“Choose,” he said, holding my story line in front of me, the left segment angled up as an offering.
I touched the metal knot closest to me and saw a flash of my story—the moment I gave up my life for Dorthea. “No.” I pulled back as if burned. “Not that one.” Never that one. It was the only truly good and selfless thing I had ever done. And Morte couldn’t have it.
The Nome King harrumphed. “Fine, fine, but hurry up. Surely you don’t think you are the only one to die today. With Blanc free, I expect business to pick up in droves any day now.”
The green tendril flickered. I could feel Dorthea’s exhaustion. She wouldn’t be able to hold it too much longer. “This one,” I said, blindly touching the next closest knot.
As soon as I grasped the line, the silver knot changed color, tarnishing and growing dark. A memory sprang to life in my mind, like watching a scene on YouMirror, except rather than seeing, I was experiencing the memory. Again.
I felt the heat as if I were back in Chimera Mountain. I tried to let go of the knot, knowing what was coming.
“Too late,” Morte said, holding my hand firm to the wiry cord. “Good luck surviving with your mind and soul intact.” As he sent me swirling into my past, he whispered, “Take the easy path. Break for me.”
“Being right means nothing if no one believes you.”
—Chicken Little, The Day the Sky Fell
3
Escape Down Memory Lane
“Ugh,” I groaned, draped atop Kato’s broad and fuzzy back in his chimera form. “Seriously, I feel like I’ve been run over by a flock of wicked witches.”
“No, just stabbed by one. Be grateful you aren’t dead anymore.”
I shuddered. I hadn’t died. Not really. It was all nightmare—the creepy, skinny man with the white pupils that looked drawn of shadows and charcoal. The mountain of dark, featureless bodies… The book…
“Close your eyes to the truth, you thief. It makes no matter. You still owe me a serious debt, which I’ll enjoy collecting, one ink drop at a time.”
I reared up. “What did you just say to me?”
Kato pushed me back down with his wing. “Stop squirming. I didn’t say anything. No one did.”
But I’d heard a whisper. Like someone was in my ear. I must have been hearing things. I’d finally lost it. That was as good an explanation as any for why it felt like Dorthea was next to me, instead of back in the prison chamber with Verte.
“It’s hotter than the gingerbread psycho’s oven in here,” I said, changing the subject. “Isn’t there a therma-spell you can turn down?”
Kato jerked to a halt. “You want to walk?” When I didn’t answer, he started flying again, skimming the blazing-hot fire flowers. “I didn’t think so. This volcano was built and enchanted centuries ago for one purpose: to keep Blanc imprisoned. Griz came within a second of freeing her, so the last defenses must have been triggered as a fail-safe, that’s all.”
A boulder fell from the ceiling of the grand chamber, shattering and sending pointy obsidian projectiles through the air.
“Safe for who?” I muttered. “Well, hurry and go sing the mountain a nursery rhyme or something to chill it out.”
Kato didn’t answer, but something else did.
“Our vigil is over,” a low voice rumbled.
“The pact is broken,” a shriller second voice wailed.
“Blanc is free,” a third said flatly. “May Grimm forgive us.”
This time the voices weren’t just in my head. Kato heard them too.
“No, no, no.” He bucked, rolling me semigently off the mismatched shorter white wing that Hydra used as a replacement for the one Griz had blown off. Flying upward, he perched on his stony throne and bowed to an obsidian chimera that had three heads. “Elders, hear this plea. We defeated the storm witch before she freed her sister. Blanc still rests in her fiery prison. Calm the mountain’s fury. Stop this before it’s too late.”
“It is already too late.”
“The White One is loosed.”
“Our story has ended.”
I really didn’t like the sound of that. “Hey, fur ball, what’s going on?”
Kato ignored me and spoke only to the elders. “There must be a mistake. I implore you, don’t do this.” The elders no longer responded. Their heads splintered apart and crashed to the ground.
Kato stared at the pile of rocks that used to be alive, then turned sharply and swooped me up in his black and broken claws. “We have to hurry and get the others.”
“What’s happeni—?” I broke off, choking on the hot dust in the air.
“The elders set the mountain to erupt to try and keep Blanc contained, with or without us in it.”
“That’s murder!”
Kato flew with speed and precision, dodging both the falling pillars and the shooting columns of lava. The air had turned smoky and acidic. “Our lives are a small price compared to the hundreds of thousands of stories at stake if Blanc escapes this mountain.”
With a boom, part of the tunnels collapsed, cutting us off from the rest of the mountain and our friends.
“Nooo!” Kato howled and frantically ripped at the rocks, while I fell off his back, forgotten. “I have to get to her.”
It was obvious who he meant. In that moment, Kato wasn’t the guardian of the mountain, concerned about containing evil. He was a prince desperate to protect his princess.
“No one cares about you, little hero,” the shadow on the wall, or in my brain, whispered.
A wave of hatred for Dorthea and the rest of the Ever-After Elite rose within me. I could sense Dorthea and knew without a doubt she was safe and protected. No matter what she did or how she screwed up, she was always okay. And like always, I had to scrape, swindle, and steal to survive.
I yanked on Kato’s horns to get his attention and turned him to the exit. “They’re fine. They’re outside.” As I said it, I could almost picture it being true.
“What? How do you know?”
When Griz threw that stormbolt, I’d chosen to balance the scales for my sins. My life for Dorthea’s. Bringing me back with her magic, Dorthea knocked the scales askew again. I felt the weight of that debt. I felt her.
“You are bound,” the shadows rumbled, the mountain rumbling as well. “She owns you.”
The mountain continued its angry tantrum around us. “There’s no time to explain, and I wouldn’t know how anyway.” I put a hand on my hip. “You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Kato growled like, Fat chance, and kept digging.
The heat had tripled—no, quadrupled. No, amped up exponentially with each passing second. My lungs burned with every breath I took. Kato’s bleeding paws didn’t look much better.
Love makes people do stupid things.
“Please,” I wheezed.
His face twisted in pain, looking from me to the blocked passage. “Grab on quickly.”
Pushing off from the ground, Kato began a steep ascent through the peak of the mountain. At the volcano’s exit, through haze and the smoke, we could see Dorthea being held by a hovering catterfly.
“Hurry!” she called, frantically waving to us.