He gritted his teeth. “I’m so close,” he said. “I want to come with you.”
“Come where?”
He drove into me. “You know where.”
Cries ripped from me as my body broke into spasms of desire. I gripped his shirt with my fists, holding him close to me.
“My girl,” he said, almost in a whisper.
He was caught in it as I was, and I started feeling hot liquid flooding me on the inside while I was completely surrendered to him, my body convulsing, groans escaping my lips. My body wanted to draw him in and force him out at the same time. It was not enough and it was too much. And that was the best thing I’d ever felt, because so far, nothing in my life had ever been too much—except solitude.
My limbs melted into the sea of pelts.
“Dorin…” I clutched him. He held me close for a moment, and then he slowly pulled his cock out of me and collapsed beside me. His hand gently stroked the thatch of curls between my legs, as if he understood that my body would miss him, and was easing the loss. “It’s just as they say…the bond spell makes sex incredible.” He shook his head. “I must get you back to my kingdom as soon as possible. I’ll go to town and buy some sturdy rope so you can climb down, and then I’ll wait here until we know the Witch is gone again.”
This all made me very nervous. “I hope she will leave again. What if she stays with me until the King of the Northlands returns?”
His eyes briefly turned hard, and it sent a shiver down my spine. He would do anything to save me, I thought, even if it meant killing the Witch.
She had kept me captive all my life, and would trade me to a king for the sake of rampion, but she was also the person who had raised me, and I couldn’t bring myself to want to hurt her.
“We’ll worry about that if we must,” he said.
Prince Dorin and I talked a little longer, and I made him a cup of tea, although we both knew he should depart immediately. I didn’t want him to go, not for a moment, not ever. I wanted to know a thousand different things about his life. I even offered him a marzipan pig. That was how much I liked having sex with him. But he said I could keep them all.
While we were talking, I combed my hair, and his eyes followed my hands. He found me as strange and fascinating as I found him, that was obvious.
“You’ve never seen a girl with long hair before? You must have seen everything by now.”
“Not many girls have hair like that,” he said. “If any.”
“You mean, I might have the longest hair in all the world?”
“I’d be willing to bet you do.”
I was very pleased.
“If you didn’t have to keep it long, to let the Witch into your tower, would you think of cutting it?” he asked.
“You don’t like it?” Sometimes I really didn’t know what he was getting at.
“I think the court will stare,” he said.
“That’s good, isn’t it? I mean, I might find it uncomfortable at first, it’s true. I’m not used to being stared at. But shouldn’t a queen have the most of everything?”
“Well, the bonding will ensure that I’m attracted to you no matter what you do,” he said.
“Even if I only had one eyeball?”
“I think so. But let’s try not to test it, shall we…?” He looked at the window. “I should go. The sun is getting high. But I promise you, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He gave me a deep kiss that got me stirred up all over again, but I had to let him go.
He took the knife from his boot and handed it to me. “In case the King of the Northlands comes for you.”
“I don’t know how to use it.”
“I think you have some idea how to use it,” he said, arching a brow. “You may not like to use it, but at least you have it if you must.”
I lowered my hair and he climbed down, every pull on my scalp feeling like a little bit of heartbreak as his body disappeared beneath the brambles. His weight fell away from my hair.
“Soon,” he called.
“Soon!” I agreed. Oh, please, I willed, let him keep his promise.
Chapter Six
Prince Dorin
As I made my way through the brambles, leaving my Rapunzel behind, I felt like two people in one body.
One was Prince Dorin of Yirvagna, staid and well-mannered, always disciplined. I tried to be the very model of the future king. I loved my people, and my kingdom, and so I wanted them to have faith in me. In Yirvagna, that meant that I always kept my emotions buttoned down and followed every rule of court.
The other side of myself had been unleashed today, when the bond spell had drawn me to this strange, small, lovely human girl. Fucking her soft naked body, hearing her unbridled screams of pleasure, was like nothing I experienced back home in a world of ladies who were eyes behind fans and rustling skirts, muted voices and curtseys.
I still had no idea what I was going to do with Rapunzel when I got her home. When she opened her mouth, she had the subtlety of a five-year-old. But my feelings were shifting. I worried less what the court would think of me for being bonded to such a creature, and more about whether they would crush her under their embroidered slippers, with unkind gossip and snubs.
A part of me wanted to take her home and lock her away, protect her from the world that I knew might be cruel and overwhelming, keep her beauty for my own and make the pleasure I would give her the center of her whole world.
But that wasn’t realistic. She must become a queen, and I must be sure she became a good one.
I’ll have to put my foot down immediately. If they want the favor of their future king, they must treat her well.
I found my horse where I had left her, and rode into town. I had been up all night traveling, and should have been exhausted, but the joining with my bond mate had given me a great deal of energy. I suppressed a smile at the stares I received, curious glances stolen by every human woman I passed. If I caught them, they would quickly look at the ground, blushing furiously.
