Of Sorcery and Snow (15 page)

His face was very close, and his eyes were incredibly green.

Something warm fluttered in my middle. It almost freaked me out as much as losing control of my body.

“Good,” he said. “Now concentrate on what I'm saying—I'm going to teach you how to resist a Fey enchantment. Okay?”

“Okay.” My heartbeat galloped forward.

“Don't fight it directly, because it'll fight you back,” he said. “The magic will just clamp around you tighter. You need to pick your moment, and when it pushes you in the right direction, you go a little farther. Got it?”

I got it, but I wasn't sure I could do it. “I'm dancing backward half the time. I can't see—”

“That's why you have me. Ready?” he said, and before I had a chance to respond, he added, “Here we go. Short step, short step, long step. Short hop, long twirl. Good. You just got us four feet closer in about twenty seconds. Now, again. Short, short, short, long, long, short.”

I'd expected it to be weird, dancing so close, but it wasn't. It was kind of nice. It was just like Chase explaining a new drill while we trained. No, it was just like when Chase had talked me through the climb up the beanstalk. Except we hadn't even been friends then.

This was better.

This time Chase's gaze was locked tight on mine, not glancing away for a second, and stepping with him got easier and easier. The pavilion faded away, and the enchantment's invisible strings hurt a little less. “There you go. Try not to spin far,” he said, raising his arm so I could twirl under it, in as tight a circle as I could manage. We came back together. “Good. Long, long, long, short. Long, short, short, long.”

I grinned. This was almost a game. Beating the enchantment was way more fun than any EAS ball. Then he grinned back, his face inches from mine. The warm flutter in my stomach exploded into a hailstorm.

It wasn't the enchantment.
Chase
was what made me like this so much.

“Almost there,” he said, as we tapped our feet out and in, out and in. I nodded, a little bit out of breath. “Short, long, long—brace yourself, I'm going to toss you through.”

“What?” I said. Chase's “almost there” usually means “halfway.”

But a doorknob clicked open, and then his arm slipped around my waist, scooping me forward and through the archway.

I tumbled onto my hands and knees, sprawled across a sheet of ice.

The chill crept through my thin dress and straight into my skin. Whoa. I'd never been so cold. My hands stiffened even
before I unzipped my carryall and tugged out my coat.

“I still need to get Lena and Miriam.” Chase stood in the doorway, steam rising off his back. “But don't come any closer. I can feel the enchantment trying to pull me back in. It'll be worse for you.”

“Okay.” My teeth started chattering as soon as I opened my mouth. Geez. At least the warm air from the dance floor was leaking over in the cave. Without it, we probably would get instant frostbite. “Just get Lena first. We need that warming spell.”

“Already on it.” Chase lunged back through the portal so fast that I was afraid that the pavilion had captured him again, but then he reappeared, dragging a stumbling Lena behind him.

When Chase let her go and turned back, she shuddered so hard I thought she might topple over. “Well,
that
was traumatizing. Next time I won't step into an enchantment without working out a counterenchantment first. I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure Melodie can—”

“Lena,” I said, with as much patience as I could muster. “It's
cold
.”

“Yeah, your lips are almost blue,” Lena said, not getting it.

Then with an
oh my gumdrops
expression, she swung her pack in front of her so she could dig through it. “I'm so sorry! I should have taught everyone the heating spell before we left!” She thrust a dragon scale in my palm—a heavy green disk, sharp at the edges. She held one too. “Repeat after me,” she said, switching to Fey.
“No need for flames, no need for a blaze, just enough heat to survive these days.”

I repeated it, and delicious heat—like a blast of warm air from a car's vent—washed over my hands and down my arms, swallowing my shoulders, head, legs, and feet. I didn't even care that it
stunk of rotten eggs. My fingertips felt like they'd been pricked by a thousand needles at once, and I didn't want to think about how easy it would be to freeze out here.

“The Fey dancing with Miriam saw me grab Lena,” Chase told us from the portal. “They've moved to the outer edge of the pavilion. I can't reach them. Rory, get me the rope in there.” He dropped his carryall in my lap.

