Pennyroyal Academy (22 page)

“Evie!” Remington emerged onto the roof, his steel drawn. He had come to save her. But a moment after having that thought, the horrible dragon's blood vision flashed into her mind. The crumbling tower. The rain. The witch floating just off the ground. The anguish on his face as he was turned to stone . . .

“
GO BACK! GO BACK!
” she screamed.

He charged at Hardcastle, sword raised. The air cleaved with a horrendous crackle as a black lance of liquid magic slammed into Remington's chest.

“
NO!
”

His doublet bubbled away where the magic struck him, and his face broke into a silent scream. Every muscle in his body clenched as tight as stone. At his chest, the magic began to create a patch of slate gray on his skin.

“
REMINGTON!
”

“And after I've done him, I'll have your heart,” said Hardcastle with a sneer.

A cackle rose from the sodden forest below. Hardcastle stopped her attack, and Remington dropped to the floor. The laughter came again, a haunted sound filled with anguish and malice.

“Who's there?” called Hardcastle. And an image of perfect horror floated gently across the battlement. It was Malora, eyes glowing yellow, a ghoulish shell of what she had once been. Her flawless ivory skin now shriveled tight against her skull, and her lustrous black hair flapped in the wind like a raven's wing.

“My darling . . . you're beautiful!”

Malora fixed her eyes, the bloody yellow of a fertilized yolk, squarely on her stepsister, and the sensation took Evie's breath away. Fear iced over her heart as Malora peered inside of her.

“This is what has been in you all along!” said Hardcastle. “This is who you were always meant to be!”

Malora still didn't speak. Her lips spread into a smile so terrifying it drove Evie to her knees.

“Go ahead, my sweet daughter. Let them be your first.”

The tattered blue linen of an Ironbone Company uniform thrashed against Malora's body as a gust of wind swept across the tower. Black smoke began to billow and churn before her chest. She held her arms out as though commanding the furious clouds to do her bidding, and she launched a magic of purest evil.

It slammed into Hardcastle's chest. She soared across the roof and crashed into the battlement.

Evie looked up at Malora, stunned.

“That's the
one time
I'll help you,” said the witch. “And it's only because you were kind to me.”

Her feet touched the stone and she went to Remington's motionless body. She knelt next to him, studying the agony on his face, and her lips began to tremble.

“You should have been mine . . .” She glared at Evie with anger and pain. “
He should have been mine!
” She ran her bony fingers tenderly down his cheek. Then, with the devastating realization that her life as she knew it was over, now and forever, she rose and walked calmly to the wall.

Evie ran to Remington. She pressed a finger to his neck and felt the sweet bounce of life.
Still alive . . . He's still alive . . .

“Thank you, Malora,” she called. “Thank you.”

Malora stood atop the battlement, a muddle of fury and hatred and sympathy and love. She was beautiful, even in her torment. Even as a witch. “She made me forget everything, but I remember it now. I wasn't ill on your birthday. I was upstairs crying in my bed because she'd locked me in. I wanted to go with you on that picnic and she wouldn't let me.” The sisters stared at each other for a moment, neither sure what to say. Then Malora dove from the wall and vanished into the desolation of the enchanted forest.

Evie turned to Hardcastle, who leered back with yellow eyes. The woman she had thought was her mother looked small, a figure to be pitied. When she had left the cave that night, she had known nothing of the world. Now, atop this crumbling tower, she understood the true essence of a witch. A witch was the absence of everything that made a princess special. A witch could create penetrating fear with a glance, could summon darkest magic, could even turn the living flesh of the innocent to stone, but she could never muster what Evie felt building inside her at that very moment.

A witch had no courage.

Flares of light began to pulse from Evie's chest, just as they had when her father's scale sank into the cauldron. She glared at Hardcastle with fierce righteousness, and found that she was no longer alone on that black tower. She stood in a vast, sun-washed meadow of flowing grass and tiny yellow flowers. A figure materialized from the crisp, clear air behind her, a woman in an ethereal violet gown with a lily in her hair. The same princess she had seen the first time she looked into the dragon's blood.

“
You are not alone,
” she said.

“Who are you?”

“
I am Princess Middlemiss. And I am always with you. We are all always with you.
”

A sheet of air glistened behind her, and dozens of others appeared. They were princesses of all ages, all shapes and shades and types. She saw a woman with black hair and sharp blue eyes and knew her instantly as Princess Snow White. There were others she recognized from Volf's books: Blackstone and Rose-Red and Chambéry. The great princesses of the past and present, all standing with her now.

