Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (10 page)

"You would not believe me," Cinderella uttered.

Shame pushing tears into her eyes, she made an effort to escape, but Rapunzel's hands turned firm as they slid to her wrist. Glancing back, Cinderella
could see she had hurt Rapunzel yet again, when it was the last thing she intended.

"Let me surprise you," Rapunzel whispered, and Cinderella felt the magic grow stronger. It was beyond the magic she had known, beyond anything she had
known.

"What about your mother?" she questioned. "Will she not return?"

"Not until tomorrow," Rapunzel responded, hands gentling on Cinderella's wrist, but not letting go. "You can stay. You will be safe here."

Gaze falling to the delicate fingers at her wrist, Cinderella marveled at how the stroke of Rapunzel's thumb spread so far beyond the skin it touched, and
did not know if she would, in fact, be safe there.

"Are you a witch?" she asked, and Rapunzel looked slightly stunned, before bursting with laughter.

"No," she replied.

"Then, how are you doing this?"

"I thought you were doing it," Rapunzel returned, her gaze holding Cinderella with greater force than her hands.

"What am I doing?" Cinderella questioned.

Sliding forward, Rapunzel raised Cinderella's hand slowly, and Cinderella lost her footing, stumbling and catching herself, as her palm pressed against
Rapunzel's chest. Warmth emanating through the fabric of the thin sleeping gown, Cinderella swallowed air as Rapunzel's heart sped even faster.

"I shall stay," she whispered without thought, and Rapunzel's soft smile made her feel too stunned to move.

As if suddenly realizing she still held Cinderella in place, Rapunzel released her, and Cinderella felt some function return. Glancing down at herself,
Rapunzel adjusted the fabric of her gown, though it had not moved, clutching at the top as if a draft were getting in.

"You can change if you would like. There are more gowns in the cupboard." She finally seemed uneasy, and Cinderella was relieved she was not the only one
who did not know what was happening. "I imagine that is not very comfortable."

"It really is not," Cinderella admitted, glancing down at the too-full skirts of the ball gown, trying in vain to press them into submission.

"You do look lovely in it, though." Rapunzel's soft voice swept down Cinderella's neck, and she wondered why she kept feeling such strange things in the
other girl's presence.

Made speechless again, Cinderella crossed the room to the cupboard, where, back turned to Rapunzel, she removed the pieces of her dress one at a time,
laying them out over stacks of books. Finally free of the petticoat, she stood in her chemise, feeling strangely exposed, and wondered if Rapunzel's gowns
were more or less revealing. Glancing over her shoulder, she thought she saw the blonde head turn, but decided it a trick of her imagination. It was not
that she did not believe Rapunzel when she said she was not a witch, but she still could not shake the feeling that the very air she breathed was
enchanted.

Deciding against the borrowed gown, Cinderella returned to the bed in the chemise, looking everywhere but at Rapunzel as she slid onto the mattress beside
her.

"Comfortable?" Rapunzel asked, and Cinderella tentatively met her gaze. The pale skin of Rapunzel's cheeks showed pink, as if she had colored for a ball.

"Quite," she returned, eyes scanning the contents of the room. "Do you eat?" she asked, blushing at Rapunzel's responding laughter. "I mean, of course, you
eat. But... how do you eat?"

"My mother brings food to me," Rapunzel responded. "Why? Are you hungry?"

"No," Cinderella said, hand going to her stomach for emphasis. "I have eaten more than my fill today."

Food, clothing, shelter, Cinderella thought, as she took in Rapunzel's living quarters, all the necessities, save for the books meant to keep an abandoned
girl occupied and Rapunzel's hair, which ensured only she could decide who came into her tower. "So, your mother tends to all your needs," Cinderella
surmised, "so you have no cause to leave."

"She does everything for me," Rapunzel returned, and Cinderella wondered if what she saw was truly everything. It was everything Rapunzel required, and,
yet, the tower felt more like a cell than a sanctuary.

"What did your mother tell you?" Cinderella questioned. "Why does she keep you here?"

"People are horrible to each other," Rapunzel answered. "They do unforgivable things, such as holding one's hand to a fire."

"They are not all like that," Cinderella replied, though it was more on faith than experience, for the people closest to her had been cruel and those close
enough to notice pretended not to see.

