Friction

espite my aching backside, we flew on for a few more hours—nothing but chilled air and limited light to occupy our thoughts.

Just as the moon (smiling despite the circumstance) reached the center of the sky, we landed in the kingdom of Harzana. The field we selected was not far from the Forbidden Forest, which most people stayed away from after dark. So it seemed like a decent place to lay low for a while.

I scratched the ear of my Pegasus, Sadie, when we landed—both to thank her for the ride and to apologize for the near-death experience I’d put her through when we’d faced off with the dragon in the skies over our realm’s capital.

Blue swung her leg over her own Pegasus while SJ, Jason, and Daniel jumped out of our levitating carriage. They began to survey the area while I continued to pet Sadie. At least I thought they were surveying the area. When I turned to look at them I realized they’d been surveying me.

“I think we should make camp for the night,” I said, ignoring their stares as I went to unload our sleeping bags from the trunk of the carriage.

Daniel blocked my way. “Is that all you have to say?” he asked.

“It’s all I’m going to say,” I responded, pushing past him with little regard.

While SJ, Blue, and Jason had been my friends for years, I’d only just met Daniel a couple of months ago. And frankly, most of the time it was all I could do not to kick him in the shin.

The moment we’d laid eyes on each other, I’d felt apprehension about the boy’s presence. For while my school nemeses like Mauvrey and Lady Agnue regularly showered me with malice and insults, Daniel made me feel something much worse: doubt.

Despite being the person in our group who knew me the least, he spoke to me with the familiarity of someone who’d known me for ages. And the words that came out of his mouth were nothing short of unsettling.

Since our first meeting Daniel had managed to hone in on my insecurities. He possessed the uncanny ability to read me like a book. And for someone like me, who preferred to keep people at a distance, this was very disconcerting.

Like the rest of us, Daniel was on this mission because he wanted to find the Author and have his fate altered. But even though we shared the same goal, this didn’t make up for the fact that I did not trust him. His prophecy, like pretty much everything else about him, was shrouded in mystery.

The perplexing boy had a naturally aloof demeanor and tended to dodge more questions than I did. Which was really saying something.

In addition, since he was a common before being selected as a protagonist, he had no fairytale lineage to provide context or backstory. He was something completely new and someone completely unreadable. The combination of which made me very uneasy.

“So, we’re not going to talk about what just happened?” Daniel asked, following me to the rear of the carriage.

“What’s there to talk about?” I countered. “It’s called slaying a dragon. I hope you were taking notes.”

“I wasn’t actually, because (a) You didn’t slay a dragon, you froze one with SJ’s portable potions. And (b) You know that’s not what I meant.”

Mental sigh.

I knew it wasn’t what he meant. Between the dragon and fleeing Arian’s antagonists in Century City, we’d been running for most of the day, which had prevented the others from asking me a lot of tough questions. We hadn’t really spoken since leaving the capital. Now that there was nowhere left to run, I had to face them—the questions, my friends, and Daniel too.

In truth, I understood why they thought I might have answers. I was the one who had led them to a bunker beneath Century City’s Capitol Building where we’d discovered files on countless protagonists in our realm—me, Jason, Blue, and Daniel included. And of all the protagonists in those files, I was the only one the antagonists were presently trying to kill.

But the cruel fact remained that I could not explain any of this. Discovering the bunker had been an accident. I’d somehow dreamed about the passage leading up to it, and when I’d seen the markers in the Capitol Building, I’d followed them out of curiosity.

And given that my prophecy was so lackluster, I could see no reason why the antagonists were hunting me, let alone what they wanted with all the other protagonists they weren’t trying to kill but were still interested in.

I released a deep breath and rotated around to speak sincerely. “Look, I don’t know what you expect me to say. I don’t know anything about that bunker below the Capitol Building with those protagonist records. I have zero idea why all of us except for SJ were mentioned in those files. And I certainly don’t know why those guys we ran into down there were trying to . . . why they wanted to . . .”

“Kill you,” Daniel said bluntly.

“Yeah. That,” I muttered.

