Of Enemies and Endings (49 page)

She hurled two more at my knees. I splashed to my left out of their path, moving much slower in the water. The Snow Queen noticed and changed tactics.

She launched four of her weapons, rapid shots to each leg. I had to jump back to keep from getting hit.

“Is it vengeance you're after, Rory?” Solange said scornfully. “Vengeance for Rapunzel and all the others?” She reached into her pockets for another round of snowflakes, and while her hands were busy, I slogged forward, the pool sloshing around us.

Solange raised her arm, but before she could throw, I shifted the heart a little lower, shielding my legs. The Snow Queen whirled a throwing star at my unprotected throat instead. I leaned out of its way and splashed right up to her.

Only three feet remained between us. The heart leapt forward, like it was reaching for its former owner. The light made the steam around us glow.

Eyes wide, she threw again, but I was ready. I jumped aside and aimed a snap kick at her left hand, the one holding the rest of her ammo. My sneaker connected with a wet smack. The Snow Queen cried out, caught by surprise. The barbed snowflakes plunked into the pool and sank out of sight.

She stared at me, defenseless now and furious about it.

“SAY SOMETHING!” she shrieked. She had realized she couldn't stop me. She couldn't even make me talk. “YOUR SILENCE IS THE SAME AS HERS!”

Maybe Solange had cut out her own heart to stop her loneliness, but it hadn't stopped her from wanting Rapunzel. She'd followed her little sister from Europe to North America just to stay close to her. I'd never thought about it like that before.

The Snow Queen had woken up missing Rapunzel like I had. We didn't miss her the same way. Solange wanted her sister like a possession she could keep locked in a tower, but the absence still ached in her, too. Even with all her power, all her clever schemes, Solange was still just a broken person.

“Rapunzel saw this, you know,” I said. “She even saw the iceberg.”

Resignation crept into the Snow Queen's face, reminding me of Rapunzel every time the Director had accused her of something.

Solange looked so much like her sister. When she was gone, another part of Rapunzel would be gone too.

“What are you going to do?” she whispered. “Do you even know?”

Rapunzel hadn't told me what to do with the heart after I'd brought it to the Snow Queen, but yeah, I still knew what to do with it.

The thought occurred to Solange at exactly the same second.

She lashed out and grabbed my wrists. She twisted them, her grip so tight I felt her fingernails digging into my tendons, trying to force me to drop the heart. She was strong, but I was stronger. I shoved hard.

The heart slid into her chest, easier than sliding a sword through flesh. She screamed, but when she sucked in another breath, it sounded more like a sob.

The light winked out and the wind died when the heart vanished. All grew dark and still. My palms tingled with the aftermath of strong magic. My arms felt rubbery after fighting the heart's vibrations for so long.

Solange didn't burst into silver dust like her sister had.

Even in the starlight, I could see her coloring change—the strawlike hair grew a darker shade of blond, ivory skin grew rosy with a very human flush. She held her hands out, staring at her body. Red and yellow ribbons seared burning lines under her skin, as if the light show that had once covered the sky was now trapped inside her veins.

The hairs on my arms began to stand up, and not because of the cold.

The returned heart was forcing out the magic that had turned Solange into a sorceress. I felt a current sweep across my skin, its power swelling and swelling just like it had with the sorceress-giant, but if Searcaster's spell was a wave, this would be a monstrous tsunami of power, huge enough to drown whole towns, to destroy beaches, to recarve the shore into an unrecognizable landscape.

Solange looked up, green and gold lines curling across her cheeks. Except for that, except for the length of her face and the color of her eyes, she could have been Rapunzel. Her gaze met mine with the same sorrow. The magic inside her was seconds away from bursting free, and she had lost control over it.

Her lips parted, like she was going to say something, the last words I would probably ever hear.

Instead, her hand shot out. Her palm struck right above my collarbone, and I flew back. I didn't realize how close we had gotten to the edge of the iceberg until I toppled over the side.

I fell toward the dark sea, my face inches from the pale ice. Hitting the water would kill me if I didn't crash into the side of the Snow Queen's frozen tower first.

Above me, the power trapped inside Solange clawed its way out. Reds and oranges licked the sky like flames, more violent than before, and waves of color cascaded down the ice. A ribbon of yellow whipped toward me. I twisted away as best as I could, but the raw magic still wrapped around my shoe and ripped it to pieces. It would have torn apart my foot, too, if I hadn't pulled my knees up and out of its reach.

Solange was gone. All of that magic must have shredded her as it ripped free of her veins, and it looked like her magic wanted me, too.

Maybe it was for the best. With both bearers of Unwritten Tales gone, no one like the Snow Queen could ever exist again.

There is more than one way to give your life
, Rapunzel had said. My hand closed over the glass light she'd given me.

Stupid. Deciding I wanted to live right then.

