Page 43 of Down from the Tower

“Stop protecting a man who would strike you in front of company,” I tell her, shaking my head. It makes the beast inside me growl, and I stamp the feeling down. The beast already tried to come out when he wasn’t invited, and those killer instincts need to disappear. “Midas cares about you only because you can do something for him. If you were a basic princess he would marry you off and never look back.”

She screams, and my shoulders tense wondering what kind of beasts she’ll call to us. But as the rage leaves her, her hands glow and her hair shines that golden hue, before the ends lift and splinter, flying through the air.

A slight sting in my cheek tells me she struck me, her eyes widening as the hair stretches and twists like rope around her. She grabs at the strands, ignoring her glowing hands, and I watch as she struggles with herself.

There’s so much untapped potential in this girl. She could probably strangle and hang the King and Queen if she set her mind to it, be she offers them blind loyalty instead.

Rapunzel gasps, and I watch as she pulls at her own hair until it falls limp again. Her eyes are wide and confused, like she’s never seen this side of her magic before. But I don’t believe that, not by a long shot.

Reaching up, I flick my fingers over my cheek. They come away black, and that’s the second time she’s drawn blood on me tonight. Midas is no surprise, but Rapunzel is something completely different. Tressa’s Golden Princess is more than a pretty face.

I trace my lips with my tongue, licking the blood from my fingertip, and she stops fussing long enough to look over at me in shock. “Your power is only limited if you allow it to be. That hair of yours has a mind of its own. If it can cut, why can’t it heal?”

Her eyes drift down to stare at her hands, wrapped through her hair as her shoulders loosen. I really don’t think she ever pushed the limits of what she could do because no one ever gave her a reason to. She was bored and alone, but for the most part relatively safe. There was no push to be more because no one cared if she learned something new. They only cared about what they could get from her at the time.

Her eyes glance at mine then away, and I turn to deal with my own wounds as she puzzles it out. Pulling the second spine out of her other arm will hurt as much as the first, and I have no idea if there’s any merit to what I’m telling her. For all I know, she’s going to be unable to do anything much with her gift aside from reverse the aging process and slice through skin with those locks.

But age is time, and wounds are something inserted into the skin. Reversing time should remove the injury. It should give her the ability to heal. Just like her anger seems to fuel the power in her hair.

We’re going to be together for a few days traveling. Leaving someone this powerful in Sherwood is an accident waiting to happen. I have no idea what to do with her, but now that we’re over the wall we’re stuck together until she figures out what she wants to do.

I make quick work of my shirt with the smaller sickle blade I keep tucked into my cloak. It rests opposite the reserve of pixie dust that I carry, and I’m worried we will run out before we reach the tavern at this rate.

There’s nowhere else I can think to take her. The other kingdoms are too far, and the woods are too dangerous to send her off on her own. The Missing Shoe is a haven amongst hells, and she can decide what to do next.

Staring down, I can see the spots where the gold is still stuck in my flesh. It’s hooked in, Midas may have been able to control the gold in the dining hall he sure as hell can’t at this distance.

Flipping the sickle around, I start digging into my skin beneath the edge of the gold. Black blood bubbles up as I do so, and I grimace as the knife slides deeper and starts to pull the gold where it digs into my skin.

It’s not going to be fatal, not for me, but it hurts like hell.

“Midas sure has some mean tricks,” Modred says, and my brow twitches as he appears in front of me again. His soul is struggling, wanting to mourn his loss of life while needing to find me. The call of Death drags his soul back to me, wanting to be reaped so he can pass on. Even if Modred doesn’t realize what’s happening, I’ve experienced this enough times before. “Striking a Reaper is quite difficult according to the Red Queen.”

My lips tighten before I speak. He’s got lots to say. “She goes by the Mad Queen now.”

“Oh, right. I forget that sometimes.” The spirit tilts his head, a little too far to the side, and seems to catch himself as he straightens himself out again.

“Does Camelot do much business with the Red Woods?” I ask, pulling at the gold. It hurts, like it’s becoming a part of me, and I grit my teeth as I pull the blade back.

“Hardly,” Modred replies, and I chance a glance to check on the princess. Rapunzel wrapped some of her hair around her arm and pivoted mostly away from us, so I can’t see the expression on her face but I get the feeling she’s testing out my theory. “We occasionally speak with the people of Wonderland, though.”

“Wonderland is dead,” I snap, glaring at him. “The Mad Queen destroyed it when she started murdering the citizens. If Arthur allied with the Mad Court then Camelot stands against the rest of Mystica. No one wants to support her eternal reign.”

“Camelot doesn’t support her. But Arthur doesn’t want his citizens used for hunting in the Red Woods,” Modred goes on, ignoring half of what I just said. Spirits sometimes get chatty, especially during times of great stress. He’s only been dead a couple hours and I doubt the reality of death has truly set in. This is still an oddity in his mind, one that can’t truly be real. He’s going to speak his peace, even if he doesn’t mean to. He folds his hands before speaking again. “I’ve heard of her lover, too. The one she strung up on the wall.”

“In pieces,” I remind him. The only knowledge anyone has of the Red King are rumors at best. He died long ago.

“Yes, dark magic that.” Modred rubs his hands together, and I notice that he briefly gets distracted watching as they pass through each other. Hopefully he won’t be a spirit for very long and won’t learn how to keep his hands from falling through each other. “You know, I swore I saw a Cheshire Cat in the castle in Tressa.”

“Cheshie?” Rapunzel asks, and when I look up her hair is glowing. It’s a dull gold, not like the times I saw her magic at work in the castle, but it’s doing something nonetheless. “A Queen left him in the castle years ago. He ran off and got lost in the halls. They didn’t find him before she had to leave again. He’s my cat now, he has been for a long time since I was a little girl.”

Modred chuckles in amusement. “I wondered where I last saw a Cheshire cat. Wonderland is abundant in them. Those shifters have their own town within the land,” Modred muses, turning his attention back to me.

I glance at Rapunzel, who looks confused by his words. “Cheshie is a cat, not a shifter.”

“Some of the Cheshire cats are shifters,” I say with a shrug, and her grip on her hair loosens a little. One more piece of her life is getting called into question, and I don’t know if she can handle much more today.

“You don’t know anything about Cheshie,” Rapunzel says with a scoff. “He’s my friend. A fat and loyal palace cat, but he isn’t some visitor from another land. And if he is, he was just a kitten when he arrived here. I would know after all these years if my cat was a shifter. What would that make him, human?”

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