“As long as there is goodness in your heart, you are never alone.”

Evie turned back to Hardcastle, and the gray rain fell again. The witch hovered in the air, eyes rolled back into her head, black magic boiling before her. Her arms and legs began to elongate grotesquely, her tattered cloak flapping in the wind.

This was the full nightmare of one of the most wicked of witches, a member of Calivigne's Council of Sisters.

And Evie stood alone beneath her.

“I'm not afraid,” she said, her eyes never leaving the witch.

The air erupted and black magic spewed toward her, but shimmering strands of courage flared up to block it. As the magic of a witch battled the magic of a princess, Evie knew that no evil could hurt her.

“
In Calivigne's name, you shall not leave this tower alive!
”

Evie's courage pulsed from her chest like the sun itself. “I am not afraid!”

A ribbon of white lit up Hardcastle's eyes, and that was when Evie saw it, and knew she had won.
Fear.

Hooves slapped through mud in the distance. A voice came, far off, yet nearing. “Up there! The tower!”

Hardcastle's magic trickled to a stop, her face a mask of rage. “You shall answer to Calivigne for this! She will not allow the Warrior Princess to be born from this place! The Sisters shall have their victory!” With a furious snarl, she leapt over the side and swooped into the fog.

“
Ungh . . .”

“Remington!” She ran to him, lifting him into her lap. “She's gone. The witch is gone.”

He grimaced in pain, then forced a smile. “So I've saved you again.”

A
FOOT DUG
into Evie's neck. It pulled on her skin and stabbed into her shoulder, but the desire to win blotted out the pain. She pushed with all she had, shoving the pile of cadets higher.

“Come on, Ironbone!” came a shout from somewhere in the mass.

Her foot slipped, but she held position. Bodies upon bodies pressed down on her, each straining to reach the silver crown resting atop a thin marble column.

“Come on, girls! Surely you can do better than this!” shouted the Fairy Drillsergeant. She circled the pile of muddy cadets with a smile. “You lot on the bottom, is that all you've got left?”

“Almost there!” called Demetra's voice from above.

“None of you are second-class cadets until you've secured that crown!”

“Everyone, on three!” shouted Maggie. “One . . . two . . . THREE!”

Evie closed her eyes and pushed as hard as she could. Her feet slipped away an inch at a time until finally her whole body slammed to the mud and the tower of girls collapsed on top of her. They pulled themselves from the slop, groaning that they'd have to do it all over again.

“I got it!” said Demetra, pulling her arm from the sludge. The crown was clutched in her fingers, mud dripping off of it. The entire company roared with triumph, pulling her to her feet. They danced as one sloppy, stomping, triumphant mess.

“Congratulations, girls!” said the Fairy Drillsergeant, applauding.

At some point, though the cadets were celebrating too much to notice, the thick blanket of clouds broke, and a ray of sunshine shot through.

Later that day, after congratulations and farewells from their individual instructors, the girls of Ironbone Company donned their sapphire dresses and began the long march through campus to the Queen's Tower.

Great arched holes had appeared at the base of the crystal walls, the Imperial Gates opened wide. They passed beneath a colonnade carved with strange, mythical beasts and into the Throne Room. Sunlight flooded the hall through forty massive, dagger-shaped windows, and even more light entered through the walls that supported them. The limestone was partially transparent, somewhere between stone and glass. From the outside, the walls were opaque, but from the inside, Evie could look out at the blue sky stretching off in all directions. Applause rained down from friends and family packed into the double galleries flanking the hall; a second colonnade sat atop each gallery, lined with even more people.

Companies stood in formation across the wide marble floor, princesses on the left and knights on the right. Ironbone filed in behind the copper uniforms of Schlauraffen Company. Evie took her place next to Sage and stood tall. As she waited for the rest of her company to fall in line, she found Anisette waving from the first-tier gallery and couldn't stop herself from smiling. Of all the different things she had experienced since leaving the cave, pride might well have been her favorite.

At the front of the hall, the Pennyroyal staff sat atop tiers of ancient thrones, their wood aged and bare. These were the original furnishings from Princess Pennyroyal's own Throne Room at the Academy's founding.
That's where the great witch fighters sat,
thought Evie, and the sudden moment of perspective sent chills down her arms. And there were her leaders, Hazelbranch and Volf and all the rest. Even Rumpledshirtsleeves, though a troll, was honored with a throne on the dais. He winked at Evie, one velvet-clad leg draped over the other.

