Page 28 of Rapunzel's Outlaw Orc
The pendant fractures. The hair-thin roots inside writhe and wither. I project one last blast of love, hope, and the fierce joy of choosing myself, and the siphon...shatters.
I stop singing. The tower inhales. Power floods back through the severed loop and settles over me like a river flowing over familiar terrain. The black-veined roots recoil as if scalded, and new vines surge as magic hums in my palms. It pours through me, wild and alive. It coils through my veins, lighting up every strand of my hair.
The dark roots shrink from me now because they know I’m no longer their prisoner.
I am their mother.
Their queen.
“NO!” Gothel’s scream is raw and furious as she draws on her magic.
It doesn’t answer.
Ido.
“My loneliness won’t feed you anymore,” I tell her, rising.
My hair lifts, the ends glowing green-gold like new leaves as the heartbeat of the forest pours through me. The tower trembles—not from Gothel’s power. From mine.
The floor opens beneath her feet. Vines coil around Gothel’s ankles. She claws for purchase on the stones. The darkest roots—her roots—reel away, hissing. The green vines climb, sure and slow, up her calves, waist, wrists, and around her neck.
She spits my name like a curse as the forest drags her down into the hungry spell she wove. It accepts her like a debt collected, like a feast delayed. Her hands claw the air, and her eyes reflect a hundred versions of my face, all caged. Her skin cracks and her bones twist as the magic she stole turns on her. I don’t look away as the roots finish their work.
Silence falls.
The blossoms tremble and settle. My hair drops around my shoulders, shorter now, the ends lit like fireflies. The window unseals with a soft sigh. The room smells like rain after a drought.
I turn to Brannock. He’s so still.
“No,” I whisper, crawling to him. “No, no, no?—”
He’s cold. His chest doesn’t rise.
“Don’t you dare,” I sob. “You don’t get to leave me. Not now. Not after I finally found you.”
My short hair lifts, swaying around us like a curtain. The strands glow with firelight and forest magic, pulsing not with pain but with hope. With love. Withme.
“I’m not done,” I whisper. “You said you love me, so come back and see what your love made me.”
I place my hands over his chest and pour it all into him—my magic, my will, my heart.
“Breathe,” I command.
Nothing.
I press closer, bow my head, and let the song in my chest spill out. It isn’t a melody I’ve learned. It’s the song I hum when I shell peas and stare at the tree line. The one I dreamed before I knew what dreams were.
My magic responds. The moss thickens beneath his shoulders, cupping him. Tender vines slip from the cracked floorboards and coil around my wrists, steadying my hands.
“Breathe,” I tell him again, feeding the command with everything I am.
The vines at my wrists thin into luminous filaments that slip into the gash without pain. Beneath my fingers, the ragged edges of his wounds reach for each other, knitting together. They weave over and under until they cinch tight.
“Come back,” I whisper, palms moving in small circles over his heart, coaxing. “Come back to me, Brannock.”
A faint thrum. Then a stutter. One beat, then two. The green filaments dissolve into him like dew. The seam of the wound glows once, softly, and the skin finishes knitting—first muscle,then fascia, then a thin, pearly line of scar that looks like frost kissed jade.
His chesthitches. A shallow breath scrapes in. I lean closer, tears slipping off my chin and dotting his sternum like glassy beads.
