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  Kato flew like our lives depended on it, which they absolutely did. Griz was the nastiest witch I had ever seen—and she was supposed to be the nice sister. The combination of Blanc and Griz together would make any evil queen quake in her dragon-skinned boots.

  Griz only had a ten- or fifteen-minute lead on us, and Kato had warned Bob ahead of time. A whole mountain full of fire-breathing chimeras should be able to hold off one witch, an unwilling accomplice, and six demon puppies, right?

  The smoke coming out of the cave opening indicated otherwise.

  I knew what was coming; I had been on this ride before. Flattening myself against Kato’s back, I smooshed Hydra under my chest so she wouldn’t fall out. She muffled some sort of protest about not being able to breathe, but without lungs, I thought the point was moot.

  We dove steeply and spiraled into the mountain. This time it was my coughing that echoed off the walls rather than Rexi’s screams. Smoke billowed in big, thick clouds like a volcano was about to erupt. Hopefully Bob hadn’t pushed the self-destruct button or something.

  He waited for us in the field of fire flowers. Blood stained his muzzle, and more oozed from a gash on his side. He didn’t seem surprised to see Kato as a chimera. Then again, I guess Bob never knew that Kato had changed back into a boy.

  He galloped toward us as we landed. “My lord. The traitor—”

  “We know. Rexi.” Kato and I spoke at the exact same time.

  “Is jinxed,” Hydra said gleefully while I hopped off Kato’s back. All the head throwing and dropping might have given her brain damage.

  Bob’s eyebrows drew closer in consternation while he shook his head. Drops of blood flicked onto my skin. “No, my lord, it’s Grifflespontus. He has joined the uprising and—”

  “The defenses have been triggered. Does that mean the White One is free?” Kato interrupted.

  “Not yet. We have the witch blocked off near the secret entrance. But, sire, Griff—”

  “Is right here.” Griff stood by the lava flow, blocking the path to the furnace room and looking bigger and scarier than ever. His broken horn dripped with blood and something thicker.

  “Stand down.” Kato growled and postured himself like a bull ready to charge. Though Kato had grown significantly since the last we were here, he was still much smaller than Griff.

  “Thanks anyway, pup.” Griff snarled and spat out something globby and red. “There’s a new order around here. A human is no longer king of the mountain—especially one pretending to be a Chimera.” The serpent tail rose up behind him and hissed menacingly.

  “So, what, you’d rather take orders from a human in a skanky cocktail dress?” I really should know better than to mouth off to creatures bigger than me.

  Griff roared and charged across the large room.

  “Freeze him, freeze him,” I urged frantically as Griff got closer.

  “It’s not working anymore.”

  Kato pushed me away with his wing, put his horns down, and braced for impact.

  I cringed at the ripping sound of horn meeting flesh. Bob ran in and gored Griff from the side, knocking him off his collision course with Kato. But Griff wasn’t done yet. He reared up and swiped a paw across Bob’s wing, the claws shredding the delicate feathers.

  Kato bounded over to help and hollered along the way, “Go, Dot! Do whatever you have to. Do not let Griz leave here with Blanc.”

  Asking me to guess Rumplestiltskin’s middle name would probably have been easier. The ground shook and smoke filled the open passageways. I took off down the one that I was pretty sure led to the furnace room. Several chimeras fought in the carved caverns. I didn’t know who was on which side. The chimeras weren’t wearing team colors or anything.

  A barbed tail swung just over my head and hit a stalactite. Pieces of rock fractured off as it hit the ground and bounced into my leg, making me crash. A shock zipped up my body from my right foot. Sitting up, I assessed the damage. The ruby heel had broken off one of my shoes and my ankle throbbed, indicating it was probably twisted. And to top it off, I’d lost Hydra’s head in the fall. My eyes burned. I couldn’t see it anywhere; it was probably rolling off somewhere. I’d have to find her later, assuming there was a later. To stand, I braced myself against a miniature volcano—the one the Griff had tried to kill me with. That meant I was almost there.

