Her lip curled back and her eyes flared with the inner darkness which was housed by her beautiful flesh.
“Make it big enough for my son to enter,” she growled.
I flicked a finger at the door and it grew to the size she required.
Gothel smirked in satisfaction and Kahn stalked forward eagerly, wrenching the door open. A solid brick wall stared back at him from the other side.
Tinkling laughter left me and I was vaguely aware that I must have seemed insane.
You are insane.
She was right. I was. And that was just fine by me.
Gothel whirled on me again but this time I turned to smoke before she could land a blow against me.
“Genie, that door needs to open into the tower and inside it I want a staircase that will lead my son up to the Princess with no further obstacles in his way!” Gothel snarled.
I gritted my teeth as I was forced to obey her command and I rematerialised a few meters from her.
Kahn shot me a loathing look as he stepped through the doorway into the tower and headed up the first set of stairs.
Gothel slammed the door behind him with a smug look on her features. “Get rid of that door again so that the Princess can’t get out,” she ordered.
I did as she commanded and waited for her to turn away from me before allowing myself a small smile. I’d done what she asked and created a stairway that led to Rapunzel but I’d also created hundreds of stairways within that tower which crossed each other, headed down before going up again and generally created a maze which would take hours and hours for Kahn to get through. Yes he’d be able to reach the Princess eventually, but I’d bought her some time at the very least.
If we get really lucky maybe he’ll fall on the stairs and break his neck.
I snorted a laugh and Gothel narrowed her eyes on me as the sound of it drew her attention.
I folded my arms, pursing my lips at her and offering an insolent expression.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, you and I,” she muttered. “And I won’t have you sabotaging me at every turn.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, offering an innocent expression.
Gothel drew closer to me, her sheet of white hair swaying around her narrow waist. The beauty she offered to the world shone with rejuvenated energy and I wondered if she’d been eating more hearts again recently or if it was just the thrill of her plans coming together that had her looking this way.
The beautiful shell didn’t fool me though; my magic allowed me to see the truth of her and as I looked upon her face I refused to see the stunning woman and saw only the beast beneath instead. A skull of shining black bone and eyes as dark and deep as the pits of hell looked upon me. Her smile was lined with serrated teeth and a forked tongue spoke the words which came from her twisted lips.
She was foul. The most evil of creations and the darkest form of magic I’d ever seen.
Gothel surveyed me through narrowed eyes before pulling the lamp from her purse. She rotated the little golden vessel between her fingers which I could see really had curved, black claws.
“Perhaps this is why the thief failed to use you more effectively. There’s something wrong with you. He had one of the most powerful creatures in all the lands bound to his will and all he did was enter a competition. Which he lost. Of course that could also be because he’s a fool.”
I fought against the desire to defend Aladdin or my own actions. I should have helped him more but he hadn’t done anything wrong. And he was the only master I’d ever had who’d ever looked at me like I was real and not just something to be used. He was definitely the only one who had used a wish for my benefit.
Imagine what we could have had if he’d really been able to wish you free...
I pressed my lips together as tears threatened and decided that I may as well play up to Gothel’s idea that I was broken. Because I probably was anyway. If I hadn’t been broken before Aladdin found me then losing him was more than enough to finish the job. But I hadn’t lost hope yet. Though my bond with him as my master was gone, I still felt the tie of my relationship with him tethering us together. I could feel Cassian and Rapunzel too. And all the time that that remained true, I couldn’t let myself give up hope. Because they were alive. And right now that was all I could wish for.
I threw myself into the role of the crazy genie and started laughing as I did a cartwheel.
Gothel cursed as I nearly kicked her in the face and drew back a step.
“We have work to do today but you can wait in your lamp until I need you again,” she growled.
“Wait!” I gasped but it was no good, my body dissolved into smoke and the most awful sucking sensation dragged at my gut as I was wrenched out of my physical form.
My master had commanded me back into the lamp and I was powerless to even try and refuse.
I fell into the bottom of my prison with a cry and splashed straight into the pool of tears waiting for me at its base.
My chest seized. My mouth fell open before bobbing closed again and again like I was a fish gasping for air. And there was no air. This place was thick with stagnant pressure. Too warm. And too cold. My heart was slamming against my ribs, pounding out a rhythm so fast that I couldn't dance to the beat if I tried.
The lid closed above me and I was plunged into darkness so thick and deep and full that it suffocated me.
I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you. I told you!
“Shut up!” I cried, unable to listen to her poison as she spewed it into my ear.
This was always where you’d end up again. Alone in the dark. Forgotten. Aladdin will die, Cassian will die. Rapunzel will live in misery with that creature Kahn. And no one will even remember you exist let alone come for you.
“That’s not true. They’re still alive! They’re still...” I trailed off because I realised that I wasn’t sure of that anymore. The lamp had cut me off from the outside world. I couldn’t feel my bond to them. They were cut off from me as surely as if they were dead.
I started shaking my head in fierce denial. They weren’t dead. It was just the lamp. Just this prison which held me. I wouldn’t be in here very long. Once Gothel needed me again she’d call me back out.
