Rapunzel and the Dark Prince Read online

  I didn’t want him to get in a fight with his mother on my behalf. “Can I still be friends with Magdalena?” I asked, trying to calm everyone down.

  “Of course!” the queen said. “When your studies are done, you will have time to do whatever you like before dinner.”

  She swished off, and I couldn’t help but whine just a little bit. “I don’t see why I can’t be a healer. That seems much more princess-like than all these rules…! You know, princesses in books never have to sit around studying policy..”

  “That would make for a very dull book, reading about someone else reading,” Magdalena said. “But—if his majesty approves—” She looked at Dorin, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I don’t see why you still couldn’t learn a little bit of healing. I’ll teach you.”

  “A secret!” I had always wanted a really good secret. I tried to keep things from the Witch sometimes but she always found them out almost immediately. “I mean—if Dorin approves.”

  He pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “As far as I’m concerned, you can have whatever you want, as long as you keep it secret. That’s what I’m afraid of, as much as you like to talk. But then again, what business is it of Jarvin’s, anyway?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Prince Dorin

  Every royal court in the world, or at the very least, every court I have ever been to or read about, is a simmering pot of gossip, with whispers and rumors bubbling to the surface at a constant rate. It’s an aggravating thing when the gossip is about you, which is why I tried my best to keep my Rapunzel safe from its worst aspects.

  But it had its advantages too. I suspected that Jarvin was not happy with the result of the bond spell, and I was able to sniff out why before long.

  “Drina seemed to think you would be bonded to her,” one of my female cousins, Lady Anna, told me during the intermission of a ballet.

  Drina was Jarvin’s own daughter, a spoiled girl who had just turned eighteen. Out of all the thousands and thousands of women, why would he presume I would be bonded to his daughter in particular?

  He must have attempted to rig the bond spell. It was the only explanation, and the thought made my blood boil.

  “How do you know this?” I pressed. “Did she actually say so?”

  “Not outright, but…she was making comments, putting on airs. It was when you left to find Rapunzel that she really showed her cards. Somebody said she had a tantrum in Jarvin’s workroom. He must have tried to wrap a love spell in with the bond spell, but the bond was too strong. He really ought to learn to say no to her.”

  To think, if that spell had worked…such a girl would be my wife. She would be the one I was bonded to, the one my body screamed for, the one who would eventually rule my kingdom beside me. And it would have been a lie.

  Jarvin had been the chief mage for eight years now, since the passing of old Erik, but he had to go.

  Anna put a hand on my arm. “Tread lightly, Dorin. I don’t have proof, and your mother likes Jarvin. There’s no good replacement for him, either.”

  “I’m supposed to sit back with a traitor in our midst?”

  “The spell didn’t work,” Anna said. “I could be wrong. That is just my suspicion. I trust my suspicions, but not so far as to go up against the queen.”

  It was a sticky situation, to be sure. If I told my mother, I would have to be honest, and all I had was Anna’s word and my own vague suspicions that Jarvin was not being very kind to Rapunzel. My mother would have to turn to Anna, which would put my cousin in a spot, and in the end, we’d be back where we started: without real proof. Jarvin was too important, too dangerous a potential enemy, to dismiss without evidence.

  On the other hand, having a palace mage I couldn’t trust was unnerving.

  “Thank you, Anna. Don’t mention this to Rapunzel. I don’t want to upset or scare her unnecessarily.”

  “Of course. I would not break her mood just as she seems to be getting used to the place!”

  Rapunzel came swooping over to me that very moment, going on and on breathlessly about the ballet, the first she had ever seen.

  However, the very next afternoon I went to Magdalena myself and asked her to make inquiries to other court healers about how to cure my eyes. I could no longer trust that Jarvin was really trying to help me.

  “Yes, your majesty,” Magdalena said. “I have my suspicions about Jarvin myself…”

  “You do, hm?”