Jason cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “Maybe we don’t know why those antagonists were after you, Crisa. But since there were other kids from Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s in those files, we should probably go back to school and find them. Find them and warn them that—”

“That what?” I interrupted. “That on our way to steal a quill that’ll help us break the spell around the Indexlands, we stuck a sword into a dragon statue, discovered a secret bunker beneath the realm’s oldest building, and then broke into a filing cabinet that contained suspicious paperwork for a bunch of protagonists with absolutely no relation to one another?”

Jason rubbed his arm sheepishly. “Well, it sounds crazy when you put it like that.”

“It is crazy. We don’t know why those antagonists are interested in those kids at school, let alone why that girl wants me dead.”

Blue tilted her head. “What girl?”

I stopped short. “What?”

“You said a girl wants you dead,” Blue clarified. “The only girl in that group chasing us was the member of the kitchen staff who I guess ratted us out to those creepy antagonists in the first place. Who are you talking about?”

“I, uh . . .”

Oh, crud.

Earlier today we’d all shared in the fun of being pursued through the Capitol Building by Arian and the armed antagonists set on (to quote that stupid file) “eliminating” me. But when the dragon had appeared and chaos had ensued throughout the city, there had been a short period when my friends and I had been separated. During which time I had suffered the misfortune of being cornered by Arian.

I shuddered just thinking about everything dreadful the boy had come to mean to me since our short period of introduction.

I was never one to feel fear. I just didn’t allow it. I couldn’t if I had any hope of ever being taken seriously as a hero, or at the very least being seen as a non-damsel princess. But when I’d come face to face with Arian I’d felt . . . something. It was a bit of fury, a touch of indignation, and a dose of anxiety. What that amounted to was what I could best describe as troubling intrigue. For while I wanted to keep Arian as far away from me as possible, I also felt the compulsion to dig deeper into the can of worms he’d opened, starting with that girl I’d just mentioned to Blue and the others.

When we were alone Arian had explained the whole “antagonists hunting me because of my prophecy” bit. But he’d also told me that he and his team were acting under the orders of a girl called Nadia.

I had zero idea who this chick was. But anyone who could order the doom of so many protagonists without our realm’s leaders noticing was not a threat to be taken lightly. Given that, I deemed the best thing I could do was bide my time until I learned more.

In the meantime, her existence, like my run-in with Arian, was a topic I didn’t feel comfortable talking about. Not with my friends, and certainly not with Daniel. So in response to Blue’s inquiry I thought fast and evaded the truth like an explosive dodge ball.

“That’s who I was talking about,” I replied quickly. “That kitchen girl clearly had a death wish for me if she ratted us out to those bad guys.”

The others’ expressions were hard to read, the moon casting a ghostly luminescence on their features.

“All right,” Blue finally declared, ending the horrible pause. “Since that’s settled, can we move on to discussing our next move?”

“Yes,” SJ said. Then she turned to face me, crossing her arms with an expectant look on her face. “Unless there is something else you would like to tell us, Crisa.”

I looked my best friend in the eye. It was obvious that she wanted me to tell the others about Natalie Poole. She wanted me to reveal to them that the girl who’d been another recurring character in my nightmares for the past several years was not only a real person who lived in our neighboring realm of Earth, but also the subject of her own elimination file in Arian’s bunker, just like me and Paige Tomkins (a former Fairy Godmother who was a good friend of my godmother, Emma).

Regardless of SJ’s wishes for full disclosure, this was something I simply could not bring myself to share either.

I mean, I’d only just found out about it myself. And despite the fact that SJ had seen the file by accident, and that she’d learned about my dreams of the bunker, I was resolute that these were still my secrets to wield until I had a better grasp on what was happening to me.

None of it made any sense. Why were my dreams seeping into reality? Why was Natalie so important? She didn’t just have a file in the antagonists’ bunker; I’d also found a similar file in Fairy Godmother Headquarters a few weeks prior. And most importantly, why were all these weird things converging on me?

The sad truth was I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. But I did know that they were bizarre, unsettling, and confusing enough to make me want to keep them private. At least if I actively chose to handle their burden alone it gave me a sense of control. The thought of unveiling all my issues to the others prematurely felt too violating to bear.

Which was why—standing there in the shrouds of nightfall and my own self-preservation—I locked my gaze with SJ’s and I lied.

