Braided, page 17
“Where are they?” I demanded.
Rapunzel sat in the chair, reached under the table, and pulled out another basket. This one was tied shut with twine. It seemed to take forever for her to untie it, raise the lid, and pull out a stack of papers.
And there they were. The letters I had written, folded and creased, held in my sister’s hand.
“I never knew when they would come.” Rapunzel put the pack on the table and smoothed down the top paper. “At first I thought they were birthday presents. Then, about two years ago, you started writing more often.” She grinned. “Thank you for that, by the way. I would wake up and a letter would just be there on my windowsill. I imagined you writing them—”
She stood and started toward me. I stepped back. Her hair had gone a bit darker, hesitant brown strands mixed with the gold—my vision was blurred by tears, but I could make that out.
“I didn’t know you were actually reading them,” I said. “Nanny Cresta sent them in secret. She was the only one who knew where you were, because she…” It felt like a betrayal, but I made myself say the words. “She’s the one who traded you to the fae.”
Rapunzel blinked. Then she sighed. “I know.”
“You—you do?”
She bit her lip. “I figured it out almost as soon as I got to the castle.”
“So when I offered to help you investigate, you already knew…”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out. Nanny Cresta was all you had in that castle. I didn’t want you to lose her.”
“She wasn’t all I had.” I spoke around a thickness in my throat. “I had Mother.” Rapunzel made an incredulous sound. “I had you.”
“Well.” She pressed her palm down on the stack of letters. “We’re together now. I know what you’ve been told about the Realms, but you’re going to love it here. You’ll see. I can’t wait to show you…well, everything. I don’t know where to start.”
“Rapunzel.” I spoke as clearly and calmly as I could. “I’m not staying here.”
Her smile vanished. Her face went blank, her chin taut. An expression I knew well.
“You must have realized that,” I said. “If you know me at all, you know I would never leave our kingdom unprotected.”
She let out a frustrated hiss of air. “So I’ve heard. I can’t say I share your zeal.”
“I know. It’s all right.” It wasn’t, really, but what else could I say?
Rapunzel folded her arms over her chest. “Why did you come, then?”
She had to know the answer to that, too. I said it anyhow. “I came to bring you home.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she said, “Well, I’m not going back. So we’re at a bit of an impasse, aren’t we?”
“Rapunzel,” I said. “Please. You’ve known me for years, but I’ve only known you for three days. It’s not enough time.”
“Not enough time for what?” she said. “To get to know who I really am? Or to turn me into what you want me to be?”
“To get to know who you are!” My voice quivered. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do this whole time.”
“Really? Because I’ve told you quite clearly that I have no intention of being the perfect, grateful princess you’ve all been searching for. I’m not staying in that deadly dull castle for one second more than I have to. I told you from the start, Cinna, the only reason I came was to rescue you!”
I looked at her. Her hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back, almost like she was wrapped in a golden dress.
“That,” I said, “was a lie.”
“It was—”
“I didn’t know you yet,” I cut her off. “But you read my letters. There’s not a single thing in them to make you think I need rescuing. They all say the same thing over and over.” I swallowed. “That I’m lonely. That I need you to come be my sister.” My jaw muscles were so tight they hurt. “You came for the same reason. Because you knew you had a sister, and you thought that meant you didn’t have to be alone anymore either.”
I thought about what it meant that Rapunzel had known my letters so well she had unconsciously quoted whole sentences from them. I thought about how many times she must have read them, over and over, until she knew them by heart.
“Come with me,” I said. “Please.”
She didn’t move or speak. I stepped sideways to the window and looked out. Fireball was still coiled around the tower, wings tucked in. He flicked his tongue at me, then looked disappointed when I didn’t provide chocolate.
A swoosh of hair, and Rapunzel stepped up next to me. I looked up at her, hope spiraling painfully through my chest. Her brown eyes were wide, with an expression that rang a chord deep within me. She was as lonely as I was. She hid her loneliness with defensive scorn, and mine made me desperate and needy, but we both had that same painful weakness inside.
And we both, over the last three days, had finally felt it ease.
I reached for her hand, and her fingers closed around mine. Just for a second, before I tried to tug her to the window and she pulled her hand free.
“I can’t,” she said. “Cinna, I’m sorry.”
My voice was so fierce I almost didn’t recognize it. “You can. I know you can.”
“Actually,” a new voice said, “she can’t. And neither can you.”
I whirled just in time to see Rapunzel’s hair turn white.
A fae woman with gleaming black wings and round, glowing yellow eyes was sitting on the gray couch, watching us, her lips curved into an unnaturally wide smile.
“It’s very touching,” she said, “to see sisters reunited.” Her voice was low and liquid, and something about it made everything in me go cold with fear. “You will be together forever now, just like you wanted, because neither of you are going anywhere. You’re both mine now.”
23
“Your Majesty,” Rapunzel said stiffly. Her fingers closed around mine so tightly they hurt.
The faerie queen ignored her. She looked only at me. Her eyes were perfectly round, like a bird’s, and completely yellow, with no pupil at all.