  “I think he has an ambitious nature. He probably wants a title, as everyone ambitious does. I’m not sure he really cares much about whether his magic is helpful, in and of itself. He wants it to get him somewhere. And some say that's the first step to magic turning black…though I am no court to judge him.”

  “Yes…that is the trouble. What do I do with such a man?”

  “Every court has a few,” Magdalena said. “If those are his true colors, he won’t be able to hide them forever. You’ll catch him in something he can’t deny eventually.”

  Every day that went by, I tried to show a normal face on the surface, but it was hard not to lose myself to despair on occasion. I thought every day might be a little easier than the last, but in fact, it started to become harder, as blindness stopped feeling like a temporary thing I must get over, and a permanent thing that would forever keep me from doing things I loved.

  Stubbornly, I kept practicing my archery. I was slowly starting to develop a different sense of space. My world wanted to narrow around me, to what I could touch. Sometimes I felt unmoored, lost in blackness.

  I think target practice helped me keep a sense of broadness, helped ground me in the larger world. It forced me to use my ears, to listen to the wind in the trees and strive to hear the way sound bounced off of objects the way Viktor could under certain conditions. Sometimes, as I set up the target and counted the paces, I was able to hit the target.

  But I was no longer good. I never forgot that. Sometimes I wondered what the court thought of me, poor blind prince, shooting his arrows in a desperate attempt to cling to his glory days. They were too polite to say so, but they must be thinking it.

  I would.

  And then a fresh wave of anger would boil inside me. Sometimes I yelled at the servants when they didn’t deserve it, but then I would force myself to calm down. I trained with Viktor every day, honing my ability to fight, and it felt good to punch and kick the training bag and practice throwing other men to the ground, but here, too, my blindness often betrayed me. I knew my sparring partners were letting me win much of the time.

  Rapunzel, at least, was endlessly in good spirits. I was worried she might chafe at her regimented days and her studies, but once she got used it, she loved learning new things. My mother could be intimidating at times but she had a genuine zest for education and employed the best tutors. Rapunzel studied history, civics, art and music. She had a dancing master who also taught court etiquette, and he was her favorite of all as it turned out, even if she always got flustered over terms of address and types of bows and curtseys.

  “Ooh, I gave Lady Herzahn a full curtsey instead of a half curtsey!” she groaned on the second evening of the harvest festivities.

  “That’s not the end of the world. Better too much than too little.”

  “Tell that to Marron! He says I need to learn to withhold.”

  “Withhold?”

  “I say too much when I talk and I’m too nice to everyone. You’ve told me the same thing. I need to be a woman of mystery like Lady Celeste.”

  “Who is Lady Celeste?”

  “The heroine of ‘The Storms of Castle Greykeep’. Magdalena just gave it to me. Everyone’s reading it. Oh, Dorin, I should read it to you!”

  “I don’t know…”

  “It’s about Lord Stormwild—”

  “Lord Stormwild? Are you kidding me?”

  “He tricked Lady Celeste into coming to his castle and it’s not respectable and she got on a horse to escape but he caught her and now he won’t le
t her leave and he dragged her to the tower and he’s going to make her write to her family and say she wants to marry him—”

  “Ah, I see why you like this. It must remind you of home.”

  She had stopped to breathe. “But meanwhile her childhood love, Sir Penvarin, is searching for her everywhere but he lost his memory in a fall and there’s a ghost, and what I think might happen is the ghost is going to appear to Sir Penvarin in a dream because of this other thing, it’s too much to explain, but don’t tell me the ending.”

  “They all die at the end.”

  She elbowed me. “Anyway, Lady Celeste is a very mysterious beauty. She says everything coyly. Marron says I should work on that.”

  “He’s read this masterpiece, has he?”

  “I just told you, everyone’s reading it. It’s the best book I’ve ever read. The Witch never let me have such stories.”

  Yes, Rapunzel was certainly getting an education in something.

