Of Enemies and Endings (42 page)

The giantess and I watched as he shrank to the size of a normal human, to the size of an elf, then a pixie, and then disappeared altogether.

“He's friendlier than East is,” said Matilda.

I forced myself to focus on the quest. Solange didn't know I was coming
today
, but she would never have left her heart in a palace guarded only by a pregnant giantess with questionable loyalties. “What can you tell me about the traps the Snow Queen has set up inside?”

“She said not to open the doors until she gave the signal,” said Matilda. “Her reinforcements are in the entrance hall, waiting. They're supposed to rush to her side as soon as she gains control of the portals. I was planning to ignore the signal. Maybe pretend I fell asleep. I'm still in the first trimester. That does happen.”

“Reinforcements, huh?” So her army
was
bigger than what I'd seen on that glacier. Perfect.

“Yes.” Matilda hesitated. “I don't think they're people, exactly. Genevieve gave me very strict instructions to keep the door shut until the right time. Like the reinforcements couldn't think for themselves.”

Knowing General Searcaster, “strict instructions” probably meant “threatened.” “Is there another way in?” I asked.

“No.” Then she added, “Well, you could blast your way through the palace walls, but unless you know where you're going, you'll probably still end up in the entrance hall. It takes up most of the first floor.”

I thought for a second and finally decided that it would be easier to keep the reinforcements bottled up if I didn't create extra exits for them. “This will be fine,” I said. “Close the doors once I'm through.”

“You don't want me to fight with you?” Matilda said, sounding a little surprised. She
was
big enough to do some damage, but I'd seen her fight before. I hadn't been super impressed.

“Let me see what I'm up against, and then I'll tell you.” I wondered if Solange had felt this calm on the day she had infiltrated King Navaire's palace to take him down.

Matilda turned the handle and pulled it open. The bottom of the door—as wide as my arm and longer than our apartment—scraped against the frozen ground. We both peeked inside.

The Snow Queen's reinforcements were made of ice. As alive as the metal dummies we used to practice on, but way more bloodthirsty. The whole horde rushed for the open exit—ice dragons, ice goblins, ice wolves, and at least five ice
giants
.

No wonder the witches were supposed to cast a spell to turn summer into winter. Solange wanted to make sure her reinforcements didn't melt when they reached the human world.

As they pounded toward us, I knew how to keep them from rushing out, and I knew how I was going to get past them to the door that led down to the prisons.

I should have been afraid of the fight that was coming, but I wasn't. Instead, I was afraid of
not
being scared. I was afraid of who I might become after I'd done this.

stepped over the threshold, pulled out one of my combs, and tossed it over my shoulder.

“Did you want—” Matilda stopped asking when bars sprouted up across the doorway, each as thick around as the Tree of Hope's trunk, and raced to the top of the door frame. “Oh. So . . . no.”

A squadron of ice trolls struck the barrier so hard that hairline cracks filled their translucent frames. Not so smart, then. One of them took a step toward me. His spear was made of wood and sharp metal.

But I was still safe. Just that step was enough to widen all the tiny fractures in the troll's ice body. It broke into a bunch of chunks that looked disturbingly like the crushed ice that comes out of a fridge.

The reinforcements couldn't take a hit like real fighters could. I could work with that.

“Behind you!” Matilda said.

Sadly, the ice army had noticed that the exit was blocked again. It would have been nice if they'd all run at the bars and broken themselves into itty-bitty pieces.

They'd also noticed
me
, and it seemed like the Snow Queen had enchanted them to kill any intruders.

An ice dragon reached me first. The Snow Queen had formed it slightly larger than a real, adult
Draconus melodius
. For teeth, she'd frozen metal spearheads in its jaws, two rows deep, like a shark.

It didn't matter. I was faster. I dashed between its legs and smashed two of its knees. It toppled and fell, right onto a horde of ice goblins who'd been racing my way.

Okay
, I thought, facing down the rows of ice soldiers between me and the door under the balcony, the one that led down to the prisons. It was too dark to see faces, only shadowy shapes. Twenty down, and a few thousand more to go.

“Are you
sure
you don't want help?” said Matilda. “Not even you can fight them all.”

I didn't plan to.

Two of the giants in the back—twin translucent Likons—ran at me. I threw down another comb like a gauntlet. Bars shot toward the ceiling. They caught the faster Likon through the torso. He shattered instantly, and his pieces crushed at least fifty ice wolves. The second Likon crashed into the bars and cracked his elbow. He pounded on the barrier, and his damaged arm fell off.

The second comb cut the room
and
the number of my opponents in half.

I was safe along the wall of bars. I started running.

Some ice trolls swarmed me, but they didn't last long—all it took was a solid hilt-smash or a punch to bring them down. I even beheaded an ice dragon with a simple snap kick.

Only the giants made me nervous. I steered clear when an ice Ori'an came my way, but I underestimated the frozen General Searcaster. I wove in between some slow-moving goblin statues, thinking the giants wouldn't smash them up to get to me. Not my smartest idea.

A huge see-through foot swept through the ranks and struck me so hard I went flying. The ice goblins caught in the kick cracked to pieces around me before we even touched down.

