Enver’s voice booms through the hall:“Stop FIGHTING me!”
It’s been over a month, but Eugene can still hear Gothel hissing the exact same words. From the look on Rapunzel’s face, she remembers it just as terribly well.
“I can’t just—” Rapunzel’s voice catches. A silver root bursts through the ground by their feet, and they all stagger back. As Eugene steadies her, she looks up at him, wordlessly asking.
Eugene braces himself, then tells Ruvon and Sulian, “You’re not getting rid of us that easily.”
Ruvon’s scowl deepens, but Sulian, for once, softens with a pained smile. “You sound like your parents.”
“Wait—” Rapunzel lights up like a lantern. “The palace sunmill. You said starting it up could weaken the tree. If Cressien can hold on—”
“Perhapsthat could give Verette a fighting chance.” Ruvon takes the apple and cuts an offensively neat slice, considering he’s using a knife pilfered from the refreshment wreckage. “This may keep your minister with us for now. You’ll have to reconnect the main shaft and release the brake wheel, which is located—”
“Behind the sails,” Rapunzel finishes as he passes the apple back. “Ididdo the reading.”
“Then go, and may the stars’ favor follow.” Sulian starts to turn. Eugene grabs the stable master’s arm as one last bolt of inspiration strikes.
“Maximus,” Eugene says. “With the white coat. You want to distract Enver? Give that horse a sword.”
Twenty-Three
Rapunzel
“LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”
Rapunzel can’t hold back a flinch as Enver’s voice chases her and Eugene down a corridor, audible even over a crash that rocks the audience hall. It’s not the fear, though all of this is nerve-wracking. It’s how long it took to see what was right in front of her face. It’s how maybe, on some level, shedidsee it—she just wanted it to be different this time. It’s what Eugene puts into words as they careen into a garden:
“He sounds like Gothel,” he says, disturbed.
Rapunzel spins until she finds the sails of the palace sunmill over the rooftops, and heads for the archway in the rightdirection. “I guess I thought she was, well, unique. But the way he talks to Verette—it’s almost the same, isn’t it? It’s just a pattern any awful person can use.”
They emerge into the courtyard of the dormant sunmill as confused birdsong breaks overhead. For a moment, Rapunzel’s just as confused. It should be late, well past sundown, yet a pearly glow is turning the palace grounds nearly as bright as day.
“Where is that light coming from?” Eugene searches for the source while fishing in a pocket for his lockpicks.
“Not sure,” Rapunzel starts as they reach the sunmill’s doors. She gives them a futile rattle; sure enough, they’re locked. Eugene kneels by the keyhole and gets to work. Pascal buzzes a warning in her ear. She looks back and finds cracks darting over the stones of the courtyard, racing toward them. Silvery light jams through the fractures, the roots tickling at the edge of her awareness. “Enver’s found us, hurry!”
Eugene twitches the picks, his words strained through gritted teeth. “He’s gotta be following the apple. If we see a way to destroy it—” He breaks off as the lock clicks. Something in the catch of his voice tells her that’s not the only reason he paused, though.
Roots explode from the ground, thrashing toward them, only to jerk to a halt as a more prismatic light flares over the silver. “It’s Verette,” Rapunzel realizes aloud. “She’s fighting—”
Before she can finish, another tangle of roots erupts near them, heading for a ladder on the side of the sunmill. Thecoils snarl around it and, with a horrible squeal, rip it to pieces, flinging them into the air as shrieking gulls wheel away. Rapunzel stares, bewildered. Why would Enver go for aladder—
Eugene yanks Rapunzel through the doors and slams them shut, turning the lock. Then, through the dim, he points to the apple. “If it gets bad,youcould try eating this. I’d do it myself, but…the starlight doesn’t know me the way it knows you.”
Rapunzel stares at what’s left of the apple glowing in her hand. The slice for Cressien didn’t take much, but Enver’s own savage bites claimed nearly half, his teeth marks dug even into the seedy core.
It’s the kind of power people would lie for, kidnap children for, kill innocents for. The kind of power that others will do anything to use.
“If it gets bad,” she evades, and turns to look for the machinery. Surprisingly, it’s not as dark as she expected, but for disconcerting reasons: More cracks have spiderwebbed the empty basin of the Great Starlight Fountain, and silvery light juts up from below and illuminates the interior almost enough to see by. The marble statue’s eyes fall on her with an air of judgment.
“We’re right over the spring,” Eugene notes, frowning as a fragment of the basin rattles and falls out of sight. Another spear of silvery light breaks through the void. “Why isn’t he using the roots there to stop us?”
Rapunzel waves a hand in a broad circle and heads forthe jumble of gears and shafts at the far end of the sunmill’s ground level. “Everything he’s doing is destabilizing the ground under the palace, especially here. I bet the roots are the only thing holding up the fountain basin right now. The starcloud treemightsurvive the fountain caving in. It won’t survive the sunmill also coming down.”
Eugene shudders. “There goes my plan to camp out here. How do we get this thing moving again?”
“When a sunmill isn’t operating, the main shaft is raised so it doesn’t turn the water screw by accident.” Rapunzel reaches the machinery and starts hunting around, holding up the apple to see better by its muted glow. “There should be something like a crank or a lever to lower it around here somewhere.”
