by Shelby Bach
It was almost enough to make me stop worrying about Chase. Almost.
“Stop, everyone! Rory, down!” Lena shouted, leaping in front of me. I ducked, hunching over to protect the heart. I felt a hint of the heat the others had complained about. I watched the heart sear a hole right through my jacket collar.
Then the spell Lena had sensed struck with the force of a twoton boulder, but something deflected it. Ice cracked into a ten-foot-wide crater ahead of us.
The sorceress-giant limped forward on her basilisk cane.
Up front, George glanced back at his sister. “Did she miss?”
“Searcaster doesn’t miss.” Lena spread both of her golden hands, and the hair stood up on my arms. “I cast the same protection spell as in your shields. Just with more power.”
“And more focus. You’re learning quickly, baby sorceress.” Searcaster raised her cane again. I felt something drag across my skin, like the sea sucking itself back, seconds before a huge wave hit. Another blast was coming.
“Genevieve, no!” Solange emerged from behind the giantess. Her dress glittered with crystal and ice. It even had a lacy train patterned with delicate snowflakes. She looked the part of a conquering queen, not like someone expecting a fight. She must not have thought we’d get this far. “Think of what she’s carrying!”
She meant the heart. I had never heard the Snow Queen sound afraid.
So, what I carried kept us safe from General Searcaster’s magic. I stepped forward. I could be another kind of shield.
The sorceress-giant lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty. I’ll capture her.”
If she did, I couldn’t get the heart to Solange. I was so close.
“You won’t touch Rory,” Lena said. “Your fight is with me.”
Searcaster smiled. Her yellow teeth looked terrifyingly pointy. “Come on, then, baby sorceress. What have you brought for me to play with today?”
Lena’s chin jutted out.
I should have seen this coming. Chase had picked the pillars, but Searcaster had made this duel personal.
“As your big brother, I heartily disapprove,” George said.
Lena stepped ahead of him, putting herself between us and Searcaster. “I’ll make sure to tell Gran when we get back.”
“Wait!” I called after her. Her golden hands were empty. She’d lost her spear in the fight with the Wolfsbane witches. “You don’t even have a weapon.”
“Rory,” Lena said, in the slow, calm voice she only used when she didn’t want me to freak out, “I am the weapon. Up, ice!” A frozen slab as big as a door rose up from beside her. It glistened in the light leaking from the heart, already beginning to melt. “Beat!” The ice launched itself at Searcaster’s face.
The sorceress-giant ducked before it crashed into her nose.
It was official. Chase wasn’t the only one of my friends who scared me sometimes.
“Be safe,” Kyle said.
Lena didn’t turn away from Searcaster. She reached a hand into her unzipped carryall. “Get Rory to the Snow Queen.”
I didn’t want to leave her. I wanted to stay and watch her back. But we both had a job to do.
The Itari fighters took off, fanning out ahead of me and the kids in our grade. This close to the Snow Queen, the heart shook so hard it nearly slipped out of my grasp. The sorceress-giant took a step toward us, but Lena launched five more chunks of ice. General Searcaster smashed them all—three with her basilisk cane and two with magic, but they distracted her long enough for us to get past her. We chased after Solange.
Out of nowhere, at least two hundred ice statues rose up ahead of us. Trolls in hockey masks, translucent and glistening.
“What the—” George’s sprint faltered.
I was the only one who had fought Solange’s magical reinforcements before. “They’re strong, but they’re brittle. They’ll bash each other to pieces if you give them the opportunity,” I told him.
“If you say so.” George pulled ahead, whirling and ducking through the first line. The rest of the Itari fighters followed his lead, swords raised high, hollering a war cry. The two forces clashed, and within seconds, a dozen trolls were in pieces.
The Itari fighters were going to win. The trolls were only slowing them down. Not for long, but long enough for the Snow Queen to get away. Along the shore, she ran, her skirt bunched up in her hands. Right in front of all her armies and her allies.
She could have a portal waiting. I couldn’t let her reach it.
