Now, the rough streaks of bark gnarling into his skin are unmistakable…as is the pewter gleam.
“You have to stop,” Verette urges.
Enver stares at her. A bitter resentment builds up behind his eyes, twisting his face with rage. “I dideverythingfor you,” he hisses. “I am your father. You don’t tellme”—his hands flex, even with leaves budding at the knuckles—“what I can”—silvery starlight burns down every limb, acid bright—“AND CANNOT DO!”
The starlight is slipping from Rapunzel’s control. Even with her and Verette both fighting, years of sustaining himself on the apples have made the starlight part of him in a way they can’t match, the evidence written in the veins blistering over his skin but not theirs. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the more distant roots curling and shriveling as he strips the starlight out of them.
A hand lands on her shoulder.
“This doesn’t look good,” Eugene says in her ear. “And I hate to say it, but Cressien’s not looking good either.”
They’re running out of time.
Rapunzel thinks of the starcloud tree being torn up in the spring. How it lit up brightest of all at a song. How she shoved Enver from the roots before, when—
When his attention was split.
“I have an idea,” she whispers to Eugene, “but we need to break his concentration.”
He looks up at the ceiling, mouth tilting, and says, “Give me twenty seconds.”
“We can find some other way to keep your wound healed,” Verette pleads to her father, hand still outstretched. “It doesn’t have to be like this. But you have to let go. You have to let usbothdo what we’ve promised.”
Enver meets her gaze for a long, long moment. It’s a chance he didn’t earn, one last try to save him from himself, save them all from him.
“It’s killing you,” Verette breathes. “Please, Papa. Just let go.”
Rapunzel feels the shift—
Of Enver’s drag on the starlight tightening.
“Not yet,” he gasps. Pale blue leaves sprout from his fingertips. “Not ready—not yet—”
He turns to the throne.
Eugene taps Rapunzel’s elbow. “I need a boost to the roof.”
She takes a deep breath and focuses on one more heavyweight root, summoning it up through the floor in a torrent of pale gold. Eugene grabs on to it, an odd lump swinging over his shoulder—a tablecloth gathered into a makeshift bag.
Enver’s voice thunders through the broken hall, brittle but steady, laced with pain and triumph. “This is still my kingdom! I am its master and its ruler!”
When he lifts a foot, roots trail like a beard from his boot sole.
Rapunzel pushes her way through the squirming masses of tendrils on the ground and reaches Verette’s side. The other princess’s face is streaked with tears and grime. She gives Rapunzel a look of pure astonishment when Rapunzel takes her hand.
Rapunzel opens her mouth, thinks of the sun as one more star, and begins to sing the lullaby.
Enver has decades of stolen starlight in his veins. But the song, like their memories of sunshine and lost mothers, lives deep in their bones, where even the roots can’t reach.
Verette’s breaking voice joins in. And this time, the starlight answers totheircall, not the king’s.
Enver is fighting still, even harder than the tree fought before, chasing after every scrap of light and magic and digging in. “You willnottake my place,” he grits out, lurching onto the dais. “It’s mine! The throne ismine! I amstill in control!” Leaves flush and bristle at his cuffs, while pewter bark hardens over his face.“I will not be moved! If I can’t have it, no one will!”
He hurls himself into the rootbound chair and grips the armrests hard enough to splinter, glaring balefully as shoots tear through his bloodstained waistcoat and lock him into place.
Rapunzel sees the difference, clearer than ever:
Verette has walked the highest and lowest streets in Astera, sat by sickbeds, sung to children, crawled through sewers, built a coalition to guide their future. And Enver…Rapunzel realizes she only ever saw him leave the palace for a tour.
