Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25724 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25724 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
“Stop!” I beg.
But she doesn’t. Of course, she doesn’t.
A root the width of my wrist punches through Brannock from behind, erupting under his ribs. A slick spear of wood, sap, and blood lifts him from the floor for a breathless, grotesque heartbeat. His blade falls. His head snaps back. Green-black spills warm across the boards, the air blooming metallic and sweet and wrong.
He jerks and his eyes find mine. “I love… you.”
“I love you too,” I sob. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
But he does. He exhales one word. “Sing.” And then he goes still.
Chapter 12
Rapunzel
Something in me breaks like ice cracking underfoot. My scream tears my throat raw. The tower answers, low and long, like the bottom of the world groaning awake. Hair thrashes. Books leap. The stove throws sparks. Magic detonates under my skin like white-hot lightning through my veins, and my body remembers.
The pendant around my neck ignites. Burning. Scalding my sternum as heat burrows inward like hot wire. I gasp and claw at it, skin sizzling, and rip the chain free. The amethyst thrums in my palm like a second, ugly heart.
“What is this?” My voice is a rasp I don’t recognize.
Gothel stills. She tips her head and smiles. “I told you never to take it off, didn’t I? That it would protect you? Foolish child. It was never for your protection. It was for mine. It’s the siphon.”
The world narrows to the pulsing thing in my hand. Up close, the stone isn’t smooth. It’s threaded with hair-thin roots, tiny veins of dark that squirm when I look at them. It pulses again, hungry and smug.
“This is how you’ve been feeding on me,” I say, quiet and flat.
Gothel lifts one shoulder. “Not all of you. Just… enough.” Her eyes cut to the roots embedded in the floor. “A tether to keep you weak. To keep the magic flowing. The tower, the roots, the loneliness—all of it channeled so sweetly. You gave and gave. And I took. Why do you think you were never able to be rid of it? You cannot destroy it. The siphon spell is unbreakable, shackling you to this place. To me. And now that your precious beast is dead”—her smile is triumphant—“your loneliness and despair will power me for an eternity.”
I look at the man—my orc—lying lifeless on the floor, and something pure and clean moves through me. The hollowness of grief is there, sharp and jagged, but shining through it is the happiness I’ve tasted, the hope I refused to stop feeding. And most of all, love. All gifts my outlaw orc carried in with him when the forest—my forest—delivered him to my window. The same forest that purred when I sang and bloomed when we made love.
Sing, he said.
Because it makes me happy. Like Brannock made me happy.
I kneel in the wreckage, the pendant hot and hateful in my palm, and I close my eyes. I picture Brannock’s laugh rumbling against my throat. His hands gripping my hips. The way pulled me close in sleep. The flowers bursting from the cracks like applause. I gather all of it—joy, love, the ridiculous, stubborn hope that kept me alive when I was alone—and I pour it into my voice.
I sing. True and from the heart.
The forest hears me first. New green vines hush and lie along the shattered floorboards. The darkest, vein-shot roots hesitate.
Gothel stumbles, eyes widening. “What are you—”
The pendant pulses, greedy little leech, and I realize how it’s always worked—how she’s always worked. Pain in, power out. Loneliness in, obedience out. Gothel didn’t just bind me; she twisted my magic to feed her hunger.
It wants to instigate fear and sadness. I give it joy instead—too bright, too wild, too mine for the siphon to hold. Heat surges up my arm and away as the current reverses. The amethyst shrieks, cracking from the inside as I feed it everything it cannot use.
“No,” Gothel snarls, flinging witchfire at me.
My hair slams down between us, and the spell skitters and dies.
The pendant fractures. The hair-thin roots inside writhe and wither. I project one last blast of love, hope, and the fierce joy of choosing myself, and the siphon... shatters.
I stop singing. The tower inhales. Power floods back through the severed loop and settles over me like a river flowing over familiar terrain. The black-veined roots recoil as if scalded, and new vines surge as magic hums in my palms. It pours through me, wild and alive. It coils through my veins, lighting up every strand of my hair.
The dark roots shrink from me now because they know I’m no longer their prisoner.
I am their mother.
Their queen.
“NO!” Gothel’s scream is raw and furious as she draws on her magic.
It doesn’t answer.
I do.
“My loneliness won’t feed you anymore,” I tell her, rising.
My hair lifts, the ends glowing green-gold like new leaves as the heartbeat of the forest pours through me. The tower trembles—not from Gothel’s power. From mine.