"They are not?" Rapunzel seemed anxious to believe it, though.

"No," Cinderella stated with conviction.

"I have thought that," Rapunzel stated, jumping up suddenly and clearing the obstacle of her hair with trained ease as she grabbed a book from a pile. "The
people in these books, they do wonderful things, heroic things. They are kind and they are brave. Do you know people like that?"

The question taking her by surprise, Cinderella thought first of those she had known long, her stepmother, who had no love for another woman's child, her
stepsisters, who were more than happy to injure and belittle her, her father, who was too weak to stop them or too callous to care. So, when Cinderella
opened her mouth, 'no' was on her lips.

Then, she thought of Akasha, who helped her and protected her with no benefit to herself, and the other women who helped hide her, and the matron and
eunuch who turned a blind eye, and even the women who wanted to give her up, but never did. "Yes," she answered, releasing a pent-up breath. "I have met
those like that." Looking to Rapunzel, who had also taken her in, by the hair of her very head, who had asked her to stay when she could just as easily
have sent her back out to the ghouls of the wood, she knew there must be more. "Would you not like to find out for yourself?"

"I would not know how to get by in the world." Rapunzel shook her head with sad acceptance.

"It is not easy for anyone," Cinderella assured her, hand going to Rapunzel's knee, but jerking back when something seemed to catch fire beneath it.
Looking for the source between them, she saw nothing, but knew Rapunzel felt it by the force of her unwavering stare.

"How do you get by?" Rapunzel quietly questioned.

"I did as I was told," Cinderella confessed in a hush. "My stepmother and stepsisters, they made me their slave, and I did whatever I had to do to keep
them as happy as I could."

Not wanting to see the look on Rapunzel's face at the revelation of that which she truly was, Cinderella dropped her head, picking at the hem of her
chemise with unsteady fingers. Hand hovering before her for a moment, it at last alighted on her leg, and Cinderella's eyes fluttered closed as she tried
to breathe.

"And how did you go on like that?" Rapunzel gently asked.

"I...I...I, uh..." Cinderella could not find her thoughts. "I...I do not know. Whenever I wanted to quit, to just..." Thoughts of the things she had
sometimes wanted to do coming back to clutch at her, her mouth went dry. "To be done, there was this tiny voice that said someday I would find something
that would make it all worthwhile."

Risking an upward glance, Cinderella watched the smile spread across Rapunzel's face and felt as if she had.

"I imagine you will," Rapunzel said, "but there is nothing in the world for me."

"How can you know that?" Cinderella asked.

"My mother says the world works on exchange. You must have something of value to give or you get nothing," Rapunzel returned. "Is that true?"

Not wanting to encourage her captivity, Cinderella also did not want to lie to her. She could not imagine her stepmother allowing her even the scraps from
their table if she had not worked for them, and had been reminded many times since leaving Troyale that nothing in the world came free. "Yes, it is true,"
she admitted.

"I have nothing," Rapunzel uttered. "Not powers nor riches nor beauty."

The declaration lacking any humor, Cinderella laughed at the sheer shock of it. "Why would you think that?" she asked. "That you haven't beauty? Did she
tell you that?

"No," Rapunzel seemed genuinely surprised by the response. "She said only that I look like her."

"You do not," Cinderella was quick to say.

"No?" Rapunzel questioned.

"You look nothing like her," Cinderella reaffirmed.

The hand on her leg shifting, it sent bolts through Cinderella's entire body like she had never felt. They seemed only to add to the strange affinity,
present and real, though there was no sense behind it.

"What do I look like?" Rapunzel sat up, bringing her closer, and Cinderella took the question as consent to gaze more fully upon her, as she had wanted to
since she first saw her at the window, but had been trained not to by courtesy.

Gaze moving over Rapunzel's face, she took in the low rise of her cheekbones, the light brows above her eyes, made all the more interesting by the single
dark streak that cut upward through the one on the left. Eyes moving down a slender nose, they came to just parted pink lips, and stared without blinking.