“No,” I responded flatly. “There isn’t.”

She glared at me. I glared at her. Then Jason abruptly cleared his throat a second time. It broke the staring match between SJ and me, which was good. Alas, his subject change added a newer, deeper layer of tension to the conversation.

“Um, guys, what about Mark?”

Mark.

I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought about him until now. Though in all fairness there had been a lot going on.

Mark was a friend of ours from Lord Channing’s. He was a prince and he’d been Jason’s roommate for a couple of years. However, at the beginning of the semester their school’s headmaster had made the announcement that Mark was taking a leave of absence for health and personal reasons. Incidentally, it was his absence that had brought Daniel to us; he had been assigned as Jason’s new roommate at the start of the semester.

Until this afternoon we hadn’t thought twice about Mark’s specific reasons for being absent. We just assumed he was sick or something and would return next semester. But after finding a file in Arian’s bunker with Mark’s name on it, along with the words “threat neutralized,” a horrible thought had been born. What if our friend’s leave of absence was way more suspicious and permanent than the school had let on?

The words “threat neutralized” could mean a lot of things. But—combined with the understanding we now had of what those antagonists were capable of—one interpretation was something far too dark to comprehend. It very well could’ve meant that Mark was, you know . . . that he’d been . . .

No. I can’t even say it.

It had to be something else. It had to be.

“I think as far as this Mark kid is concerned, if we want to find out more, our best bet is still the Author,” Daniel asserted.

Blue cocked an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, Mark was a protagonist, right? That means he has a book, a book the Author wrote. If we find the Author, maybe we can look at it, see what really happened to him, and if it was something messed up then it’d serve as the proof we need to show the schools.”

A beat of reflection passed.

“He’s not wrong,” Blue said eventually. “Plus, if we find the Author we can also use her original books as proof that the realm’s ambassadors have been forging protagonist books.”

Ah yes, I’d almost forgotten about that little chestnut.

The trusted ambassadors of our realm’s twenty-six kingdoms (not including the antagonist kingdom of Alderon) were evidently in cahoots with the Scribes and the Fairy Godmother Supreme, Lena Lenore, to manipulate protagonist selection by both creating books for royals who weren’t chosen as main characters and destroying those for people who were but didn’t fall within their “realm quota.”

I had no idea how long they’d been doing it, but their reasons had become clear to us when we’d eavesdropped on their meeting in the Capitol Building.

Evidently they considered putting a cap on the number of main characters allowed in our realm—and sticking with the tradition of all royals being protagonists—to be a vital part of keeping order in Book. The five of us, however, saw it as a twisted betrayal by the very leaders charged with keeping this kind of malevolence at bay. It was a problem that we somehow, someway needed to bring to an end.

We all thought on both Blue’s and Daniel’s proposals. It made sense to continue heading for the Author. In the meantime, we just needed to push past our worried feelings and trudge onwards. It sucked. But realistically, it seemed to be our best option.

“Fine then,” I agreed, looking around at the acquiescing nods of the rest of our group. “I guess it’s decided. We keep searching for the Author. Which means that now that we have the first item on Emma’s list to break the In and Out Spell, we should probably figure out how we’re going to find the second.”

“I actually have a few thoughts on that,” Blue piped in. “I think we have to go to Adelaide. Well, to the Forbidden Forest first, and then to Adelaide.”

Blue began to recount the gears that had been turning in her head about how to find the next ingredient for deconstructing the In and Out Spell around the Indexlands (i.e., “The Heart of the Lost Princess”).

While she wasn’t quite sure what the whole “heart” thing was referring to, Blue (like the rest of us) was sure that Book had only one “Lost Princess.” Princess Ashlyn of Adelaide—daughter of our land’s most famous hydrodynamic main character, the Little Mermaid.

A small spark tickled my brain at the thought of her. Being several years older than me, I’d only seen Ashlyn in passing at school. But suddenly I remembered that I had actually met her once. It had been during my first ball at Lady Agnue’s. The introduction had just been so many years ago, and for such a brief moment, that I’d forgotten.

When Ashlyn vanished a year and a half ago, all signs pointed to her being lost at sea, off the coast of her home kingdom in Adelaide. If we were going to find her, that was where we should start our search.

