But that information is going straight to her mother, when she promised herself she would make her mother proud.
A flick of silver in a flower bed catches her eye.
Another threadlike worm coils in the dirt a few feet away.
Rapunzel isn’t sure princesses are supposed to be this interested in worms. But at this rate, her list of Princess Conduct Infractions seems to be growing out of control, so what’s one more?
Rapunzel checks to make sure no one’s watching, then crouches for a better look. It twitches back, and only then does she see howlongit is—and it’s not alone, either. Another pale flash stitches through the soil nearby. Then she spots another in a different bed…and the curious thing is they’re all oriented in the same general direction, like a tiny broken road scattered over the garden.
She straightens up and slowly walks along the lawn, following the crude trail. It winds through the flower beds and around another wall, and when she turns the corner, she finds an old, unassuming iron door set into the palace’s stone wall, half obscured by an enormous lacy fern. A faint track has been worn into the dirt leading to it.
What an odd little puzzle. The door isn’thiddenper se, but it isn’t exactly a garden feature—yet the dirt track says it’s getting regular use. And a heavy-duty door like that can’t be for something like a tool closet.
Something about this—the dirt, the wear, the flaws—finally cracks the unease that plagued Rapunzel for the whole tour.
Everything she’s been allowed to see is polished. Rehearsed. Curated. Any time she slowed to look closer, any time she dug for more detail, she was carefully, deliberately redirected.
Maybe it’s just the same sort of defensive diplomatic lacquer Minister Cressien’s trying to get her to perfect.
Or maybe something’s under that veneer.
Distant shouts break through her thoughts from somewhere below the gardens. There’s a faraway scuffle, then more cries spike from the party. Rapunzel whirls around to look back the way she came—
Only to find Maximus charging toward her, an ash-smudged, groggy Pascal plastered between his ears. An older stableman is giving chase. “So sorry, Your Highness,” he gasps between heaving breaths. “He just broke out—we’ll have him back and safe in a trice—”
Max skids to a stop in front of Rapunzel, hooves shaving dark gashes into the manicured lawn.
“I’ve got him,” she says, grabbing his bridle and trying not to panic about what Minister Cressien is going to make ofthisnew fiasco.
Then Pascal lets out a long trill, and everything else promptly gets shoved off her mental desk.
Rapunzel plucks him off Max’s head, eyes wide, pulse rising. “What do you mean,kidnapped?”
Eight
Eugene
As far as abductions go, Eugene has to give this one a grudging eight.
Not on the experience, of course; that’s a solid zero out of ten, would not repeat. But there’s undeniable competence here that reveals a certain degree of expertise, and he has to at least recognize the work of a professional. The trick with the peddler was a nice little misdirect; knocking him out without physical force is always appreciated; and for the second time in just over a month, he’s waking up tied to a chair. Unfortunately, they’ve also thought to blindfold him.
So far, he’s just had to deduct two points. The first: Blindfold or no, he still woke up to the muffled rush of water andgroaning timbers somewhere beyond the walls. Between that and the limited distance you can reasonably smuggle an unconscious adult man, it probably won’t be too difficult to track this place down when he gets out.
And the second point is why he’s so confident that’s awhen, not anif: Whoever bound his hands behind his back got lazy with a clove hitch.
They’re going to lose another point if they take much longer to notice he’s awake. He’s heard murmurs, and multiple distinct footstep patterns have moved in and out of the room; he’s clearly being monitored.
Then the soft scrape of a wooden walking stick punctuates incoming footfalls. Eugene holds his breath, refraining from leaping to conclusions—
“…telling you,” comes Solena’s quiet, raspy whisper. “Eugene would never work for a man like that.”
“Eugene would like to not be blindfolded,” Eugene announces, already bored with pretending to be asleep. “Solena, long time no see. Hypothetically. You know, because of the blindfold.”
A choked silence grips the room.
Eugene rolls his head. He’s found it helps to play melodramatic in times like this. “Come on now, do you really think I wouldn’t recognize those dulcet tones? Funny story, I was actually going to visit you the more-normal-less-kidnapping way, but it turns out there’s no official record of you arriving in Astera. I had some questions about the book you gave me.The one that apparently came from aprivate royal collection.” That too is met with silence. “Really, anytime now, feel free to just jump in and start telling me what the devil’s going on.”
A strange voice, a sawtooth contralto, picks up much too close to Eugene. “Our questions come first.”