The sound of shattering attacked my eardrums, echoing across the bay like the Glass Mountain itself had been smashed. Frozen chunks exploded outward.

I curled my arms around my head, but a huge piece slammed into my body, knocking me to the side, away from the raw magic spilling into the sea. Around me, light pulsed brighter and redder.

Then something small struck my temple, and black conquered everything.

Ice chilled my back, and my legs felt like they were covered in icicles. I started shivering before I even opened my eyes.

A hand burned against my cheek. Chase sounded impatient. “Come
on
, Rory.”

I looked up. His face was inches from mine. “It is so cold,” I said, my teeth chattering.

Of course it was. I was wearing a coat with a hole seared through it. I'd lost a shoe, and the breeze was ripping through my ragged sock. My jeans—thanks to all the water the heart had melted—were now frozen up to the knee. The Snow Queen and the magic that poured out of her had failed to kill me, so the Arctic Circle was giving it its best shot.

Chase's arms slid around me, deliciously warm.
His
jacket's spell was still working. I snuggled into his chest, greedy for the heat, cradling Rapunzel's light between us. Soon my shivering eased.

Then I noticed Chase was trembling.

“Hey.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He didn't stop shaking, and he didn't answer. “Chase? Are you hurt?”

“I have never been so scared in my entire life.” His whole torso had curled over mine.

“You told
me
that I wasn't going to die.” He was a good liar. What he had said about his dream could have been completely made up. It had worked, though.

“Well, I didn't think so,” Chase said. “But I didn't know if the plan was going to work. Rapunzel said you were in danger. She put it in her letter:
The ice will rise. Rory will fall. Chase can catch her, but in the explosion, you'll need to find her. Put Lena in charge of the light
. So Lena reworked Rapunzel's vial. She said she was pretty sure it would glow when she blew into her whistle, but she didn't have time to test it before she gave it back to you.”

“Lena made Rapunzel's light glow red? So you could find me and catch me?” I said, slowly starting to understand. Three of my favorite people had worked together to save me. “But Rapunzel said she hadn't seen the final outcome—”

“You were unconscious when I grabbed you—” His voice broke.

I decided to stop asking him questions. “Chase, I'm okay. I promise.”

His forehead rested against my shoulder. Something wet soaked through the hole in my coat. If anybody asked, I would have lied and said it was snow.

“Rory!” Our favorite inventor ran along the shore, so fast it was like she wasn't even tired, but the rest of the kids in our grade sure were. They jogged doggedly behind her.

“Chase, Lena will reach us in less than a minute.” I kissed his cheek, stood up, and stepped in front of him, shivering again. The wet sock on my shoeless foot instantly turned to ice under my heel. If we were lucky, all the focus would be on me. No one would have any reason to notice Chase's red eyes.

The only problem with this plan was Chase himself. His arm snaked around my shoulders, and I was pretty sure he'd thrown a glamour over his face. “You'll freeze on your own.”

My trembling stopped. Smiling, I leaned into him. “How did Lena take down Searcaster?”

“Sleeping enchantment,” he said, as we watched our friends speed toward us. “She supercharged the leftover spindle from my Tale and stabbed Searcaster in the foot with it.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to get him to smile again. “My friends' jobs were way more impressive than mine. Technically, all I really did was carry something.”

“Yeah, right. You thought we were famous before, but after this . . .” Chase grinned, just like I'd hoped he would. “We'll go down in
history
.”

Yep. He sounded more like himself.

“It's over!” Lena was closer now. She was practically skipping with joy. “They don't even have a leader with the Snow Queen and Searcaster gone, but they're all surrendering! If I had any magic left over, I would figure out how to cast fireworks!”

he kids in our grade and the human Itari fighters joined us before we trudged back to the portal.

The rest of the news came in fits and starts.

“I didn't want to kill Searcaster,” Lena told me. “I mean, we already knew the Snow Queen's death would create a huge blast. The second spindle still had a sleeping enchantment. Pricking her forced the enchantment past her defenses. She was guarding just against magical attacks, so a physical one took her by surprise. She almost squished George when she fell. He'd been coming to help me.”

When I asked Chase if all the pillars were dead, he said, “Everybody but Jimmy. He aimed for me and accidentally beheaded Ori'an. Jimmy will probably bleed out soon, though. Ripper really tore him up.”

I wondered how Matilda had taken her husband's defeat. I didn't see her anywhere on the battlefield, but I was sure we'd see her again.

Lena handed me a dragon scale, and I chanted the heating spell. Chase didn't move his arm from around my shoulders, though. A huge smile grew on my face and didn't budge.

Light—good, old-fashioned sunlight—revealed the mess in the valley. All the snow was churned up, most of it bloody.

We'd been up all night. Fatigue hit me, and then I really was glad Chase's arm was keeping me steady.