by Perdita Finn
“Whoa!” gasped Daring the Beast, staring at Northwind’s ice giant feet. “Those just might be the largest feet I have ever seen!”
Northwind looked down. “Cool, huh? Actually, it’s my first time becoming an ice giant. Pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.”
“You are gigantic!” Daring complimented him expertly.
“Crystal, run,” whispered Rosabella. “Get up to the throne room. Daring and I have got this. I don’t know how, but somehow we’ve got this!”
Crystal nodded gratefully. “Stay safe. Everyone else, come with me!”
“Very impressive, my man,” continued Daring the Beast.
The girls began to sneak through the main hall with Crystal.
“But hardly the most impressive,” Daring added.
Rosabella smiled at him. “Keep it up!” she told him.
“What?” He was confused.
“Distracting the giant!” replied Rosabella.
But the spell was broken. Northwind realized what had happened. “Hey! I’m not that dumb!” he said. But it was too late. The girls had already made it past him.
CHAPTER 32
Battle on Ice
Jackie was still trying to figure out how to use the Snow King’s magical scepter. She fired it at a pillar, missed, and tried again. This time she hit it. “Aim, ice,” she told herself. “That’s more like it. Jackie rules!”
Suddenly, there was a call on the globe atop the scepter. Jackie answered it. “Is it too much to ask if you have defeated the little princess and her pompous pack of minions?”
Northwind leaned into view. “Oh, we are totally winning,” he told his sister confidently. “Except that Crystal and her friends got away and are heading toward you.”
“AAAAGH!” Jackie screamed. “What part of that is winning? Okay, I’m doing this myself.”
Jackie turned her attention to the Snow King and Snow Queen. She knew Crystal was after the last rose, the Rose of Winter. Jackie plucked it from the queen’s hand and froze it to her own collar. “She’s going to have to get through me first,” she cackled.
Crystal appeared a moment later, flanked by her friends. Jackie was on the throne. Blondie was filming the whole scene so that everyone at Ever After High could follow what was happening.
The first thing Crystal saw was her parents—asleep and frozen. “Mom! Dad!” she called. “Jackie Frost, you’d better not have hurt them!”
“They’re fine,” sneered Jackie. “And I’ll do whatever I want. I’m the boss around here. Not you!”
“But this is not your palace! You stole it!” Crystal was outraged.
Jackie mocked her. “Boo-hoo-hoo!”
“The staff of winter!” Crystal realized Jackie was holding it. “It is too dangerous! The people and creatures of Ever After are being buried by this wicked winter! I know how to use the staff!”
While she was talking, the winter pixies crept out from under the throne, carrying Crystal’s wand.
“You don’t know anything,” answered Jackie angrily. “You can’t do anything. You don’t deserve power. You just consider winter your playground. Fun, fun, fun. Some of us do all the work!”
“Winter should be fun,” Crystal responded. “And yes, it is work to prepare a good winter. But we should be working together. All of us doing our best…”
Jackie didn’t want to hear any more of this. She leaped up, brandishing the staff. The pixies startled and jumped back. “You? The next queen of winter? Ha!”
“Because I care!” Crystal stood up to Jackie. “I care about all the creatures of winter. Because I’ve struggled. Because I’ve climbed ice walls. I quested to find a cure for my parents. I crossed the world. I risked everything to get back what I had once upon a time. I understand what a great responsibility this is, and I am ready—not to rule, but to serve.”
“You tell her!” cheered Blondie.
The students and teachers listening to this speech at Ever After High nodded in agreement. The penguins in the throne room cheered!
Jackie scoffed at Crystal’s inspiring message. “You want to use the immense power of winter to help others? Girl, I always thought you were a bit weird.”
“Jackie, please, give me the staff.” Crystal extended her hand. “Let me heal winter, for everyone.”
Crystal was approaching Jackie, one slow step at a time. Jackie’s eyes were narrowed, glaring at the princess. Ashlynn and Briar hugged each other. Faybelle was shocked. Blondie was filming everything.
