A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(117)

“That’s good to hear,” Alex said. “We’re in about the same shape here.”

Soon the armies gathered alongside their kings and queens as they made their way from the gardens and regrouped with others at the front of the palace. Mother Goose and Lester landed next to the twins and Jack and Goldilocks joined them, too. Every man, woman, troll, goblin, and fairy looked exhausted—but an underlying pride was felt among them: They had fought off the Grande Armée together.

Conner walked through the crowd and headed to the center of the gardens.

“Conner, where are you going?” Alex asked.

“To end this,” he said.

He walked until he was halfway between the Happily Ever After Assembly armies at the front of the palace and the general and his men at the edge of the gardens. Only a couple dozen Grande Armée soldiers remained with the general and each looked more exhausted than the last. They leaned against the carriages and poles and one another. They were completely out of bullets and cannonballs and most of them had lost their swords.

General Marquis was the only one who seemed to have any life left in him. He stood as tall and as spiteful as ever—as if he still thought there was a chance the Grande Armée could win.

“The war is over!” Conner shouted at the general and his men. “It’s time to surrender, General, before one more life is lost.”

A menacing smile grew on General Marquis’s face. “The Grande Armée never surrenders!” he said.

Conner threw his sword on the ground to further prove his point. “The Grande Armée is gone,” he said. “You and your men were trapped in that portal for two hundred years! There is no French Empire for you to go home to! Napoleon is dead! You and your men aren’t fighting for anything anymore.”

The Grande Armée soldiers whispered to one another—was it true? Had they really lost all sense of time in the portal? The general held his stoic face and laughed at Conner.

“You stupid, pathetic, ignorant little boy,” Marquis said. “Do you insult my intelligence trying to fool me with these lies? I did not travel all this way to be defeated! This war has only begun!”

A thunderous pulsing vibrated through the ground like a massive heartbeat. Conner looked at the ground and saw his sword quivering as if something gigantic was heading their way. The tremor grew with every beat and the Fairy Palace began shaking as if the kingdom was being rattled by earthquakes.

Smoke filled the sky above the treetops in the distance. A horrible screeching noise erupted through the air. Everyone standing at the palace covered their ears from the dreadful sound.

“Oh no,” Alex said, and her face went pale.

“It can’t be,” Mother Goose faintly whispered to herself.

The Happily Ever After Assembly watched in horror as the silhouette of a gargantuan creature appeared above the trees. The rumors of the egg were true; a dragon had risen in the Land of Stories.





CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE





THE DRAGON AWAKES


The dragon emerged from the trees and landed at the edge of the fairy gardens. He was almost as tall as the Fairy Palace. Red scales covered his body and a forked tongue slipped in and out of his sharp teeth. He had two horns and sharp spikes covered his head and traveled down his spine. Two large wings grew out of the dragon’s back and a long tail whipped around behind him. Smoke continuously floated out of his enormous nostrils as if they were the exhaust pipes of a steam engine.

Alex and Conner could never have imagined a creature so big. There wasn’t a dinosaur or monster they had ever read about that could compare to the beast coming toward them.

The dragon arched his back and roared at the Happily Ever After Assembly. It was so loud many of the windows shattered. All the fairies in the gardens ran or flew to the trees beyond the gardens to avoid being trampled by the creature. General Marquis laughed hysterically at the frightened fairies fleeing their homes.

Conner grabbed his sword from the ground and joined his sister and the men and women at the front of the palace.

“Mother Goose, what do we do?” he asked.

Everyone turned to her.

“Why is everyone looking at me? I’ve never killed a dragon before!” she said.

“Weren’t you and Grandma some of the fairies who hunted them during the Dragon Age?” Alex asked, trying her best not to panic.

“I just wrestled the smaller ones,” Mother Goose admitted. “Your grandmother was the one who knew how to slay them.”

Conner rubbed his fingers through his hair. “Okay, everyone think! There’s got to be a way we can kill this thing!”

General Marquis could feel their anxiety all the way across the gardens. He enjoyed seeing how helpless his new pet made them feel and forced them to wallow in it for a little longer before ordering it to attack them.

The Masked Man appeared through the trees just below the dragon and had never looked so happy. He gazed up at the dragon as if he were looking at an embodiment of his life’s work. He had waited his whole life to possess an actual dragon, and it was bigger and better than he could ever have imagined.

Unfortunately for General Marquis, the Masked Man had more control over the dragon than he realized.

“That’s enough waiting,” the general shouted. “Send the dragon to attack the Fairy Palace! I want to watch it burn!”