Page 3 of Zel
“If anyone goes against this and eats the lettuce in yours or your child’s stead, they will perish instantly. Make no mistake about that. Follow all my instructions and you may yet live to meet your grandchildren.”
“Please,” Sophie said, hanging her head that she had finally stopped shaking, for looking into the sorcerer’s eyes made it too real. “We have waited so long for this child.”
“Then enjoy them for all the time you have them. When they are no longer a child, they will be mine. Do we have an accord?”
Sophie could not speak, for either option felt equally damning.
“We do,” Gregor said.
“Gregor!”
“It is this or death, my love, to us and the babe before it has even known breath. We have no other option.”
“No, you do not,” the sorcerer said. “Do wehave an accord?” he asked again, looking solely at Sophie, as if needing both toconfirm so aloud. Maybe he did for whatever magic this pact required to work.
If only she had not been filled with lustful greed for more, they might have had all they had ever wanted without needing to give anything up. But she knew they had no choice.
Lothar would be furious. They could only hope he would be understanding once they returned to the guild and explained that only Sophie could eat the lettuce he had sent them to retrieve.
Though it was not the vow Sophie had been hoping to exchange, she answered the sorcerer, “We do.”
ULRICH
“Two more items to heed,” Ulrich said, staring down at the thieves. Surely, the woman, Sophie, had not consumed more than a single leaf of his lettuce, but it had been enough that the taste of her soul had been ripe and invigorating.
The taste of the second soul, however, had proven a hundred times as tantalizing. The idea never would have occurred to him had a pregnant thief never darkened his door. At last, might hemeet someone who could prove his equal and end the torture of his solitary existence.
“First, be under no illusions that to eat of my lettuce makes you immortal.” Ulrich reached for Sophie’s cheek and sliced a thin cut with his nail just deep enough to draw a trickle of blood. “My garden serves its purpose, but it is not why I live eternal.
“Second, you will name the child for what you have stolen from me so that you are reminded daily of our pact. Your babe shall be called…”
One
Twenty Winters & Nine Months Later
ZEL
“Rapunzel!” Gregor yelled, while fending off one of the unsanctioned thieves they had been contracted to stop. His sword glinted in the moonlight and meager candlelight from the windows of nearby homes. “One of the targets is getting away!”
Rapunzel. How silly to have been named after lettuce, but Zel had been born with eyes the same verdant green as its leaves,unlike either parent, and with hair as splendid as finely spun gold in the same golden hue as the plant’s stems.
“Rapunzel! Did you hear me? The target!”
He had also been born a boy.
Jolting to attention, dagger still buried in his current target’s side—avoiding vital areas, but enough to hurt and incapacitate—Zel looked to his father and finally realized that the last of their quarries had dashed past him and was running down the alley. That man was their true target, the leader. The rest could stand as reminders to others if they survived their wounds, but the leader had to die.
So said the Queen, who did not tolerate thieves she did not own. These men had also killed guards when escaping capture after their thefts, like common bandits beyond the city. They deserved to be put down. They deserved to die. There would be chaos in the streets if the Queen’s orders weren’t heeded. There would be curses upon anyone who stood against her, and a crossbow bolt between the eyes for anyone who defied Lothar, master of the guild that carried out her work.
“Rapunzel!” Gregor shouted again, just as he skewered his target’s shoulder, practically pinning the bandit to the wall. While many citizens, especially in these streets, knew who served the Thieves Guild, it was still best to keep the names of any assassins from being spoken aloud. Tonight, Gregor was clearly as anxious as Zel to have spouted his name so brazenly multiple times.
A mask covered Gregor’s face of all but his blue eyes, and he wore a hood like all members of the Thieves Guild. If it hadn’t been up, it would have revealed flaxen hair, though more wheat colored than a match to Zel’s gold. He was a handsome man, slight of build and naturally smooth-faced, which was lucky, for the same had been passed down to Zel. Maybe that was its ownluck, even magically so, because it meant Zel never needed to shave to keep up the lie.
No one outside of their family knew he had been born a boy. No one could ever know, not until the pact was complete, unless Zel wanted to die when he was given to the sorcerer if their ruse was discovered too soon.
The sorcerer expected a bride, and a bride he would receive.
Zel had heard the stories since he was young. Lothar had been as furious as expected when Zel’s parents returned from the sorcerer’s tower and explained what had transpired. Sophie, Zel’s mother, had a cut on her cheek to prove the lettuce had not been what they thought, but Lothar had still sliced her other cheek to confirm for himself that eating the lettuce had not made her immortal.
