Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sasha tipped the vial into Sidney’s lips and frowned. Her sister was shivering from the poison that was rampaging through her system. She had been nearly dead by the time she’d arrived at Sasha’s door in Virtue’s arms.
They were such a cliché looking pair that Sasha had to bite back a laugh the moment she’d seen them.
Hero and Princess.
He had long dark hair this time around, his beard grown out from months clearly spent on the road. His cape was red and tattered at the edges, stained with dirt and mud on the bottom. His armor was burnished and a mix of leather and steel. It, like him, had seen battle.
A scar ran across his cheek. It didn’t do anything to mar how perfectly handsome his was. He had a literal golden sword strapped to his back that looked unique—she was certain it was enchanted. Probably some special blade that was destined to kill the Dark King or something.
And Sidney was dressed in a silvery gown, stitched with runes that Sasha knew were some kind of elven language.
Her ears were pointed, and her hair was long and straight.
Right. Yep. Elven princess. Sure. She got to be a scuzzy bog witch, and her twin got to be beautiful and elegant elven princess.
Probably with her own set of magical powers.
But she could be bitter about her sister getting to always be the pretty one later.
She had a bigger problem to contend with.
Namely, that she had just saved her sister’s life.
And she was supposed to be enslaving her to some contract that she’d made up in the previous chapter or the one before—she couldn’t keep track—because the Dark King wanted her dead.
“You shouldn’t be here. Neither of you.” She shot a glare at Virtue, who was standing by the fire, his arms folded across his broad chest.
Sidney was lying on Sasha’s cot by the wall, struggling to stay awake. “We’ve been searching for you for months,” her words slurred. The antidote would work fast and would help wake her up. “Months!”
“It hasn’t been months, Sid.” Sasha sighed and headed to a pitcher to pour her sister some water. “We only just got dropped into this story a few hours ago.”
“No, that’s not…” Sidney furrowed her brow. “We’ve been…everywhere. Everywhere, Sasha. All over this fucking land, looking for you. Completing quests. And side quests. And more side quests.”
No. They hadn’t. She looked over at Virtue. But he was just staring into the fire and wasn’t being any help at all. Whatever time had passed for Sidney, it hadn’t passed for Sasha. At least not in her perception. “Maybe you were in a different book.”
Sidney’s expression said bullshit. And she was about to argue the point verbally when Dundle made a rather less-than-graceful arrival. Sasha wasn’t sure if he had intended to jump down from the rafter above Sidney to say hello, but it seemed more like he had flopped down like a dead bird.
And her sister reacted appropriately. With a weak scream, she recoiled in horror at the corpse of the stitched-together lizard monster that had just landed with a fa-schlap in her lap. “Oh my god!”
“That’s just—”
“Holy fuck it’s moving! Get it off me!”
Dundle was righting himself. Or trying to, anyway. He was wriggling his legs.
“Ohmygodohmygodgetitoffmegetitoffme!” Sidney was now frantically screaming and smacking at Dundle, her words a stream of hysterics. In a panic, she finally picked up Dundle and threw him against the wall.
“Hey!” Sasha yelled and ran over to her poor pet, who was now crumpled in the corner. His tail was bent at an angle. They were tough monsters when they were expecting an attack, but he hadn’t been. Sidney was supposed to be a friend, after all.
Crouching down, she winced, and carefully scooped up the poor little thing. “Oh, you poor thing…come here. She didn’t mean it. Let me take a look.”
“Didn’t mean it?” Sidney shouted. “What is that thing? Didn’t mean it?”
“Stop shouting.” She shot a glare at her sister. “This is Dundle. He wasn’t trying to hurt you. He was just saying hello. He was being nice.”
Meanwhile, her lizard was hiding his face in the crook of Sasha’s arm, as if Sidney was the terrifying monster in the room.
She shushed him gently and petted him, before taking a look at his tail.
Luckily, it seemed the wire was just bent, and she gently eased it back into its normal shape. “There you go. Good as new. Uh. Ish.”
“You’ve lost your mind.” Sidney curled her knees up close to her chest, now fully awake from the adrenaline rush. “Being here for months on your own has driven you crazy, hasn’t it?”
