Of Sorcery and Snow (14 page)

“You doubt our scouts?” said the guard annoyed, but he actually waved us
in
.

We didn't question it. We scurried through the doorway into a long corridor. One wall was prickly with branches, the real living
kind growing through the blank white plaster. Leaves brushed my cheek, and twigs tried their best to get tangled in my hair.

The door clicked shut. With the glamour making him so tall, Chase towered over the rest of us.

I knew who he was supposed to be.

Cal. His nose was thinner, but besides that and the dots on his face, he looked exactly like Chase, just older. I never knew the family resemblance was so strong. I wondered if Brie's baby would look like me. Solange and Rapunzel looked alike, even though they had different mothers.

I shoved that thought out of my head. I couldn't afford to get distracted.

“Cool trick, Chase,” Miriam whispered. “I can't believe they don't teach that to all the Characters.”

I didn't want either of them asking Chase for a lesson. “Which way?”

“There!” Lena pointed to the far end of the corridor, where stairs curved out of sight. Miriam plunged down the hall, Lena on her heels. I fell into step beside Chase.

Part of me wanted to ask him if he should be wearing Cal's face. His brother was kind of famous. And no longer alive. But I was kind of glad I couldn't point that out while Miriam and Lena were in earshot. I was glad for the chance to see what Cal looked like.

“Are you guys coming?” Miriam asked when she reached the top of the stairs, glaring like she might strangle us if we didn't hurry up.

“Three floors,” Lena said, right behind her.

Miriam trotted down first, and the rest of us followed. As far as I could tell, the steps were pretty normal concrete. Maybe that part of this place had been there before Titania messed with it, because the next floor down was much stranger.

First of all, the room was impossibly big, stretching on and on. I couldn't even see the back of it.
Trees
grew under ceilings so tall that no leaf brushed its surface. They were birches, so the silver trunks didn't throw me that much. But the silver
leaves
certainly did, rustling from every branch with light metallic rings, like wind chimes.

Between the trunks stood tiny sky-blue wardrobes. Fairies and humans clustered around each one. The Fey we'd seen in line had dropped her glamour. Her wings were blue-green and lighter at the edges, as if years of flying had rubbed away the color. She settled a top hat, embroidered with berries, on her ponytailed captive's head.

Lena whispered, “Do you think they would notice if I collected some samples? For some spells?”

Miriam didn't answer. She just grabbed Lena's wrist and dragged her down another flight of stairs.

Halfway down, the next floor came into view: another huge room with trees, but these were gold instead of silver. And it was apparently autumn in this room, because the fan-shaped leaves tumbled from branch to floor, glittering like giant confetti. This room also had
tons
more fairies, all holding goblets of Fey honey mead. Tables of food had been set up among the golden trunks.

Queen Titania sat near the back, elbow propped up on her golden throne, talking to a couple knights. Golden flowers had been woven through her dark blond hair, and her wings trailed golden glitter over her golden gown. It was easy to guess what her favorite color was.

Miriam didn't loosen her grip on Lena's wrist, as she led us along the banister.

We passed close enough to overhear one group's conversation—a grown-up Fey with bronze hair, a pale boy with silk clothes as black as his wings, and another Fey boy wearing a crown.

I recognized the first two. That meant Torlauth di Morgian and Prince Fael of the Unseelie Court could recognize us too. I grabbed Chase's arm to warn him. He followed my gaze and stiffened. His glamour lost three inches, his hair dulled to brown, and his chin grew an idiotic-looking goatee. I hoped he'd changed my face as well.

Torlauth's eyebrows lifted. “Your fathers haven't told you?”

Prince Fael had seen the older Fey's pitying look. “It's only for the heirs of the Seelie and Unseelie thrones?”

A huge hulking shape lurked behind them, like a boulder with cement-gray wings and chains around his wrists. Ori'an, Prince Fael's bodyguard.

I thought he was watching us for one scary second, but his gaze slid to Torlauth.

“A demonstration, you might say. Of the Courts' most ancient and powerful magics,” Torlauth explained, and I could see the eagerness on Fael's face, even out of the corner of my eye. “But if the kings themselves haven't spoken of it, it isn't my place to enlighten you. Perhaps they think you're too young still—Princess Dyani didn't perform it until her two-hundredth year.”

“You'll tell
me
,” Fael said, who obviously didn't realize he was playing right into Torlauth's hands.

“Calm yourself,” said the other boy Fey. His leafy crown looked a lot like Queen Titania's. Awkward to have a party in the same room as your mom. “Torlauth isn't one of your subjects, nor is he yet one of mine. But he's reasonable. . . .”

Before I could hear what else the Seelie prince had to say, Chase steered me down the steps behind Miriam and Lena.

“I guess we figured out which Fey is working with the Snow Queen,” he whispered, once we were on the stairs.

He was probably right. A couple years ago, when Chase and I had ended up in the Snow Queen's hidden war room inside the Glass Mountain, we'd found a report Torlauth had sent her, describing all the skills of EAS's fighters. He'd organized a mini-tournament at the Fairie Market to spy on us. But I said, “Let's hope not, because it sounded like he was trying to trick Fael. And we all know he's not the sharpest sword in the armory.”