The cheers from the galleries began to die away as Corporal Liverwort rose from her throne and crossed to a lectern carved with scenes from fairy stories. She read from a parchment in a stiff, uncomfortable voice.

“Headmistress General, Princess Beatrice, distinguished faculty and staff of Pennyroyal Academy, and honored guests.” She glanced at Beatrice, sitting in pride of place atop a huge cherrywood throne, then back to her parchment. “Cadets of the third class, you lot have accomplished something many others could not. You should be quite proud of yourselves, as are the whole of us.”

Evie studied the Headmistress, who seemed more interested in a loose thread in the hem of her gown than the proceedings at hand. Something about her demeanor was troubling. “Shouldn't Princess Beatrice be saying this?” she whispered to Sage.

As Liverwort continued with her remarks, Evie tried to force those thoughts from her head.
Beatrice may have trusted Hardcastle, and even been a friend, but she couldn't possibly doubt what happened on that tower . . . could she?
She looked around at her company-mates to try to refocus on the joyousness of the event. But even that led to dark speculation. What might have happened had Malora still been with them? Or worse, if she had made it through all three years and become the Princess-Witch? Had the old hag's prophecy really been referring to Malora all along, or did the Warrior Princess still stand among them?

“In closing, we look forward to seeing you all back here next year. That is all.” She folded her parchment and walked back to her throne. All through the hall, including the galleries, people looked at one another in confusion.

“That's it?” said Sage.

The Fairy Drillsergeant's voice rang through the hall. “WELL DONE, CADETS! GO HOME AND GET SOME REST. YOU'LL NEED IT FOR NEXT YEAR!”

Someone in a knight company cheered, and it quickly spread to the entire third class. The ranks dissolved as cadets embraced and congratulated one another. Evie kept her eyes on Beatrice, who remained rooted in her seat. She had no expression, not joy or pride or anything else. She was completely inscrutable.

Eventually, the cadets began to file out, merging with their families in the great sloped courtyard outside the Queen's Tower.

“They put the ceremony in
her
bloody tower and she can't be asked to come down and say hullo?” Evie recognized the voice immediately.

“Anisette!” she said, pulling her into an embrace.

“Well done, Eves. Can't wait to be able to say I knew all these great princesses when.”

They walked together back to the Ironbone barracks. Anisette told her all about her life since dismissal. She had been assisting Demetra's sister, Princess Camilla, back at the Blackmarsh, meeting with villagers and country folk to gather information about witch activity in the area.

“It's great fun,” she said. “This whole training palaver was never for me, but who knows, maybe someday I can assist Princess Basil.”

With Evie's meager possessions stuffed into her knapsack, she and Anisette joined Demetra and Maggie in the arrival area outside Pennyroyal Castle. All around them, cadets and siblings and parents and instructors buzzed about, while horse teams pulled coaches and carriages around the fountain to be loaded. Demetra gently stroked a white draught horse as it passed by, then she and Evie shared a smile.

“So, back to the cave then, Eves?” said Anisette.

“That's right. I can't wait to sleep on solid rock again!”

“Hiya, girls!” Basil trotted over, twenty-one churlish boys mocking his every move. When he noticed Anisette stifling her laughter, he said, “The brothers. Ignore them.”

“Can you handle a whole summer with that lot?” said Evie.

“Reckon so, I've done it before. Somehow.” He shook his head, taking it all in one last time. “I still can't bloody well believe we made it.” He embraced each of them, enduring a hail of hoots from his brothers. “Listen, I just want to say . . . clearly I never intended to be a princess, right? But as I am, it does me proud to serve alongside you lot.”

“Bassie Bassie and his lassies!” shouted one of the brothers, and the rest roared with laughter. He shrugged, then ran off to join them as they moved in a great herd toward their coach.

As the girls chuckled, Evie noticed a peasant couple approaching from Hansel's Green. The man fiddled with his folded, ratty hat.

“Ah, here's Mum and Da. Ready, Demetra?” asked Anisette.

“Whenever you are.”

The four friends exchanged hugs and farewells and promises to visit one another in the months before second year began. As Demetra and Anisette turned to go, Evie heard the father say, “It's our sincere honor to welcome you in our humble carriage, Your Serene and Exalted Highness—”

“Oh, shut it, Da, you're so embarrassing.”