I smirked. For hundreds of years, human men had made us out to be barbaric demons, but human women knew a good thing when they saw it. Back home, girls openly admired me as the prince, but seeing myself through the eyes of the human women, with their nervous blushing…it made me eager for the time when my Rapunzel would truly be mine, with no concerns standing in the way.
This town seemed to be a hub along the King’s Highway, no great metropolis, but large enough to have a market district, with many shops and stalls, and travelers of many different races. Faeries and elves were scattered among the crowd, and several different tongues were spoken around me. I usually rode during the night, and now the sun was beating down on my black clothes. I just wanted to get the rope and get back to the tower.
As I was searching for the proper shop to buy such a thing, I spotted a hunched woman in a dark cloak maneuvering around a group of giggling younger women. It was the Witch. The old woman glanced at me, as everyone did, but kept moving in a hurry. She slipped between two temporary stalls, ducking down an alley.
I saw a small sign down the alley with a picture of a bottle and a wand. A spell shop.
The Witch was out to buy a dowry, but her movements seemed suspicious.
I tied up my horse and approached the alley cautiously, peering around a stack of crates near the entrance.
She disappeared inside the shop.
My ears were fairly keen. I dared to walk down the alley. Something in my gut told me the woman was up to no good.
I heard coins scatter on a table. “I’ll have more soon,” the old woman said. “Lots more.”
“I’m not giving you the elixir until you have the full payment. Five gold.”
The sum shocked me. Five solid gold pieces was a good deal of money.
“I tell you, I’ll have the whole thing after the full moon. Just give me a drop.”
“I told you, no more drops. You buy the whole thing and then you move on. A guard was here the other day asking about
you.”
“If I die before the full moon, you won’t get anything,” the old woman snapped.
“Why should I even believe you’re going to come up with that kind of money?”
“I am selling my most prized possession to the King of the Northlands.”
“I can't risk my whole business over it. Get out until you have the five gold.”
“Look here,” the old woman began, getting ornery, but I’d heard enough. I went back to my horse.
If the shopkeeper was afraid to sell the elixir, then it could only be one thing. An elixir of youth. Most of the kingdoms had made it illegal to make or sell them, because wars had broken out when they were made in the past. When youth and long life could be bought by the richest members of society, the middle classes grew deeply resentful. When the eighty-year-old King and Queen of Palham had suddenly grown beautiful again, their people rebelled and chopped them to pieces in their own throne room. That was two hundred years ago, but no one had forgotten. Nothing made people more violent than the prospect of immortality for a precious few.
So this was the witch’s plan, more sinister than Rapunzel knew. The rampion was not the full story. The Witch was growing near the end of her life, and was willing to bargain away Rapunzel for enough money to buy the elixir. Then, she would probably slip away to another kingdom and make her life over again, growing more and more powerful as a witch.
I wondered why the King of the Northlands would pay so much for a common girl in the first place.
I hoped I never would know why, because I would have her back to my own home, safe and sound, long before he ever came for her. But there was no time to lose.
Chapter Seven
Rapunzel
After Dorin left, I paced the tower. I had never been so restless. I should have been dusting and making my lunch, and I could do nothing. I really didn’t want to do those things anymore.
“What do you think?” I asked the stuffed crow. “It feels like I imagined the whole thing, but I know I didn’t. He’s going to save me. I think he’s still deciding if he likes my hair, but that’s all right. I’m still deciding if I like men with tails. He’s sort of human and sort of not.” I paused. “No, I’m lying. I do like tails. I wish I had one. It would be very useful. In fact, I think I like everything about him except the way that I can’t figure out what he’s thinking sometimes.”
When the Witch came back, her sack was stuffed with new clothes. Underthings and warm dresses, for the north. I was a little worried that she would know someone had been to the tower. It was such a shocking experience for me, I thought it must have changed the entire room. But she seemed wrapped up in her own thoughts, laying out the clothes and telling me what she’d bought. “And there’s a corset for you, and proper petticoats, and stockings, and I got blue dresses because you do look so nice in blue. I won’t have you looking like a vagabond.” She regarded me solemnly. I saw something like guilt in her expression, which was unusual.
In my mind, she was ‘the Witch’. But she had always asked me to call her ‘Mother’. I tried to avoid addressing her at all. Even when I wanted to be polite I would just open with ‘Excuse me’ or ‘Forgive me’ or ‘If you don’t mind’. But today I had a knife tucked under my pillow and particular fears swirling around in my head.
“Mother…” I tried to sound heartbroken. Actually, I hardly had to try. “I really am very scared. Would you plait my hair for me? I’m so afraid it might be the last time…”
She had always been very proud of my hair, and this made her look even more guilty. “Of course…” She picked up the comb and I sat on the bed, and she began to carefully comb my locks and gather them up into three separate strands.
“I suppose when I’m married to the King of the Northlands, such a fearsome troll will never plait my hair,” I said. “In fact, I worry that maybe he will tear it right out of my head!”
