The oracles shrieked, skittering backward, arms flailing. “Impossible!” they howled as Ash stalked forward, his face hard. “How? How did you bring him here?”

“That’s a good question,” came another voice, as Puck stepped out from the trees behind me, daggers already in hand. “One minute I’m trying to decide if that doll is looking at me funny, then next, poof, here we are. And just in time, too.” He turned and smirked at the oracles, eyes gleaming. “That,” he stated, waggling his knife at one of them, “is my trick.”

The oracles screeched and flew toward us again, claws slashing. We met them in the center of the glade, the three of us, fighting side by side. Dust flew, swirling around us, as one by one, the duplicates vanished, cut down by my sword, stabbed with Puck’s daggers or pierced through the heart with a shard of ice. Until, finally, only one was left.

“Wait!” the last oracle, the real one, cried, throwing up her hands as Ash stalked toward her. “Iron Queen, wait! Spare me, I beg you! I have not told you everything. I know one last secret. Knowledge of your son and your brother, something that could save them both!”

“Ash, wait,” I called, and Ash halted, keeping his sword at the oracle’s withered chest. “More secrets, Oracle?” I asked, walking up to her, keeping my blade drawn. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Because it is a small thing,” the oracle whispered, her sightless gaze shifting from me to Ash and back again. Puck joined us, arms crossed, a disbelieving smirk on his face. “The tiniest lynchpin, in a huge, complicated machine. But, if it is removed, the entire structure could fall, sending our world into chaos. It is the domino that begins the collapse of everything.”

“Enough,” I said, as Puck rolled his eyes dramatically. Ash didn’t move, still keeping his blade inches from the oracle’s heart, waiting for my orders. “Speak, then, Oracle. How do I stop this? Tell me, right now.”

The oracle sighed. “To save your brother, you must—”

A deafening crack ripped the branches of the tree behind us, and a giant limb came smashing down, barely three feet from where we stood. I flinched, taking my eyes off the oracle for the briefest of seconds—

* * *

—and the scene disappeared. Blinking, I gazed around, wondering what had happened, where we were. Ash and Puck stood close by, also glancing around in confusion. The oracle was nowhere to be seen.

“What the hell?” Puck exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “What the heck just happened there? I’m getting a little tired of being poofed about whenever it strikes someone’s fancy.”