Chapter Thirteen Rapunzel
Thirteen
Rapunzel
“And according to Councilor Laroux, even though Astera is a volcanic island, it contains limestone deposits, and the majority of the basalt is also relatively porous,” Rapunzel whispers to Eugene, who is busily picking the lock on the iron door as she keeps a lookout for guards on their night patrols in the royal gardens.
It was already hard enough to ditch the personal guards assigned to each of them the moment they set foot back in the palace.
Even Minister Cressien couldn’t shake his “additional security,” despite his increasingly direct hints that he wanted a private word with her and Eugene.
(Part of Rapunzel can’t ignore that King Enver promised not to assign more guards. The rest of her is insisting that there has to be a good reason. That she can’t keep looking for Gothel in every shadow.)
Not that any of that could stop Rapunzel and Eugene from sneaking out.
When Councilor Laroux confirmed earlier that the unremarkable iron door Rapunzel had discovered does in fact open to the king’s path into the Starlight Spring, she probably assumed the regular guard patrols were enough of a deterrent, and the lock would do the rest.
Councilor Laroux probably needs to spend more time with Rapunzel before making that sort of assumption.
Rapunzel scours the darkened lawns for the torchlight of an approaching patrol and continues. “The groundwater’s mostly in highly permeable karst aquifers, so when the rainy season increases the watershed’s intake, any contaminants ought to be diffused throughout the whole system. Do you see?”
Eugene, who graciously did not ask too many questions when Rapunzel knocked on the glass of his bedroom window earlier tonight and asked him to help her break into the Starlight Spring, says under his breath, “Not even a little, Freckles.”
“The Starlight Spring is connected to all the other water sources on the mainland. Starlight is in the whole water supply, even in small amounts—it’s why even the children are still going gray. But if the starlight’s in the water…”
“…ah. The poison should have spread too.” There’s a faint click. Eugene eases his lockpicks from the keyhole and stands, then opens the door with a bow. “After you, my lady.”
“Thank you, kind sir.” Rapunzel curtsies, grabs the lantern she “borrowed” from a low-lying garden lamppost, and heads inside. “And yes, exactly. Something—”
She pauses as Eugene’s fingertips brush her lips. He yanks the door shut, then holds his index finger to his own mouth. The orange glow of torchlight and muffled footsteps swell at the doorjamb behind them, then fade.
“You were saying?” Eugene asks once the patrol passes.
Rapunzel tucks her hair behind an ear, hands tingling. “Something must be giving King Enver a false positive. I want to get a sample to test ourselves.”
She heads off down the dim stone tunnel, partially just to keep from getting too distracted. Even before guards were shadowing their every step, they hadn’t had any true alone time since setting foot in Astera, and it doesn’t seem like Enver’s about to willingly let them off the leash anytime soon.
It’s a familiar, unsettling kind of surveillance. Rapunzel remembers bargaining with Gothel for years for the “privilege” of hanging curtains over her bedroom doorway; a month of having real privacy was enough that Rapunzel doesn’t ever want to give it up again.
“Do you think someone’s messing with the tests?” Eugene asks.
“Councilor Laroux said the king does them himself every morning.” Rapunzel swings the lantern around, studying the rock walls.
Strange, shiny veins play through the rough-cut pillow basalt—maybe some kind of mineral?
If they had more time, and she had her sketchbook…
“It does sound like conditions in Astera are worsening, but I don’t think it’s due to contamination.
I think something’s been draining the Starlight Spring so less of it seeps into the other water sources.
We know plants can absorb the magic, like the sundrop flower did, so my best guess is it’s something like that. ”
“Because of the roots you saw?”
“Right. They seemed like they were reacting to the song like my hair used to.”
The lantern light jumps abruptly around a corner. They’ve reached a fork in the tunnel.
“I thought they said every route but one was sealed off,” Eugene says behind her.
“Maybe they just meant the entrances.” Rapunzel lifts the lantern to study both options.
Eugene points to the ground on the left. “Look, there’s moss growing on the path.” Then he gestures to the barren stone on the right. “This one gets more use. If Enver’s down here every day, that’s gotta be it, yeah?”
“Good—” Rapunzel stops short as the hinges of the iron door creak.
Eugene steadies her elbow as they duck down the mossy path. Rapunzel finds the lantern’s shutters and yanks them down, then plasters herself to the wall.
