“Um. Okay. That I was not expecting,” I said, backing up from the giant chimera. His lion’s body was twice the height and width of Kato’s. And Kato’s dragon tail didn’t have barbs.
“We figured it out during the hollabaloo in the mountain with Griz. You were living impaired at that moment.” Verte raised the teapot again, but not at me. “Rexi, meet Bestiamimickos. Also known as the First Beast King, Wizard of Is, Mic the Mimicman, and the most self-absorbed man with a Peter Pan complex that has ever been written, and I woulda coulda shoulda erased him from the page ages ago.”
“All this just because I mimicked your hideous form,” Mic growled. “You don’t know me. You don’t know the pain I’ve suffered or love I’ve los—ow.” His pity party ended when the teapot bopped him on the nose and bounced off, getting stuck on his horn.
“Dow he’s done id.”
The emerald eye in Verte’s belt clouded over, not in the “foretelling a prophecy” way, but as if a hurricane were imminent.
“Don’t know you, ya say.” She flicked her wrist, and a book flew off the shelf and pelted the large chimera in the side. “You trip trap tiptoed around me for years.” Smack. Another book flew at the chimera. “Begged me to look beyond your shedding problem.” And another. “Then you took up with that soggy psycho Blanc and started a war. But you wanted forgiveness.” This time the whole row of Magipedia Brittanica flew at him, knocking him over with a thud. “You swore. You said you’d spend an eternity doing good to make up for all your damage.” Whack “You.” Whack. “Caused.” Whack.
“How would you know that?” the beast grumbled.
“Becud she wad dere, idgid.”
“No. The only people there when I made that promise were Blanc, the Storymaker, and my beloved Dorthea, the first Princess of Emerald.” After he let that sink in, Mic shook his head, fur flying off his mane. “No. Inconceivable. My princess was beautiful and kind. And human. Nothing like this rotting, green wretch covered in warts.”
Watching Verte throw books and berate Mic, I could totally see the Emerald temper family resemblance.
“It’s been nearly three hundred years. Some of us age more gracefully than others. And you can blame Frank for the ozification of my skin.” The hair in Verte’s warts grew longer and curlier as if to spite the man. “I’ve watched over generations of the House of Emerald, biding my time and working until all my pieces and plots were in place to end this saga once and for all. And you and your philandering, over-chemically, hormonified beastliness has been chasing after a girl one-fiftieth your age. You should be ashamed.”
“You should be dead,” Dorthea said. Her flat voice put a bigger chill through my bones than her anger ever had. Through the bond, I should have known she was behind me before I heard her, but I was too wrapped up in the carriage wreck in front of me.
“Simmer down, sapling,” Verte said, motioning Kato to get Dorthea out of the room. “I can handle this pox on my own.”
Dorthea shook her head, the flames of her hair burning eerily stable—not snapping or popping, but bright and calm. Her eyes were blank as she called the Emerald curse along the tips of her fingers. “If you were handling this properly, he wouldn’t be breathing. But I can fix that.”
“Strong people don’t put others down; they lift them up. Makes the fall that much more satisfying.”
—Red Queen, Lots of Heart: How to Get a Head
29
Might Makes Right
Dorthea flipped her hand and Mic doubled over. No one else could see what she was doing except me, because I could see the lines of power. She was burning the braided lifeline.
Kato tried to get close to her, but Merlin’s owl flew from its perch and barreled into his chest. Anyone who touched Dorthea right now would be a nice snack for the Emerald curse. Last time I’d touched her, I’d nearly been eaten alive, the curse taking over me.
And now I was going to do it on purpose.
After jumping in front of Dorthea, I felt the Emerald power pull at me. This time, I pulled back. Dorthea still wore my opal, but it didn’t resemble a fire opal anymore. It was mystic green with swirls of black and only tiny hints of a red-orange glow.
“Let go,” she said. “Don’t you remember what Mic did to me? What he’s done to countless stories?”
“Memory isn’t my specialty right now.” I grunted because the struggle had gotten harder. “But ask yourself if you really want this slimeball crawling around in your brain.”
She paused her power draw for a second. But that was all I needed. “I vote no, since we have to share our minds. So thanks for the power loan, but here, have it back.” I didn’t want to drain Dorthea’s power—I wanted to overload her. I pushed everything I had into her. She gasped, her eyes rolling back in her head.
Kato caught Dorthea as she crumpled to the ground, out cold.
Mic was down for the count but breathing.
I swayed and fought to stay on my feet. The green opal on Dorthea’s chest had darkened, and a crack was webbing out from its center.
Verte walked over to Mic and snorted. Then hawked a very unladylike loogie on the passed-out Beast King.
“Eww.” I scrunched my nose. Mic wasn’t the only one having a hard time reconciling Verte with some ancient, dainty princess.
Beside me, the owl started hacking and gagging too.
“Seriously?” I pointed to the chimera. “If you’ve got an issue with your boss, take it up with him but don’t upchuck over here.”
The owl didn’t listen. It barfed out a mouse. Ish. Even covered in slime, I could see the mouse was half-mini-rhino. With a puff of smoke, the rhimouserous changed into the stuffy old man in the tweed jacket.
“Sorry I’m late. I’m afraid I’ve been rather occupied,” Oz said, combing the slime out of his mustache. “Thank you for the hospitality, Nikko, you can go,” he said and shooed away the owl.
“Bah, just when we knock out one old fool, another pops up.” Verte hobbled over to Oz and poked him in the gut. “You can’t fool me. I know you were tick-tocking the seconds to make the flashiest entrance you could.”
He wiped the sludge off his glasses next. “Not at all. I simply waited until most of the danger had passed.”
I rolled my eyes. “I forgot you Storymakers like to control the action with your pens from a safe distance.”
Oz blinked. “Of course. If one gets too close to the story and the lives of the people in it, well, it makes it that much harder to do what needs to be done.”
Verte glared, poking harder. “And what, in your meddling opinion, needs to be done?”
“I think you know exactly.” He stared pointedly at Dorthea. “There is a very good reason that Storymakers can’t linger in this realm. If you want to preserve Libraria as it is, you need to banish her to the other world.”