“Oh, you must not think of such things! I’m sure…he would not harm his own queen.”
“You’re very sure?” I gave her a piteous look.
I think the Witch was going to miss me. After all, how many friends did she have? Not a single one that I knew of. And certainly, she had no blood daughter.
“Yes,” she said curtly.
“You couldn’t teach me just one spell that would let me protect myself if he tries to hurt me? I’m so scared.”
The comb bit into a snarl in my hair, and I sucked air through my teeth. Curses. She was still angry at me for asking about magic, even now. I thought it might work, just this once.
“Well…,” she began, and then she paused for a very long time. “I’m just not sure about giving you a powerful spell when you know so little about the world…but…”
I think she was afraid I might use the spell on her.
She patted her pockets, feeling something that was inside them.
“You know, perhaps I have an idea,” she said. “I will give you one spell. If the King of the Northlands ever tries to really hurt you, this spell will make it so that he can’t see you any more, and you can escape him.”
She told me to wait there, leaving my hair parted into thirds, and she went down to her workroom. When she came back, she had a tiny bottle, which she handed to me. “To cast the spell, you must throw out a generous pinch of dust on the ground in front of your foe, and say, ‘Irim, orum, negorum’.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it would be more exciting.”
“I’m afraid it took me some time to make this concoction and it isn’t something I can simply teach you in an afternoon. But it will help you if you need to escape, and that’s all you really need, isn’t it? Just don’t tell him I gave it to you. I have a contract with him, and he must not know I gave you any means of escape, or he would strike me dead.”
“Thank you.” I put the bottle in my pocket, and she finished braiding my hair. She even put ribbons in it herself.
She stayed with me that night, and all the next day. I worried she might not leave, and Dorin wouldn’t be able to return.
I tried to find a way to convince her to go back to town.
“Do you think this is enough of a dowry?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t have much money to give you more, I’m afraid.”
And then later, I asked, “Do you think we have enough food? Shouldn’t we have one grand meal before I go?”
“I don’t have much money to buy more food,” she said. “But I will make my good stew.”
Later in the afternoon, I heard a particular whistle down in the brambles. It sounded like a bird, but not quite like any bird I knew. I don’t think the Witch knew the songs of all the birds as well as I did. She didn’t remark on it. But I knew it was Dorin, letting me know he was waiting.
I was running out of ideas, but before we went to sleep for another night, I said, “Should I have a gift for the King of the Northlands? Don’t people give gifts to each other at weddings? Maybe you could take some of my favorite books to town and exchange them for a nice new cloak.”
“My dear Rapunzel, you know nothing of how the world works. The bride doesn’t have to give her husband any gifts. You are the gift. Don’t you want me to stay close to you every moment we have left?”
I must say, I had never lost my temper with the Witch. Not ever. And I think that was a pretty good long time to be patient. But that night, after spending the whole day thinking of Dorin and knowing he was down in the brambles waiting, I was starting to think that I hated her. I hated the way she pretended to be kind to me but she didn’t let me have any freedom. I hated that she admired my hair but she was the only one who ever got to see me, as if she possessed the very sight of me. Right this minute, I thought, I didn’t even like her good stew. It wasn’t that good. So there!
“I don’t care if you stay or go,” I snapped. “You’re the one who is trading me to a troll king!”
“I have no choice in the matter!�
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“It’s still your fault.”
“Rapunzel, please! I—I know I was stupid to go after the plant, but I thought I wouldn’t get caught, and once I was, it all became a cascade, one bad thing after another. I never wanted to steal you away from your parents! I never wanted any of this. I’m old now, and do you think I want to give away the only thing that is precious to me anymore?”
“You mean me?”
“Of course!”
“If I’m so precious to you, how come, when I asked for a friend, you brought me an old stuffed crow? How come you told me so many lies, that lots of girls live in towers all over the kingdom, that my mother was a horrid thief—as if you weren’t—and not one thing about men, or sex, or—”
“Who told you about sex?” she interrupted me. “How do you know that word?”
“It—was in one of my books.”
“I never gave you such a book.” She glanced around, in a sudden panic. “Rapunzel, tell me, and you must not lie—has a man been here?”
“No!” I said, but my voice came out with a squeak. I never lied to the Witch. I never had anything to lie about.
Her eyes widened, bulging orbs of judgment. Her nostrils flared. I panicked, and ran to the window. I tossed my braid out. My hair was shorter bound than loose, but while the Witch was short, Dorin was tall and I was sure he could reach the braid.
I felt his weight yank on my hair immediately. He was coming fast.
But the Witch was advancing on me. She took a vial from her pocket. It looked much like the spell she had just given me. I was too scared to think straight, but I managed to wrest off the cap of my own spell and toss out some of the powder, crying, “Irim, orum, negorum!” as I tossed the powder at her.
Rapunzel and the Dark Prince Page 4