Of Enemies and Endings (27 page)

I hated seeing his face like this, empty of everything that made him Chase. He was
never
this still. I wanted to see him grin or scowl or laugh at me for worrying so much. I wanted him to tell me off for saying such terrible things.

I wished I hadn't dreamed anything about this day. I wished I was sure that Adelaide's kiss would work. I wished Chase had gotten any Tale but this one.

Adelaide entered the room, way more gracefully than I had. She didn't even glance my way. She sailed straight to the bed, took his hand, and whispered his name.

Well, I'd gotten her here. I didn't have to watch.

Lena poked her head through the trap door. “Rapunzel lived here? Not very long, though, right? It's so small.”

I didn't answer. I was too busy trying not to hear Adelaide leaning on the bed, trying not to imagine her mouth lowering to Chase's. I offered Lena my hand. She took it and let me help her inside.

As soon as both of Lena's feet hit the room's floor, the wooden door rose, all by itself, and slammed shut.

This side didn't have a handle.

Traps within traps
. Perfect.

I was almost relieved. It gave me something to focus on besides what was going on over there with Chase. “Maybe we can pry it open.”

“We can try.” Lena was too nice to point out that a magically sealed door probably couldn't be fixed by a crowbar. She moved closer to the furniture piled against the walls. She poked around, inspecting first a child-size table leg and then some very dusty drapes. “Ooo, I see the spinning wheels. There are two—a little one and a big one. Solange must have been teaching Rapunzel. But where are the spindles?”

“Or we could go out the window,” I said, glancing at it. I hardly felt sick at all. From this height, the frost vines looked like fog. You could see the river from here too, its water glittering through the green-gold trees. It
was
a pretty view.

“I don't have any rope long enough,” Lena said.

But any second, Chase would wake up. He would offer to fly us down. He would probably insist that we feed him first.

“We have bigger problems.” Adelaide's voice broke over the last word. I turned to see her hugging herself, looking defeated. She actually stepped
away
from the bed.

And Chase still slept on.

ry
again
,” I said, furious at her for giving up so quickly.

She wouldn't meet my eyes. “I tried three times.”

“Maybe you aren't kissing him right,” I said frantically. “Maybe you need to kiss him for longer.”

“I can't do it,” Adelaide said through gritted teeth. “I can't save him.”

Death isn't the only way you can lose someone. The Director had slept for a century.

A hundred years. A hundred
Chaseless
years. Even if I did survive the summer, even if I joined the Canon and lived long enough to see him wake up, it would never be the same. I would have lived a whole lifetime without him, and we would be strangers to each other.

I could have survived him being with Adelaide. I might have endured us growing apart, but I couldn't imagine him never teasing me again, never bossing me around, never telling me that I was better than I thought I was.

It wasn't like after losing Hansel. I didn't scream or sob, but tears cascaded down my face. I felt them drip off my chin, and when I tried to blink them back, they just fell faster.

Lena gave me a tiny, kind smile. “Rory, we'll get him back. You're just going to have to kiss him, that's all.”

I snorted—always a messy, snotty mistake when you're in the middle of crying. “And are you going to give it a try if that doesn't work?” We could create a portal in this room and march every single girl Character in here to attempt a kiss. It still wouldn't matter. I knew how this Tale worked—the girl who could wake up Chase might not have even been born yet.

“Are you
serious
?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adelaide balk. I guess she'd seen my face. Ugh. The only thing worse than having a breakdown was doing it in front of
her
.

“Rory, sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss,” Lena said. “Adelaide's kiss didn't mean anything. They've probably kissed tons of times.”

I stared at her. That wasn't making me feel any better.

“It wasn't that many times,” Adelaide mumbled, which actually did cheer me up a little.

Lena spoke slowly and calmly, like she always does when she doesn't want me to freak out. “It would be different if you kissed him.” Her voice became tinny. She was reciting something. “ ‘
A first kiss has its own magic. It is as powerful a change as the transformation into a sorcerer. Before a first kiss, a relationship was one thing. Afterward, it is irrevocably changed
.' ”

“Don't you want to kiss him?” Adelaide asked bitterly.

That was a good question. It was easy to want to see my family and friends safely through the summer. It was easy to want to defeat the Snow Queen. It was only a tiny bit harder to want to live long enough to go to high school.

But with Chase . . .

I wanted to rewind our lives to the way things used to be between us, like I had pretended all summer. No, I wanted to rewind to the week between getting back from the Arctic Circle and finding out Adelaide was Chase's girlfriend. I wanted to go back to the days when just seeing Chase made my stomach explode with happy butterflies and my face break into a goofy smile. If we'd just had a little more time before everything had gotten so complicated . . .

“Rory, you idiot, it has always been you.” Adelaide's fists balled up. “When we're together, he's not even thinking about me. He's usually watching you on his M3.”

“That's for those Itari lessons—” I protested.

“That's the excuse. He's watching
you
,” Adelaide said. “He's been obsessed with you since you showed up in sixth grade.”

Adelaide wouldn't lie to make me feel better. She wanted to save Chase as much as I did.