Footsteps thud closer. Rapunzel risks leaning out for a better look—and even though she can’t quite make out the stout figure as it briefly passes, headed for the other branch of the path, she can tell that’s not Enver’s silhouette against the swaying torchlight.
Isn’t the king supposed to have the only key into this passage?
Rapunzel doesn’t even have to say a word. Once the coast is clear, Eugene whispers, “So we’re following, right?”
“Right.”
She tweaks the lantern shutters to let only the thinnest hint of light out, then heads after the newcomer.
The path doesn’t branch out again, but there’s no telling how close they are to catching up.
Neither she nor Eugene makes a sound—until Rapunzel stops in her tracks, and Eugene bumps into her with a quiet oof. It’s her turn to hold a finger up.
For a long breath, she’s half convinced she imagined it. Then she hears it again: a rumble of voices.
“I’m starting to get the feeling they did not in fact seal off every entrance,” Eugene says under his breath. “Want to go back?”
Rapunzel grips the lantern tighter. “No. We’ll just be careful.”
They keep moving, taking extra care to hold the light low and avoid stepping on any noisy loose gravel.
The voices continue to echo back to them, indistinct but growing louder.
Finally they turn a corner and find firelight spilling out from an entrance cut into the passage wall—firelight and the dull roar of faraway water.
Rapunzel sets the lantern down a few paces back, close enough to light the last few feet, far enough that it won’t draw notice. Then she and Eugene creep closer.
When she carefully peers around the timber bracing the entrance, she finds it’s the top of a ramp leading down into the biggest cave she’s ever seen—almost an underground harbor.
At least a dozen ships are bobbing at a long torchlit dock below while crews move crates and barrels into cargo holds.
A stocky man is pacing over the planks, shouting orders—the man they followed here.
She recognizes him now from when they arrived and she was introduced to the king’s council. “That’s the Master of Seas, Councilor of the West, Erwan Persevault.”
Eugene’s breath hitches audibly. “I heard Solena say something about her brother’s fleet.” He squints. “She used ‘Vald’ for her last name back home—maybe that was short for Persevault. But why on earth are they hiding ships down here?”
Rapunzel scours the dock but doesn’t see anything obvious. She waits until they’ve retreated to the lantern to answer, still keeping her voice hushed. “Maybe it’s just so people underestimate the size of their navy?”
“There has to be an easier way to do that.” Eugene looks past the entryway in the wall; the corridor carries on into the dark. “Onward, or back to the fork…wait. If what we’re looking for is growing from the spring, could you follow the roots?”
The lantern light catches ridges in the stone wall, and Rapunzel frowns, running her fingertips along a streak worming through the basalt.
It’s not limestone, not any kind of rock she recognizes—and she memorized her geology book’s table of rock varieties when she was eight, so she knows her schist.
She draws a breath, then, as quiet as she can, hums the opening stanza of the lullaby.
Light sparks beneath her hand, shimmering along the streak. It spreads up, branches through the walls, and slows to a pulsing halt no more than a few paces away. After a moment, it fades.
But not before she sees the fraying pattern of roots in the glow. And they look like their source is back the way they came.
“Come on,” she whispers.
Once they return to the fork in the path, she hums the lullaby again and doesn’t stop this time.
She doesn’t even have to touch the walls for the roots to ignite, glimmering with a silvery iridescence that reminds her of the white shells, and shining brightest around her.
Even the moss clustered on the unused path pulses with a faint green-gold glow.
For a moment, she feels almost upsettingly…at home.
Not the way her parents’ palace feels like home, but the bitter way cold flagstones under her soles sometimes remind her of the tower’s tiles in winter—how she’d huddle by the fireplace until the floor’s chill didn’t bite.
Or how petrichor reminds her of watering the window planters in summer, and that she’s not sure how to ask her parents if she can go get them, if the petunias are even still alive.
That’s the problem with truly seeing where you grew up from the outside. You have to figure out how to explain that when something feels like home, that’s not always a good thing.
“How are you doing this?” Eugene sounds almost awed. He dah-dah-daahs a few notes under his breath, with no reaction from the roots. “It’s not just the song—it’s responding to you.”
Rapunzel pushes the treacherous nostalgia away and starts methodically picking her way around the clumps of moss. “I think it, er, translates? From the sundrop flower? It doesn’t feel the same, just…familiar.”