Of Enemies and Endings (26 page)

“Back to the sack!” Lena cried. The axes swooped in obediently. “Maybe I should have done that from the beginning.”

“You think?” Adelaide darted over the threshold and disappeared into the darkness beyond the door.

“Are you two coming?” she called from inside. “It's dark in here.”

I reached into my carryall and groped around for the glass vial. Lena and I stepped inside.

A clap rang out, so loud it hurt my ears. Before I could even suck in a breath to whistle over Rapunzel's light, something else thunked into place, and something else, over and over until I lost count.

I couldn't even tell where it was coming from—the sound echoed too much, banging around us and then up and up.

Then I felt someone grab a fistful of my shirt. “The door,” Lena whispered. From where I stood, it just looked like a gloomy patch only slightly brighter than the rest of the room, as if the vines had already closed in. “Rory, does it look smaller to you?”

Traps within traps
, Rapunzel had said.

I whistled over the glass vial. Light spilled out of it, through my fingers, filling the inside of the tower.

Now we could see two piles of rectangular yellow stones sitting just beside the entrance. They shrank as blocks flew from the floor into neat rows, filling the door frame, walling us in.

But the real surprise was what
else
had been hiding in the dark.

The floor was packed with beasts. I would have never guessed that four dragons and a dozen ice griffins could fit into such a small space. I raised my sword and stepped in front of Lena automatically. Rapunzel's light swung in my hand, and shadows danced along the walls.

“They're
asleep
,” Adelaide told me.

Curious, Lena squatted down beside the closest dragon. Its head was roughly the same size as a car tire, its eyes closed. “I'm guessing she sent them as soon as George, Ben, and Kyle went back to EAS. They were probably supposed to ambush us as soon as we got inside. The sleeping enchantment must be strong. Stronger than the Snow Queen thought. I mean, sometimes, the sleeping enchantment in this Tale knocks out a whole castle.”

“Then why didn't it get George, Ben, and Kyle?” I asked.

“No, why aren't
we
sleeping?” Adelaide said shrilly.

“I'm not sure,” Lena said, but in this excited way that meant she had some theories. “Spells are funny. It could have taken awhile for the enchantment to finish with Chase and start creeping to other living beings. Or maybe these beasts are more susceptible to spells than we are.”

“So you don't think we'll be enchanted?” Adelaide said.

“No.” Lena stood and dusted off her hands. “I think we got lucky.”

I wish I could have believed her. “Does that mean that they'll all wake up when we break the spell over Chase?” The ice griffins could fly. They would find us at the top of the tower.

“We'll deal with that later,” Adelaide said. “We need to find Chase.” She started picking her way through the sleeping bodies.

“Oh, before I forget—” Lena pulled her M3 back out and called, “Melodie?”

No one answered. I didn't really expect a response. The Snow Queen must have set up a warding hex around the whole tower.

“Well, I was going to check on Kyle,” Lena said, sticking her M3 in her back pocket, “but I guess we're on our own.”

“You guys talk too much,” Adelaide said.

Lena bristled. “Actually, we call it ‘planning.' It's what experienced questers do so they don't die.”

“Well, I found the staircase,” Adelaide replied. “That's what questers do when they want to get to the top of the tower.”

I'd been holding out a tiny hope that it was the kind of staircase with a railing between you and the drop, but no. We would have to climb steep spiral steps with nothing between us and a long fall onto a pile of dragons and ice griffins.

“This will be fun.” Lena steered me around the beasts toward the base of the stone stairs. Hot, sulfur-smelling air hung above the dragons, but cold clung to the ice griffins.

Adelaide didn't wait for us. She started marching up. “Stop!” I said.

“Remember what Rapunzel said about booby traps!” Lena reminded her.

Adelaide froze. “Well, if you have so much quest experience, what do you suggest we do? Just walk up the steps
really
slowly?”

I sighed. If Ben were here, he would have repeated, “Same team.” I didn't think I could get away with it. Adelaide hated me too much.