“Princess Cinnariosia,” she said. “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
Rapunzel drew in her breath and didn’t let it out.
The queen kept her focus on me. She had a long, white-skinned face, with cheekbones as sharp as razors and a flat, unsmiling mouth. She would have been beautiful, if not for those eyes.
“How delightful that you’re home,” she said.
Rapunzel still made no sound, and the queen still didn’t spare her a glance. She tilted her head to the side, birdlike, her eyes fixed on me. “You don’t seem pleased. Do you not like the decorations?” She waved a hand. The paintings on the wall shimmered and vanished, turning into a soothing pattern of light and dark blue.
She paused, waiting for me to react. A frown flitted over her grotesque, elegant face. “Or is it that you don’t want to share a tower with your sister? I suppose I could find you your own tower. But shouldn’t sisters be together?”
She laughed softly. Whatever the joke was, I didn’t get it—and neither, judging by her frozen expression, did Rapunzel.
I’m a princess of the Borderland, I reminded myself. I can stand against the fae. I was created to stand against the fae.
I wished I hadn’t cut my hair.
“This isn’t my home,” I said. My voice shook, and Rapunzel pressed my hand even more tightly. “I’m going back to the Borderland.”
“Are you?” The faerie queen spread her wings, covering the couch with blackness. The whole room went dimmer, as if her wings were casting an impossibly large shadow. “Oh, I forgot how funny humans are! Silly little princess. You are on my side of the border now, and you came here on your own. I’m afraid that wasn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done. At the very least, before you entered my domain, you should have made me promise not to hurt you.” She laughed. “And you definitely should not have cut your hair. I can’t imagine what possessed you.”
I made the mistake of meeting her eyes. They had grown larger, until they covered nearly half her face, and they paralyzed me. I stood watching them grow even larger—no, it wasn’t that, she was coming closer…
Run, something small in me whimpered. But I couldn’t move. The faerie queen smiled widely, revealing pointed teeth.
“I’ll tell you why I cut my hair,” I blurted out.
She paused and blinked. “Go on. I am curious.”
“I cut it because I don’t want it,” I said. “I don’t want to wield magic. I don’t want to be queen of the Borderland. All I want is my freedom.” I glanced sideways at Rapunzel. “It’s what we both want. If you let us go, we’ll fly together to the end of the earth. The Borderland will be left unprotected.”
The queen’s eyes narrowed, going from round circles to slits in her face.
“That’s your goal, isn’t it?” I said. “This was your plan all along. It’s why you kidnapped Rapunzel in the first place. You don’t want our hair or our magic. You don’t need it, not in this place that’s made of magic. You just don’t want the human world to have it. You want the Borderland defenseless.” I glanced at my still-motionless sister. “That’s also why you let Rapunzel come home. So that when she returned to the Realms, I would follow her.”
The queen pursed her lips. “It worked out quite nicely, didn’t it? Once your mother dies, there will be nothing standing between me and the rest of the human world. It’s always a pleasure when things go exactly the way I want them to.”
“It worked out for us, too.” I took a tiny step closer to her. It was the scariest thing I had ever done, far harder than getting on a dragon’s back and flying off the edge of a cliff. “All we want is to be free and together. Let us go, and you’ll never have to worry about either of us again. The world will be yours for the taking.”
“Interesting.” The queen intertwined her fingers. They were thin and many-jointed. “But I think it would be simpler to kill you now.”
She raised one hand, impossibly long fingers spread impossibly far apart. I felt the sudden, sharp buildup of a violent magic, making my hair burn and my chest feel too heavy to breathe. Or to scream. A purplish-black ball formed in the hollow of her palm, whirling slowly.
Then her eyes and her smile and her magic disappeared from my view, cut off by a fall of white-gold hair.
“Rapunzel,” the faerie queen hissed. “Get out of my way.”
I couldn’t see Rapunzel’s face, but her shoulders were stiff and her voice sharp. “Don’t touch her.”
“Oh, my dear.” I also couldn’t see whether the faerie queen was laughing or snarling. From her tone, it could have been either. “You’ve lived here too long to be so foolish. Do you think you get a say?”
“I think,” Rapunzel said, “that you once promised not to let me come to any harm. And that makes me dangerous to you.” Her hair was like a flame, white strands so bright they glowed. “If you harm her, I will go to war against you. I will destroy every bit of the Realms I can reach. And you won’t be able to stop me. You won’t be able to touch me. Because that’s the bargain you made when I was given to you.”
“You wouldn’t,” the faerie queen said. “You love the Realms.”
I sidled sideways so Rapunzel wasn’t blocking me. The motion made me realize that my legs were quivering like jelly, so I stopped moving as soon as I had a clear view of the queen’s elongated, coldly cruel face.
“I do love the Realms,” Rapunzel said steadily. “And I will lay waste to them anyhow. I promise.”
