Chapter Fourteen Eugene
Fourteen
Eugene
“The sheer audacity.”
Eugene tries not to smirk into an outrageously tiny sandwich.
The reception ball has kicked off in earnest now, and Rapunzel has no shortage of intrigued partners on the dance floor—and no shortage of skeptics on its edges, such as the gossips clustered around the refreshments.
Most of them take one look at him and lower their speculations to snide whispers, but others clearly want to make themselves heard.
Such as: Councilor Persevault, snarling into his champagne, “What would an outsider know about our island? Absurd!”
Councilor Laroux, the recipient of his tirade, shrugs. “The princess has a respectable command of the related fields of study. Perhaps she sees something we don’t.”
Eugene decides to be an unmitigated stinker and saunters up to Persevault. The man bristles, glowering. Even though he sees the physical similarity to Solena, the councilor’s all puff and no spinach, hand giving an underbaked twitch toward a saber hilt too polished to have seen much, if any, use.
Eugene holds his glare. Then, with utmost schmooze, he says, “Pardon my reach,” and leans over to snag a canapé from the platter behind Persevault.
“You are pardoned,” Persevault returns icily.
As Eugene stuffs the canapé into his mouth and turns on a heel, he sees Cressien deep in conversation with Councilor Teophine.
Cressien’s face is showing the ironfisted neutrality of a man who’s dying inside.
Eugene can’t blame him, considering they didn’t make it to the “By the way, there’s a giant mutant apple tree guzzling all the water from the Starlight Spring” segment of their brief pre-ball conference.
He decides to have mercy on the minister and at least let him know Rapunzel’s vow is actually feasible.
On the way over, however, he gets distracted, first by the allure of a cheese fountain, and then—the quiet orders being given to two of the guards lining the wall behind him.
“…when Princess Rapunzel leaves, she’s to be intercepted at the guest wing and brought directly to the king for questioning. No harm is to come to her. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Eugene’s chest tightens. He makes himself linger casually by the cheese fountain—not that big of an ask, really—but watches out of the corner of his eye. A guard with a captain’s sash walks past, heading for another pair of guards, no doubt with the same orders.
Eugene finds Enver in the crowd. He looks pale, drawn, one hand fussing with the buttons of his waistcoat while he babbles away to Hughes.
Enver’s been lying for years. Decades. And now that Rapunzel’s calling his bluff, that raw edge is back in the king’s eyes: desperation.
Cressien can wait. Eugene needs to get Rapunzel out of here, fast.
Can he feign sick? No, Dr. Savary is here; she’ll catch him faking. Is there a terrace they can slip away to? No, the ballroom only has one far wall of windows overlooking Astera—no way out but the handful of guarded exits.
His eyes land on the dark spikes of champagne bottles in ice buckets at the far end of the refreshment spread. An idea sprouts. It’s risky, and if he gets caught—
Well. There’s no one to impress here. Even the rebels think he’s nothing more than a common thief.
Eugene swipes a final wedge of bread through the cheese fountain and mutters, “I’m so sorry. You were too good for this world.”
Two minutes of discreet tampering and light larceny later, Eugene has helped himself to a champagne bottle and Persevault’s ornamental saber, and destabilized the cheese fountain’s supportive base.
He takes up position near the pyramid of champagne flutes and waits until he sees the cheese fountain start teetering.
Just as it begins to tip over, Eugene runs the saber up the bottle seam just the way an old friend taught him—
And the bottle mouth shears off with a crack, firing the cork and broken glass tip into the pyramid of glasses.
The champagne flutes descend in a terrible shattering cascade.
It’s immediately followed by the cheese fountain explosively toppling to the floor, dragging a corner of the tablecloth with it.
More platters and chafing dishes fly into the air with metallic clangs as screams break out.
For a final touch, Eugene ducks behind a flower arrangement, pitches his voice into a falsetto, and yells, “THE PEOPLE’S DAGGER!
