Page 88 of Locked
"How could I know? You never told me," I replied. "You withheld everything from me and now you're surprised I've escaped?"
"Your parents aren't dead," she tossed out at me, grinning viciously. "They live in the palace in the center of the city."
"They work for the king and queen?" Sorrel asked.
Mother laughed coldly. "Theyarethe king and queen. Why do you think I allowed you to live in such splendor, Rapunzel? I wouldn't have bothered, but when your parents gave you to me it was on so many conditions. So many, I almost tossed you from the top of the tower when I brought you there. But your powers weren't to be ignored and I thought… well. If I'm to be switching bodies… it might as well be into a magical one."
"We're not switching bodies…" I muttered.
"Well not now," she replied. "Now I'll just squeeze in beside you, I suppose."
"No," I countered.
"Your father took my land from me, so I cursed him…" Her voice faltered. "He took so much more than stupid old greens. So I took his first born… and now? Now, I'llbehis firstborn… I'll return to Mommy and Daddy, good as new and ready for the royal life… and I'll accept the crown. The throne."
The ground began to shake around us. "But first. I need to take care of a few little nuisances."
Kinden's shield shattered, causing all of us to be blown backwards onto the fallow ground. Black tendrils grew up from all over, wrapping themselves around Rifyr, Kinden and Sorrel.
I waited for them to wrap around me, but they didn't. So I ran for Sorrel, who was the closest, grabbing the vines and snapping them away so he could get his hands free.
But then, the locket around my neck began to tighten. To choke out my breath. I reached up to grasp it, rasping out a protection charm and yanking at the chain.
It snapped, falling onto the ground in front of me.
The broken clasp that had never ever ever been opened was laying there in the black death. Practically taunting me. I don't know what made me do it. But, I extended my hand and blasted the locket with fire.
And, since I'd been practicing, or maybe because I was so angry and scared, it blew the gold trinket into pieces, leaving behind one lock of hair. Not blonde as I'd previously been led to believe. But gray. The same color ashers.
I'd had a warlock's pendant around my neck for my entire life and hadn't known.
Mother reached down and grasped the lock of hair, seemingly absorbing it into the black mass that was her body now. Her essence.
"It's a good thing you were a good little witch and kept your precious Basil's bones with you in the house. With his skeleton and this lock of hair, I'll soon be able to cast an invocation and inhabit your body and there's nothing--"
Basil's bones? I frowned, glancing over at Kinden, who had suddenly started looking a little more hopeful. Sorrel had gotten free and had run over to him, freeing his hands and therefore his magic as well. He soon had Rifyr free and all three of them huddled with me on the ground.
She'd needed Basil's bones? Basil's bones weren't in that box. There were chicken bones in that box.
She muttered something low, something otherworldly. Her voice grew deeper and deeper.
"Shield," I whispered, beginning to mutter a protection spell in time with Kinden's. His shield appeared over us, purple and green just like before. We'd woven a dome of spellwork around us once more.
And just in time too, because in a burst of light, she was gone.
The ground was gone. The asphalt. The car. Everything.
We were falling, all four of us. Falling, falling, falling.
Until we weren't.
I opened my eyes, blinking at the sun.