"Your face is as pale as the skin you see," Cinderella said, returning her gaze to Rapunzel's. "I imagine it is because you have been ever out of the sun,
for you do not match the others in this kingdom. Your hair is the lightest I have seen, but for those near-black streaks beneath. I have never seen
anything like them. And your eyes..." Cinderella lost herself as they appeared to hover closer. "Your eyes are like the sky, only lighter, like blue
diamonds. You are..." Cinderella shook her head, words failing to capture what she saw. "Achingly beautiful."

"Am I?" The question was no more than a breath.

"Amongst so many other things," Cinderella whispered, feeling Rapunzel's obvious kindness and generosity and cleverness rise up around her, making her long
in a way she had never known.

Gaze falling again to the parted lips, she watched the bottom one turn red as Rapunzel pulled it between her teeth and released it. Then, as if by their
own accord, her own lips were pressing against the yielding surface of Rapunzel's, and Cinderella felt the warm air rush to meet her as the magic seized
them. It was only when Rapunzel made a sound that could have been either surprise or fright that Cinderella pulled back.

"Oh, I am sorry," she breathed. "I am not certain what possessed me."

For there was no explanation, no reason at all, only the way that Rapunzel looked at her and her own pressing desire.

"Are you?" Rapunzel returned, and Cinderella fearfully met her gaze, finding her not surprised nor frightened, but wearing a look Cinderella could neither
recognize nor fail to feel.

"Uncertain?" she asked.

"Sorry?" Rapunzel returned.

Staring into eyes so clear, it was as if she could see through them, Cinderella was snagged by the truth that she felt a hundred things, but sorry was not
one of them.

"No," she admitted.

"Then, perhaps, you should do it again," Rapunzel said, shifting closer, leg pressing against Cinderella's as her hand moved inward to brush Cinderella's
hip, a single touch like a thousand.

Never in her life had Cinderella wanted to meet a request more, and, as her lips again met Rapunzel's, she did not fear any sound or taste or sensation,
nor did she fear Rapunzel when her hands rose warm and unexpected to Cinderella's cheeks.

A flash so bright it went through Cinderella's closed eyelids wrenched them apart and brought them closer together, as the crack of thunder that chased it
shook the entire tower and piles of books crashed to the floor.

"It is all right," Rapunzel said, body pressed to Cinderella's, hands soothing against her back. "It is only a storm."

Another flash, as bright as the first, lit the sky outside the window, and they huddled closer, as if they had known each other their lives through.
Thunder crashing again, the sky finally unleashed its torrent, rain cutting against the tower and splashing in on the stone floor.

"It never rains," Rapunzel uttered, eyes squinting as she watched the large drops invade. "The sky gets angry, but it never cries."

Rain falling harder, Rapunzel pulled away, and Cinderella shivered at the sudden chill as she followed Rapunzel's path to the window, where she pushed the
shutters closed and dropped the wood bar into its brackets to lock them in place.

Watching the night disappear, Cinderella realized she was more trapped than she had ever been, in her home, in the harem or in her life. She would have
utmost difficulty leaving without Rapunzel permitting it, and she wondered how, in the midst of her truest captivity, she felt the greatest freedom she had
ever known.

T
he sky beyond the window turned deepest purple as the dark man slumped upon his desk. For days, he had forgone all but his books - sleep, food, even drink
to calm his frayed mind. So beside himself he felt, he could not tell if his eyes saw true or if they worked to deceive him. For if his eyes saw as they
saw, they saw the impossible.

If his eyes saw as they saw, they saw The Girl in another story, far from Her own. They saw Her changing things, bringing chaos to his order. If his eyes
saw true, The Girl unraveled the very fabric of the world he created.

It was blasphemy enough that She would not return to Her own story. Now, it seemed, She was intent upon destroying that of another, on making a mockery of
his design.

If he could only remove Her from the path She had taken, perhaps he could return Her to the right path, his path, the one he created for Her. Restore the
balance of his world. Undo the damage She had done.

Feeble from lack of care, a determined hand shook as it lifted the sponge from the desk and dipped into the glass water bowl, mindless of the black ink
that turned the water gray. Wrung with reckless haste, the sponge was far too wet where it met the page, and the paper grew weaker amidst the onslaught,
but the ink did not. Just as She had refused to return to Her own story, She refused to leave, existing on, unsmudged, as determined to remain as he was to
erase Her, even as murky water swamped the pages.