I smacked into one of the bars. My right side flared white-hot. I gasped with pain and choked on blood.

The Searcaster statue stretched her hand toward me. She moved way slower than the real thing.

She's just big
, I reminded myself.
She's not as smart. She doesn't have any magic
.

I groped inside my carryall. I threw the third comb, rolled to my feet, and ran, only half as fast as before. I didn't think anything was broken. My right side just felt off, barely there, like it had been flattened when I'd fallen on it and it hadn't reinflated yet.

“She made it past that comb, Rory!” Matilda warned me. “She's coming!”

Scratch what I said about not being afraid.

It was even darker in the back of the Snow Queen's entrance hall. I could barely see. A dragon reared up out of the gloom. Next, two goblins. Then a hand of ice—larger than my entire bedroom at EAS—slammed down in front of me.

I couldn't stop. The ground was too slippery. So I curled my left hand into a fist and punched.

It didn't work. Her fingers closed around me, blocking out the little light I had left. They slapped me against her palm, and pain exploded against my temple.

My arms flew up to protect my face. My left knuckles banged into the thick thumb joint, and that did it. The ice hand fell off along the wrist. The fingers and I went tumbling like logs, and I rolled to my feet again.

Two hits. That was what it took to break a giant-size ice statue.

Losing a hand didn't seem to bother the Searcaster statue at all. She just started reaching down with the other one. I wasn't going to let her grab me again.

I broke into a sprint. Away from the door under the balcony.
Toward
the giantess statue.

I slid through her legs and skidded to a stop behind her. My left fist slammed into her ankle, just like I'd done with Matilda. I felt my knuckle split against the ice. I winced, and then I struck again in exactly the same place. Completely unbalanced, the Searcaster statue began to topple backward.

She would crash to the floor. She might even break into pieces, but she would definitely crush anyone underneath her when she landed.

As Lena might say, I ran like hiccups. I ran like
Lena
.

A dozen ice trolls tripped on each other in their rush to ambush me. Chase would have been proud of the way I vaulted over them, the way I slashed through a swarm of tiny gremlin-looking things.

The shadows deepened. Searcaster's ice statue was still falling.

The door rose up, just ahead, a square solid shape slightly darker than the gloom.

The ice giantess's head cracked against the balcony.

I threw open the door and dove through.

The balcony shattered. Shards of ice rained down, sharp as the darts the Snow Queen had sent through Hadriane's heart.

Still, the ice statues were following me. White shapes streamed around the fallen ice giantess.

One comb left. I pulled it out. I only had an instant to decide.

I could chant the retrieval spell, call the combs back, and toss one comb down afterward to make sure none of them followed me. But then the way would be clear. The ice army could leave through the front door as soon as the Snow Queen called them, and she would have her reinforcements. Matilda couldn't stop them all.

Or I could drop the last one and leave behind all four combs—the only cage ever proven to catch the Snow Queen.

I tossed the comb I was holding. Bars grew between me and the army, sealing them in.

I turned and began to hobble down the hall. My ribs hurt.

It really was up to me now—me and the heart.

Light doesn't travel too well through ice. The gloom deepened to black. Luckily, the combs weren't the only things Rapunzel had given me.

I fished out the glass vial and whistled. Light bloomed over my fingers and spilled down the hall. Blood was smeared over my forearm.

I couldn't close my hand without gasping. Green clouds had gathered under the skin around my knuckles, the beginnings of some very serious bruises. Plus my scalp was tender with goose eggs, my hair sticky with blood, my mouth swollen. If this was how I felt
before
confronting the Snow Queen, maybe it would be a mercy to put me out of my misery now.

I didn't really mean that. Well, maybe just a tiny bit.

I limped onward. My right leg was beginning to hurt more than my ribs.

The icy hallway sloped and narrowed. I paused. I couldn't remember if it had done that before. I didn't think so. The white fox had led us straight back, and then we'd gone through a door to the Treasury, where we'd taken a secret staircase down to the dungeons.

Solange must have done some remodeling since I was here last. Of course she had. She knew I might come.

Ugh. I needed a plan.

I leaned against the wall. I'd just wanted to take some of the weight off my leg, but then I kept leaning. Despite the heating spell I'd cast, the ice felt good. It numbed the ache in my ribs and my leg.

The soles of my sneakers squeaked against the floor and slid an inch toward the middle of the hallway. I hadn't moved, not even a muscle. I was sure.

Then with another squeak, my shoes slid two more inches.

I stepped back.

The corridor wasn't getting narrower. The wall was
moving
. The Snow Queen had clearly included booby traps in her remodel.

I took off down the hall. I didn't run, not quite. The wall wasn't moving quick enough to crush me, so a fast walk would—

Triumphant squawk-shrieks echoed down the corridor. Fear knifed me through the chest.
Witches
.

“Took you long enough to notice, Aurora Landon,” said a silky voice.

Three green-skinned witches blocked the hall twenty meters ahead. A taller witch stood a little bit ahead of the others, her back straight, her hair woven with moonstones. It was Istalina and two more Wolfsbane witches, their wands raised.