” before shoving the arrangement into another table.
And that turns it from a mishap to a stampede.
Most of the attendees are on the dance floor and too far away to notice anything but the crashing and screams. Cries of “The People’s Dagger!
” strike a match through the ballroom. Every guard converges on the king, searching the pandemonium for enemies that aren’t there.
King Enver himself has gone from pale to bone white, eyes wide, expression terrible, almost—resigned.
Not the scrambling panic Eugene expected.
But what matters is finding Rapunzel. He searches the crowd for her sparkling tiara and finds it—slipping through a far door, Verette all but dragging her out.
A hand locks around Eugene’s upper arm. “What in the name of every blessed corner of the continent do you think you’re doing?” Cressien hisses.
“Getting us out of here.” When Cressien gives him a nonplussed look, Eugene snaps, “To look for white shells, I guess? Why else?”
“We are so far beyond white shells I’m going to die happy if I never hear of them again. Where is the princess?”
“With Verette. I’ll get her and meet you in the guest wing.
” Eugene takes off before Cressien can protest and weaves through the chaos after them as fast as he can.
He makes it into the hall just in time to see Rapunzel’s purple skirts fluttering around a distant corner.
The palace is flooded with frantic guests rushing away from the ballroom and guards trying to push through toward it, so by the time Eugene reaches that corner, Verette and Rapunzel are even farther ahead, hurrying under a grand archway Eugene recognizes from two nights ago—the entrance to the royal wing.
Even though he runs as fast as he can, they’re already out of sight when he enters the wing.
Luckily, the guards also seem to have been summoned from their posts, so no one’s there to question him as he trots down one corridor, then another.
The furnishings are getting more lavish, so he’s close to the royal living quarters, but there’s no sign of either princess.
He’s perilously close to shouting Cerulean and cobalt are the same blue so he can find Rapunzel by her outraged yelling—and then footsteps echo down the hall.
Not the skip-shuffle of slippers, but the heavy slap of boots, moving fast and getting close.
Eugene swiftly ducks through the nearest door and shuts it behind him.
When he looks up, he sees moonlight streaming through a wall of windows…and landing on a desk inlaid with the royal seal in gold.
Eugene holds his breath as the footsteps pass, and takes a better look at the room.
It’s hard to make out much by the full moon, but he can see the furniture is ornate, richly made, worthy of a king.
A portrait of Enver hangs on the far wall, directly across from the desk, near bookcases stuffed with excruciatingly boring-looking books on topics like Asteran law and political theory.
The desk itself sports only an ink and quill stand and an unlit candle that looks like it’s got one last late night left.
This has to be the king’s personal study.
And that means Eugene has a chance he almost certainly will not have again.
Rapunzel’s with Verette, and the guards are too distracted to bring her in for questioning. A few minutes should be fine.
Eugene has been in many wealthy peoples’ homes, usually for illegal reasons, and almost always in pursuit of things they tried to keep locked down.
If Enver is hiding something, and there’s any kind of paperwork to that effect, it’ll be somewhere out of the way of a servant casually cleaning the study, and inaccessible to someone casually snooping.
But a paranoid man like Enver? He’ll keep his secrets close.
Eugene eyeballs the bookshelves; too open, too easy. A compartment behind Enver’s portrait would be too much of a pain to get to. The desk, however…
The golden inlay flashes in the moonlight as Eugene closes in.
The desk has drawers on either side of the chair well, and he’s not surprised to see keyholes on the top two, nor to find those drawers locked.
The thing is, he’s certain those aren’t worth his time, because no one becomes as powerful as Enver by keeping their secrets somewhere so obvious.
Instead Eugene yanks open the other drawers, prodding for panels at the back or bottom. No dice. There is a noticeable heft to the desktop itself, just thick enough to raise Eugene’s suspicion. He quietly knocks on the underside of the panel, tapping in circles until there’s a hollow thud.
