Of Enemies and Endings (45 page)

“Oh.” I hadn't known that. “Well, Rapunzel made me one at EAS. To keep the Pounce Pot safe.”

“Rory, if it's a one-key safe, it must be enchanted to only let the Snow Queen in,” Chase pointed out. “What makes you think you can open it?”

“I think because the key for this one is having an Unwritten Tale,” I said. Rapunzel hadn't picked that quality when she made my one-key safe, but when Solange had made this one, she'd probably assumed she would always be the only bearer of an Unwritten Tale.

“The one-key safe uses the most unusual thing about you to identify you,” Lena explained to the others, catching on fast. “The safe must identify the Snow Queen by her magic—the same magic that has been hanging around her since her Unwritten Tale. The magic around Rory is nearly identical. I'm sure the Snow Queen would have made a new, more specific one if she'd had more time.”

“And you don't think the Snow Queen just moved it?” asked Daisy sarcastically.

That hadn't occurred to me. It should have.

“No,” Kyle said slowly. “Think about it. If you had a safe only one other person could open, would you move it someplace where
anyone
could get at it?”

“Rory's right,” Lena said. “She can fool the safe.”

For the first time ever, being like the Snow Queen felt like a good thing.

Chase still didn't like the idea, but he was considering it now. “Can you break the enchantment, Lena?”

She examined the door. You could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “Rory, did you swipe EAS's extra supply of dragon scales before you left?” I nodded, shrugging off my carryall and passing over the two sacks. “Then I can. It would take some time though.”

“We don't
have
time,” Daisy said. “The invasion could begin like, any minute.”

Chase cursed in Fey, and I knew he'd given in.

“Come on, Chase. Even Maerwynne, Rikard, and Madame Benne weren't together all the time.” I unsheathed my sword and crossed the room, trying to hide my limp as much as possible. “They were united in purpose even when their paths diverged.”

“Rory, I can tell when you're just repeating something Rapunzel said,” Chase told me.

“Well, it makes
me
feel better.” I stopped in front of the door. It seemed smaller in person. Under Rapunzel's light, the tiny frost crystals on the dark wood sparkled just as brightly as the enchantment around the door frame.

“Wait.” Chase came over. His fingertips traced my jaw, tilting my face up again and checking my concussion. Ugh, not again. “All the rest of you, turn around. Lena, you too.”

Well, that was a ridiculous order. I thought some of them would protest, but they did it, smirking.

I didn't blame him for being worried, but he couldn't convince me to take the rest of the Water. “I'll be fine. Just let me do this. We
are
on a time crunch.”

“Rory,” Chase whispered. “Please stop talking. I'm trying to do this right.”

Then he lowered his head and pressed his lips against mine.

They were a little cold, like they'd been in the tower, and suddenly, they weren't. All the places where he touched me thawed, and the warmth spread, chasing away the chill. The whole room soared, like we were weightless, on top of the world. It was like flying without being afraid I would fall.

He drew back, so careful not to brush any of my bruises. “
That
was our first one. The thing in the tower didn't count.”

I laughed a little. I didn't realize how close I was to crying until I heard how shaky I sounded. “Of course it counted. It woke you up.”

“We clearly have a different definition of ‘counting.' ” He had that smile on—the one that I rarely saw, the one that was almost shy. “For me, it can't count unless both people are conscious.”

I wanted to stand here and tease him until we both laughed. I wanted to savor this. I didn't want to feel like time was running out. I didn't want to feel like this might be our last kiss.

“I told you,” Vicky muttered to Tina. I jumped. I'd totally forgotten other people were in the room. “I knew it would happen before the end of her Tale. You pay up.”

“Shhh,” Lena hissed.

So the kids in our grade took bets about me and Chase fighting
and
kissing. Great. I wondered if they had bets on whether or not we would die, too.

“You're not going to die, Rory.” And Chase thought
I
read minds sometimes.

“You don't know that.” He was afraid too. You don't make a point of kissing someone who's about to walk into a trap, unless you think they might not come back. “I have to go.”

He nodded. He stepped away, but he didn't drop my hand. I reached for the knob with my sword arm. It turned easily. The door creaked open. Cold air spilled out.

“See you in a bit,” I told Chase, and before I could lose my nerve, I pulled my hand out of his and slipped through the doorway.

o giant ice statues. No crushing walls. Not even an enchantment to freeze me where I stood.

It was a plain white chamber, identical to the one I'd just left, except that this room only had one person in it.

She wasn't the Snow Queen. She was taller and not as slender. Her hair hung in perfect brown waves all the way down her back, streaked with lighter honey strands. Her hazel eyes had a piercing gaze under arched eyebrows. Her dress flowed to the floor in a cascade of dark gray silk. She was beautiful in that chilly, distant way that the Snow Queen was—like her beauty was a prelude to some sort of catastrophe.