I turned to the bed. Sleeping, he looked so defenseless.

I knelt down beside him. I touched his cheek. His skin was chilled, like he'd been sitting in a refrigerator for hours.

This wasn't how I imagined my first kiss. With all this pressure and the terrible sinking fear that even this might not work.

But if a first kiss could save Chase, I would give it up gladly.

I took a deep breath and pressed my lips against his. They were cold too.

I hated that my mind was racing. I hated that Lena and Adelaide were watching. I hated that his eyes were still closed and his breaths were still even. It hadn't worked. It hadn't worked, and Chase was waiting for someone else, and he was lost to me.

Then a large hand encircled my wrist. The fingers were still half frozen, but his palm was warm.

“I'm pretty sure I've had a nightmare,” said a voice, so weak that I barely recognized it. “They
suck
. How do humans deal with having them all the time?”

Chase sat up and looked at me drowsily, just like that time he'd overslept and I'd gone to wake him up before his group's session. He was even grinning.

Buckets
of tears poured down my face. “I'm so sorry!”

Chase didn't draw back on that tiny cot. He didn't even shoot me a look that said he was too sleepy for this. He just yawned and said, “It's okay, Rory. I'm fine. I can't keep my eyes open, but I'm sure that'll wear off.”

He thought I was apologizing for crying. “No, Chase. I'm sorry for what I
said
.”

“You didn't mean it. It was stupid to corner you in front of everybody. Just—” He rubbed his eyes and managed to get both of them open. “Don't say it ever again, okay?”

He was looking at me like nothing had changed. He had no idea why he'd been asleep or why he'd woken up. If I had my way, I'd never tell him.

“Found them!” Across the room, Lena thrust two spindles into the air high above her head—an adult-size one and a kid-size one. Chase must have pricked himself on the smaller one. Blood had dried on the pointy end. “Okay, we can go home now.”

Chase spotted what was in her hand—he looked from it to the long scratch on his arm and then to me. He started to look slightly green, but I didn't think nausea was a side effect of a sleeping enchantment.

He knew. He knew I'd kissed him, and the idea made him sick to his stomach.

“Please tell me that I didn't get my Tale,” he said, strained.

“Okay. You didn't.” I was too miserable to say anything else.

Chase gave me an exasperated look. Well, at least that much hadn't changed. “You usually lie better than that, Rory.” He lurched to the window. Adelaide was standing there, staring at the drop like she was thinking about hurling herself out of the tower.

“Move,” Chase said coldly. Hurt flashed across her face.

That wasn't fair. She'd been terrified for him too. She slunk back, her arms curled around her middle.

Chase surveyed the icy vines. Some sections were more translucent than the others, a silver-green strip cutting the misty white right down the middle. That must have been where Lena's axes had chopped a path. The vines had already grown back.

“They enchant you if they draw blood, don't they?” Chase said in a dead, faraway voice.

“They got Kyle,” Lena said, obviously still a little worried about him. “He turned into—”

“Ice,” Chase finished. I wondered how he knew. “We have to get back to EAS.”

“No argument here,” muttered Adelaide.

The Snow Queen had cast the warding hex on the tower, so we had to get outside for our rings to work. “Lena, do you think your axes could hack through the door?” I asked.

“Axes?” Chase repeated. “You have axes now? Are they Axes of Destruction? Because that just might cheer me up.”

Lena eyed the trapdoor skeptically. “I do. They
might
be up to breaking us out.”

Something roared far below. Something else shrieked a little closer. Yep, the dragons and ice griffins were awake.

“Looks like we're going out this way.” Chase hoisted himself up on the windowsill. His wings fluttered into sight, an orange blur above his shoulders. Hovering just outside the tower, he extended a hand toward me. I took it, already dreading the flight. “I can only take one of you at a time. Rory first, obviously, and then—”

His wings blinked out of sight. Chase plummeted. My grip tightened on reflex. His weight nearly tore my arm out of its socket. He banged against the stone below the window, but he didn't fall.

“Well,
that's
never happened before.” Chase looked down. The surprise on his face turned very slowly to alarm. “Is this how people who can't fly feel all the time? The fear-of-heights thing makes sense now.”

“Can you climb back inside?” I said through gritted teeth. Chase was heavier than I was, and I'd caught him with the hand that
didn't
wear the West Wind's ring.

“Hold on. My wings just let me down. I'm in
shock
. I'm wondering if I'll ever fly again.” Chase had clearly woken up enough to be dramatic.

“It's temporary.” Lena reached out the window and grabbed Chase's other hand. The strain in my shoulders eased. “It's just a side effect. The sleeping enchantment put your magic to sleep too, and it'll cut in and out for a while.”

Together, we pulled him up. He threw a knee over the stone and sat on the windowsill.

“Lena, do you have a spell that can make rope longer or—” I started.

“Hey!” came a faint voice from the ground.

Lena pushed her head around Chase and looked down. “Kyle! Are you okay?”

He was
safe.
He'd even made it back to the quest. Another knot of tension eased.

Chase seemed worried, but not about Kyle. “What's happening at EAS?”