She can sense the starlight in the apple’s remains, concentrated into dangerous potency. It feels…malleable, the way the sunlight used to, when she pushed it out and into a wound.
She cups the apple in her hands. Then she takes a breath and imagines drawing out the starlight, letting it drain into her bones.
In moments, she’s left with a plain, mostly eaten apple, its skin dull, its flesh starting to brown.
“Enver won’t be finishing that,” she says with grim satisfaction. “Come on.”
She can weave the starlight to her will easily enough, but the roots unfortunately prove more of a challenge. Even though she can sense them clearly, moving them feels like trying to pick up a mug with a pair of tongs. As she and Eugene approach the doorway, the tendrils jerk back in an ungainly tumble, nowhere near how they behaved under Enver’s adept control.
And even with Verette fighting him, Rapunzel can still feel the shift in his attention as silver like mercury surges through the network of roots, bound for them.
They have to get to the brake wheel before he does.
Rapunzel makes an awkward yanking gesture. It calls a burly, thick root up through the earth, one standing as tall as the doorway and with plenty more length in reserve. “Grab on,” she tells Eugene. Once they’ve both got a solid grip, she reaches for the starlight in her bones and draws the root upward.
It rockets them into the air like a string pulled tight, stretching higher and higher past the glittering sails. Amazingly, Rapunzel cansmellthe sunlight waiting for release in the crystal panes, even if it’s not the form she knows.
Then she makes the mistake of looking down.
Silver tendrils are swarming up the sides of the sunmill, racing them for the top.
Eugene sees them and says a very crude word. When she stares, he says defensively, “I learned it from Cressien.”
Their root arcs toward the heart of the sails, where their beams all meet and affix to the brake wheel’s shaft. The shaft itself runs horizontally into a little covered hutch at the top of the sunmill to protect the gears from the elements, and a narrow walkway runs around it for maintenance workers. Rapunzel swings down onto the walkway, with Eugene a heartbeat behind her.
The bottom two sails creak and rattle. Enver’s roots have curved away from the walls—and knotted around the edges of the sails like a heavy silver fringe, immobilizing them in a giant X.
There’s no doubt about it. He’s not chasing the apple anymore—he’s caught on to their plan. Even if they release the brake wheel, the sails won’t activate and the water screw won’t turn. She can feel the weight of the dragging roots—
Inspiration strikes. She rushes to the brake wheel’s hutch and throws it open. A heavy steel bar has the brake wheel locked in place, but this time, the release lever is clear as day. She points to it. “Eugene, on my signal, you pull this, okay?”
“As Her Highness wishes,” he says with a grin, and Rapunzel realizes—even with every awful thing that’s happened, she’s smiling too.
It’s not the starlight lighting her bones; it’s not trading seventy feet of hair for thousands of filaments of roots. It’s that she’s solving problems, keeping her word,doingthings again, because that’s the kind of princess she wants to be. This iswhat she left the tower for. And even when the starlight fades, no one can take that from her.
Rapunzel crouches at the edge of the ledge. The roots pull on the bottom left and right sails, and she can sense Enver’s control in every fiber. She can use that. In fact, she ventures little feints at the starlight in the roots just to goad him into tightening his grip.
The trick is Enver’s trying to stop the sails entirely, and Rapunzel only needs one.
“Now!”she shouts, and brute-forceshovesher way into the roots—but only those holding the left sail. They curl back from the sail, shivering. Enver doesn’t follow suit fast enough with his roots dragging on the right, and as the brake wheel releases with a clanking jolt, the silver roots pull the right sail down—kick-starting the sunmill into motion.
A shudder runs through the stones. The sails pick up speed, years of stored sunlight humming with glee. Enver’s roots are nowhere near strong enough to stop them now, and the sail tears them from the ground like so many feeble lichens.
Rapunzel can feel the starcloud tree far below, as the tension of the water screw strains to turn even through the wood of the trunk. It’s lived longer, larger than so many of its kind, grown where it was never meant to thrive.
And the tree—the tree is tired.
“Look,” Eugene says as he helps her back to her feet. He points beyond the sails, and she remembers this isn’t just the top of the sunmill—it’s the highest point in the kingdom, with a view to match.
Below them, all of Astera is ablaze with starlight.
The roots lace nearly every inch of open ground she can see, fanning out all the way down to the shore and shining even through the dirt and stone. It’s what’s turning night to day, wild and sprawling. Tiny figures like ants spill out into the streets to stare as flocks of birds swoop and cry.
And as the water screw grinds into the tree…the light flickers.
For a blink of an eye, Enver’s control on the roots slips.
Then they thrash with the panicked ferocity of a cornered animal.
