Chapter Thirty-One Hairbreadth Escapes
Chapter Thirty-One
Hairbreadth Escapes
“So,” Angelique said, gazing at me expectantly, “would you consider a partnership?”
“What kind of partnership did you have in mind?”
The corners of her lips twitched into a small, coy smile. “We can work that out over time. But you seem to have infected me with your foreign notions. I don’t think I’d mind if you were awake the next time we kissed.”
“I’m…not sure.” I hadn’t come up with any reasonable escape plans. Unwisely, I’d gotten caught up in her story instead.
“Whyever not?” She came nearer, closing the distance between us. “You must see the benefits.”
I shrank back, but I had nowhere to go short of throwing myself out the window. Around us, the few monstrous creations left in their cages gibbered and shrieked.
“For one thing,” I said, “I think you might be, you know…evil.”
She stopped midstride.
Then she chuckled. “Well, if the glass slipper fits, I’m happy to wear it.”
I blinked, surprised. “You are?”
“I’ve murdered most of my family. I understand that’s a lot to take in.” She moved in so close that our knees were almost touching. “But you must see I had my reasons. You know what it’s like here. All of us restricted to our little wing. Kept out of the light so we don’t get any ideas.”
“Locked in a tower.” My throat was suddenly dry, and the words came out as a whisper.
“I’m hardly the first person to kill for a crown.
They weren’t going to give it to me any other way.
” She put her hands on the sill, one to either side of my hips, and leaned forward.
“I’d be shocked if any rulers haven’t left a few corpses behind them.
I’d wager your stepmother has, to keep hold of her throne.
Why does she deserve it any more than I do?
” Her face was a scant inch from my own.
“Or more than you do? Come to Castle Tailliz with me. It surely can’t withstand the both of us. ”
The castle still stood, then. I hadn’t been trapped in the glass coffin as long as I’d feared.
Angelique lowered her lashes. “I know you feel something for me. My kiss wouldn’t have woken you otherwise.”
Was that true? I hardly knew anymore.
She was right about my stepmother. I was well aware of what she’d done to crush any threats to her rule.
I remembered watching a prince tumble from my tower window, falling so far and so fast into the rosebushes.
It was unlikely he’d survived very long, wandering blind in the wilderness.
My stepmother had kept her life at the cost of his.
Although the blame couldn’t be shouldered by her alone—I’d played my own role in it.
I didn’t like to tell that part of the story.
I’d be lying if I said no trace of me was tempted by Angelique’s offer. Two sorceresses united, with a kingdom to call their own. We would have enough power to stand against anyone who might oppose us—the nobles, the lion, perhaps even my stepmother if she objected to her plans being disrupted.
And who was to say she would care? I had been sent to wed the ruler of Tailliz, and here was a would-be ruler of Tailliz, waiting on my answer.
One who had kissed me and perhaps truly meant it, which was more than Gervase had ever done.
If whatever I felt for Sam could never come to anything outside the realm of dreams and stories, if my ultimate choice was either a queen with a ruthless streak or a king who loved someone else, then the queen with a ruthless streak might at least view me as a valuable ally instead of a curse.
Not to mention that I couldn’t deny a certain justice to her cause.
Forever set aside in favor of her brothers.
Her mother’s life ruined. Both of them trapped in a kingdom where women were locked away and ignored.
In her place, I might have fought back just as fiercely.
There were far worse reasons to overthrow a government, even if the only brother who’d ever listened to her was condemned along with the rest.
There was, however, one important subject her tale had not addressed.
“Why do you want to be queen?” I asked.
She pulled back slightly. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You must have a reason beyond it being denied to you.”
“I thought that would be obvious.” She tilted her head, peering at me like a bird. “Wealth. Power over everyone else. Instant obedience to our whims. Anything we want brought to us the moment that we want it.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s everything, surely. That’s why kings and queens exist, so others might serve them. Who would rather serve than be served?”
“I see.”
It wasn’t an unusual opinion. In my travels, I had seen despots of every type. I’d heard every version of Angelique’s argument—that this was simply the way of things, that the only options were to be in command or to be commanded.