But it had already been so long. Hours turned to minutes turned to weeks and days and months or moments... I couldn’t be sure.
It was so, so dark and I was all alone.
You’re a fool. And a failure. You had one good, true master in all the years that you’ve been cursed and you couldn’t even do anything to stay by his side. Your magic could have protected him. He could have wished for so many more things to stop this from happening but he didn’t. And you didn’t think to tell him either. This is your fault. All your fault.
It was dark inside the lamp. I curled in on myself in the pool of tears, unable to conjure a light. I didn’t deserve to see. In the dark the monsters would come for me. But I was fairly sure I deserved their wrath this time.
It’s all your fault... a sob cut her off and I realised that she’d finally broken too. That was it. The final piece of me destroyed by my own stupid actions. I was right. It was my fault.
“I know,” I breathed, my voice echoing in the dark chamber.
A growl came to me from the far side of the pool as my magic conjured monsters to punish me.
I remained where I was. Waiting for my fate.
It was the least that I deserved.
***
I was wrenched from the lamp by a thread of magic which lodged itself behind my navel and pulled. It threw me from my prison and deposited me before my new, vile master.
“Let’s see if you can get this one right,” Gothel murmured. “Until now, the creation of my pets has been held back by what I can manage to produce with my own magic. But the process is draining. My magic has limits, unlike your own.”
We were standing on a hil
l in the centre of a sprawling graveyard. Every way I looked, tombstones jutted from the ground, pointing up at the heavens like accusing fingers blaming their god for letting the people who lay beneath them die.
So much death. So much life. All gone now. All gone.
I stared up at the hazy sky, drinking in the sunlight on my skin.
How long had I been stuck in that lamp? Days? Weeks? Months?
The sky was still red with the coming sandstorm but it hadn’t struck yet. Still the same day then.
A tingling started up in the pit of my stomach and I released a soft moan as I realised that my friends were still alive. It was more than I could have hoped for and I looked around for a moment as if I might find them close by but I stopped just as quickly. I could tell they weren’t close to me. And maybe that was a good thing. I didn’t want them anywhere near Gothel. If there was a chance that Aladdin and Cassian had escaped Egos and his band of cutthroats then I hoped that they would take the opportunity to get as far away from her as they could and never look back.
Cassian would never abandon Rapunzel like that.
I nodded in agreement. What about Aladdin though? Would he leave? He’d made such beautiful promises to me...
He probably made the same promises to Rapunzel.
I bit my lip, wondering if that was true.
“Genie,” Gothel said, her tone commanding my attention.
I looked up at her, my small stature meaning I had to tilt my head back to look into her hellish eyes.
“I wish for you to create two hundred of my creatures for me.” She opened her hand and revealed a glistening black beetle there, its pincers clicking menacingly as its beady eyes turned towards me. “I wish for them to be made in the image of this beetle in my hand. They should follow my commands the exact same way and have no additions to them whatsoever.”
I gritted my teeth as her will wrapped itself around me and my magic was twisted to her command. There was no way that I could sabotage that wish and I shuddered at the dark feeling of the power which was summoned to create those creatures.
My skin itched with the sensation of a thousand tiny feet scurrying across my body and I held my arms wide as the beetles appeared, racing down my arms and leaping to the ground as they ran to greet Gothel.
She caressed them as they swarmed over her and I suppressed the scream which wanted to tear its way free of my lips as the beetles raced over my flesh. I didn’t think my magic had ever been bent into something so ugly and evil before and the feeling of it being twisted this way was enough to make me gag.
Gothel didn’t seem to notice my discomfort as she raised her arms into the air, spinning around as she indicated the sprawling graveyard that surrounded us.
“Go my pets,” she breathed. “Find yourselves new hosts. And build me an army of the dead. It’s time I laid claim on this kingdom once and for all.”
My heart pounded a terrified rhythm and my body dissolved into smoke as a tide of beetles swarmed away from Gothel, heading in every conceivable direction.
I watched in horror as they began to burrow into the ground in search of their hosts.
And despite the desperate agony I felt at our separation, I began to hope that Aladdin hadn’t meant any of the promises he’d made to me.
Because if he didn’t then he wouldn’t be coming here. And if he didn’t come then he wouldn’t have to face this monster and her army of unnatural creations. And I was beginning to think that there was no hope of us defeating her. So maybe the best thing he could do was run.
I had my sword in my hand and a fire in my soul. Today was not the day we'd die. And after what we'd survived, I fully intended to live a long damn life to its very fullest. I had stared death in the eye a hundred times, but this had been different. This time I'd had something to lose.
Rapunzel was the deepest desire of my heart. And though I'd never allowed myself to envision a life at her side. It had been all I'd thought about when Egos had chained us in place and vowed to end us. I wasn't sure if I was worthy, but there was one thing I did know. No man in Osaria or in any other kingdom would work as hard as me at trying to be. So that had to count for something.
The thieves travelled with us like shadows as we headed toward the palace on swift feet. They moved like wraiths over rooftops and through alleys. None gathered too closely together, but the occasional shadow and movement in my periphery told me they were diligently following Aladdin. Their new Den Leader. The luckiest bastard I'd ever known. And I was sure as hell glad that his luck had rubbed off on me today.