  Shoes in hand, I hobbled into the furnace room just in time to see Griz clobber one of the chimera guards protecting the stoic Blanc. Rexi stood in the center of the room, looking like she would run and save her own hide at the first opportunity.

  I dropped the shoes so I could bring the flames to my hand. Hoping for a dramatic entrance, I fired a single shot into the ceiling of the cave to announce to Griz that I had arrived. Instantly, I felt the strain of the curse waking up, wanting to be fed.

  End this quickly. There is nothing here that doesn’t deserve to burn.

  I pushed the thought away like I had before, holding on to the name I needed to save.

  “Hand over the vial and Rexi’s necklace, or the next one goes right into Blanc’s prison.” I walked forward and allowed the fire to form in my hand again to show her I was ready to do it.

  Why wait? Just fire.

  I shook my head to knock the voice loose. “Shut up.”

  Griz leaned to the side and studied me. “Having a bit of trouble controlling it, are we?”

  I chuckled. It sounded half-mad to me, so I hoped it sounded just over the edge of desperate crazy to her. “I don’t need to control it anymore. I can just let it go and erase you and your sister off the pixing page.”

  That was not the answer Griz was hoping for. She frowned and yanked the opal off her neck. “We seem to be at a standstill. You are threatening someone important to me, and I have something important to you. What do you propose we do?”

  She’d made the right move by holding Rexi’s life hostage. Even though she had betrayed me, she was still my friend and I was going to save her life somehow. If I survived the rest, I could beat her senseless later.

  A shuffle shuffle came from the back of the room. “Do what you were born to do.” Verte stood in the left entrance next to the desk. She was a little roughed up but still alive.

  My sparks flared up in response.

  “Stop.” Another Verte appeared in the entrance behind me. She looked exactly like I remembered her from the garden—down to having a little green friend peeking out from under her hat.

  My double vision could only mean one thing. Well, two things actually. Verte was here and alive. And so was the Mimicman.

  Oh, yeah, and I didn’t have a fairy flippin’ clue who was who.

  I motioned to the Verte behind me. “You, move closer to the other…you.” I needed to get everyone in a single field of vision.

  “You come to me, child. Use your powers. I will help you control them.” This from the beaten-up Verte. “The evil sisters cannot be allowed to live.”

  The other Verte walked with her back closely to the rounded wall. “Humph. Can’t necessarily argue with that fact. But using that abominable curse is not the way. Let it go, Dot.”

  I didn’t know who was real or what to do. Where was a Grimm-forsaken mirror when I needed one?

  Logic told me that the battered green witch was the real Verte, because the Mimicman was on Griz’s side—he would want to protect her, not tell me to kill her. The other Verte looked too perfect, but she had called me Dot. There was just no way to be sure.

  Burn them all.

  Both Vertes glowed with magic. The voice was seductive and the power wound its way along my insides. It felt different from the first time I had used it at Crow’s. There, it had been a single voice, a single thread. There were multiple voices now, one had a tinny quality to it, another distinctly woodsy. And the thread had grown into a twisted strand. If I focused inward, I could almost see the newest shiny thread, and I still had the metallic taste of the gigan’s life magic in my mouth.

  Right t
hen, I finally realized the full danger of the curse. At the least, I thought Hydra had been warning me against using all my own life and, at worst, warning me that I would grow to like the feel of power and control and become addicted. Both valid concerns, but I foolishly thought I would be okay—that I could be stronger and tune out the voice if I just used the flames sparingly. But in feeding the Tinman to the curse, I’d taken in more than just his power.

  I could feel his mindless savagery fused to the flames within me, the dinner guest that wouldn’t leave. Moony too. If I killed Griz and Blanc with emerald fire, they would join in and become my evil Jiminy Cricket consciences. I’d be madder than a March hare in minutes. I would burn down the world and laugh while doing it.