  Crowds and court functions still made her nervous. But I need not have worried that she would be unhappy here. She was quickly making friends and I think everyone in Yirvagna, even if they were too reserved to admit it, appreciated her enthusiasm.

  At night, she saved me from all the frustration and anger that built up in me throughout the day. She wrapped her arms around me, caressed my hair, kissed me everywhere, took my anger and turned it into cries of pleasure. In this, I was at no disadvantage. My body understood Rapunzel’s to such a degree that I didn’t need to see her to know exactly what she wanted.

  Six weeks after we had first arrived, she told me she had a surprise for me.

  “Dorin…my moon cycle is late. Magdalena says I’m probably…pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?” I knew this day would come, but…

  “Yes!” She threw her arms around me. “I can’t even believe it! A baby, made from me and you? I know people have babies all the time, but it seems like magic. Do you think it will have horns or a tail? Or will it have my golden hair?”

  I tensed all over. “You’ll have to tell me, Rapunzel…I’ll never see my own child.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rapunzel

  Oh.

  Maybe I should have known that this news would agitate Dorin. But—

  I was a little frustrated with him just then. Of course I felt bad that he had to deal with losing his sight, but still, our first child?

  “Dorin—don’t you want to have children, whether you can see them or not?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s just—at least I have seen you. At least I can hold the memory of your face. But for all the court to see my child, except me— I’m its father. And these damned useless mages aren’t even trying to cure me.”

  “Magdalena is! She’s been corresponding with other mages! We talk about it every day. It’s just…she doesn’t have an answer yet. She can’t make one appear from thin air. In the end, does it really matter if you see this baby? We will still love it more than anyone, and it will love us, and nothing will change that bond. I’m sure that even if I couldn’t see you, I would know every inch of you better than anyone in the world. Besides, wouldn’t it be even worse if I didn't get pregnant? We are supposed to have heirs.”

  His hands clutched my arms in an iron grip. “I know,” he said. “I know. I just—need time to accept—” He lowered his head. “Six weeks. I’m starting to realize that this might really be—how things are for me for the rest of my life.”

  “Six weeks isn’t that long.”

  “But I have to really accept it, don’t I? There is no sign of a cure on the horizon.”

  I smoothed his brow. I hardly knew what to say. I wished it had been me to take the spell instead. It was torturous to think that I would never have seen anything beyond the tower, never have seen the mountains or the ballet dancers. But of course, he must be tormented by this as well. She was my witch. I should have suffered the consequences…

  Magdalena said it might be a true love spell, but that only drove me to frustration. If it was a true love spell, why couldn’t I cure him?

  “I’m not ready to give up on you,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Rapunzel…maybe having hope gets in the way. Maybe I would rather you accept it with me.” He clutched my hands.

  “If that’s what you want, it’s an easy request. I love you more every day and every time I see you, I feel like I’ll burst with pride.”

  But I wasn’t entirely telling the truth. I went to Magdalena the next day practically begging her to figure out a cure. “There must be something I can do before the baby is born!”

  “Whoa there,” Magdalena said. “First off, I said you were probably pregnant. You skipped a cycle, but it could always be from the stress of assimilating to court. You still look like you want to melt into the floor every time you have to face the adoring masses.”

  It was true, I was starting to like most aspects of my new life, but I hated facing The People. I liked people, in theory. But having thousands of people staring at me? I could hardly sleep the night before if I had to do something public. Especially since my hair had become the talk of the land. Everyone wanted to see the princess with the golden river of locks. I could have been just a sheltered peasant girl to the people of Yirvagna, but my hair was what made me a princess—at least until such a time that I could live up to it on my own merits.

  “But, now that we have some time, we could cast a spell to try and find out for sure,” Magdalena said. “Usually I can hear a heartbeat by six weeks. If you got pregnant right away…” She took a few bottles off her shelf and glanced at me. “I’m guessing Dorin didn’t waste any time.”