Evie and Maggie laughed. The joyousness of the day was tinged bittersweet as the group splintered back into the world.

“Is your dad here?” asked Evie.

“You having a laugh? He'd never come this far just to see me home.”

Though she said it with a smile, Evie could hear the pain underneath. “Good, then we can ride together.” Maggie hugged her once more, and Evie could feel tears on her neck. They were two girls who had both lost their mothers, but in ways that could not have been more different. “Your mum would be so proud, Maggie. I know she would.”

Maggie broke the embrace and wiped away her tears. “So would your dad.” She sniffled and composed herself, then said, “Oh, I've forgotten that bloody riding hood. Grandmother will kill me. I'll just collect it from the barracks and we're off.”

Maggie ran across the Green, leaving Evie to watch her fellow cadets reunite with their loved ones. In the shadow of Castle Marburg, she had stood alone amidst these same people and nearly crumbled under the fear of them. But now she felt a powerful love for humanity, for all the complexity and heartache and joy that being one of its members brought. It was more exhausting than being a dragon, but in many ways more rewarding as well.

Her eyes swept the crowd, taking as much of it as she could into her memory to hold her through the months to come. She found Forbes standing away from the rest, dressed in a shining silver breastplate over a black tunic. He was talking to a man laden in armor and furs. The man had a bushy silver beard curled at the corners of his mouth. Several heavily armored men on horseback waited behind them. She sighed, then started across the courtyard.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Ah, it's you,” said Forbes with a sneer. “One last fight before you go?”

“I wanted to thank you, actually.”

An arrogant smile crept across his face. “In that case, Father, this is Cadet Evie of Ironbone Company. Evie, my father, King Hossenbuhr.”

“Ah,” said the King with haughty disdain. “The girl from the portrait.
The Princess of Saudade.
” A sudden wave of faintness washed over her. She couldn't move, even as Hossenbuhr said, “I see no one has taught you to bow to a king. Come, boy. We're away.”

“I'd like to get my thanks,” said Forbes.

The King mounted his destrier, a behemoth of a horse, its face obscured beneath a spiked black faceplate. His glare cut his son dead.

“Perhaps next year,” said Forbes, all his confidence suddenly gone. He mounted his horse and the party rode off, leaving Evie staggered.

“I thought he'd never leave.”

“Remington!” she said, wheeling around. “Are you all right? I looked everywhere for you!”

“Well, they've had me locked away in the Infirmary. I've been poked and prodded and tested and studied . . .” He untied the laces of his doublet and pulled it apart to reveal a small patch of coarse gray stone in the middle of his chest. He rapped it with his fist to show it was solid. “Built-in shield, I suppose.”

Evie ran a finger over the rough stone.
How close you were to death.
“How did you ever find me out there?”

“After the Grand Ball and what you told me about the wolves, I had the most awful feeling about Malora. I couldn't let you go out there alone. Didn't you notice the extra frog in that dragonfly's basket?” Her eyes went wide. “I would have found that tower sooner, but you're much faster than I am.”

“Well . . . thank you. I really do owe you my life.”

He bowed his head. One of the coaches pulled away from the courtyard with a clopping of hooves. “Well, I suppose I'd best be off.” He tightened his doublet and smiled, but it wasn't the easy half grin she was used to. There was an awkward pause, neither of them sure what to say next. “Until next year, I suppose.”

He glanced around, but too many people had noticed them together and stopped to watch.
Do it anyway,
she thought.
Do what the vision said you would.
He smiled once more, lips pursed tight, then turned to go. Her heart sank.

“Remington . . .” He faced her and she threw her body into his, clutching him around the neck and pressing her lips to his. His arms slid around her hips and he held her tight. Other cadets stopped and stared and laughed and clapped, but neither of them paid it any mind. They kissed the way a knight and a princess always should.

After many carriages had come and gone, and the crowds had thinned to only a handful of stragglers, Evie and Maggie boarded the final coach, which was nearly empty. They took seats on two benches near the back. Maggie almost immediately started chatting to the few cadets and parents also on the coach, leaving Evie alone with her thoughts. They bounced across the cobblestones and back onto the dirt ruts leading to the edge of the hill. As they passed the towering sculptures of knight and princess, courageous and triumphant, Evie realized that was exactly how she felt at that moment.