Chapter Seven Rapunzel
Seven
Rapunzel
“This,” Minister Cressien whispers tightly in the shade of a pergola practically sagging with wisteria, “is becoming a problem.”
Rapunzel catches herself once again picking at her sleeves and hides her hands behind her back. “Eugene’s probably just running late,” she insists for the umpteenth time.
“I told him to stay in the palace today.” Cressien squeezes out a smile and nod as the Councilor of the North and Master of Scholars, a stiff-spined woman whose professional distance disintegrated into glee the moment Rapunzel dropped the word aquifer, lopes past en route to the refreshments.
Once she’s out of earshot, Cressien adds under his breath, “If Master Fitzherbert was not prepared to treat this visit with the seriousness it requires…”
Rapunzel’s been keeping her stare on the nearby flower bed so Cressien can’t see her frustration.
He’s not wrong. This social is to introduce them to Astera’s nobility and allow them to mingle with the higher-ranking government officials.
She’s well aware of how it looks to have the princess’s companion skipping the first official social event: almost as bad as going barefoot.
(She’s compromised with a pair of sandals that don’t cross over her blisters.) But… Eugene knows better. Doesn’t he?
A wiggle of silver in the dark soil suddenly catches her eye. Rapunzel blinks. It looks like a tiny, almost threadlike worm, something she’s never even heard of—
“Are you even listening, Your Highness?” Cressien asks incredulously.
Before she can answer, that same low horn that bellowed in the ocean mists sounds again, this time at the far end of the garden. King Enver strolls in, Hughes and Verette at his heels, though Verette splits off toward Councilor Teophine as her father makes a beeline for Rapunzel.
Rapunzel curtsies when King Enver halts a few feet away. “Good afternoon, Your Majesty! These gardens are absolutely incredible. I’ve already found five species that weren’t anywhere in my botany book.”
“We do take pride in our roots, in more ways than one,” King Enver laughs, brown eyes twinkling. Rapunzel can’t help laughing too, especially because it’s the sort of pun Eugene would make.
Then Enver looks around, puzzled. “I recall you brought another companion, Princess? I do hope you know he was welcome to attend this.”
Rapunzel’s belly wrings. “Oh, of course! I mean—I told him—I mean—he knew—” She can feel herself stumbling and giggles nervously, trying to twirl a too-short lock of hair around her finger.
All the veneer of poise flakes away. “He’s just like a house cat, that Eugene! Comes and goes on his own schedule.”
“There were some errands,” Cressien glosses, “that the princess’s companion wished to attend to.”
Hughes, the chamberlain, speaks up, deploying a degree of stoicism that makes Verette seem high-strung by comparison. “I believe, sire,” he says with an almost mournful chew of each syllable, “that the young gentleman went for his own tour of the city in the company of palace guards.”
King Enver beams. “An adventurer! I admire that in a fellow. I wish we’d had time to speak last night. I’m afraid I didn’t catch his title, and I’d hate to address him incorrectly.…May I ask what rank the Herbert family is?”
“I believe Fitzherbert was raised in an orphanage,” Cressien interjects, smoothly slotting in the name correction.
Rapunzel recognizes that tactic. Gothel would do something like tell Rapunzel to hang the dishes up to dry, and Rapunzel would ask if she meant the laundry, and Gothel would scold You know I meant the laundry, don’t be difficult, until Rapunzel learned to respond instead that yes, she’d get to the laundry right away.
She always thought that was, well, life with Gothel. But maybe there’s a diplomatic use for all the little tricks and strategies she taught herself in the tower.
King Enver is shaking his head in amazement. “An orphanage! Remarkable. So his background, his parentage, it’s a complete mystery. However did you become acquainted?”
Cressien shifts his weight uneasily, but Rapunzel thinks she knows how to handle that. “It’s a bit of a long story, but he helped me escape the witch who held me prisoner.”
“The one who stole you for your hair,” Enver says with a somber nod.
Cressien’s chin lifts. “I wasn’t aware His Majesty had heard of that.”
“Two Kourenne ships landed at Merchant’s Crescent, oh, eighteen years ago?
” Enver runs a finger along his jaw. “The first was searching for the sundrop flower to save the queen. Then a few months later, they were searching for the kidnapped infant princess. According to Councilor Persevault, they mentioned you already had nearly a foot of hair like sunlight.”
Rapunzel catches her hand sneaking toward the blunt ends of her hair again and turns it into an ungainly flutter. “It went back to brown when it was cut.”
“But the sundrop flower’s magic remained.” Something like wonder flickers in King Enver’s stare. For a moment, she remembers the soft wood-grain ridges of the tower’s windowsill under her fingers on her birthdays, the simmer of anticipation in the dark before the lantern light bloomed.
She swallows hard. “No, that’s gone too.”
Is it sympathy sending a shadow through the king’s face, or disappointment?
“Are you certain?” he presses. “A power like that—I imagine it would change you forever. There’s truly nothing you can do?”
“I, uh.” Rapunzel’s stomach twists. “I can…draw your portrait?”
King Enver’s smile is cramped. “That’s…quite a talent as well.”
He doesn’t have to say it—she can read it in the drop of his shoulders, the averted gaze. This is a letdown.
Without her hair, she is a letdown.
King Enver changes the subject. “So, what was your favorite part of the tour today?”
That she can’t fall short on. “All of it,” she says in a rush. “The sunmills are incredible, and I’ve never seen anything like the solstice pavilions—oh, and Princess Verette told me the story behind her name! I love that legend!”
“I was worried it might be a bit trite, but her mother insisted,” Enver says warmly. “Her health wasn’t the best at the time, and she believed Verette was truly a blessing.”