“Jackie’s going to blast-freeze Crystal,” worried Faybelle.
She was right.
CHAPTER 33
The Big Chill
Northwind wasn’t used to his new size. He staggered after Rosabella and Daring, waving his enormous hands at them—and missing every time.
“Gotcha! Er, no, I don’t.”
“How much longer do we have to play this game of cat and mouse?” Daring panted, out of breath.
Rosabella’s eyes widened. That was it! “Daring, you’re brilliant!”
He grinned. “Yes, well, thank you… How?”
Rosabella was thinking fast. “Northwind is a shapeshifter, right? All we have to do is get him into a different shape.”
Far above them, Northwind couldn’t hear what they were whispering. Daring stepped out from behind a pillar. “Say, Northwind, old chap, Rosabella and I were just wondering… well, this is awkward… but I say that you can choose any winter creature to shape-shift into.”
“That’s right, I can!” bragged Northwind.
Daring cleared his throat, stalling for time. “But, well, um, Rosabella here…”
“I say that Daring is wrong! You can’t,” Rosabella teased Northwind. Daring stepped in front of her protectively.
Northwind was offended. He puffed out his chest. He roared!
“But I’m on your side, old boy!” said Daring hastily. “Let me see, you were a polar bear, and, um, an owl…”
Northwind transformed in an instant to a snowy owl! “I do that one good! See?”
“Yeah!” Daring complimented him. “And a snow mouse!”
Rosabella shook her head. “He was never a mouse,” she insisted.
“Yes, I was!” protested Northwind. “Wasn’t I?”
Daring sighed. “That’s the problem. I say yes, and she says no.”
“Northwind can turn into whatever Northwind wants to!” the snowy owl announced. An instant later, he squeaked. He was a tiny, tiny mouse.
“Now, Daring!” shouted Rosabella.
Daring leaped, catlike, onto the mouse and pinned him with his giant paws. The game was over.
Rosabella clapped her hands. “Gotcha!”
Northwind was strangely unworried. “I’m guessing that this is all part of Jackie’s plan,” he said mysteriously, his mouse whiskers twitching.
Needless to say, it wasn’t. Jackie was facing off with Crystal in the throne room.
“Jackie, do the right thing,” Crystal urged her. “Give me the staff. Give me the Rose of Winter. You do not have the power to control it. You will only get hurt!”
“Pretty words from a pretty useless princess,” Jackie taunted her. She spun the staff in her hands, and it began to glow.
Crystal shook her head, concerned. “A stolen destiny will never give you a Happily Ever After. Join me!”
“What if I do?” asked Jackie. “Why should I?”
“You know I have no powers,” Crystal told her. “My dad took them away. I stand before you humbly to ask you to turn back. Join me! Heal the world!”
No one dared to move. The kids in the auditorium at Ever After High all held their breaths. Would Jackie take Crystal’s offer?
But Faybelle wasn’t going to wait to find out! Quick as a flash, she flew toward Jackie—and snatched the Rose of Winter from her jacket. Jackie spun around. She shot a beam of slush toward Faybelle and froze her in midair! Faybelle, holding the Rose of Winter, was a solid block of ice. She clunked to the flo
or.
“I knew it was a trick!” screeched Jackie.
“No, Jackie!” Crystal wailed.
“You think you are a big deal,” sneered Jackie. “Well, I can be a big deal, too.” She began to entice the magic energy out of the staff. Purple and pink lights flickered around her. She grew taller and taller and taller until she was as tall as the ceiling. She was an ice giant! “Now it’s time to end this story, starting with your parents.”
Jackie aimed the magic staff at the king and queen, but Crystal dived in front of them. “No!” She tripped. Her laces were untied again.
The winter pixies raced to protect her.
Jackie laughed. “You want to join her? Then you share her fate.”
But she didn’t know that one of the pixies had slipped Crystal her wand!
“My wand of winter!” Crystal whispered.
Just as Jackie went to blast her, Crystal created a shield around her parents, the pixies, and herself. Jackie couldn’t even see them anymore! The jolt of frost she’d fired formed a circle of ice around the shield.