But I could not help but think of my stepmother’s kingdom, where ogres no longer sucked the marrow from human bones and the fae folk had stopped stealing babies.
To defy her, thieve from her, or insult her was to risk terrible punishment, but during the years of her rule, her people had thrived and prospered, protected from all predators except my stepmother herself.
Angelique had not once given a thought to the villagers crowded into the castle courtyard or the soldiers defending the walls, facing horrible death by tooth, tentacle, and claw.
I have made many mistakes in my life and undoubtedly will do so again, but I was not about to ally myself with a woman who somehow managed to be even worse than my stepmother.
I threaded my fingers into my hair. Since no reasonable escape plans were coming to mind, I’d have to try an unreasonable one.
“Do you know,” I asked, “what happens to someone stopped midway through growing out their hair?”
“No.” She sounded baffled. “What?”
“Probably nothing much.” I threw the whole tangled mass of it toward her and commanded it to grow.
Grow fast.
It shot out with enough force to knock her off her feet. Within seconds, it filled up the room, pressing up against the monster cages and through the bars as the creatures inside howled and shied back from the snaking strands.
Keep going, I commanded my hair. More.
I’d never tried anything like this before, and I hadn’t been sure it would work. But hair growth was the first magic I’d mastered and still the one I was best at. If there was anything I could command without a devil’s hair, the Golden Key, or True Love’s First Kiss, it would be this.
I didn’t dare let my concentration drop.
By this time I no longer saw anything but my own tresses, the whole of my vision a wall of snarled brown curls.
The monsters screamed, and the stone walls groaned with the strain as the hair took up all the room in the chamber and continued to pack more densely, seeking space that wasn’t there.
It pressed against me, threatening to push me out the window.
I let it.
The moment I was outside, the noises cut off. Frigid air hit me like a slap. I dropped a short distance and stopped with a jolt that threatened to rip my scalp off.
Above me, my hair pulled taut, rising straight up until it vanished into thin air. To all appearances, I was dangling from nothing above the ruined building where Sam and I had spent the night. Whatever spell Angelique had used to make the upper floor invisible and inaudible, it was a strong one.
The tug on my scalp became more uncomfortable with every passing second.
I focused on lowering myself to the ground.
As I did so, the air in front of me began to glow with a golden, misty light.
It quickly spread to the stone building below.
The entire structure must have been a magical construct of some kind, and my hair, still expanding within it until the very stones cracked, was breaking the spell.
I sped up my descent, not wanting to find out what would happen if it reverted to its original form while I kicked in midair.
Just as my feet touched the earth, the tower collapsed in on itself, twisting and shrinking until it was an acorn that hovered in the air for a fraction of a section before dropping into the snow.
Twenty feet of hair fell around me, sheared off at the end by the vanished window but heavy enough to land with a thump even so.
I was relieved that I’d been spared from being crushed under the thousands of pounds of it that had vanished along with the tower.
Without question, I hadn’t thought this plan all the way through.
Angelique was nowhere to be seen. Had she suffocated in my runaway locks, or been transformed into an oak seed? Or simply been crushed to death when the spell broke, compressed to the size of an acorn?
I was still wondering when a huge dark bird, easily twice my size, dove out of the sky with an ear-piercing cry. Its talons reached for my neck.
I barely managed to fling myself out of the way before it could rip out my throat. As it hurtled past, I saw that it had Angelique’s warm brown eyes, narrowed in fury.
Her offer of an alliance had not extended past my second attempt to kill her.
She reached the edge of the clearing that used to house the tower and wheeled around for another go. Out of ideas, good and bad alike, I gathered my hair in my arms and ran.
My effort was doomed from the start. I still had too much hair dragging behind me, catching on roots and shrubs.
Even if I’d had the means to cut it off, she could fly faster than I could run.
I’d stumbled no more than a few feet out of the clearing when the bird’s shrieking cry sounded just behind me.
Then something narrow and bright flew past my head. I heard a thud of impact as I dove to the ground. With a flutter of wings, the bird changed course, veering up to the treetops.
I glanced up. A huge sword was sticking out of a tree, vibrating like a plucked guitar string. Who had thrown a sword?