“Run!” I roared to the civilians on the street. And this time, they damn well listened.
“Hold them back – go for their heads!” Aladdin bellowed to his men and the thieves drew their weapons in answer. Aladdin tugged my arm as several more of the reanimated corpses poured onto the street. The civilians screamed and chaos broke out. But before even one of them fell, the nearest thieves descended on the soulless beings like a swarm of ants, cutting through their ranks.
Aladdin gripped my wrist and dragged me over the edge. My stomach swooped as I fell and I remembered to roll at the last moment before we hit the grassy bank beneath the wall. The moment we came to a halt, I leapt to my feet, sword drawn and ready to attack. But all was silent in the grounds and that set me on edge. Where are the guards?
Back beyond the wall, the clamour was growing to a raucous war.
My mouth dried up as my gaze fell on the palace. An enormous tower stretched up high above it from the east wing, taller than any building I'd ever seen.
“What in Osaria?” I gasped, then fell into a run, knowing with all my heart that Rapunzel was in trouble. That Gothel's magic was going to infect my entire city and bring it to its knees.
The only way to stop her was to drive Kyra's blade into her black heart. And so help me, I would fight until my very last breath to see it done.
The rest of The Forty may have been buying us time but I didn’t want to let that fight go on for long. They were outnumbered and battling against a sea of undead, unnatural creations that felt no pain and only hungered for human flesh.
The thieves may have known to strike for the skulls and destroy the beetles, and they may have been a collection of the meanest, toughest bastards ever to have walked the streets of Osaria, but they were still just human. And mortal flesh felt pain, grew tired and would eventually fall under the onslaught from Gothel’s foul monsters.
They were buying us time but not much. And I refused to waste even a moment of it while their lives hung in the balance.
Maybe it’s a good thing I passed up the opportunity to be Rapunzel’s King, I don’t think I like having power over the lives of men.
As we raced towards the inner gates of the palace walls, my gaze was drawn to the immense tower which stood to the left of the palace itself.
It hadn’t been there yesterday. It didn’t even look like it could be there now. It defied the laws of physics, towering above us so far into the cerulean sky that it blocked out the merciless sun.
“What foul magic is this?” Cassian breathed.
At the mention of magic, my gut twisted with an uncomfortable truth.
“Kyra,” I moaned. It was the only explanation.
Gothel must have wanted this monstrous tower for a reason and the only one capable of delivering such a thing was the genie herself. I had to find her, I had to be sure that she was alright. But with Gothel keeping hold of her lamp, I had no idea where to even begin. I could only hope that the Shaitan would be easy to find. Because she was the only lead I had and I doubted she would be letting that lamp out of her sight anytime soon.
“Here,” Cassian hissed, leading me along as we drew further and further from the fight taking place at the outer wall.
My heart was racing but not because of the run here; I was terrified of what we were about to find. Gothel may not have been willing or able to hurt Kyra but the wishes she’d obliged her to execute could easily do lasting damage to the innocent girl who’d wound her way into my heart.
I couldn’t bear to see her hurt by the things she’d been forced to do. I wanted every decision she ever made to be hers and hers alone. It wasn’t right that she'd had to endure this fate for so long. All she’d done was kill a man who’d taken everything from her. He’d deserved his fate and yet she’d been dealt one so much worse in return.
I wasn’t going to abandon her to Gothel. No matter what it took, I was going to find a way to set her free from the Queen’s control and return her life to her.
The inner gates were ominously abandoned and we hurried straight through them with nothing to slow our progress.
Cassian made a beeline for the imposing tower of white stone which stood out like a great scar across the face of a beautiful woman. There was no looking anywhere else, no way to ignore it.
As we sprinted to its base, a shimmering cloud of purple smoke appeared before it and my heart leapt with excitement.
Kyra materialised in a blur of motion as a sob escaped her and she dove into my arms.
I was knocked back a step as her weight fell against me, her arms locking around my neck as she hung from me, her feet not even touching the floor.
I buried my face against her neck, my heart pounding in a way that was wholly unnatural as the most profound sense of relief filled me.
“You’re okay?” I demanded, gripping her so tightly that I would have been afraid of hurting her had she not been close to cutting off my air supply with her own embrace.
“No. Never again. But yes because you’re here and you’re alive. But no again again because you shouldn’t have come. You stupid, brave, stubborn, cocky, arrogant, ugly, ugly man. You should have run as far away from here as you could get and never looked back.” Kyra’s tears were pooling against my flesh and I pushed my fingers into her hair. I was unable to stomach her words while knowing deep down that never in my life had anyone else even come close to caring about me enough to try and make me run from danger.
“I couldn’t leave without you,” I said firmly, not caring if it made me a fool. I’d sooner be a dead fool who’d tried to save her than live a thousand years in the sun without her by my side. “Where’s Gothel?” I asked, looking around as if she might step from the shadows any moment.
“She went to feed on some poor soul’s heart. I have to stay here and guard the tower.”
“Where’s Rapunzel?” Cassian demanded urgently, his voice strained with worry.
Kyra pulled back, dropping out of my embrace and landing on bare feet before us.