  Being lost to my thoughts for just a moment was long enough for Griz to take advantage and hurl a silver bolt my way. One second, I was staring at the silver mercury coming closer, the next, I was staring into Rexi’s wide green eyes. She smiled a little half smile and fell forward into my arms.

  Her weight dragged me to my knees. The bolt in her back melted and oozed away, losing its shape as it trickled onto the floor. I laid Rexi down flat on the ground, and a mixture of silver and blood pooled beneath her.

  My tears were there, but the flames burned them before they could reach the surface. Rexi’s final choice answered the questions that had been plaguing my mind about our friendship, and it proved she was not the cowardly lion she believed herself to be.

  Griz sighed. “That was…unfortunate.” The opal necklace clattered to the ground. Its bright, pulsing light dimmed.

  By jumping into the path of the stormbolt, Rexi had not only saved me, but she had also deprived Griz of her source of magic. Unless the Gray Witch had something heavy to float at me, she was out of tricks.

  The scuffed-up Verte yelled at me while pointing to Griz, and her green face reddened with anger. “What are you waiting for? Blast her!” In the beginning, she had been hunched over and injured, so I couldn’t get a good look at her. Now that I wasn’t drugged and had a clear view, I could tell that I was looking at the Mimicman. Even his ability to mimic couldn’t copy the emerald eye in Verte’s belt. His looked like cheap green glass.

  Griz confirmed what I had just figured out. “Don’t listen to him!” She put her hands out in defense. There was something in her face that I hadn’t seen yet.

  Fear.

  If the Mimicman wanted her dead as well, the only ally she had left was locked behind a prison of fire and my number of allies had just increased. Kato padded into the room, panting and favoring his left paw.

  Perfect timing.

  “Kato, will you please go eat the Mimicman? He’s the Verte closest to Griz.” I pointed him out.

  The false Verte looked about to protest, but as Kato drew closer, the Mimicman gave up the game. With a great shudder, the Verte disguise flaked off. Now he was a chimera, with golden horns.

  The Beast King.

  “It’s a lie,” Kato growled.

  If that was true, then why did it look like Kato was struggling and unable to move any closer?

  Griz ran to hide under the golden horns. “You finally reclaimed your first true form, Bestiamimickos. Now is your last chance to reclaim your former glory and side with us. Once the bindings are broken, your powers will be restored and all will be forgiven. Just prove your loyalty and bring this whole mountain down on the Emerald brat once and for all.”

  The last piece of the sordid puzzle. Apparently some parts of the story get glossed over in the retelling. The noble Beast King led astray by unrequited love was really just a magnificently spineless weasel.

  He roared, making both Griz and Kato back up. “We both know the empress would kill me before her bracelet bindings hit the floor. And even if I believed you, it seems I’m destined to make the same choice again and again.” Looking over to me, his eyes seemed to burn gold. “In that blaze of green, you are more perfect than you can ever know. I will find you once more. You will love me.”

  “Only in your worst nightmares,” I snarled.

  “Finish the empress and fulfill your destiny. I’ll be waiting.” Abandoning both Griz and me to play out the rest of the story, the Mimicman loped out the side entrance. With him out of sight, the spell he had on Kato broke and the current Beast King bounded after the old.

  “You fool,” Griz cursed, then realized her mistake in drawing my attention to her again.

  The longer the emerald flames danced in my hands, the harder it was to remember why I didn’t want to use them. Rexi’s body still lay at my feet, so I really wanted to use them.

  “One down, one left.”

  “Wait. You still need me. I have what you want.” Griz reached into the pouch at her side. Out came the vial in one hand and the Book of Making in the other. “What you want more than anything in the world—your parents. They might have been erased from this story, but they are still alive in another world.”

  The dream came back to me, the one I’d had by the lake, the picture of my parents on the gold-leaf page. As my flames went out, my sanity returned.