“What?” Jackie was baffled.
Behind the shield, Crystal used the wand to enchant a small pile of snow. The pixies pulled her parents to safety behind their thrones.
Crystal stepped out from behind the shield, wand raised. “You want to play? Let’s play!”
What she’d forgotten to do was tie her laces. The strings straggled on either side of her shoes. What if she tripped again?
Ashlynn and Briar watched from afar, terrified.
Jackie cackled. “Play? Ha! Come back when you’ve learned to tie your own—”
But Crystal had already done it! She knew how! She’d tied her laces and her boots transformed into skates. “I’ve learned a whole lot on this adventure.”
Crystal turned her wand into a hockey stick, just as she had long, long ago with her father. She conjured a hockey puck with a puff of frozen breath, just as her mother had done. Crystal hit it with her stick right at Jackie’s feet. She zigged and zagged across the icy floor. The puck ricocheted—and walloped Jackie on the nose!
Jackie, unused to her giant size, lumbered across the room. But Crystal was too fast for her. Jackie swung the staff wildly, blasting here and there. Ice was spraying everywhere. Icebergs hardened in the room. Jackie had frozen her own feet to the floor! She bellowed and struggled, but she couldn’t move.
Clutching each other, Ashlynn and Briar breathed a sigh of relief. Faybelle tried to cheer from inside her block of ice. The crowd at Ever After High went wild.
Crystal skated gracefully. She twirled in the air and landed cleanly on one foot, her other leg stretched behind her. Everyone applauded!
“Crystal Winter is on fire!” Blondie reported.
“Hey, Jackie!” Crystal called, and fired the hockey puck right at her. The princess skated full speed in Jackie’s direction. She created an ice arch, just as she had done when she played with her father. It went right up the side of the frozen ice giant. Crystal whizzed up it and knocked the staff from Jackie’s grip. Without the magic staff, Jackie shrank back to normal size. Crystal froze her hands with blocks of ice.
“Not fair!” Jackie whined.
With a gentle push, Crystal slid the frozen elf across the room—right into the hockey net.
“Goal!” shouted Blondie. “What an upset!”
“You get to stay there until you learn to chillax,” Crystal told Jackie.
With Jackie’s powers gone, Faybelle’s ice cube began to melt, and soon she was free. Daring and Rosabella rushed into the room. Northwind, in Daring’s paws, squeaked. Crystal bound him in ice as well and dropped him next to his sister.
He giggled. “Hi, Jackie. Is this part of the plan, too? You’re so clever!”
His sister rolled her eyes. “Ugh!”
On orders from Crystal, a troop of penguins lifted the frozen elves and carried them out of the room. Enough. It was time to put them on ice and make sure they couldn’t get into any more trouble!
CHAPTER 34
The Greatest Magic of All
Crystal’s quest was over at last. She and her friends had found all four magic roses. As they brought the roses together in the center of the room, the flowers began to glow. They floated out of the girls’ hands, and their stems twisted together to form a bouquet.
“We can finally cure the Kindness Blindness.” Ashlynn was relieved.
But Faybelle’s fingers were still wrapped around the Rose of Winter.
“Faybelle?” Crystal questioned.
For a moment, guilt flashed across the fairy’s face. But then her hand tightened around the whole bouquet. It was hers. No way was she going into service for two hundred years! “Sorry, gang,” she said as she flew with the roses toward the balcony. “I need this more than you do.”
“Those are to save my parents!” cried Crystal.
“Faybelle! What trouble have you gotten into now?” Rosabella asked.
Faybelle paused. She wasn’t a bad fairy. Okay, well, she was—but still, she needed to explain herself. “I need these roses to save me from a fate worse than death—hard work!”
“Think of someone else for once!” It was Daring the Beast. “This affects ever after all of us!”
Rosabella’s mouth hung open. Had he changed? At last?
But Faybelle didn’t listen to him. Her wings began to flutter. “That would be a you problem, not a me problem. Bye-bye!” She flew away from the palace and headed toward Ever After High.