I darted around George, ducked under the arms of three ice trolls, and sprinted after her.
“You’re supposed to wait for us!” George called after me.
My feet dug grooves into the slush the heart was creating. A few times I nearly slipped, but I was gaining on the Snow Queen. Solange hadn’t had a lot of reasons to run in the past few years. I was in way better shape. Only twenty feet behind. No, fifteen.
Solange glanced back. She raised her hands, ready to blast me with a spell.
he ice beneath her cracked and broke away from the shore. Her own private island.
A defensive spell, then. That made more sense, considering it was her heart I was holding. Attacking me would be suicide.
I didn’t stop. I couldn’t jump as far as Chase, but I could still jump pretty far for someone without wings.
She noticed. The ice under her shot up. Not just her private island—a private iceberg, and I knew she wouldn’t stop feeding it with magic until it had grown as tall as the tower where she’d trapped Chase and her little sister.
I leapt.
I cleared the distance, but the ice had grown too fast. I landed on my elbows instead of my feet, hard enough to bruise, but I barely felt the pain. By the time I threw a knee up over the ledge, the new iceberg was already slick with melting water. Still, it grew.
“How are you feeling, Rory?” The Snow Queen’s gaze was pinned on the heart in my hands. I wondered if she’d ever taken it out of its symbol-covered box, especially considering she got a light show every time she got close. We traveled upward fast. The ice troll–Itari fighter battle shrank to the size of dolls, of mice, of ants. “This isn’t making you nervous?”
I just looked at her. A little sick to my stomach, definitely. But not nervous. I’d been chasing her. I knew which one of us was more scared.
We were very high now. Light unfurled across the sky. Golds and reds threaded through a delicate silver green. The bay water mirrored the colors. The land was dark, the armies just shadowy silhouettes. General Searcaster slammed a spell down with her basilisk cane, then another. Jimmy Searcaster had fallen, and Ripper bounded over his fellow pillar, jaws snapping at a figure I couldn’t see.
I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off Solange. Something whistled through the air toward me.
The ice darts flew, aimed at my head, no danger at all to the heart I held at my chest. I didn’t have enough time to dodge, but it didn’t matter.
Inches from my face, they vanished in a puff of steam.
The heart was very hot. It hadn’t just melted a puddle around us—it was practically a pool. The water had reached our shins.
I took a step toward her.
The Snow Queen thrust her hands into the water. It froze, and ice stretched toward me but never reached my legs. The water on my side of the pool stayed liquid no matter how hard Solange strained.
All she managed to do was create a breeze, her cold swirling around my heat. Rapunzel’s glass vial banged against my hip, whipping along its silver chain. Solange spotted it.
“Is that all you have left to help you?” she snarled. “Where are your combs and your ring? Where is your magic sword? You’ve given up everything that made you a threat.”
Liar. I had her heart. I didn’t need those other things.
I took another step. The heart was getting harder to hold. Its shuddering sent ripples through the water.
“Your friends will lose! They’ll lose unless you help them!”
Solange sounded desperate. I risked another glance at the battle below. Ori’an swooped down and plucked Ripper off Jimmy, trying to save one pillar from the other. He carried the Big Bad Wolf upward, trying to reason with him, but Ripper must have nipped him or something. Ori’an dropped him. It was too dark for me to see him land, but I heard the cracking boom when he hit.
Mistake. I couldn’t believe I fell for that again. Something silver flashed out of the corner of my vision, much too close to my eye.
I whirled back to the Snow Queen.
Her skin had dulled to the color of slush, and her hands bristled with snowflake-shaped throwing stars, probably all poisoned. Heat weakened her magic. So she’d brought out some weapons way harder to melt than ice darts.
I took another step. The heart shook so violently that it almost lurched out of my hands. Steam rose from the water, blocking the view of the battlefield. All I could see now was her.
She launched another barbed snowflake. I splashed to the side, barely fast enough. The throwing star whizzed past my cheek, shearing off a lock of hair growing at my temple. I felt it brush my ear and fly away.