Of course, to search for anyone in the ocean, you have to hold your breath for more than a couple of minutes. That’s where the Forbidden Forest came into play.

Many mythical and magical entities were rumored to exist deep within our realm’s infamous forested area. The most whispered-about was called the Valley of Edible Enchantments. This place was said to house an assortment of different magical foods that people could consume to achieve a myriad of goals.

Blue’s obsession with fairytale history (and the fact that she was from Harzana, which bordered the Forbidden Forest) made her pretty familiar with its legends. She informed us with relative certainty that one part of the Valley had something we could use to breathe underwater for a prolonged period of time.

My friend’s logic was sound, and it made sense that the Valley should be our next stop. Our only hesitation was that it was a gamble to enter the Forbidden Forest at all. You had to be wary of monsters and magical creatures when you set foot in most forests in Book, but the Forbidden Forest was different. Few people had ever made it out alive, and even fewer had managed to find the legendary Valley we were seeking.

Then again, I supposed it was also a gamble that we would even be able to locate Princess Ashlyn, given that tons of people had already failed to find her.

Since risk, faith, and presumption were all we had to work with at the moment, we all agreed to the course of action anyways. Next stop—the Forbidden Forest and an accompanying order of highly probable doom for five.

Yeah, I know that’s not a real optimistic outlook. But I’ve had a long day.

As we proceeded to make camp for the night, I could tell SJ was still a bit uncertain about the idea, while Blue and Daniel seemed unfazed.

He hardly ever showed emotion, so I couldn’t tell if his indifference was due to lack of worry, or lack of ability to show it. Blue’s calm, on the other hand, was genuine. Things rarely got under her skin. And in this particular case, she was the most prepared of all of us.

The combined knowledge she’d acquired researching the Forbidden Forest in her books, and from the accounts of people in her village who’d survived its trap was impressive. For goodness’ sake, even her own older sister (Little Red Riding Hood) had firsthand experience of the Forbidden Forest.

Red’s journey had allowed my inquisitive friend to glean a very rare inside understanding of some of the Forbidden Forest’s internal workings. Knowing that, I understood how Blue could be so even-tempered about the mission ahead.

Not worried about her, my eyes drifted to the area of the campsite where Jason was chopping wood for the fire. He hacked away with his trusty axe at a steady pace—silent, focused, and keeping to himself as he tried not to burden us with the emotions that must’ve been whirring around his head in regards to Mark.

I felt bad for him. Our friend’s unknown state was gnawing at the back of my mind just as it was no doubt gnawing at the back of Blue’s and SJ’s. But the three of us didn’t know Mark anywhere near as well as Jason did. Up until this year, we typically only saw the boys once a month for our school balls. Jason, on the other hand, had been Mark’s full-time friend and roommate for two years. He must’ve been really worried.

Despite how he was probably feeling, Jason remained stoic. Not because he was too proud or closed off to admit such feelings, but because he didn’t want to weigh down our mission. It was his way—putting aside his needs for the needs of the many and the greater good.

I admired him for that, just as I admired Blue for her bravery, SJ for her compassion, and even Daniel for how secure he was with himself. They were all pillars that stood for something. What with everything going on, I wasn’t sure I felt that kind of power in any part of myself anymore. How could I when my life was becoming an epicenter for change and conflict?

Jason, Daniel, Blue, and SJ continued to move about the campsite. We’d packed more than enough supplies in the trunk of our carriage. While SJ rolled out the sleeping bags, Jason prepared the fire and Daniel removed the harnesses from the Pegasi and set up an area for them to sleep. I, meanwhile, went to aid Blue with unpacking the food.

As I helped her, my focus was not so much on the various cans of beans she’d brought with her, but on the journey that lay ahead—the fate that awaited us in a place that so few had ever dared explore.

It would be a tricky, risky endeavor, and I was anxious just thinking about it. But despite my initial skepticism over the likelihood of our success, I wasn’t afraid of the Forbidden Forest. The term “forbidden,” in my opinion, had always been more of a suggestion. And honestly, the stories I’d heard about the place sounded far too far-fetched to be taken seriously . . .