The girls were stunned.
“How will we cure your parents?” Ashlynn wondered out loud.
“What do we do?” cried Briar.
Crystal stared after Faybelle. She was deep in thought. This was no time for despair. It was time for action. “Penguins,” she commanded, “prepare the royal sleigh. We’re going to follow that fairy!”
They had no time to lose.
Led by a team of royal polar bears, the Snow King’s sleigh raced toward Ever After High. Everyone was crowded on board—including Daring the Beast, who was relieved not to be pulling it this time.
Faybelle reached the school castle in no time. She paused on one of the top turrets and was relieved that no one seemed to be pursuing her. She called the Fairy Mob and held up the bouquet of roses to her MirrorPhone. “Okay, I got the Roses of the Seasons.”
“We’ll meet you at your locker,” snarled the mobster on the other end of the call. “And yes, we know where it is.”
Faybelle squinted. At the edge of the horizon she saw something. It was the royal sleigh—she’d been followed after all! She ducked through a window and zipped through the snowy hallways to her locker as fast as she could.
No one was there. She looked up and down the corridor. She had no time to lose. Where were the mobsters?
“Ahem.” Someone coughed—from inside her locker.
She spun the lock and opened the door. All three mob fairies were crammed inside. They were rummaging through her stuff.
“This color lip gloss,” commented one of the mobsters, “not really working.”
“Give me that,” Faybelle snapped at them. “And get out of my stuff.”
They flapped their wings, and Faybelle slammed the locker shut behind them. “I got the Royal Roses of the Seasons, like I promised,” she said. “Old magic in exchange for my freedom.”
One of the mobsters raised a bushy eyebrow. “And how do we know it’s the real deal?”
Just then the front doors of the school flew open. It was the sleigh! The polar bears were panting. The students, who had been following Blondie’s reporting, poured out of the auditorium to see what was happening.
Crystal caught sight of Faybelle and ran over to her. Faybelle clutched the bouquet tightly.
“I need those roses to save my parents!” Crystal cried.
One of the mobsters leaned close to his buddy. “Um, I’m thinkin’ this is legit.”
Faybelle looked at the assembled students. She looked
at Crystal. What was she going to do? “I need them to save myself,” she whined. “I signed a deal with the mob fairies to take my detention duty to clean up the school.” She wiped away a tear. “And I didn’t read the fine print. Now I owe them two hundred years of service. Unless I give them these roses.” She hung her head, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
Crystal felt terrible. “Oh, Faybelle.”
But the mobsters were not moved by this exchange. “Boo-hoo,” one of them said sarcastically. “Either we get the roses or we get two hundred years of service from you. What’s it gonna be?”
Crystal forgave Faybelle. “I understand. You felt that you didn’t have a choice.”
“But I do!” Daring the Beast leaped off the sleigh. He ambled over to Faybelle and put his hands on the four roses. “Faybelle, I choose to take your place,” he said nobly.
“What?” Faybelle couldn’t believe her ears.
“I’ll take on your debt to the Fairy Mob. You’ll be free. If you give the Royal Roses of the Seasons back to Crystal.”
Rosabella gasped. The other students were astonished. No one could believe that Daring could be so selfless—least of all Faybelle.
“You’d do that for me?” she asked.
“If the Fairy Mob will let me,” Daring said, determined.
The head mobster shrugged. “Makes no difference who’s doing the work. No sweat off our wings.” He produced a contract out of thin air and handed Daring a feathered quill.
Daring signed the paper.
The mobster slapped him on the back. “Congratulations!”
The contract magically ripped apart! What was happening?
His buddy turned to the crowd. “It’s in the small print,” he explained. “If someone offers of their own free will to take on the work this contract is void.”
“You’re off the hook,” the head mobster said to Faybelle.
His buddy slapped Daring on the back. “Nice job, kid. We don’t see that enough these days. Okay. Fairy Mob out!”
They vanished. Daring handed the bouquet of roses to Crystal. “Now that that’s over, we can finally—”