  Griz ran a drop from the spring along the binding of the book, and the red engraved cover flew open, finally unlocked. She released the book from her hand and floated it closer to me in a flurry of pages. When it finally settled, the pictures moved across the paper, animated like Blanc’s story had been earlier. My parents were wearing strange clothing and sitting in rocking thrones on a porch. Dad wore blue pants with something like pinafore top with buttons, and a big straw hat. Mom had her hair in a disarray like I’d never seen, and it was gray. She wore an ugly floral skirt and a white top that had the letter I, then a picture of a heart, and then the word Kansas. Whatever that was. A little animal ran around their feet. Not a demon puppy, but a small little black dog about the size Kato the chimera had started out as.

  I reached out to touch the image, but Griz snapped the book closed. “They’re in the world of the Makers. If you join my sister and I, we could show you how to draw out the power in your blood and bring them back from the realm of Kansas.” The book dropped to the ground with a clatter, just out of my reach. “But without us, you’ll never see them again.” She held the vial over the open pages.

  Verte approached with a shuffle shuffle. There was no thunk without her emerald staff. Looking up at her, I longed for home more than ever, to go back to the garden before any of this had ever happened. With the loss of the star, that was impossible now, but I could have at least one thing back.

  “Is she telling the truth?” I asked Verte.

  She twitched her nose as if trying to sniff out the truth. “Good chance of that.”

  “What should I do?” I asked quietly.

  The emerald eye in her belt clouded over. “You will make a choice and someone will lose.” The eye returned to normal and winked at me. Verte hunched over with a groan, a hand protecting her back. “But I already told you that. The rest has to come from you.”

  Once again, my thoughts went back to the courtyard garden. How much had she seen back then under the harvest moon?

  Verte was doing her best impression of a stone wall, and I knew I would get no further help from her. What would my mother do if she were here instead of me?

  A memory popped into my mind, something I hadn’t thought of in years. I was seven and it was my birthday. The only thing I’d asked for was to spend the entire day with my mother. I planned the whole thing out—a fashion show with my dolls, a tea party, and a mother-daughter sleepover in the palace gardens. But that morning, there had been raiding and a land dispute in some part of the Emerald Kingdom. Instead of being with me, my mother spent my birthday hearing the people, settling disputes, and arranging aid to the village that was pillaged.

  I spent the whole day crying in Verte’s lap, furious at my mother. She was the queen. She could do whatever she wanted, and she’d preferred to spend the day dealing with other people’s problems instead of being with me. That night, when my mom ca
me to say good night, I rolled over and refused to speak to her. She kissed the back of my head and said, “It’s not about who I want to be; it’s about who I need to be.”

  I never forgave her. I held that and many more things against her for years to come. She had made her choice: power first and being my mother somewhere way down the line.

  I understood her choice much better now; it wasn’t power she chose but duty. I wanted to be the loving daughter and do what it took to bring my parents home, but I needed to be the princess that would keep the land safe from Griz and Blanc.

  I had made my choice, and I was the one who was going to lose.

  Griz must have seen the decision in my eyes because she turned to the prison of fire, pulling the stopper out of the vial. She was going to free Blanc even though she had to know I would hit her with the flames if I had to.

  But I didn’t have to. I was never going to feed another soul to this curse if I had any say. The idea didn’t even have a chance to fully form before I put it into action. I grabbed the shoe I’d dropped earlier and chucked it at the Gray Witch. The heel hit the glass and shattered it on impact, spilling the spring water down the front of Griz.

  A few sparks came from her vest, and there was a momentary look of surprise and horror as her silver, slitted eyes widened to nearly all black. Then her expression became indistinguishable because everything about her turned to liquid silver with lightning streaking through it. The strikes bounced around inside her, melting everything they hit until only a puddle with a few shards of bone remained.

  “Rule #1: Every fairy tale comes equipped with a happy ending. You just have to find it.”

  —Definitive Fairy-Tale Survival Guide, Volume 1

  36

  Use Your Head and Be True to Your Heart

  Kato flew back into the room. “He escaped. He was just too—” His voice and paws stopped short when he saw all that was left of the Gray Witch. “Is that—?”