Chapter Twenty-Four Eugene
Twenty-Four
Eugene
A week later, Eugene notes with no small degree of dismay that the seagulls have yet to fully move on.
Fortunately, they largely congregate around the remains of the audience hall, and most of the flock he brought down on Enver has left. But even now, on their last day in Astera, the shrilling of the gulls still follows him and Rapunzel out into a familiar sunlit courtyard.
Like most of the palace, the sunmill is laced in the stone roots of what once was the starcloud tree.
The sails creak and tilt occasionally with the breeze, but the waterworks are motionless; Ruvon is working with Councilor Laroux to salvage as much of the apparatus as they can.
The logistics of the Great Starlight Fountain, however, have also changed with the landscape.
The fountain’s basin outlasted Enver by only a few minutes. When it collapsed, it took a large swath of the courtyard with it, leaving a yawning sinkhole where the spring’s cavern once was. The rim has been roped off, with only a few ladders dangling down into the pit, but that won’t last for long.
There have been many hard choices this week, decisions of what to salvage in the palace and what to let go.
Eugene and Rapunzel have helped everywhere they can, whether by picking the locks on the queen’s chambers or helping shelter citizens whose homes were swallowed by roots.
Verette, however, has been simply and unmovably clear about one key decision: The Starlight Spring was torn open, and it’s staying that way.
Eugene and Rapunzel find her at a table set up near the lip of the sinkhole, huddled over sheets of parchment with Ruvon and Councilor Laroux. “…and if we add a support column below this shelf, that should stabilize—oh, you’re here!”
“We’ll keep working, Your Majesty,” Councilor Laroux says.
Verette tenses briefly, as she has every time someone’s called her “majesty” in the last week, but just says, “Thank you.”
“Still weird?” Eugene asks as she walks over.
“Still weird,” Verette confirms. She’s not dressed like the queens in storybooks, but in a laborer’s breeches and shirt, the only sign of rank a plain silver circlet over her long braid.
“I’m still not used to ‘highness,’ and it’s been a month and a half,” Rapunzel says. “I guess it just takes time. But anyway, what did you need help with?”
“I actually wanted to show you something. Come on.” Verette beckons them to the rim.
Eugene frowns. “If this is an assassination attempt, frankly, it could use a little more polish.”
“That’s how you know I’m not really trying,” Verette says cheerfully. She ducks under the rope fence and heads for a ladder.
Eugene and Rapunzel follow her down into the chaotic morass of broken stone and petrified roots.
Even what was exposed mud is now coated in pale dust. The former starcloud tree sits like a bizarre statue in the corner, the trunk splintered and twisted around the gash the water screw left as it pulled it up, roots and all.
The network of roots itself makes a strange webbed dome of stone tendrils under the tree, lit from within by a soft glow.
Ruvon did say the tree was planted over where the stardrop fell, and now it’s finally exposed.
“Look at this.” Verette kneels at a low patch in the rubble.
Eugene looks down as Rapunzel sucks in a breath. What he thought was dust on the ground—shivers. The reflection of a wheeling seagull darts through it. He crouches and dips a finger in.
He only gets one knuckle deep before grazing the mud, but when he lifts his hand, the drops of water gleam like pearls.
“It’s coming back already?” Rapunzel’s voice squeaks with excitement.
“Like you said, it just takes time.” Verette stands. “But I wanted you to see before you leave tomorrow. And…I may have another surprise before you go.”
Verette does not tell them what that is, only sending them to go pack before Rapunzel can run off to help hold a ladder for a repair crew or grab a broom and sweep up glass.
She’s come alive in an entirely new way the past week, lending a hand wherever she can but letting Eugene and Cressien steer her away from burning the candle at both ends.
That is, when Cressien hasn’t been…distracted.
As Rapunzel and Eugene approach the guest wing, Eugene sees through the open door of the parlor that it’s already occupied.
Never before would he have considered Cressien a man capable of lounging, but the minister looks positively at ease on the parlor sofa, smiling as Hughes passes him a cup of tea and sits beside him.
Eugene promptly steers himself and Rapunzel back into the hall outside the guest wing, then says under his breath, “I think we can give them some privacy.”
“Agreed.” Rapunzel’s mouth twists as they lean against the wall. “Especially since it’s their last day together for a while. I did offer to talk to my parents for him, but…”
Eugene doesn’t have to ask; both Cressien and Hughes love their kingdoms too much to abandon them.
