, they were trying to get out and defend EAS, but their path was blocked. Four metal dragons were wedged into the doorway. Only a few dummies could fight the villains at a time, and a few weren’t enough to overwhelm well-trained fighters.

  The Fey knights had clustered in the back corner, standing shoulder-to-shoulder around their king. They didn’t look as stoic as usual. They kept glancing to their right, toward the crowd of humans.

  You could fit a lot of people in a tiny space if you really scrunched. I would have never guessed more than two hundred little kids, new moms, elderly, and wounded people were stuck back there.

  Brie was easy to spot. She was on top of a stack of mats with Dani strapped to her back. Her bow was drawn.

  Then I saw him. A slender man with a pointed face and a smile full of gold teeth. Ferdinand the Unfaithful, prowling along the edge of the people I’d come to save.

  One of the villains had gotten in.

  I ran, but halfway there, I realized they didn’t need me any more than Mom had against the goblins.