  “A heartbeat?” I ran a hand over my bodice with some astonishment that a heart could be beating in there. “How?”

  “I’ll teach you the spell.”

  When Magdalena taught me a spell, it took a long time. She had to explain every ingredient, where it came from and how it was used. In this case, she brought a small pot to boil over the hearth and mixed powders into the water, then let it cook down into a sludge. She took the pot off the stove to cool.

  “When it’s safe to touch, we’ll spread it over your womb.”

  “What’s a womb?”

  “It’s where the baby grows.”

  “I thought babies grow in my stomach.”

  “Close, but not exactly.”

  “How do they get out, though? For a long time I thought they grew in a cabbage field but then I had a book that said they grow inside. It’s very confusing, because a cabbage field and inside your body couldn’t possibly be more different. Only it never really said how they get out…”

  Magdalena sighed. “Oh, gosh. I shouldn’t have to be the one to tell you all this! You have to push it out. It usually takes hours and it’s painful but I’ll be with you and so will the midwife.” She took a book off the shelf and showed me a few illustrations.

  “Oh dear!”

  “Really. It’ll be fine. At the end you’ll be so happy with your baby that it’ll be worth it many times over. And you have good hips for it.”

  To make sure I didn’t get any herbal sludge on my dress, I stripped down to my shift, and Magdalena had me spread the sludge around. Then she took something off the shelf sort of like a trumpet horn and pressed it against me. “Chant with me,” she said, and I had to follow along with her through a fairly long string of spell words.

  Then she put her fingers to her lips abruptly. “Shh!”

  I started to hear a muffled sound like tiny hands knocking. “B-ba, b-bum, b-ba, b-bum…” The sound came out of the horn and it was still such a faint, fragile sound that we didn’t even breathe for listening to it.

  “Is that…the heartbeat?” I finally whispered.

  “Yes, but—listen to the way it almost has an echo…” Her face grew bright with excitement. “I think it might be twins!”

  “Twins?”

  She nodded and I could tell this was something special. But I could only think
of Dorin’s face, wanting to see his babies. “Now I’ve spent all this time checking on the babies and we haven’t talked about Dorin.”

  “Is that any way to talk about your firstborn children?” Magdalena said, putting fists to her waist. She looked so bossy that way, she would have reminded me of the Witch if she wasn’t so cute.

  “It’s just—I can hardly believe that I’m really going to have babies, while Dorin’s sadness is so…immediate.”

  “I’ve told you a dozen times now, you’ve just got to be patient. I’m doing everything I can. The very second I have a lead on a cure, I’ll come running.”

  “I know,” I said, twisting my hands.

  “But remember, they won’t be born for another seven or eight months. Dorin will have a good deal of time to accept the situation. Right now, he hasn’t had long at all.” She grabbed a napkin to clean off the spell I had smeared all over my skin. “Do you want to practice the swift-healing spell I taught you last week? I cut my foot on a broken bottle earlier.” She lifted her skirt, displaying an ankle flirtatiously. “I’ve been saving it for you.”

  I laughed. “All right.”

  Magdalena made another batch of the spell and loaned the horn to me so I could share the heartbeat with Dorin that night. It was the closest I ever saw him come to losing control of his emotions.

  He immediately pulled me into his arms before I even had a chance to wipe the spell balm off. “Rapunzel…you perfect, perfect creature. I’m a lucky man. Two babes at once…we’ll have our hands full, won’t we?”

  “Luckily we have four hands between us. But I guess I only have two breasts.”

  He laughed. “You will also have a wet nurse.”

  “Ooh, we’ll see about that. I’m not sure I’ll want to give them up.” I settled contentedly into his arms, deciding that it was all right if our clothes were smeared with spells. The palace had a laundry room for a reason. “I can hardly believe, after all those lonely years, that soon I’ll have a whole family. Boys or girls, do you think?”