Lena plopped her carryall on the floor and pulled out a paste that glittered with dragon scales. “Melodie mentioned a spell for finding booby traps. Either we can cast it for every single step, or—” She finger-painted some green-and-gold dragon scale paste onto the mirror's surface. “We can adapt it.
This quest just gets stranger and stranger; do us a favor
,” she said, switching to Fey.
“Light up when a stair means danger.”

The dragon-scale paste sank into the glass.

She was getting better at making up inventions on the go.

Adelaide was not impressed. “That can't possibly work.”

In answer, Lena ran past her and stuck the mini mirror over the next stair, and the next. On the sixth try, white light flared across the M3's surface, so bright that all three of us had to look away.

Lena yanked her M3 back just in time. A hundred arrows flew out of the wall, straight at the mirror
and
the arm holding it out.

She squeaked and tucked her hands into her chest. Then she looked at them. Two long scratches marked her palm.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Still attached!” she said with so much forced cheer that she reminded me of my mother. “And now we have a booby-trap detector. I'll go first. Then Rory after me.”

Adelaide was clearly about to go on another
I'm the girlfriend
rant. “Why am
I
last?”

Because Lena trusted me to bail her out of trouble more than Adelaide. Because Lena knew if I went last, I would lag behind and probably vomit as soon as vertigo hit.

You could practically hear Lena rolling her eyes. “Because Rory has the light.”

I thrust Rapunzel's glass vial into the air and began to trudge up the steps. I wondered how old these traps were. I wondered if Solange was trying to protect her baby sister or trying to stop me when she had made them. I wondered if it mattered.

Lena was clearly in the lead for the Most Valuable Companion Award on this quest. Twelve more steps up, she found some stairs that only
looked
like reliable grey stone. If you laid a finger on them to check, you could feel that they were actually illusioned ice—cold and slick and more than ready to make you slip and fall to your death. Lena dug around her carryall until she found extra dragon scales. She cast the spell that we normally used when we fought ice griffins, and spikes sprouted out of the bottom of our sneakers.

Another two flights up, and three stairs in a row dropped on a hinge like a trap door. It would have dumped us onto the beasts below. Lena fixed those with a stasis spell a lot like the one General Searcaster had used to hold the city of Kiivinsh hostage.

I just focused on climbing, hugging the wall and placing one foot in front of the other.

You haven't met any winter today. The ice griffins are asleep. No winter, so no death
, I reminded myself, but that wasn't what pushed me to take another step.

I pretended that Chase was awake. I pretended that he was watching and waiting, just like he had when we climbed up the beanstalk. Maybe my foot would slip, like it had back then. Maybe a stair would crumble, and I would go with it. Screaming, of course, because that was how I usually handled falling. And then the trap door would slam open, and Chase would swoop out from the top of the tower with a flash of orange wings and snatch my hand, just like he had when the troll bridge broke. And he'd say, extremely pleased with himself,
Can't I take a nap for three hours without you getting into trouble?

It was a very stupid daydream.

But I let myself have it anyway. He would start explaining to Lena how the Fey of the Aspenwind clan have a natural resistance to sleeping enchantments; it just takes a while for it to kick in. I imagined him turning to me, grinning and saying,
You were worried about me, Rory? I'm touched. Especially considering how we aren't even friends
. I started to make up my apology, but I didn't get very far.

God, I couldn't cry. I needed to
see
.

I should have apologized before he went on that mission.

Either Adelaide heard me sniffle, or she sensed that I was having a conversation with her boyfriend in my head.

“Chase said
you
were the bravest?” Adelaide said.

My chest tightened.

This feeling had grown familiar. I'd felt it before at the Snow Queen's palace, watching the trolls pummel him, watching Solange lay her hands on his face. I'd felt it on my birthday, waiting for him to return from Atlantis, waiting to see if he'd come back at all. I was starting to think I would
always
feel this helpless terror that he may be hurt, and this desperation to stop it.