When I unzipped it, all I saw was a puffy jacket. I tossed it at Chase, and it flopped over his head, like a fluffy fire-engine-colored curtain. “Put that on. You're no good to anyone if you freeze to death.”

He stuffed his arm through the sleeves. I found the rope, all coiled up inside the back pocket. As I passed it over, I recognized the grappling hook on the end. His father had something just like it, but this one belonged to Chase, which meant Lena had added a bunch of improvements to it. Unfortunately, last time he had tried to use it in a fight, his aim hadn't been great.

“Thanks.” Chase snatched it away and unscrewed the grappling hook, so the rope ended with a heavy metal cap instead. Then he started swinging it so fast the rope sang
Woop, woop, woop
as it cut through the air.

Forty feet. That was how far away Miriam's partner had taken her.

“Can you even make that?” Lena said.

I couldn't see how he could, not without accidentally hitting one of the dancers twirling between us and them. I groped inside my pack for my sword, just in case he brained a Fey and they decided to attack.

“I've been practicing.” Chase let the heavy end of the rope fly. It sailed over the dancers. I winced, waiting to hear a clunk against
someone's head—but the rope dropped just over Miriam's forearm, right above the hand she was resting on her partner's shoulder.

“That's the trick, knot real quick,”
Chase muttered in Fey. Then he yanked, like a fisherman hooking something at the end of the line.

Miriam jerked away from her partner, tripping between the other couples as Chase pulled the rope, hand over hand. The Fey were too astonished to stop her, and by the time Miriam passed through the portal, she was laughing.

It could have been the fairies' gaping jaws, but my bet was on plain, hysterical fear.

“Did you seriously just lasso me?” Miriam asked.

Chase bent over her wrist, fumbling with the knot in the enchanted rope. His fingers were red and clumsy. He was colder than he realized.

“Lena, I think we need some dragon scales,” I said.

“Right here.” She passed one to Chase and one to Miriam. “Here's the spell—”

“No need for flames, no need for a blaze, just enough heat to survive these days.
Yeah, I heard you telling Rory,” he said, looping the rope back up. Then Miriam repeated it too, but it took her two tries since she forgot to say it in Fey.

I slammed the portal shut as soon as the spells caught. My eyes started to adjust to the moon's glow flowing through the cave mouth.

“I think I'm going to change shoes.” I didn't feel the
cold
anymore, but the spell apparently didn't extend to keeping stuff dry. Melted snow soaked through my slippers.

Chase nodded and kicked off his fancy shoes. I couldn't believe he hadn't started bragging about the awesome rope trick yet.

“Should I change out of my dress?” Lena said.

“Absolutely not. That'll take too much time. Just put on another layer,” Miriam said shortly, pulling on a knitted blue and orange beanie, but her smile was huge.

Miriam's mood swings were even more intense than Chase's, and that was saying something.

“We're still about a day and a half's walk to the Snow Queen's palace.” Lena had gotten her sketchpad out with her boots, scarf, and mittens. Her pencil flew over the paper, redrawing the map. Then she pointed to the bottom right-hand corner, to something labeled
IVINHOOR'S BAY
. “We're here.”

The palace—marked with a ring of jagged spires—was in the upper left-hand corner. Basically, as far away from us as it could be and still stay on the same page. Not encouraging.

But I'd thought of a shortcut. “I have a couple boons left from the West Wind. He can carry us there.”

“Bad idea,” said Chase, lacing up his boots. “A giant flying personification is extremely easy to spot. The second he shows up here, the Snow Queen will know exactly where we are. I don't like our chances if we can't sneak up on her.”

That hadn't even occurred to me. “So, we're actually
walking
?”

“Not to be rude or anything, but I don't care right this second.” Miriam practically skipped over to the cave mouth, her carryall over her shoulder. “We're here, closer to Philip than I've been in days, and I'm finally getting to do something to get him back.” She pointed outside. “Look! There are the footprints! Just like his Tale said!”