The queen threw her head back and laughed. Her laughter pealed and pealed through the room, icy slivers growing sharper and more high-pitched with every passing second. It hurt my ears, but somehow I knew that covering them would be a bad idea. A sign of weakness. I clenched my fists at my sides.
The laughter ended abruptly. The queen snapped her head back down. Her eyes had gone black, huge and fathomless in her cruel white face.
“You would destroy your home,” she said, “for a sister you barely know?”
“Hmm.” Rapunzel tilted her head to the side. “I guess I would.”
Something twitched in the queen’s face. It was hard to read anything in that inhuman expression, but I had a sudden suspicion that the faerie queen might find Rapunzel just as irritating as most humans did.
“But if you let my sister go,” Rapunzel went on, “you’ll get exactly what you want. She’ll leave the Realms and she’ll leave the Borderland, and you’ll be free to take over the world.”
The faerie queen’s wings contracted slightly, so that their curved edges looked like blades. “How do I know she won’t come back?”
“Because she doesn’t want to come back,” Rapunzel said. “She’s like me. You know I have no interest in ruling anything, or in fighting the Realms, or in being kept in any one place, even if that place is a castle. She’s the same.”
“Are you?” The faerie queen looked at me.
“Of course I am,” I said. “We’re sisters, aren’t we?”
The queen considered this.
“You know it’s true,” Rapunzel said. “Why else would she have cut her hair?”
“Very well,” the queen said. She blinked again. “You appear to have left me no choice. This time.”
The threat in her tone made me flinch. But Rapunzel just inclined her head.
“Go, Cinna,” she said, and the urgency in her voice was so clear she didn’t have to add, Quick, before she changes her mind.
I tore my gaze from the queen’s terrifying eyes and took two quick steps—not toward the window, but toward Rapunzel. I grabbed her wrist.
She didn’t resist. She met my eyes for a brief second as I pulled her to the windowsill and over, and we tumbled onto the dragon’s back together.
Her weight thudded into me a moment before Fireball took off through the fog, his tail whipping once against the tower wall and then streaming behind him as he arced sharply upward and away.
24
Fireball streamed up, up, and up, then burst out of the fog into golden sunlight. He leveled out several yards above the thick grayness, lashed his tail, and took off toward the horizon. All the horizons looked the same to me, nothing but gray merging with blue everywhere I turned, but hopefully Fireball knew where he was going. I leaned over his neck and urged him on.
The wind whistled around my head, wild and cold and loud, whipping my hair into a froth. Rapunzel shouted something, but I couldn’t hear it.
“What?” I yelled, but my words, too, were whipped away by the wind. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Rapunzel grimace with frustration. Her hair was a tangled cloud streaming behind her, and it was dead white.
She let go of my waist. Her fingers moved to my hair and worked deftly, separating it into strands, tugging and weaving. I could tell she was making a five-strand braid by the way her fingers moved swiftly from one side of the braid to another, dropping strands and then gathering them up.
Which was when I realized that my hair was brushing the tops of my shoulders, long enough to make a five-strand braid. I reached up in amazement to touch the edges, then quickly grabbed Fireball’s scales again.
Rapunzel, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem balancing on his back with both hands in my hair. She looped the braid through itself and tugged it tight, then pulled it up and fastened it with a pin she pulled from her own hair. She gathered up the rest of my hair into another five-strand braid that circled my other ear.
“Did it work?” she shouted, and I realized that she had created a hearing-strengthening spell. Ingenious.
“Yes!” I said. “Amazing.”
I heard the grin in her voice. “I paid attention when the maids worked on my hair. One second, I’ll do them for myself, too.”
“But—” The loop swung against my cheek. The rest of my hair tickled the nape of my neck. I glanced back, just in time to see Rapunzel finish off a hearing-strengthening braid of her own. “How did my hair get this long?”
“You’re in the Realms. Your hair has plenty of magic to draw on.”
Fireball tilted slightly, and I tightened my grip on his scales. Rapunzel went right back to working on her hair, unconcerned. “Are we going in the right direction? I don’t see the border.”
“Cinna,” Rapunzel said.
I twisted and looked at her, even though the movement sent fear shooting through me. And even though I knew what she was going to say. It was in her tone, as much as it was in her face—in her steady, regretful stare.
“You came with me,” I said. “You’re here with me now.”
“Because you wouldn’t have gone otherwise, and we didn’t have a second to spare. But Cinna…I can’t go with you.”
“Can’t?” I repeated.
She drew in a breath. “You’re right. I won’t.”
Her eyes were wide and rimmed with white lashes. Her hair was still gold, but apparently she couldn’t control her eyelash color as well. Something to keep in mind for later—
I caught myself. There would be no later.
“All right,” I said.
She blinked, and the rest of her hair went momentarily as white as her lashes. For the first time since I’d met her, I had shocked my older sister. “All right, what?”
The wind was already bringing tears to my eyes, so I couldn’t tell if I was crying or not. “If that’s really what you want, I won’t try to stop you.”
She laughed. “You couldn’t stop me if you did try.”
“Well.” I tried to smile. “There’s that, too.”
