Of Enemies and Endings (46 page)

She nodded again. “I was on the other side, and you screamed,” Lena said. I didn't remember doing that. “I tricked the one-key safe. I used my sorcery to rip all the magic out of the dragon scales and kind of hold it around me, and the door wouldn't budge, but then it did. I heard the others try to follow me, but they couldn't, and there you were, lying on the floor . . .” She swallowed hard. “It took the rest of the Water to bring you back.”

All of it? We'd had enough to last us through a few more wounds and enchantments, so I must have been really bad off. Maybe near death.

Well, at least all my banged-up places had stopped aching. “Lena, I'm so sorry.”

She shot me an exasperated look. “It's not your fault the Snow Queen tried to kill you.”

But it was me who had brought her here, where she had to fish sword shards out of her best friend.

I stood. Doll pieces were strewn around the room, which kind of added to the crime-scene vibe, but since most of the dragon blood acid had leaked out, it was
slightly
less horrifying than it could have been. I searched for a container big enough to put a heart in.

A small chest had fallen against the wall. It was covered in symbols just like the ones on the bottles we used to hold the Water. With those symbols, the chest could contain magic, or maybe stop a magical acid from eating away at the heart it protected.

I knelt beside it. The dragon blood had gotten into the cracks, tracing all the symbols. It wasn't safe to touch. My T-shirt was full of holes. It was easy to rip off a section from the hem.

“Be careful!” Lena said, way more worried now that we didn't have any Water to heal us. “Are you sure that this isn't just another trap?”

I wasn't, but we had to risk it. “Lena, she thinks I'm dead. Besides, she would want to have a way inside the chest too.”

“It's bound to be locked . . . ,” Lena said.

“It is.” I pointed to the faint gleam all around the rim of the lid. “It's another one-key safe.”

Lena squinted at it. “I didn't know you could make one so small.” Her expression shifted from concern to interest. I flipped the lid open.

Light spilled out, so bright that I was sure for one terrible second that I'd been wrong, that a second blast was waiting for us. Then my eyes adjusted.

“It's definitely still connected to her,” Lena said. “Look. It's still beating.”

A heart. Larger than I expected. It was mostly red, but cobalt streaks curled all around its lumps and chambers. Silver light leaked from its center, shifting as the heart moved—swelling and squeezing, then swelling and squeezing again.

Gross. I hadn't expected it to look so . . . anatomically correct. “Do you think she'll feel it if I pick it up?”

I'd asked the Pounce Pot to keep the Snow Queen from finding out about my quest for the heart. The enchantment was probably broken, considering the Snow Queen and I had talked through the doll. The Pounce Pot wouldn't stop her from discovering that I was alive and that I was bringing the heart to her.

“I don't know!” Lena said, clearly freaked. “The Snow Queen is the only Character who has ever tried this!”

“Yeah, but you're probably the only Character alive who could figure out exactly how she did it.” I dropped the rag I'd used to open the chest. It had a few dragon blood spots, and I didn't want it near whatever enchantments Solange had cast around the heart. The last thing we needed was another explosion. “What's your opinion?”

Lena thought about it. “Fifty-fifty chance. I mean, she and the heart share some sort of psychic link that transcends temporal space, so she might know. But the nerve endings aren't attached.”

Much better odds than I was expecting. “Lena, I think everything's going to be okay. I have this feeling.”

“That doesn't mean much, considering I just had to dig pieces of your sword out of you, Rory,” Lena said. “I'm not worried about defeating the Snow Queen. You'll handle it like you always do. I'm worried about
you
.”

I didn't tell her not to worry. I knew better. “I'm glad you're my best friend,” I said, just in case I never got a chance to say it afterward.

Then I reached both hands into the box.

My fingertips tingled as I slid my palms underneath the heart and lifted it out. Vibrations buzzed all the way up my arm, but the only other change in the heart was the light. His color grew warmer, more amber than silver, so bright you could barely make out the heart's outline. It was like touching pure magic.

“Wow,” Lena whispered. “Do you feel that?”

“Um. I'm
holding
it.” Of course I felt it.

My pulse thudded in perfect time with the thumping heart in my hands. I wondered whose heartbeat was setting the pace.

“No, I mean the
heat
.” She pointed down at the floor. A new puddle had formed under my knees. The water reflected my face. My temple was covered with dried blood, but the wound underneath it had healed.

“That puddle has gotten bigger since I've been staring at it.” Lena glanced up. The ceiling glistened with a wet sheen, and a few drops plunked into the water below. “Okay, if it's hot enough to melt the ceiling, then we
really
need to get out of here.”

“Okay.” It was awkward to get up when I was holding something in both hands. I glanced at what was left of my sword. It felt weird to go into a fight without it, but I forced myself to look away. “Do you remember which way you came in?”

Lena pointed at the wall behind me. “The door vanished when it shut. I'm sorry. I didn't even think about keeping it open.”

“I did the same thing. Besides, you were distracted by the horror-movie scene.” I stepped close to the door and held the blazing heart up, hoping that the extra bright light would bring out the cracks.

