“Thank you,” Rapunzel says automatically, taking the envelope. “I’m honored to accept—”
“—consider it,” her father interjects as Teophine’s smile widens and half the room gasps. “We’ll need to—”
Rapunzel swings around to look at him, startled by the urgency in his voice.
Unfortunately, the king was stepping forward, halfway to dropping a hand on her shoulder again. He tries to jerk back,loses his balance, lurches to the side…and misses the top step of the dais.
There’s a scuffle, an ugly crunch, and a muffled string of words Rapunzel’s pretty sure a king’s not allowed to know.
“Oh dear,” her mother sighs. “Can someone get the doctor? He’s done it again.” As she hurries past Rapunzel, she says under her breath, “Don’t worry, sweetheart, this dais always trips him up. If we’re lucky, it’s his fourth sprain; his second break if we’re not. Itoldhim we need railings.”
Rapunzel reaches for her hair, ready to say that for once tonight, she knows what she’s doing—
And comes up short. Her hand closes on empty air.
There’s no denying it’s easier to move without seventy feet of hair. But if she still carried that weight…
A quick little song, and all of this would be fixed.
The queen crouches by her husband, who sits red-faced on the stairs, one leg outstretched. They insisted she need only have fun tonight. Rapunzel’s fairly certain they’re regretting that now.
There’s a firm cough at her elbow. “I’ll handle this, Your Highness,” Minister Cressien says stiffly, and plucks the golden envelope from her grasp.
“Oh—sure,” Rapunzel says hesitantly. She turns back to look for Councilor Teophine—
But there’s no sign of midnight-blue silk or crystal-studded hair anywhere in the ballroom. All that she’s left behind are the invitation and whispers trailing like stardust in her wake.
Two
Eugene
“Oh, it’s not just you,” Eugene tells Rapunzel, watching her brush a streak of violet across the wall as he perches on her ladder. It could be a garland, or a decorative flourish, or, as he’s learned, the dark base she’ll build lighter layers into. And heaven knows she won’t tell him; it’s a game they like to play, seeing how long it takes him to guess what she’s painting. He’d like to think he’s gotten better at it, but then she goes and does something like turn a purple line into patina-green rooftops. “Nobody knows anything about Astera.”
Rapunzel frowns and blows a hair out of her eyes. Eugene’s witnessed her various attempts to keep it away from her face;today’s handkerchief is just this side of peasant quaint, but it seems to do the job better than most.
Which is good, because after last night’s invitation fiasco, Rapunzel’s spent most of the day painting through her feelings in her nursery. Well, nursery turned painting studio. From what Eugene’s eavesdropped on, the king and queen had the room locked fourteen years ago, once they accepted that if their daughter was ever found, she’d be too big for her crib.
One thing Eugenewillgive himself credit for, though, is noticing how Rapunzel kept staring at the relatively plain palace walls, and discreetly telling the king how Gothel’s tower bloomed with Rapunzel’s work. Her parents were all too glad to open the nursery and clear those fourteen years of dust just so she could paint new life into it.
“I thought it was only a day and a half away.” Rapunzel steps back from the wall. By now Eugene knows the tilt of her head when she’s assessing a painting’s composition. Pascal, in his semipermanent post on her shoulder, tilts his head too. Then she swallows. “At least…it was for Gothel.”
Eugene squints, trying to piece together the blocks of color and see what she sees. Still no dice. “At least three days by ship, with good wind and good seas, and another three back. But she was a creepy old witch—maybe she just turned herself into a bird and flew? I could see her as a seagull.”
He’s never sure how jokes about Gothel will go over. Sometimes Rapunzel laughs, and sometimes she looks like she bumped a bruise. This time, he can see her ears lift with hersmile, which means it landed well. “Maybe. That’s still not that far, though. Why don’t we know anything?”
“Well, for one thing, they don’t let outsiders onto the mainland. May I?” Eugene hops off the ladder and picks up a stick of chalk. Sometimes Rapunzel will use it to sketch her paintings out first. When she nods, he moves to an empty stretch of wall and draws the outline of Astera—or at least, his best recollection of it, which looks like a fried egg being orbited by other, smaller breakfast foods. “It’s an archipelago. Most everyone lives here on the mainland”—he taps the fried egg—“but foreign ships can only dock here.” This time, he indicates a tiny croissant to the south. “It’s called Merchant’s Crescent. Asteran traders will cross the bay to do business with foreigners there and then sail right back. Guards even observe the trading to make sure no one spills Asteran secrets.”
“How do you know all this?” Rapunzel asks as she studies his crude map. A blob of pale yellow waits precariously on the tip of a brush in her hand, abandoned for the moment. Candle-flame yellow, he realizes, and finds she’s already sprinkled it over the upper half of her painting, the earlier purple now the folds of a velvet drape. It falls into place: She’s painting last night’s ball, before everything went sideways.
“Solena, one of the caretakers at my orphanage, wanted to see the world before she retired. She joined the crew of a trade ship but wound up falling for an Asteran. She came back to say goodbye, because once you set foot on mainland Astera, you can’t leave the archipelago. I’m assuming they make exceptionsfor royalty. And royal emissaries.” Eugene dusts the chalk off his hands and jerks his thumb at the couch, where a worn book lays half under a throw pillow. “Flynnigan Rider’s supposedly Asteran, you know. Got his start as a royal guard, even. But I think the author was just making things up, since no one outside of Astera…”
Familiar voices seep from the hallway beyond the door.
“…too harsh on her,”the queen is saying.
“…knows the truth,” Eugene finishes. Rapunzel goes still; Pascalbrrrrs a protest as Eugene quickly plucks him from her shoulder.
The echoes in the hall distort the words, but he catchesstill learninganddoing her best.