“It hasn’t b—” Sasha sighed. It wasn’t going to be any use. Her sister was fully convinced of the fiction. And maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let her think she’d been marching around the High Fantasy Countryside for months. It certainly seemed to have dulled the memory of the fight they’d just had.
Which she supposed was a good thing. She didn’t feel like rehashing it. “The important thing is…I think I have a plan.”
“Not another one of your plans.” Sidney groaned. “Is this one going to get me killed by a train?”
“No. Mostly because I don’t think there are trains in this story?” She wrinkled her nose. “I mean I think I know how to get us out of this whole mess. Let me make some tea, and…something to eat. This is going to take a lot of explaining.”
“Finally,” Virtue muttered. It seemed this version of his personality wasn’t much for words. “Food.”
Sidney leaned back against the wall, and the exhaustion was clear on her face.
Her sister might not have actually spent months wandering through a story. But it was clear that it felt that way.
And in the end, wasn’t that all that mattered?
It took about twenty minutes for Sidney to stop flinching every time Dundle moved.
To be fair to her sister, the taxidermy lizard amalgam had taken one look at Sidney after being tossed across the room and had decided that she was either a threat or a toy.
So every time Sidney moved, Dundle moved.
And every time Dundle moved, Sidney whined or screamed.
And every time Sidney screamed, Lundle dropped from whatever rafter he was perched on to investigate.
Which made Sidney squeal louder.
It was almost funny.
Almost.
If Sasha hadn’t been holding the fate of their escape plan in her head like a soap bubble that could burst at any moment, she might have laughed.
Virtue, meanwhile, had taken it upon himself to stand watch by the window, his golden sword propped against the wall beside him.
His arms were folded across his chest, and his jaw was set in that classic hero pose that would’ve looked right at home on a book cover.
The firelight caught the scar across his cheek and turned it into a crescent of bronze.
He was doing the perfect Brooding Hero thing. Sasha had to fight the urge to roll her eyes.
“All right.” Sasha pulled up a stool and sat across from her sister.
Dundle was in her lap, having decided that Sidney was not worth the emotional investment.
Lundle was somewhere in the rafters, doing whatever Lundle did when he wasn’t scaring the shit out of people.
“We need to talk. And I need you to actually listen to me without freaking out.”
“I haven’t been freaking out.” Sidney’s voice was still a full octave higher than normal. “That thing is fucked up.”
“Uh-huh.” Sasha scratched behind Dundle’s head. He made a soft, contented skritching sound. “I think I’ve figured something out. Something that might get us out of here. For real.”
That got Virtue’s attention. He turned from the window, his brow furrowed. Even Sidney sat up straighter on the cot, pulling her silver-stitched elven cloak tighter around herself.
“Out of…this story?” Sidney asked carefully. “Or out of…all of it?”
“All of it.” Sasha let the weight of those three words sit in the room for a moment. The fire popped. Dundle yawned, showing off his glass teeth. “I think I can make a spell. Here. In this story.”
Sidney blinked. “A spell.”
“I’m a bog witch, Sid. Literally. I have a whole table full of potions and charms and spell components and fuck-all-knows-what-else.
” She gestured at the cluttered workstation behind her.
Jars of things that had no business being in jars lined the shelves.
Something in a bottle near the back was glowing faintly green and appeared to be breathing.
“And I realized something back in Wonderland. The props in the stories? They’re real.
Or at least, they’re real enough. When a story ends and we go back to the library, things from the story can come with us.
Vile said it himself—props can leave the fiction. ”
She could see the gears turning behind Sidney’s eyes. Her sister was a lot of things—dramatic, impulsive, prone to screaming at taxidermy lizards—but she wasn’t stupid. “So if you make a spell in the story…”
“I can take it with me when the story ends. Back to the library. And we can use it there.” Sasha couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face.
It was the first time since this whole nightmare began that she’d felt something other than dread or resignation.
“But it has to be powerful. Really powerful. And I have to be careful—if Vile figures out what I’m doing, he’ll find a way to stop it. ”
“Can’t he read your thoughts?” Sidney’s face had gone from cautiously hopeful to cautiously terrified in the span of about two seconds. “Can’t he just…look into your head and see what you’re planning?”