“I found your dragon,” the mouse announced, which didn’t make me want to scream any less.
I shot upright. “Why’d you come back? I slammed a door in your face.”
“All is forgiven, my lady. ’Tis an occupational hazard.” The mouse plopped onto the bed and sat like a human beside me.
I shrank away because I was still pretty concerned about the bubonic plague.
“The prophecy states—” he began timidly.
“Not you, too, with the vague prophecy nonsense.” But he looked so earnest that I wearily waved for him to continue.
“The prophecy states that on the eve of the second day of the Chosen One’s arrival, they will venture north-northeast into the woods for two miles, whereupon they will come across an abandoned barn, inside of which they will discover a dragon.”
“Oh. Well, that’s actually—highly specific.”
“According to ancient lore, the wrath of a dragon can be tamed by a Chosen One,” the mouse said. “If you should accomplish the task, having such a mighty force on your side will aid you in the fight to come.”
Slowly, I nodded. This was more doable than Amy’s popularity magic. I wasn’t sure why the mouse still had my back after I’d slammed the door in his face, or why he believed I was the Chosen One when his only interaction with me was theaforementioned door slamming, but he wasn’t such a bad sidekick after all.
This was the quick solution to getting us out of here. Once I figured out who kidnapped Winston, I could swoop in on a dragon and rescue him before incinerating the Evil One’s fortress—wherever it was. I was pretty sure Bryce was the Chosen One, not me, but I couldn’t ask Bryce, scared-of-grass-cuts Bryce, to try to tame a dragon. How hard could it be?
I was sort of in the mood to burn something down anyway.
CHAPTER 13INWHICHAWHITEKNIGHTGETSSCARED
BRYCE
Courtney didn’t come to dinner.
“I don’t want a friend,” she’d screamed at me back at the stables. Words that should have stung made my heart ache with how familiar the sentiment was. Her dysfunction fit with my dysfunction. Maybe the fact both of us were avoiding relationships was what had made our weird not-relationship work so well.
“Where is Lady Courtney?” someone at the table asked.
Maybe she found a way home, the catastrophizing voice in my head whispered. She’d seemed pretty upset. Maybe she’d done a small, good deed—like helped an old lady cross the street—and it had bettered the world enough to open the portal for her, and she’d abandoned me.
Sure, I wanted her out of my life, but not like this. Not before we were both safely home.
“I saw her head into the woods.” The faint voice of a maid in the shadows snapped me from my thoughts, and my self-pity morphed into a new kind of dread.
I was well-acquainted with fear. I thought I knew it inside and out until that moment. Until I stopped feeling scared for myselfand started feeling scared for someone else. It was brand-new and a thousand times more terrifying.
“The woods?” I repeated, words sharp, mind filling with horror stories of murdered joggers and bear attacks. “Where?Alone?”
Ten minutes later I’d mounted a living death machine and was galloping into the forest. As the shadows closed around me, my mood darkened further. The sun was fading fast. Fog hovered above the ground, opaque wisps weaving among the foliage. It split around the horse in coiling ripples as we galloped through. As the trees grew thinner, the horse’s hooves scrambled for purchase over stone. I slid from its back and rushed forward on foot. The stones took shape as the ruins of a house, its chimney the only thing still erect—like a skeletal arm bursting from the ground, reaching for the sky.
I crashed into a clearing, boots sliding over slick bricks as I fought off rosebush thorns and spiderwebs. Light from the orange-sherbet sunset poured through the opening in the tree canopy above. Below, a stone barn stood forlornly in a circle of brown, matted grass.
A cloying burnt smell stung the back of my throat. Fog rose off the ground, turning the dying sunlight into something hazy and dreamlike. Spindly forms twisted from the hovering fog here and there, maybe the blackened remains of farm equipment… no, they were trees—what was left of them, burnt and twisted. A foreboding chill swept up my spine.
Through the sound of crickets and tree frogs, a metallic clinking met my ears. My head snapped toward the sound. Courtney stood before the barn doors, fiddling with a chain that was looped through their handles. She let the chain go, the padlock securing the ends together, smacking against the heavy steel doors.
I took a step, boot snapping a charred twig, and I noticed the grass underfoot was blackened too.
Courtney whirled. “Bryce? Why are you here?”
It was strange seeing her like this. Usually, she went around sounfazedby everything. “Are you okay?” I asked, momentarily ignoring my creeping suspicion that the clearing was created by an unnatural and deadly fire.
Giving me the cold shoulder, she turned back to fiddling with the padlock. “Why do you keepbothering? You’re like that guy. That character in a TV show who dies, but their body is never shown, so you know they’re going to come back.”