Lena tied a chain to my wrist. Rapunzel's glass vial dangled from it, no longer glowing now that something else was giving us light. “For luck,” she said. “Look! Well, that solves one problem!”

The heat was melting the wall. Water cascaded down it, and in the place where the ice was thinnest, we could see the outline of a figure. Chase.

He elbowed through the wall's weak spot, and then he stuck his face through the opening. He spotted the scarlet craters everywhere, the other Rory in pieces. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. Oh no. He thought she was me.

“It's just a doll, Chase,” I said, quickly stepping into his line of sight. “We got the heart.”

Chase's mouth closed, but he took in the bloodstains on my shirt and Lena's pinched face. “Good call on saving the Water.” He made it sound like a joke, but his face was still too pale. “Hold on. Let me make a bigger hole.”

He hammered at the ice with his sword hilt. Big chunks fell at his feet. Lena squeezed through easily, and then I splashed after her. The heart had already created a puddle of melted ice water around the door.

Chase squinted at what was in my hands. “The battle started fifteen minutes ago. Just so you know. Ben said he'll call me if any of the Snow Queen's forces actually reach the human world.”

I wondered how long I'd been unconscious. It had to be a while if the invasion had already started, if people were already dying. It was time to end this.

Something cracked above us. Chase was ready for it. He yanked me and Lena forward a few feet, a second before a huge slab of glistening ice crashed down onto the spot where we'd been standing.

“I was afraid of that,” Lena said.

“The heart's a portable furnace.” Chase led us to the exit. “Maybe you shouldn't stand too long in one place while we're in a building
made of ice
.” He opened the brown wooden door for me.

The other kids in our grade hung back. Lena's golden skin flashed as she waved them forward. “Go on. The Snow Queen's heart doesn't bite. Just melts.”

I glanced back, wondering if we should wait. Chase took my elbow and hurried me on ahead. “Rory, it's
your
Tale. Your Companions are supposed to keep up with you, not the other way around.” We reached the next door. He opened it too. I should keep my hands full more often. It made him as gentlemanly as Ben.

The heat was taking the place out
fast
. Something crashed behind us. I almost turned back.

“We're okay!” Lena called. “Keep going!”

“Come on. The heart's making it worse.”

Chase dragged me through the busted doors. The prisons looked like I remembered them, empty and huge, too pale except for the horrible stains frozen to the floor.

Those stains were starting to look kind of wet now. The melting floor was
very
slippery.

Chase grabbed my arm just before I face-planted. “Lena, we could use that shoe spike spell.”

Lena hurried into the prisons, chanting in Fey. When the spell took hold, she ran forward.

“Thanks, Lena.” The heart wasn't buzzing gently anymore. It was vibrating hard enough to make my voice shake.

Behind us came Conner's voice. “I don't get it. All she has to do is stab the heart. That would kill the Snow Queen, wouldn't it? Then this would all be over.”

That should have occurred to me. It hadn't. I had been so focused on getting the heart and bringing it to the Snow Queen. I hadn't considered that there might be another option.

But stabbing the heart would work. It was pumping magic through her veins instead of blood. Destroying it would end that flow, and considering she was over two hundred years old, magic was the only thing keeping her alive.

We'd reached the hole in the main corridor. They'd blasted through five feet of solid ice. I wondered what Lena had used on it.

“Step on the chunks.” Lena pointed out a path up the huge blocks of ice that had fallen out of the wall.

The others ran down the corridor toward us. “It could all be
over
,” Conner told his brothers again.

“What do you think?” I asked Chase before our grade could catch up with us.

“I think it's your Tale. It's your decision.” Chase was saying that a lot tonight. It would only last until he
really
disagreed with me.

I stepped onto the first ice block. It melted underfoot, and I almost slipped on my second step.

Stabbing the heart wasn't the right way to stop Solange. I glanced back. “I need to bring it to the Snow Queen. That's what Rapunzel saw in her vision.”

That didn't seem to be a good enough reason for Conner. Or Kevin, Paul, Vicky, Tina, and especially not for Daisy. I wondered if I should tell them the heart would probably explode if we put a knife through it. Returning it still wouldn't be a natural death, but it was as close as we would be able to get under the circumstances. Maybe that would minimize the blast.

“It wouldn't end the war,” Chase said, climbing out right behind me. “The Snow Queen would die, sure, but then General Searcaster would lead the army. The invasion would still happen.”

Something else cracked. Everyone looked up, horrified, but forty feet up, the ceiling was smooth, still frozen.

“Wall,” Kyle said, pointing to what we had heard. Another huge crack, and the wall began to topple. The others scattered, out of its way.

Chase took matters into his own hands and decided to get the heart out of the palace before it could destroy anything else. He unfurled his wings, scooped me up, and flew out of the hole. A second later we landed on the snow.

“You okay?” Chase asked. I nodded, counting the others as they climbed out. All nine of them came out, uninjured.

Then an enormous shadow fell over us.

Chase drew his sword. “Giant!”

atilda threw up her hands. It was very strange to see a four-story-tall woman cowering in front of a kid who had only cleared six feet this summer.

“Rory!” she said in a tone that clearly meant
Help me
.