Too close. Solange had adjusted her aim to compensate for the wind. She was good. Throwing stars had probably been her weapon before she’d become the Snow Queen. No wonder they’d become her trademark.
Fine. My dodging skills weren’t half-bad either.
Another step, and another throwing star. I ducked to avoid it.
She hurled two more at my knees. I splashed to my left out of their path, moving much slower in the water. The Snow Queen noticed and changed tactics.
She launched four of her weapons, rapid shots to each leg. I had to jump back to keep from getting hit.
“Is it vengeance you’re after, Rory?” Solange said scornfully. “Vengeance for Rapunzel and all the others?” She reached into her pockets for another round of snowflakes, and while her hands were busy, I slogged forward, the pool sloshing around us.
Solange raised her arm, but before she could throw, I shifted the heart a little lower, shielding my legs. The Snow Queen whirled a throwing star at my unprotected throat instead. I leaned out of its way and splashed right up to her.
Only three feet remained between us. The heart leapt forward, like it was reaching for its former owner. The light made the steam around us glow.
Eyes wide, she threw again, but I was ready. I jumped aside and aimed a snap kick at her left hand, the one holding the rest of her ammo. My sneaker connected with a wet smack. The Snow Queen cried out, caught by surprise. The barbed snowflakes plunked into the pool and sank out of sight.
She stared at me, defenseless now and furious about it.
“SAY SOMETHING!” she shrieked. She had realized she couldn’t stop me. She couldn’t even make me talk. “YOUR SILENCE IS THE SAME AS HERS!”
Maybe Solange had cut out her own heart to stop her loneliness, but it hadn’t stopped her from wanting Rapunzel. She’d followed her little sister from Europe to North America just to stay close to her. I’d never thought about it like that before.
The Snow Queen had woken up missing Rapunzel like I had. We didn’t miss her the same way. Solange wanted her sister like a possession she could keep locked in a tower, but the absence still ached in her, too. Even with all her power, all her clever schemes, Solange was still just a broken person.
“Rapunzel saw this, you know,” I said. “She even saw the iceberg.”
Resignation crept into the Snow Queen’s face, reminding me of Rapunzel every time the Director had accused her of something.
Solange looked so much like her sister. When she was gone, another part of Rapunzel would be gone too.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered. “Do you even know?”
Rapunzel hadn’t told me what to do with the heart after I’d brought it to the Snow Queen, but yeah, I still knew what to do with it.
The thought occurred to Solange at exactly the same second.
She lashed out and grabbed my wrists. She twisted them, her grip so tight I felt her fingernails digging into my tendons, trying to force me to drop the heart. She was strong, but I was stronger. I shoved hard.
The heart slid into her chest, easier than sliding a sword through flesh. She screamed, but when she sucked in another breath, it sounded more like a sob.
The light winked out and the wind died when the heart vanished. All grew dark and still. My palms tingled with the aftermath of strong magic. My arms felt rubbery after fighting the heart’s vibrations for so long.
Solange didn’t burst into silver dust like her sister had.
Even in the starlight, I could see her coloring change—the strawlike hair grew a darker shade of blond, ivory skin grew rosy with a very human flush. She held her hands out, staring at her body. Red and yellow ribbons seared burning lines under her skin, as if the light show that had once covered the sky was now trapped inside her veins.
The hairs on my arms began to stand up, and not because of the cold.
The returned heart was forcing out the magic that had turned Solange into a sorceress. I felt a current sweep across my skin, its power swelling and swelling just like it had with the sorceress-giant, but if Searcaster’s spell was a wave, this would be a monstrous tsunami of power, huge enough to drown whole towns, to destroy beaches, to recarve the shore into an unrecognizable landscape.
Solange looked up, green and gold lines curling across her cheeks. Except for that, except for the length of her face and the color of her eyes, she could have been Rapunzel. Her gaze met mine with the same sorrow. The magic inside her was seconds away from bursting free, and she had lost control over it.