“They didn't see us, right?” Miriam said. Chase and I shook our heads. “Then who cares?”

Lena spotted the next room first. “Trees of diamond! I don't care what you say—I'm taking some twigs.” Breaking out of Miriam's hold, she flew down the rest of the steps and across the floor to the nearest tree.

I wasn't half as eager as she was. The forest in this room looked like it was carved of ice. It didn't have any leaves. It didn't even have any color, except for the rainbows that the see-through trunks threw off like prisms. This garden could belong in the Snow Queen's palace, and it gave me the creeps.

Miriam scowled, clearly not a fan either. “I don't see the portal.”

“My guess is that it's in the pavilion.” Chase pointed to a clearing ringed with extra-tall diamond trees, their crooked branches nearly touching the ceiling. Ribbons were strung from branch to branch, marking out the dance floor.

We crossed through the weird trees and lined up at the edge. The Fey nobles and their partners didn't glance our way as they twirled and glided, everyone perfectly in time.

This was definitely disturbing. There wasn't even any music.

No one needed to ask if the humans were enchanted. One girl in a lavender dress spun and stepped with her fairy partner, graceful and languid. You would have guessed that she'd been
transformed into a perfect Fey lady, except for the way her eyes were wide with fear, the muscles in her neck as taut as bowstrings.

A dozen single dancers in red and orange flitted above the couples, pirouetting and leaping on half-extended wings. I didn't like the way a few of them watched us like a dragon that had spotted an EASer to snack on.

Lena thrust a handful of diamond sticks into her carryall and zipped it closed. “I
hate
the Snow Queen. I could be dancing with Kyle right now.”

Miriam ignored her. “Does anyone see the portal?”

“Yeah, and the good news is that it's not far.” Chase pointed straight ahead, right in the middle of the whirling dancers. An archway stood between two small, beribboned diamond trees, all by itself, like it went no place except for the other side of the pavilion. A hundred feet of dance floor stood between it and us.

“The bad news,” Chase added, even though we'd all started to figure it out, “is that we have to dance to get there.”

iriam stared at Chase, one eyebrow raised, like she was waiting for him to tell us,
Just kidding! The portal's inside this tree
. But he didn't. “Okay, everybody,” he said. “Let's see your shoes.”

I gulped. If he was checking to see how durable they were, he probably thought that we'd be stuck dancing for a long time. I stuck out my foot, with its flat-soled sparkly slipper, and Lena and Miriam did the same. Lena's wedges had rhinestones at the toe, and Miriam's plain black heels were so high that I wondered why she hadn't changed out of them before we left.

“Rory, your shoes look the least dangerous.” Chase grabbed my hand. His palms were hot. “You're with me.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, taken aback.

Lena snorted very softly.

“I guess you're with me, then,” Miriam told Lena.

“You can
try
,” Chase said. “If the Fey let that happen, I'll eat my carryall. Rory and I will get to the portal, and then we'll grab you after.”

I was ready to get
out
of this creepy room. “Let's go.”

We stepped away from the hard dirt to the cool stone of the dance pavilion. A violin reel exploded in my ears. Suddenly Chase's glamour vanished, and my body wasn't my own.

I'd been under other enchantments that moved my limbs for me—usually from my sword's magic and once from the mother of the four winds. That just felt like I had forgotten that I'd told my sword arm to swing or my legs to run.

This felt like someone had tied puppet strings to every limb, every finger, every muscle, every eyelash. Painful tugs forced me to grab my skirts, sweep my arms open, and curtsy to Chase, as he bowed low to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Lena curtsying to a slender Fey with green wings, but I couldn't turn my head to see her face.

Then the enchantment straightened us up. Chase took one of my hands, positioned his other hand just below my shoulder blade, and we were off. The spell tugged our feet one step forward and one step back. Then Chase twirled me, and even though I felt invisible strings yanking me in a thousand directions, we moved so smoothly that the hairs on my arms stood up.

Miriam and her leafy-haired Fey partner did this complicated step-tap-hop-glide combination in perfect sync, and I knew we were doomed. This enchantment would never let us reach the portal. If we were lucky, Queen Titania would release us from the spell like the other humans. If we weren't, she'd figure out who we were and imprison us for seven years.

“You need to follow
me
—not the enchantment,” Chase said right in my ear.

“What's the difference?” I said, too freaked out to be nice, but relief flooded me as soon as I said it—at least my mouth did what I asked. “You're under the enchantment too.”

“Not the way
you
are.” I couldn't see his face, but I could hear the grin in his voice. “The enchantment's set up for humans. I just feel a strong nudge the way it wants us to go.”

That sounded too good to be true. He was probably just trying to make me feel better. “So you can dance like all these Fey?” I said skeptically.

“I told you I was good. Ballroom lessons are required in Unseelie preschools,” Chase said. I must have made a
yeah right
face, because he added, “Iron Hemlock method.”

He'd learned to fight that way too. The Fey instructor basically electrocuted his students if they made a mistake. I believed him now.

Chase squeezed my hand. “Listen, or we'll never get to the middle. I need you to look at me. The enchantment should let you do that much.”

Well, the spell didn't
like
it exactly, but after another spin out and back in, I managed to lift my chin.