There’s a compartment. Now to get to it.
The release mechanism can’t be too conspicuous, or too inconvenient. Eugene studies the desktop, checks under the inkpot and candle…then sees a faint gleam on the inlay. The western star has been worn a little more than the others, polished by regular contact.
Eugene jabs a finger into it. He hears a click, then a clunk. A panel in the desktop sinks and slides back to reveal a velvet-lined box containing four pieces of parchment, each of their wax seals broken.
Three are addressed to Rapunzel’s parents and bear Cressien’s insignia as the minister of diplomatic affairs. Enver has been intercepting Cressien’s reports, every single one.
The last letter is addressed to Rapunzel. And the remains of the seal belong to her mother.
Eugene stuffs the messages into his doublet and starts to return the panel, then pauses.
At this point he’s fairly confident tonight ends with them being smuggled onto the royal galleon to make a swift getaway, but on the slim chance he’s wrong, they need a scapegoat for when Enver discovers the messages missing.
The first idea to come to mind feels…oddly appropriate.
Eugene pulls a scrap of blank parchment from one of the other drawers, then uses the quill and ink to scribble a tiny, crude dagger.
The parchment goes in the compartment, the panel goes back into its place in the desktop, and Eugene goes straight for the door, waiting only to listen for voices or footsteps before heading back into the corridor.
But this time, when he rounds a corner into a long hallway, he finds Councilor Erwan Persevault pacing toward him from the opposite end. Persevault’s face turns stormy. He breaks into a run, shouting, “You! Andreas’s boy! I saw you!”
Eugene backs up, hands raised. Escaping by sea will be a lot harder if he can’t get the master of Astera’s armada off his case. “What? I’m just looking for Rapunzel—”
“Don’t lie to me,” the councilor snarls. “I saw your little stunt with the champagne! You started this whole mess!”
“Are we sure?” Eugene falters. “It might not have been champagne. It doesn’t count if it’s not from the region—”
“It was a misunderstanding.” Hughes’s voice cuts down the hall as he strides up behind Eugene and clamps one bony hand around his shoulder.
“Her Highness asked young Fitzherbert here to show her how to saber a bottle of champagne, and the boy was confused. You know how hard it is to hear in a ballroom. Now please excuse us—the princesses are very eager to make sure he’s unhurt. ”
Before Erwan or Eugene can object, Hughes pushes him onward. Eugene does wait until Erwan is out of earshot to mutter, “I appreciate the save, but if you’re taking me to Moon Eye, I’d rather just take my chances jumping out the window, thanks.”
“Of course I’m taking you to Moon Eye, you fool,” Hughes drones, and to his credit, he doesn’t even sound surprised to be called out as a member of the People’s Dagger.
He steers Eugene into a parlor that’s almost insultingly larger than the guest wing’s, one that’s leaned really hard into butterfly motifs.
“I’m not leaving Rapunzel on her own.” Eugene digs his heels in. “Enver wanted to question her, and I’m not going anywhere until—”
“She’s safe.”
The familiar distorted voice comes from behind him.
He turns and finds Moon Eye, mask, hooded cloak, and all, standing with their hands on their hips in the yawning void of a hidden passage, one that grows only wider as the bookcase that was obscuring it continues to grind aside.
Eugene sorts his new avalanche of questions in descending order of priority; Rapunzel takes precedence over Secret Tunnel in the Parlor at the moment. “How do you know that? The last I saw her, she was with Verette.”
Moon Eye hesitates and looks over their shoulder.
“If you think I’m leaving this palace without her—”
Rapunzel herself steps out of the passage, wearing the same kind of gray cloak as Moon Eye, a torch in one hand.
“I’m fine, Eugene,” she says. Moon Eye pushes their hood back and lets a long, pale, iridescent braid spill over a shoulder. Then, as his head reels and the mask falls, Rapunzel adds, “Because this is Verette.”