“You're completely overrated,” Adelaide continued, stomping up behind me. “
You
might as well be under a sleeping spell. What good are you?”

“Stop it, Adelaide,” said Lena.

“No!” She dashed up until she'd reached my step. She shoved her face close to mine, completely furious.

“It's
your
fault he's in danger, Rory.” The accusation wouldn't have hurt me so much coming from anyone besides Adelaide. She was the only other person who worried about Chase the same way I did. “The Snow Queen never would have gone after him if you didn't care about him so much.”

The stair cracked beneath us. Her mouth opened, but faster than she could scream, the pieces under our feet began to drop. Her fingers scraped across the wall, searching for a handhold.

My body took over, my mind barely involved, just like when I fought under my sword's magic. I grabbed her wrist, leapt up the stairs, and swung her up to safety above me.

Even without Rapunzel asking, I would have saved her. Saving her meant saving Chase.

“Oh my gumdrops,” Lena whispered behind me. “How could I be so
stupid
? Another trap activates if more than one person stands on the same step. Two deaths using the same magic it takes to kill one.”

Got it. Single file
, I thought, but I didn't say it. I kept my mouth closed and concentrated on not throwing up.

“So you're not useless.” Adelaide didn't look so impossibly pretty now. Her hair was plastered to her face, sticky with sweat. “But it's still your fault.”

“I
know
, Adelaide,” I said.

“Be quiet for a second.” Lena sounded so breathless I glanced over to check on her. She was pointing upward. “Is that it?”

“Chase,” Adelaide whispered. He was so close.

We could
see
the top of the tower, the landing where the stairs ended. A ladder stood on it, directly under a trap door.

My breath caught.

The wood of the door was black and cracked with age. Light from Rapunzel's vial gleamed across a silver doorknob. The shadows were too deep for me to see any symbols etched beneath it.

It looked like the door from my dreams. I'd been sure that I would find it in the Snow Queen's palace, but it could be here. I could believe that the fate of the world depended on Chase.

“That
has
to be it.” Her jaw set and determined, Lena thrust the M3 over the next step—one of her quick swipes.

I kept waiting for another trap to spring, but Lena's mirror didn't glow with any more warnings.

Only three traps to protect Solange's sister? Only three traps to keep us from rescuing Chase?

We reached the landing. “That was easier than I thought,” Lena said happily.

“Speak for yourself,” Adelaide said.

I thrust Rapunzel's light toward the door.

It wasn't the one from my dream. I could see what was etched underneath the doorknob.

Not just an
S
. No, it had an
S
and an
R
entwined. I guess Rapunzel and Solange really
had
lived here.

Stupid of me. It couldn't have been
that
door. I couldn't go through it alone. The whole point was to get Adelaide in there.

The ladder was right in front of me. I started climbing. It was only ten feet tall. Barely a challenge at all, especially compared to the stairs.

“I should go first,” Adelaide said, scurrying forward.

But I was already at the top. I couldn't help myself.

“Um, Rory—” Lena said, like she wanted to point out that she had a perfectly good booby-trap detector I wasn't using.

I reached for the knob. It turned easily, and the door creaked as I rammed my shoulder into the wood and shoved. It opened.

“I guess it's not locked?” But even Lena's worry didn't register.

The tower's only room was even smaller than I expected, maybe fifteen feet across. Child-size furniture was piled up against the wall.

Climbing in, I scraped my knee on the trap door's hinge and scrambled to my feet.

Chase was lying on a narrow cot. Its old-fashioned mattress might have once been very fluffy but now feathers spilled out of both sides, fluttering in the breeze coming from the open window.

He was curled up on his side, one arm flung out and the other hand curled toward his face. He must have been holding his weapon with that hand; the sword had slipped to the stone floor among the feathers.

His jawline was growing to be as rugged as his dad's, but he still looked so much like his mother. The summer had teased more gold out of his hair, and his long lashes cast dim shadows across his cheeks.