“I guess we’ll just have to force them to take a lot of vacations.
But that reminds me—there’s something else I wanted to settle before we head back.
” He ducks his head. “We didn’t really have time to mull it over back in the sunmill, but how do you feel about Sunshine? ”
“Er…generally favorable?” Rapunzel blinks. “I mean, I like rainy days too.”
Eugene stifles a laugh and whispers, “No, I mean—as your official nickname.”
Rapunzel just stares at him, and this time, he doesn’t think it’s a lack of comprehension.
“You hate it,” Eugene says nervously.
But Rapunzel’s whole face is lighting up, brighter than the dawn. “I love it. It’s perfect.”
“Really?” His grin nearly matches hers.
“Really,” she says.
There’s a sudden crash from the guest parlor. Rapunzel rushes in, Eugene on her heels as she blurts out, “Is everything okay?”
Cressien and Hughes are mopping tea off the parlor’s low table, an overturned teacup the clear culprit. Hughes scrambles to his feet, Cressien a second behind him, neither forgoing so much as a scrap of decorum. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. We were just…”
Hughes falters, clearly coming up empty for excuses. It’s really a miracle he didn’t get caught all these years, but then again, from the way he and Cressien are both acting, Eugene also suspects it’s been a long time since either of them was in puppy love.
“Crocheting,” Cressien croaks. “We were…crocheting.”
Eugene lets out a dramatic gasp. “No—don’t tell me you were considering smooching in here. No boyfriends until you’re eighteen—we discussed this!”
“We did?” Rapunzel makes a face.
“I’m leaving.” Hughes gives him a sour look and heads for the door. Then he stops. “Actually, Fitzherbert, I, er. I was sent to track you down. Councilor Persevault would like to speak with you before you go. I believe she’s currently in Queen Gaelle’s library.”
“I’ll stay here and pack,” Rapunzel tells him. “Take your time.”
Eugene kisses her cheek. “You’re my favorite.”
He heads off, splitting ways with Hughes as they pass the audience hall.
For now, it’s the one part of the palace that hasn’t been touched since the night Enver locked himself into the throne.
Verette left the choice to the People’s Council, and the consensus was that a place like that ought to remain only as a memorial to what was lost, and a testament to the price of losing it.
Eventually, the rubble will be cleared; then there’ll be a plaque left to testify to the truth of the Night of the Poisoned Dagger and the lives lost to Enver’s folly…
and Enver himself, as a warning to those who would outstay their welcome on a throne.
As a council, the group claimed it will be addressed last because the living take priority, and that has been true. But as Verette’s friends, they have all seen her eyes fill with tears when they pass the king’s statue. It’s not unlike the look Rapunzel used to get anytime anyone mentioned Gothel.
A portrait of Queen Gaelle has replaced Enver’s in the royal wing, and as Eugene passes it, he can see the resemblance to Verette. It’s not shocking at all that there’s more of Gaelle than Enver in her.
The queen’s chambers have been aired out repeatedly, but they still feel intrinsically dusty, the library most of all. Leona is peering into a chest of short, wide drawers, and as he comes to a halt at her side, she pulls out a chart—no, a map.
“Aha,” she huffs with satisfaction. “Did you know, one of the first things Enver banned was maps of anywhere but Astera? They were all locked up or burned. You want to keep people on an island, you make sure they don’t know where else to go.
But Gaelle, she always loved collecting them.
Your Minister Cressien’s agreed to bring some of our cartographers to Kourenne to catch up, but these are a good start. ”
“Cressien thought maybe Enver banned The Tales of Flynnigan Rider because it encouraged kids to leave,” Eugene says, studying the next map in the drawer.
Leona makes a tch sound. “That, and spite. He always felt like your parents should have been more grateful. Like Gaelle liked them more than him.” She points to a shelf where there’s a dust-filled void between tomes.
“There, that’s where your copy of Flynnigan Rider came from.
Gaelle got the very first binding of it, and she was so excited, she embossed her insignia upside down inside.
When Marietta and I made it all the way here on the Night of the Poisoned Dagger, the queen was on her deathbed.
She insisted we take it. Marietta could barely stand to look at it on the ship to Kourenne. ”
Eugene tells himself it’s the dust thickening his throat. “What were her last months like?”