She also didn't look armed. That was the part that really mattered. “So . . . who are you?”

The girl laughed. “Isn't it obvious?” she said, with
my
voice.

No
. Walking into a one-key safe couldn't split one person into two. Even the Snow Queen couldn't manage that, right?

“I got all your best traits,” said the other Rory. “None of the indecision that holds
you
back, none of your fears, none of your failings.”

Well, if she had all my best traits, she was missing my stubbornness. I had a job to do, and I was going to do it—weird other Rory or no. I circled her once to make sure she hadn't tucked any weapons under her skirt. Then I turned away. I inspected the walls, looking for some hidden compartment where the Snow Queen might have stored her heart. I even risked sheathing my sword so that I could run both hands over the ice, feeling for cracks too small to see.

Nothing. I should have at least felt the doorway, but that blended in too. No handles or keyholes either. I probably should have left it ajar when I walked in.

Oh well. I would deal with that problem
after
I got the heart.

The other Rory didn't try to stop me. She didn't even move closer. “If I was the one out there, your father wouldn't need another family. Your mother wouldn't be in danger.”

I squatted down to inspect the floor, barely listening. I didn't see anything there either. My head throbbed.

“If I was the one out there, the Snow Queen would have been dead ages ago. Lena would not need Melodie. Chase would never have been ensnared by someone else.” Geez, for someone who was supposed to be me, she sure talked a lot like Mia. Like the Snow Queen, when she was trying to stop me.

I turned back to the other Rory, suddenly interested. “You're a doll, aren't you? Solange, are you in there?”

The girl didn't speak. Maybe the Snow Queen didn't trust herself to answer. Maybe she regretted trying to use the same trick twice. Maybe she was starting to feel fear.

I drew my sword slowly.

If I had figured out her identity, she should have attacked. Even Mia had poisoned knives for fingers. Solange wouldn't leave the last guardian of her heart completely defenseless.

Well, unless attacking me would risk the heart she was protecting.

It was stupid of the Snow Queen to make the doll look like me. If it had resembled Chase or Lena, I would have hesitated longer.

I leapt and stabbed. My sword slid into the other Rory's torso easily, like her skin was made of papier-mâché. No bones got in my blade's way. No wood like the Mia puppet, no metal screws to hold it together.

The doll's illusion didn't even flicker. Something wet—a red so dark it was only a shade away from black—oozed down my sword.

Eww. I might have rethought my strategy if I'd known
that
was going to happen. I twisted the blade, and its edge scraped something solid and hollow—something big enough to hold a heart. Well, if I had to cut it out of her, I would.

The other Rory glanced down at my weapon. The fake blood had trickled across the metal and covered up all the ancient Fey symbols on the blade.

Her chin tilted up. Her lips curled slowly. Solange's smile was on
my
face.

“Very clever, Rory. You've figured out how to kill me.” Her voice was her own again. A small relief. “Pity you'll die here.”

Traps within traps
, Rapunzel had said. It had been too easy. The Snow Queen was planning something else.

An explosion blasted me off my feet. Shrapnel—as long as my hand, as sharp as scalpels—thudded into my chest, into my stomach, into my hips and shoulders. I crashed into the wall. My head cracked against the ice.

At least I passed out before I could feel the pain.

“Rory?” Lena's voice was trembling. A warm metal fingertip brushed hair away from my forehead. “Rory,
please
wake up.”

“ 'M okay,” I mumbled. Then I managed to open my eyes. Lena let out an
I'm happy but too scared to believe it
gasp.

The room was splattered with that awful dark-red ooze. Splashed up against the white walls like that, it made the room look way too similar to the crime scenes in Mom and Dad's movies, the ones they still said I was too young to watch. The red had left craters wherever it landed.

“Concentrated dragon blood.” Lena's voice got stronger when it took on that familiar tinny reciting tone.
“In this form, it acts like—”

“—an acid. I remember.” I sat up. Beside us, a bean-shaped pool of scarlet had eaten through at least three inches of ice. “It burned me, didn't it?”

Lena nodded. “And your sword.” She pointed to my other side, at a pile of sharp metal slivers. That couldn't be my weapon. They looked like misshapen silver spikes, tipped with a much brighter red than what was on the walls. “That was what caused the explosion. The spell was forged into the actual blade, and the acid ate away at the metal. The enchantment unraveled. All the magic spilled out at once, and then—”

“Boom,” I finished. The Snow Queen had expected me to cut into the doll. Maybe she knew about the Itari curse Lady Aspenwind had warned me about. I looked from the shrapnel to Lena. “You pulled those out of me, didn't you?”