Pascalbrrrs and scurries across the alleyway, blending in to the plaster and stone. Eugene can barely see his outline at the boarded-up door. One minute goes by, then five more, then another ten, as the previously busy door stays annoyingly shut. He’s just getting antsy when a peddler cuts down through the lane, metal pans swaying and clanking from their hooks on his cart. Eugene pretends to dig in his satchel as the man passes, trying to look at least a little less suspicious.
He glances up just in time to see the peddler’s gaze narrow on him—and then shift to something over his shoulder.
Eugene has one crystal clear moment of realization: his own conspicuousness was, in fact, not the thing he needed to worry about here.
Then rough, heavy cloth drops over his head, and everything goes black.
Seven
Rapunzel
“This,” Minister Cressien whispers tightly in the shade of a pergola practically sagging with wisteria, “is becoming a problem.”
Rapunzel catches herself once again picking at her sleeves and hides her hands behind her back. “Eugene’s probably just running late,” she insists for the umpteenth time.
“Itoldhim to stay in the palace today.” Cressien squeezes out a smile and nod as the Councilor of the North and Master of Scholars, a stiff-spined woman whose professional distance disintegrated into glee the moment Rapunzel dropped the wordaquifer, lopes past en route to the refreshments. Once she’s out of earshot, Cressien adds under his breath, “If MasterFitzherbert was not prepared to treat this visit with the seriousness it requires…”
Rapunzel’s been keeping her stare on the nearby flower bed so Cressien can’t see her frustration. He’s not wrong. This social is to introduce them to Astera’s nobility and allow them to mingle with the higher-ranking government officials. She’s well aware of how it looks to have the princess’s companion skipping the first official social event: almost as bad as going barefoot. (She’s compromised with a pair of sandals that don’t cross over her blisters.) But…Eugene knows better. Doesn’t he?
A wiggle of silver in the dark soil suddenly catches her eye. Rapunzel blinks. It looks like a tiny, almost threadlike worm, something she’s never even heard of—
“Are you even listening, Your Highness?” Cressien asks incredulously.
Before she can answer, that same low horn that bellowed in the ocean mists sounds again, this time at the far end of the garden. King Enver strolls in, Hughes and Verette at his heels, though Verette splits off toward Councilor Teophine as her father makes a beeline for Rapunzel.
Rapunzel curtsies when King Enver halts a few feet away. “Good afternoon, Your Majesty! These gardens are absolutely incredible. I’ve already found five species that weren’t anywhere in my botany book.”
“We do take pride in our roots, in more ways than one,” King Enver laughs, brown eyes twinkling. Rapunzel can’t helplaughing too, especially because it’s the sort of pun Eugene would make.
Then Enver looks around, puzzled. “I recall you brought another companion, Princess? I do hope you know he was welcome to attend this.”
Rapunzel’s belly wrings. “Oh, of course! I mean—I told him—I mean—he knew—” She can feel herself stumbling and giggles nervously, trying to twirl a too-short lock of hair around her finger. All the veneer of poise flakes away. “He’s just like a house cat, that Eugene! Comes and goes on his own schedule.”
“There were some errands,” Cressien glosses, “that the princess’s companion wished to attend to.”
Hughes, the chamberlain, speaks up, deploying a degree of stoicism that makes Verette seem high-strung by comparison. “I believe, sire,” he says with an almost mournful chew of each syllable, “that the young gentleman went for his own tour of the city in the company of palace guards.”
King Enver beams. “An adventurer! I admire that in a fellow. I wish we’d had time to speak last night. I’m afraid I didn’t catch his title, and I’d hate to address him incorrectly.…May I ask what rank the Herbert family is?”
“I believe Fitzherbert was raised in an orphanage,” Cressien interjects, smoothly slotting in the name correction.
Rapunzel recognizes that tactic. Gothel would do something like tell Rapunzel to hang the dishes up to dry, and Rapunzel would ask if she meant the laundry, and Gothel would scoldYou know I meant the laundry, don’t be difficult, until Rapunzel learned to respond instead that yes, she’d get to the laundry right away.
She always thought that was, well, life with Gothel. But maybe there’s a diplomatic use for all the little tricks and strategies she taught herself in the tower.
King Enver is shaking his head in amazement. “An orphanage! Remarkable. So his background, his parentage, it’s a complete mystery. However did you become acquainted?”
Cressien shifts his weight uneasily, but Rapunzel thinks she knows how to handle that. “It’s a bit of a long story, but he helped me escape the witch who held me prisoner.”
“The one who stole you for your hair,” Enver says with a somber nod.
Cressien’s chin lifts. “I wasn’t aware His Majesty had heard of that.”
“Two Kourenne ships landed at Merchant’s Crescent, oh, eighteen years ago?” Enver runs a finger along his jaw. “The first was searching for the sundrop flower to save the queen. Then a few months later, they were searching for the kidnapped infant princess. According to Councilor Persevault, they mentioned you already had nearly a foot of hair like sunlight.”
Rapunzel catches her hand sneaking toward the blunt ends of her hair again and turns it into an ungainly flutter. “It went back to brown when it was cut.”
“But the sundrop flower’s magic remained.” Somethinglike wonder flickers in King Enver’s stare. For a moment, she remembers the soft wood-grain ridges of the tower’s windowsill under her fingers on her birthdays, the simmer of anticipation in the dark before the lantern light bloomed.