Pip and Balthazar moved several paces behind us, the two of them blending into the crowd as we drew closer to the palace walls at the centre of the city. My heart was pounding like never before, each beat bringing me closer to Rapunzel. And I would get her back. Come hell or high water. I longed to bring down the black-hearted Shaitan who called herself Queen.
“You ready for this, mate?” Aladdin murmured as we passed through a busy marketplace.
“I'm always ready,” I said, tossing him a fierce look. He returned it with equal fervour and we quickened our pace, closing in on our destiny with every step.
The air was thick and the heat wafted around me, clinging to my skin. The scratch of sand within the wind told me a storm was coming and from the way the canopies were blowing above the stalls, I expected it would be upon us soon enough.
“Of all the days for a storm,” Aladdin growled.
I nodded, my jaw locked tight as we arrived alongside the outer ring of the palace walls. It was nearly thirty feet high and smooth in most places. But I knew its weaknesses. The dents, the holes. The places thieves could place a foot, a hand. But even the slipperiest of thieves would catch the eye of the townsfolk climbing the palace walls in broad daylight. Which was why Pip and Balthazar had something in store as a distraction.
Aladdin and I rested our backs to the wall, a few feet below a sizeable gap between the bricks. I knew it from my patrols. I'd complained to Marik about the possibility of ruffians getting in. But he'd said anyone stupid enough to try would be dead before they moved two paces within the gardens on the other side. And perhaps he was right about any common folk. But the men and women climbing in were The Forty. So I had faith they'd be just fine. As would we.
The bustle of the streets and the easy merriment of the people seemed a far cry from what we were dealing with. They had no idea what was happening within their own home. A spider was spinning webs at the heart of it and soon they'd all fall prey to her venom.
Aladdin scratched behind his ear in a signal and I squinted up at the rooftop across the street, spotting a slight figure moving there for half a second before he was gone. Pip seemed in his element and had taken charge of causing the distraction with barely contained excitement. There might have been more experienced men for the job, but Aladdin had chosen him and if he trusted him wholeheartedly then so did I.
“Monsters!” a man cried from my left and I turned in confusion. “Run – get away! Take your children somewhere safe!” He appeared sprinting down the street, his shirt shredded and his arms coated in blood.
I glanced at Aladdin in alarm, wondering if this had been the distraction Pip had planned but his confused expression said it wasn't.
My spine straightened as the pebbles at my feet began to dance. The street trembled and those behind stalls or walking along the road fell still. The crazed man ran up to a woman, grabbing her hand and trying to tug her along. “Run my dear – run!” he yelled, though no one was complying. The woman tugged her hand free, stumbling away from him in fear.
His eyes were wide and filled with a horror of something he'd seen. My neck prickled and I drew my scimitar on instinct.
A low whistle caught my ear and Aladdin exchanged some hand gestures with Pip up on the roof.
“Shit,” Aladdin hissed, catching hold of my arm. “Time to go up, mate.” He shoved me toward the wall.
“What is it?” I demanded.
&nbs
p; A thundering noise grew in my ears and my pulse quickened as a cloud of dust circled up beyond the rooftops a few streets away.
“Up!” Aladdin snapped, clasping his hands together to give me a boost.
I didn't hesitate. No one was watching and I knew the guard patrol had long since passed this area. I sheathed my blade again and stepped into Aladdin's hands, certain we needed to hurry. He shoved me up with a grunt of effort and I pressed my foot into the gap, reaching higher to catch hold of a tiny space above my head. I heaved myself skyward but struggled to find any more footholds. A figure in my periphery took me by surprise and I glanced over to see Aladdin scaling the wall at speed. He was soon perched atop it and held out a hand to pull me up.
I snatched hold of it and quickly joined him atop the wall. I rose to my feet and Aladdin did the same as we gazed toward the commotion deeper in the city. The sand storm was starting to blow off of the Lyrian, clouding my view in a hazy golden glow over the rooftops.
It took me a moment to realise the tremor I felt thrumming through the ground was the pounding of hundreds of feet. Screams carried to us on the wind and my heart rate ratcheted up several notches.
All along the wall, thieves were joining us, rising up to its peak. Many remained on the roofs opposite or slinking in the shadows of doorways and porches, awaiting a signal from their leader.
Aladdin held up a hand and the thieves on the wall fell into crouches, totally still like eagles perching on a branch. He turned to me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “We gotta go.” He turned to face the palace behind us. “Ho-ly shit,” he breathed, but before I could move to see what had alarmed him, one of Gothel's undead creatures sped onto the street.
A breath got trapped in my lungs at the sight of the rotten corpse, its body barely intact, but its movement impossibly quick. One side of its skull was missing and I could see the beetle inside its head, latched onto the remnants of its brain. More of the undead spilled onto the street like a sea of death, scrambling to get past one another in their desperation for blood. Fear pulled at my insides. But not for me. For my people.
Forbidden Fairytales- The Complete Series Page 66