“Up, up, up. All the way at the top,” she pointed towards the sky where the tower almost seemed to sway above us. It was endlessly high, an impossible thing given life by her magic. “Kahn is in there too, climbing, climbing, climbing until he finds her. But I made it hard as hard can be - it will take him a while yet.”
Kyra looked between us excitedly, her eyes brimming with emotion which said she was looking for praise.
“You sabotaged Gothel’s wishes?” I asked, catching her hand in mine and holding on tight. She’d been out of my arms for altogether too long already and I refused to accept even the littlest separation from her now.
Kyra nodded brightly, her green eyes brimming with power for a moment before it faded away. As I looked at her I knew I hadn’t been too late. She was still the girl who time had forgotten. Still the brightest point in any room. Still insane. Still just the way I’d fallen for her.
“Yes,” she said proudly. “I muddle them as much as I can whenever she asks... but she’s catching on now, making her wishes more carefully so that I can’t fool her. “
Cassian nodded as he moved closer to the tower again. “Then all I have to do is catch up to Kahn before-”
“Stop!” Kyra shrieked, ripping out of my grip and diving before Cassian like a woman trying to save her baby from a runaway horse.
“What the-”
“Gothel left me here for a reason! I have to kill any who try to break into this tower! If you try and get inside then my magic will destroy you!”
Kyra started slamming her fists into her skull and I raced forward to catch her wrists, pressing her back a few steps until I had her boxed against the tower wall.
“Don’t,” I breathed, unable to form a coherent sentence about the way it made me feel when she tried to punish herself like that. Any little failures she perceived in herself were always far outweighed by all the good in her.
Kyra blinked up at me, tears clinging to her long lashes as she inhaled
deeply.
“So what do we do?” Cassian demanded, almost bellowing with his desperate need to save the Princess.
But if we couldn’t enter the tower then I really had no idea what else we could even try.
Kyra stared at him, desperation casting her beautiful features into panic.
“Can’t go in it,” she muttered, frowning as she focused on something inside herself for a moment. “That won’t work either. Don’t call me that, I... but even if I could then that would require me to wield the power over my own... sorry I ran away with the thought there. But what if you’re on to something?”
“Kyra?” I breathed, trying to wrangle her attention away from the strange conversation she was having with herself but she held up a solo finger to silence me.
I arched an eyebrow in surprise but she was too caught up in her one sided discussion to respond to it.
“Yes!” she cried suddenly. “When you’re not being a spiteful harpy, you actually have some good ideas!”
“What?” Cassian demanded as he ran a hand over his face and pushed it into his short, brown locks.
“You can’t break in. But you can stay out!” Kyra said happily. “And there’s a balcony so it’s not breaking in!”
Cassian stared at her for a long beat during which time his neck grew dangerously red.
“I know I can stay out,’ he growled, clearly fighting against the urge to snap again. “But it doesn’t help Rapunzel, does it?”
“Yes it does, silly!” Kyra hopped forward and flicked him right between the eyes before he could flinch away.
I snorted a surprised laugh and he glared at me.
“How?” he ground out, clearly not finding a moment for humour or mysteries while he was caught up in his angst over the Princess.
“You go up like a spider, spider!” Kyra reached out to him and created an imitation of a spider with her hand, crawling it up his chest with a huge smile filling her lips.
“What?” Cassian growled.
Kyra sighed dramatically then dissolved into mist for a moment before re-materialising at our feet in the form of a huge, purple spider which was at least twice the size of a cat.
“Holy shit!” I cursed, stepping back before I could stop myself.
I hadn’t thought that Kyra could look like anything other than the purest form of temptation to me but in that moment she looked goddamn repulsive.
Her laugh burst from the giant spider’s pincers before she turned and ran for the tower. When she reached it, she instantly started climbing up the wall in a way that only a spider could.
“I can climb it?” Cassian asked as realisation hit him. “I can climb the outside of it and make it up to her?”
Kyra leapt from the wall, transforming into a girl again before she hit the ground.
“Yes! It’s not breaking in, it's climbing up and at the top there is a balcony you can step onto! That doesn’t break the rules!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Climb like a spider!”
Cassian tilted his head back and I followed his lead. The tower seemed endless, the climb up its sheer sides impossible. There was no way in hell to do it safely and likely no way to do it at all.
“Alright,” Cassian said determinedly. “I’ll go after Rapunzel and Kahn. You see if you can take out Gothel.”
“Keeping all the fun jobs for yourself I see,” I replied teasingly. Not that I was at all excited about the idea of going up against Gothel. But she had Kyra’s lamp. So the fact that she was a heart eating, power sucking, beetle birthing, daughter of the devil himself was a side issue. I couldn’t let her remain in control of Kyra’s fate.
“If you manage to put that dagger through her heart, you’ll be saving the whole of Osaria,” Cassian said, reaching out to clap a hand on my shoulder and forcing me to meet his eyes which were burning with a ton of emotions so fierce that I was almost afraid to face them. “You’ll be a hero amongst men. No one will ever forget your name. Women will name their children after you, men will write songs about you, everyone will want to-”
“You’re painting a pretty picture there, mate,” I interrupted him. “But you don’t need to convince me with flattery and ego stimulation - I’ve found a better reason than that to invest myself in this fight.”