I finished tying my boots and joined Miriam. The moon was almost full, and the snow reflected the silvery light. Icebergs bobbed in the dark bay ahead. A snowy ridge rose up on our right.
It was so stark and still that fear crept inside me. We were traveling through this?

“Pretty, isn't it?” Miriam obviously didn't feel the same way. “See? There. Footprints.”

A path—churned up by hundreds of feet—curved from the cave. It looked so fresh I counted toes on the closest tracks, but I was just relieved to see signs of life.

Miriam trotted down the path. She was a
lot
quicker without her heels on.

Chase groaned. “Any faster, and she would actually be running.”

“Wait, let me lead!” Lena hurried too, but without looking up from the paper in her hands. I was amazed that she didn't take a nosedive. “Miriam, we need to follow the map! General Searcaster might have created fake tracks to throw us off!”

When she passed Miriam, Lena straightened up, squared her shoulders, and walked fast—her fearless leader mode. It was kind of hard for me and Chase to keep up. The ice on the bay's edge had broken to pieces recently, and the current had pushed them farther onto the shore. Every hundred yards or so, footprint-covered slabs clumped together like a pile of dishes in a full sink. Waves lapped in between them.

Miriam and Lena scurried over like it was nothing, but climbing them was
not
fun.

Chase had trouble too. I heard him cursing behind me at least ten times.

We traveled so long that my dragon scale shrank to the size of my palm. Lena had told me to expect the spell to eat away at it, but it was kind of weird to see it in action. She'd also said that we would need to switch out our scales every eight hours or so.

Hopefully Miriam would get tired and let us stop before then.

“Crap! Crap crap crap!” Chase said, with extra gusto.

I glanced back to make sure he was okay.

He'd caught himself, landing lightly on some flat ice, but his wings—the real, unglamoured ones—shone clearly in the moonlight.

Something was wrong. His wings weren't visible unless he used them for five whole seconds, and he was an expert at using them for just four and a half. He would never expose them on purpose, especially when he'd just used a glamour in front of Lena.

Luckily, she and Miriam were still plowing through the path ahead. I stopped, letting them get farther and farther away. “What's up?” I whispered.

“I'm fine,” he said, panting. He was still sweating, despite the cold. “I just did too many spells in a row. My magic level is at, like, two percent right now.” He reached me, his head bowed low.

“I didn't know that was possible.” I fell into step beside him, ready to help him if he tripped again.

Being out of breath couldn't keep Chase from talking. “I don't have that much of it to begin with, compared to regular Fey. I try not to use it this much. Cal would be furious with me.”

I could think of only one reason why Chase's brother would get upset about it. “So you're basically in the danger zone.”

“I was in the danger zone even before we started dancing,” Chase said. “I haven't felt like passing out so much since the beanstalk, when the portal in the giant's desk ran out of magic and stole all mine instead.”

Oh. Well, that explained why he'd passed out first. I started watching Chase out of the corner of my eye, looking for signs he was going to faint.

He stumbled a little bit, and I slipped an arm around his waist, steadying him. He put an arm around my shoulders and leaned a little of his weight on me. We'd helped each other out this way many times, so I shouldn't have noticed how tightly we were pressed together. My arm around his waist definitely shouldn't have tingled, but maybe the magic in his wings had something to do with that. This was the closest I'd ever gotten to touching them.

“It's always eighth grade,” Chase said, almost mumbling, he was so tired. “I thought we were immune, but everybody was just waiting for the dance.”

I was officially concerned. He wasn't even making sense anymore. “What are you talking about?”

“Lena and Kyle. Dating and stuff,” he said. “With Characters, it always starts before high school. It took our grade a little longer than the ones before us.”

That didn't seem like something Chase would ever notice, let alone talk about. He must have been
really
exhausted if he wasn't even acting like himself.

“When we get back, Kyle will figure out a way to ask Lena out again,” he said. “Paul and Vicky will probably be a thing.”