30
I’ve Got an Eye on You
“No.” Mic turned the other direction.
Kato grabbed him. “Wait.”
Mic huffed and shrugged. “Rexi is dead anyway. Focus on the one that matters.”
“They both matter.”
Mic poked Kato in his shoulder. “And that, pup, is why you will lose. You can’t save them all.”
“Pardon me?” Mordred said. “Remember us?”
I stomped on his foot with my broken heel and bit his wrist, freeing his grip on me and the sword.
I swiped his sword, finally doing what I’d come to Camelot for in the first place. Not exactly stealth, but it didn’t matter if Mordred knew I had Excalibur as long as I was faster. “I can save myself, thanks,” I snarked at the guys as I sprinted past.
I didn’t make it very far before a row of orderlies blocked my path. Sparkles stood in front of them. “You should have left the light on for me. I really do hate the dark. This means war.” He opened his mouth, and that horrific, high-pitched alarm came out.
Kato grabbed my hand, and we pivoted. “Hurry.”
The urgency was even more pressing once we got outside. Gwennie’s little nightmares had been released. Cute and glitter-shedding teacup unicorns galloped across the field one minute, flame-snorting demons ran across it the next. When they got closer to the castle, they slowed. They sensed the same shift in the air I did. There was a powerful maiden inside. And she was waking up.
“This way.” I was still holding Kato’s hand and dragged him behind the castle while the mini-night-mares were confused. We doubled back to Gwen’s model castle. Mic followed behind us and barred the doors. We’d lost Mordred and the lethal unicorns—for now. But if the crystal kittens kept yowling…
Mic transformed just his chimera tail and took out the entire hutch in one sparkly catastrophe.
“There. I’ve wanted to do that since the moment Gwenevere arrived,” Mic wheezed. “You know I sent you that fair-e-mail so you would come here and keep me safe. For supposed heroes, you’re rather bad at this rescue business.”
“It’s not over,” Kato said. “We’re not dead yet.”
“That could change at any minute. She’s awake and—ow!” I flinched as heat seared the mark on my wrist. Kato quickly let go of my hand with an apology.
“It’s not you,” I assured him. “But is there any way we can see what’s going on with Dorthea?” I had a really bad feeling.
“There’s an eyepod in the desk.” Mic threw open a drawer and started chucking all the clutter. There was enough makeup and girly stuff that even Dorthea would drool. They didn’t exactly match the other half of the contents, which looked like mid-evil torture devices. Finally he pulled out a purple crystal ball—with an eye carved in it.
As soon as Mic set it down on the desk, it rolled around, looking at each of us as if it were alive. “That’s a lot like…”
“That green goblin’s belt. Yes, don’t remind me.” Mic frowned, still apparently upset to be reunited with his ex, Verte.
Kato ignored him and kept talking. “If Verte’s emerald belt is related to the Pendragons and Camelot, then all our story lines are tied in a much closer knot than I ever thought.”
“I thought Legends and Fairy Tales weren’t supposed to tangle.” I’d grown up in the forest that straddled the two realms, and until Dorthea’s wish, I’d never known them to mix.
“Libraria was different before the empress fell,” Mic said.
Oz’s voice came from the eye as the amethyst turned cloudy. “And in this realm, every action, every deed is interconnected. If a fairy dies in Neverland, the effect will be felt all the way in Emerald. Everyone matters. Every decision changes the course of a story.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I cocked my hip and slapped my hand on it. “How can you say that as a Storymaker? One’s fate is written the way it is. And nothing can change that.”
“Pfft. Hog-wart wash. Stories are living tales. They are always growing and changing.” The crystal resonated, like someone whacking it.
“Leave my belt alone, old coot,” Verte said, but it was Oz’s face that suddenly appeared close up in the eyepod.
“Can you see me now?” he asked.
Verte’s hand entered the picture, pushing Oz away. “Back up, or the only thing they’re gonna see is up your nose.”
I held the sword up to the amethyst, unsure if the picture was two-way. “We got waylaid. But tell Dorthea I have Excalibur, so Blanc’s not going to get her hands on it.”
“I can hear you just fine,” Dorthea said, her voice low.
“Now back to what I was teaching you.” Oz grabbed a book off the shelf. SCUBA: The Singing Crustacean’s Underwater Ballroom in Atlantis. He flipped it open to a page that showed a little, red crab directing an orchestra for one of King Neptune’s parties.
Dorthea dug her nails into the broken table. “Get to the point.”
“Waid for id,” Hydra said.
No sooner had she said that than the picture started to disappear. Like a watercolor left out in the rain, the image faded to nothing.
“Why did it do that? What does it mean?” I asked.
Oz took off his glasses, breathed on them, then wiped them clean. “It means that this story is changing. What you saw is no longer what happens.”
Now Dorthea was interested. She took the book and flipped through the pages. They were all empty. “What happened to the crustaceans?”
Putting his glasses back on, Oz looked perfectly unconcerned as he said, “They’ve been erased.”
Gone. In just a few moments. How many characters…gone?
“She’s reclaiming the water,” Mic said quietly.
No one needed any elaboration on who she was.
Dorthea frantically flipped through the book. Some of the pages still had images, but they were fading fast. She flipped to one where the illustration stayed static. But I wished it hadn’t. King Neptune was slumped in his throne, a golden arrow in his chest. It was the same arrow that the Lady of the Lake had taken from me.
No. No. No. Please no. Not again. I didn’t…
Dorthea pointed to the symbol engraved into the pillar next to him. “She’s mocking me, leaving a calling card saying come get me. Wish granted.”
Oz peered closer at the symbol. “The lotus rose. I’ve seen that somewhere… There are too many pieces in my head.”
The book was too difficult for us to see through the eyepod, but I had a feeling I knew exactly what that flower looked like. And why Oz had déjà vu again.
I stared at my wrist. There was nothing there now, but I knew what shimmered beneath the skin. I’d been marked with that same flower symbol by the Lady of the Lake, Blanc. The pieces snapped into place. The “service” I had done for her—aiding Griz in retrieving the spring water that eventually set her free.
I dug my nails into my wrist of the other hand, hard enough to draw blood and stop my hands from shaking. Why was it, no matter how hard I tried, I always ended up back in the same place? On the wrong side.