“I’ve seen the white moth shells before, but in paint pigment, not as charms.” The second Rapunzel says it, she realizes she’s put her foot in it.
Sure enough, Cressien clears his throat, picking up the signal she didn’t mean to send. “Oh, yes, Her Highness has been on the lookout for those white seashells. Perhaps we can go inquire with one of the councilors—”
“Oh—no—” Rapunzel jumps in. “I mean, uh, different white shells! Not the ones we discussed yesterday!”
Cressien looks like he’s internally composing several new scripts for her to stick to, along with another paragraph for his next report. All he says is “I see.”
“The shells we use for verettes are white, though,” Enver says, pleasant but perplexed.
“They definitely are, and I think they’re really neat,” Rapunzel babbles.
Enver steps back with a forced laugh. “It’s a quaint tradition. My people do love their old stories, no matter how trite. I should go say hello to my councilors before they try to oust me. Hopefully young Herbert can join us soon.”
His departure leaves a mortified silence between Rapunzel and Minister Cressien, one she forces herself to break after an excruciating delay. “It could have gone worse?”
“Academically speaking,” Cressien says through teeth gritted tight as a treasury vault, “that is correct, Your Highness.” He heaves a sigh. “We should return to the guest wing to strategize for future…interactions.”
“Do we need to?” Rapunzel’s trying to keep a whine out of her voice, but they already spent so much time at sea in etiquette lessons and strategy sessions. “I think I’m getting better at this.”
“Engagement with a monarch demands perfection,” the minister says coolly. “Even small talk, as you now know. What if he tries to negotiate aspects of trade agreements outside official channels? Or asks about our military strength? Or—what will you say when Fitzherbert misses the next gathering?”
It’s one thing for Cressien to grill her, but she draws the line there.
“Eugene has never let me down,” Rapunzel says, a little heated.
“I’m sure there’s a good reason he’s not here, and if he misses anything else, I’m sure it’ll also be for a good reason, and I’ll be happy to tell King Enver that if need be. ”
All Cressien says is “I see,” which Rapunzel now understands to mean I don’t believe you.
“I’m going to walk around the gardens first,” she tells him, and doesn’t wait for his permission. There’s no point if she’s already getting another lecture as it is.
Rapunzel scans the garden as she strides away.
The only other people she’s really spoken to are Councilor Teophine and the Councilor of the North, Katou Laroux, who are both engrossed in conversation already.
Verette is nowhere in sight, and Rapunzel has the squirming feeling the other princess doesn’t want to talk to her anyway.
Instead she heads for the less crowded end of the gardens, slips around a corner, and keeps going until the party’s noise is muffled to a dull murmur and all the attendees are far behind her.
Then she slips off her sandals with a hiss of relief and leans against a low stone wall, trying to work through the knot in her throat.
If she still had her hair, she could have fixed her father’s foot with a song.
If she still had her hair, she wouldn’t have disappointed King Enver.
How is she ever going to prove she’s enough without it?
Even now, she can imagine exactly what’s going into Cressien’s next report: Sloppy. Gullible. Na?ve. And he wouldn’t even be wrong. So far she’s managed to upset both Enver and Verette in the space of a few hours.
But that information is going straight to her mother, when she promised herself she would make her mother proud.
A flick of silver in a flower bed catches her eye.
Another threadlike worm coils in the dirt a few feet away.
Rapunzel isn’t sure princesses are supposed to be this interested in worms. But at this rate, her list of Princess Conduct Infractions seems to be growing out of control, so what’s one more?
Rapunzel checks to make sure no one’s watching, then crouches for a better look.
It twitches back, and only then does she see how long it is—and it’s not alone, either.
Another pale flash stitches through the soil nearby.
Then she spots another in a different bed…
and the curious thing is they’re all oriented in the same general direction, like a tiny broken road scattered over the garden.
She straightens up and slowly walks along the lawn, following the crude trail.
It winds through the flower beds and around another wall, and when she turns the corner, she finds an old, unassuming iron door set into the palace’s stone wall, half obscured by an enormous lacy fern.
A faint track has been worn into the dirt leading to it.
What an odd little puzzle. The door isn’t hidden per se, but it isn’t exactly a garden feature—yet the dirt track says it’s getting regular use. And a heavy-duty door like that can’t be for something like a tool closet.
Something about this—the dirt, the wear, the flaws—finally cracks the unease that plagued Rapunzel for the whole tour.
Everything she’s been allowed to see is polished. Rehearsed. Curated. Any time she slowed to look closer, any time she dug for more detail, she was carefully, deliberately redirected.
Maybe it’s just the same sort of defensive diplomatic lacquer Minister Cressien’s trying to get her to perfect.
Or maybe something’s under that veneer.
Distant shouts break through her thoughts from somewhere below the gardens. There’s a faraway scuffle, then more cries spike from the party. Rapunzel whirls around to look back the way she came—
Only to find Maximus charging toward her, an ash-smudged, groggy Pascal plastered between his ears. An older stableman is giving chase. “So sorry, Your Highness,” he gasps between heaving breaths. “He just broke out—we’ll have him back and safe in a trice—”
Max skids to a stop in front of Rapunzel, hooves shaving dark gashes into the manicured lawn.
“I’ve got him,” she says, grabbing his bridle and trying not to panic about what Minister Cressien is going to make of this new fiasco.
Then Pascal lets out a long trill, and everything else promptly gets shoved off her mental desk.
Rapunzel plucks him off Max’s head, eyes wide, pulse rising. “What do you mean, kidnapped?”