Her lips parted, like she was going to say something, the last words I would probably ever hear.
Instead, her hand shot out. Her palm struck right above my collarbone, and I flew back. I didn’t realize how close we had gotten to the edge of the iceberg until I toppled over the side.
I fell toward the dark sea, my face inches from the pale ice. Hitting the water would kill me if I didn’t crash into the side of the Snow Queen’s frozen tower first.
Above me, the power trapped inside Solange clawed its way out. Reds and oranges licked the sky like flames, more violent than before, and waves of color cascaded down the ice. A ribbon of yellow whipped toward me. I twisted away as best as I could, but the raw magic still wrapped around my shoe and ripped it to pieces. It would have torn apart my foot, too, if I hadn’t pulled my knees up and out of its reach.
Solange was gone. All of that magic must have shredded her as it ripped free of her veins, and it looked like her magic wanted me, too.
Maybe it was for the best. With both bearers of Unwritten Tales gone, no one like the Snow Queen could ever exist again.
There is more than one way to give your life, Rapunzel had said. My hand closed over the glass light she’d given me.
Stupid. Deciding I wanted to live right then.
The sound of shattering attacked my eardrums, echoing across the bay like the Glass Mountain itself had been smashed. Frozen chunks exploded outward.
I curled my arms around my head, but a huge piece slammed into my body, knocking me to the side, away from the raw magic spilling into the sea. Around me, light pulsed brighter and redder.
Then something small struck my temple, and black conquered everything.
Ice chilled my back, and my legs felt like they were covered in icicles. I started shivering before I even opened my eyes.
A hand burned against my cheek. Chase sounded impatient. “Come on, Rory.”
I looked up. His face was inches from mine. “It is so cold,” I said, my teeth chattering.
Of course it was. I was wearing a coat with a hole seared through it. I’d lost a shoe, and the breeze was ripping through my ragged sock. My jeans—thanks to all the water the heart had melted—were now frozen up to the knee. The Snow Queen and the magic that poured out of her had failed to kill me, so the Arctic Circle was giving it its best sh
ot.
Chase’s arms slid around me, deliciously warm. His jacket’s spell was still working. I snuggled into his chest, greedy for the heat, cradling Rapunzel’s light between us. Soon my shivering eased.
Then I noticed Chase was trembling.
“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He didn’t stop shaking, and he didn’t answer. “Chase? Are you hurt?”
“I have never been so scared in my entire life.” His whole torso had curled over mine.
“You told me that I wasn’t going to die.” He was a good liar. What he had said about his dream could have been completely made up. It had worked, though.
“Well, I didn’t think so,” Chase said. “But I didn’t know if the plan was going to work. Rapunzel said you were in danger. She put it in her letter: The ice will rise. Rory will fall. Chase can catch her, but in the explosion, you’ll need to find her. Put Lena in charge of the light. So Lena reworked Rapunzel’s vial. She said she was pretty sure it would glow when she blew into her whistle, but she didn’t have time to test it before she gave it back to you.”
“Lena made Rapunzel’s light glow red? So you could find me and catch me?” I said, slowly starting to understand. Three of my favorite people had worked together to save me. “But Rapunzel said she hadn’t seen the final outcome—”
“You were unconscious when I grabbed you—” His voice broke.
I decided to stop asking him questions. “Chase, I’m okay. I promise.”
His forehead rested against my shoulder. Something wet soaked through the hole in my coat. If anybody asked, I would have lied and said it was snow.
“Rory!” Our favorite inventor ran along the shore, so fast it was like she wasn’t even tired, but the rest of the kids in our grade sure were. They jogged doggedly behind her.
“Chase, Lena will reach us in less than a minute.” I kissed his cheek, stood up, and stepped in front of him, shivering again. The wet sock on my shoeless foot instantly turned to ice under my heel. If we were lucky, all the focus would be on me. No one would have any reason to notice Chase’s red eyes.
