Chapter 26 The Top of the Tower #2
Thankfully for Sage’s already-struggling lungs, it wasn’t far.
Too many years in dark and dusty libraries had ensured that her fitness was not up to this, but at least Casimir was not here to witness her huffing and puffing or to make any more terrapin references.
She wheezed her way to the front door of the Lyceum.
The crimson roses of the gardens had taken a particularly firm hold of the tower, the whole structure newly encased in trails of determined writhing stems, an abundance of burgundy blooms creeping their way up the stone.
Only when she faced the door, daring herself to try it, did it occur to Sage that she did not have a key to the place, nor any magic for a lock-picking spell.
She slammed an incensed fist against the door, then promptly fell forwards when it swung open straight away with a pained, awful sort of creak.
It was unlocked, no key required. Strange.
“Laurel?” Sage called up the spiralling stone staircase. “Laurel, are you here?”
No answer here either. Only a ghostly sort of silence as she poked her head up and around the stairs to find a musty smell of stagnation breathing out of the slim tower.
Too aware of the noise of her own footsteps brushing and knocking against the stone, Sage took a cautious few steps up.
This wasn’t right. It should require a key to make any sense of the bracelet’s clue.
But she would have to climb it now she was here—for clarity and meticulousness, if nothing else.
The fronts of her thighs screamed and struggled against the endless steep incline.
Sage’s head spun with dizziness as she went round and round, further and further up.
The Lyceum was evidently enchanted; she should have easily reached the top by now, but the inside of the tower kept unravelling into the clouds.
She wheezed Laurel’s name as she rose higher, but still there was nothing in reply.
The thought that she was barking up the wrong tree—or clambering up the wrong tower—was persistent, but Sage had to make sure; the key could be a metaphor for the princess in the tower.
The locked door might be waiting at the top of the staircase.
Or, at the very least, it would be one more possibility exhausted of where to find her sister.
Finally, Sage reached the last few steps and halted.
A soft, defeated gasp escaped her. She willed her legs to move forwards, but nothing happened.
The top of the tower opened up to a round room which, rather than the same stone walls, was held within the twisting rails of an intricate golden cage.
Hundreds of the finest bars of pure gold, like tendrils of the sun, spanned the room and encased the space like a beautiful prison, forming a domed top and a small entryway that was, thankfully, unbolted.
The rose stems that climbed the tower outside tumbled through the window, carving crimson paths up and around the golden cage, surrounding… Laurel.
In the centre of the room, the princess in the tower, just as Sage had theorized.
But Laurel was not waiting to help her sister solve clues or unravel stories.
She was not waiting with the answers. Laurel, the little bird whom Sage had always done her very best to take care of, was lying stone cold and perfectly still atop an intricately carved wooden bed, an abundance of roses surrounding her unmoving body.
Worst of all, Laurel had spoken her fate in black and white at the bonfire as she snuggled, yawning, into her sister’s hair and left clues of what was written at the hands of magic.
But Sage had been too selfish, too distracted and preoccupied with all the blasted wonder that she had decided to prioritize to take any notice of the vital hints.
“The long sleep…” Sage whispered. The strange, arcane state in fairy tales that hung so precariously, like blown glass between two realms, childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience…One wrong move and a princess would shatter.
Slowly, Sage dragged her feet towards her sister and fell to her knees at the bedside. She reached for Laurel’s hand and held it tightly between her own.
“I’ve been looking for you all day, you know that? As usual, Laurel, you continue to be the greatest pain in my arse,” Sage said softly, “even when you’re sleeping.”
Sage could feel it in her soul—whatever was left of it.
Her steel resolve and endless determination was dwindling so, so quickly.
She was losing faith in her own abilities to problem-solve, losing hope that she would figure out how to fix it all.
Her two most treasured, precious people had succumbed to the spell, and she had not even the first idea how to break them free from it.
Just as Lilara had warned, a cursed witch like her could never deserve true kin, a sister or a brother.
“It might not seem like it, because I’m doing a horrible job, but all I’ve ever done is try to keep you safe.
It was the very least I could do for you two, after I was the one who took them from us,” Sage told Laurel, moving her sister’s long red hair away from her face in a sweeping way that Laurel would have absolutely hated and moved back immediately.
“And you couldn’t even be bothered to stay awake to help me out.
” She chuckled dryly. “Sounds about right.”
Sage was trying not to let her shoulders shake, trying not to let her bottom lip wobble pathetically. Trying not to let the tears break free. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to stop if she gave in.
“Look, I know I’m hard on you. And very difficult to be around at the best of times.
I know you’ve always been stuck with me, even when you don’t really want to be.
And I know you have to be so patient. But I get a shock every time I see you, Laur.
Every time I spot you in the corner shop buying a million magazines or I open the front door and find you waiting with a tub of ice cream and a DVD when I have reading to do.
Or when I meet you at the train station because you need a lift.
Or…” Sage rambled into a crushed, dejected sigh.
“I can’t believe you’re not the little sister I remember anymore, the one I had to sweep up in my arms and rush out of Mum and Dad’s bedroom.
That day when we found them…It’s the same with Robin too.
I think something in me froze in time that day. ”
She sniffed. For the briefest of moments, Sage thought she felt the smallest of flexes between her fingers from Laurel, but as quickly as it flickered, it was gone again.
“I didn’t just lose them when it happened. I lost myself too. And I lost the ability to loosen my grip on anything I even remotely care about. It’s all choked and clawed and ruined because of me; I squeeze the life out of everything.”
Sage was barely talking aloud anymore. The words were a whisper, her forehead leaning on her sister’s cold arm.
But still, it felt important to tell these things to Laurel anyway.
To finally offer up some form of twisted, humble apology to explain why she was the impossible way that she was.
Always desperately clinging on as much as she could, white-knuckled, scared that it would all slip away from her.
Why she was never fun or spontaneous or distracted by laughter or fun.
She had never been able to risk it again.
“A fat lot of good it’s done me, living like that,” Sage laughed bitterly. “I’ve still lost everyone. I always will.”
A gentle breeze blew through the turret windows and sent a ripple through Laurel’s hair. Sage settled it back down and left a gentle kiss on her sister’s forehead.
“Alone again,” she whispered to herself.