Cassian smirked as he glanced at Kyra, pulling me into an embrace fierce enough to crush bones.
“I never thought I’d see the day when Aladdin, the best thief in all of Osaria let a girl steal something from him,” he murmured as I tightened my grip on him too. Emotional outbursts may have been way out of my comfort zone but in the moments before death came hunting for us, it seemed appropriate enough.
“What’s that?” I asked in confusion, frowning at him as he finally released me.
“Your heart.” Cassian smirked, thumping me on the chest right above the offending organ. It leapt a little in response but not half as hard as it did as I turned my gaze on Kyra.
She was watching me too, her eyes dancing as she bit into her bottom lip, waiting to see what we were going to do.
Cassian clearly didn’t expect a response and I was glad because I wasn’t sure I had one.
He stalked away from me, dragging Kyra into a hug too before beginning his mission up the tower.
“Be careful, mate,” I said, eyeing the climb with concern as he began his ascent.
“I will,” he agreed.
The brickwork was new, the mortar firm, yet he managed to find a handhold and heaved himself up. And again. And again. I watched with bated breath for several long seconds before accepting that he was okay.
Sure, once he got a little higher, one wrong move would see him plummeting to his death, but standing around to watch it happen wouldn’t change the outcome.
I needed to get that lamp.
“Where’s Gothel?” I asked, drawing Kyra’s attention from the royal guard. Cassian had his role to play in this and so did I. I needed to go after the Queen.
“I don’t want you to risk-”
“Don’t ask me not to go,” I interrupted her, reaching out to snag a lock of her long hair into my grip as the wind drove it across her face.
I leaned close as I tucked it behind her ear.
“You’ve saved me more times than I can count, Kyra, and not just from death. You saved me from who I was. And now it’s time I rescued you in return.”
She looked up at me as more tears formed in her eyes.
“If you die it will be the end of me,” she breathed.
“If I die it will be because I love you. And I don’t want to live in a world where you aren’t free.”
Kyra closed the distance between us with a kiss brushed with tears. Salt danced over my tongue as her full lips devoured mine and her fingers wound into the front of my shirt, dragging me nearer like she would never be close enough.
Heat blazed between us for an eternity that only lasted a moment before we broke apart.
“Tell me,” I begged.
“The throne room. She wished for a magical mirror to watch as her undead army take over the city. She has the Emperor with her and she’ll kill him once Kahn makes his marriage to the Princess official.”
I cupped Kyra’s face between my hands as I studied every inch of it.
“If I die then I want you to know that there was only one wish I ever should have made and though I didn’t, it came true anyway. I would have wished for you, Kyra. Every perfectly imperfect inch of you. I would have wished for your smile and your handstands and your conversations with yourself. I would have wished for your soul and your heart and the depths I found in your eyes. You’re everything I could have wished for and more. And if I only got to have you for this brief moment in time then that’s still more than I ever deserved.”
Her lips parted to respond but I silenced her with a kiss which was heart-breakingly brief before turning and running towards the palace entrance.
There was only one way to end this madness.
The Queen had to die.
&
nbsp; I knelt before the door that had once led out of my quarters. I was attempting to pick the lock and prayed there'd be a way down from this tower beyond it. But maybe I was just desperately trying to convince myself of that.
I twisted the bent hairpin again and again, unsure what I was doing but I'd read books about this kind of thing. I had the theory, I just needed to implement it.
My hair had grown into a wildly long mane, reaching all the way across the room, still growing in an endless pool around my feet. I had a wild vision of drowning in a sea of it within a few days and the terrifying thought made my heart pump harder.
The wind made the balcony doors bang against the walls and I bit down on my lip as the repetitive noise drove me crazy. Just as I was about to give up with the hair pin and close those doors, the lock clicked and opened.
I squealed my joy, jumping to my feet and wrenching the door wide. I hurried out into a wide stairway, my hair trailing along behind me in a golden sheet as I moved. My mind boggled as I leaned over the railing and took in the criss-crossing pattern of steps running up and down through the vast tower. So many spirals, so many routes down. But I didn't have a choice. I had to get out of here and this maze was my only way out.
I steeled myself and moved to the top of the first step, but I froze as the pounding of loud footsteps carried from somewhere below.
My breathing hitched as I leaned over the railing again, gazing down at the endless labyrinth of stairs, intersected by sheer drops between them. Running up a stairway not even thirty feet below me was Kahn, gleaming with sweat and panting heavily.
I sucked in air as he looked up and his gaze slammed into mine, full of a manic excitement.
“Rapunzel!” he cried his joy. “I'm coming for you!”
“Stay away!” I yelled down at him as forcefully as I could. He released a grunt of fury, quickening his pace and ignoring my demand.
Adrenaline poured through my veins as I turned, gathering my hair into my hands as I sprinted back to my room, I slammed the door and jammed a chair under the handle to hold him off, my lungs labouring as fear pressed in on me.
Forbidden Fairytales- The Complete Series Page 67