by Laura Kenyon
“He is,” Belle said, just as Grethel slunk silently back down the stairs, shooting Rapunzel a discreet all is well. “I was just with Angus and he admitted—”
“He admitted what?” Hazel barked, shutting her down instantly. “The man is as worthless as they come. A conniving, jealous, whiny, spiteful skunk of a man. Evil, yes. But magical? Not one iota. No, Angus Kane didn’t curse my son.” She paused and gnashed her teeth at Ruby, who’d silently backed all the way up into the living room and was eyeing the door. “She did.”
“She’s crazy!” Ruby shouted even as she broke for the door. But the old, wheezing fairy was barely half as fit as her attacker—who shot across the kitchen in seconds, ricocheted off the couch on which Ethan was now comatose, and halted Ruby just as her toes hit the welcome mat.
“I really have to hand it to you, Ruby,” Hazel spat as everyone else stood frozen, doggie paddling through the shock. “This whole righteous, incontestable persona you invented? It’s genius. Really. So genius that even though you lost your powers at the exact same time my son’s curse came back, this group of fools couldn’t even imagine you might be the culprit.”
Rapunzel gritted her teeth. That wasn’t true. She’d made that exact assertion the morning Belle awoke at the hospital, and Penny had been all over it that afternoon. But now wasn’t the time to play told-you-so.
“Instead, they preferred to swallow that ridiculous tale about Angus pilfering some ancient fairy’s residual magic and using it like some sort of magical boomerang.”
“More like a siphon,” Ruby grumbled. “And that wasn’t entirely wrong. What happened was a combination of—”
“Oh, just stop it,” Hazel commanded. Ruby’s jaw clapped shut. “You cursed my son for acting out when someone murdered the love of his life,” Hazel said as Belle looked more confused than ever. “He was a brokenhearted wreck. He was beyond consolation. So yes, he took it out with booze and bad behavior, but he wasn’t hurting anyone. I had it under control. But then you waltzed in, fresh off your Cinderella high, not knowing even a fraction of the story, and decided his behavior warranted a life-altering punishment—a punishment judged, levied, and executed by you.”
“Believe what you want,” Ruby mumbled, crossing her arms but visibly frightened. “It was an accident. I—”
“You’re full of shit,” Hazel proclaimed, lunging forward to wallop her across the cheek. Ruby fell into the wall and clutched her face. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”
“I meant the second time,” Ruby backtracked, glaring, red-eyed, at her assailant. “The second time was an accident.”
“So you were justified six years ago?”
Ruby stared at the floor and shook her head like a guilty child. “That was a mistake, but I had my reasons at the time.”
Hazel laughed and started to say something about jealousy not being a reason, when Belle joined the attack, her voice firm, angry, and pitiless.
“How could you?” she demanded. Rapunzel could tell she was thinking about Rye, and the Phoenix, and everything she’d lost—not because of Donner after all, but because of Ruby. Because Ruby had refused to let the world turn in opposition to her desires. “How could you stand by this whole time and pretend like you had nothing to do with it? You might have cast that spell to turn Donner into a monster, but you’re the monster, Ruby. You’re the one who should be thrown in jail, not him.”
Rapunzel could see Hazel’s satisfaction as clear as glass—but not as well as she could see Ruby’s terror. It was a sight she’d imagined so many times for so long—the moment someone finally put the self-aggrandizing blowhard in her place. But now that it had come, she actually felt a twinge of sympathy. The dogmatic old fairy was boxed in. Her reputation would be tarnished forever. The closest thing she had to real friends were doing nothing to help her. And Hazel wasn’t going to stop until every last shred of dignity had been scratched from her frail, magically depleted bones.
“I’m sorry,” Ruby said again, looking at Belle as she pushed herself away from the wall. With her mouth tight, her shoulders hunched, and her chest moving faster than a triathlete two steps over the finish line, she looked so … done. “But it wasn’t jealousy. I thought I was protecting Marestam, like my parents wanted. The monarchies are supposed to be beacons of light, not debauchery and excess. Braddax deserved a queen like Belle, and no one can say she didn’t make Donner a better man—even if it didn’t last forever. But you’re right. I shouldn’t have taken it upon myself to arrange that.”
Belle crossed her arms and glared at her. “Then why did you do it twice?”
Ruby laced her fingers together, shook her head, and addressed Belle directly this time. “I swear I never meant to bring it back,” she repeated. “I mean, I thought about it; but I knew I’d regret it. I kept hoping I could talk some sense into you instead. I kept trying to make you see that erasing your fairy tale would be detrimental to the very fabric of Marestam. But then one night when I came to make my case again, I saw you kissing that … that derelict.” Belle and Rapunzel shot each other panicked looks. Hazel’s arms were crossed, and it was possible there was smoke rising from her ears. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. After everything I’d told you.” She sucked her cheeks in and shook her head, trying not to get pulled back into that moment. “Anyway, my emotions took full control at that point, and I must have said something by mistake. You have to believe me, I never meant to. I muttered something—to myself, it was just supposed to be to myself. But almost immediately, you started screaming and Gray started hollering for an ambulance. I thought it was just a coincidence until Donner’s blood came back from the hospital—though now I know that was skewed by whatever Angus Kane put in his body. And as soon as I found out about the baby, I—”
“Baby?” Hazel interrupted, shaking her head like a wet dog. “What about the baby?” She paused for a split second, then amped up her volume and intensity tenfold. She stomped forward. “Ruby Welles, if I find out you cursed my grandson too, there is no way in the universe you’re leaving this cottage alive.”
Ruby’s eyes widened and she leaned into the wall again, sliding further down the closer Hazel got. “I tried to take it back immediately but you know I can’t,” she said, her voice almost a whimper. “You know how magic works. Just because I cast it doesn’t mean I can stop it. His curse is a curse to me too.”
“Wait,” Belle said, tears starting to force their way through. “I don’t understand. If you cast it because you wanted me to go back to Donner, why didn’t it break when I decided to?”
Ruby’s eyes panned the ceiling. “Like I’ve said a hundred times, magic doesn’t abide by any—”
“It didn’t break because you don’t love me anymore,” Donner interrupted, his voice deep and grave. All heads turned to see him, arms crossed by the stove, a mess of dark hair obscuring his eyes while Snow’s orange pot bubbled over behind him. “The cure is an act of true love, right?” He glanced at Ruby but didn’t bother waiting for her answer. “Well, Belle doesn’t love me anymore so that’s not the answer.” He gave a weak, defeated smirk, then looked up. “Though on the bright side that means she did at one point.”
Belle stepped towards him. “Donner, that’s not—”
He waved her off. “No, it’s okay. What you said a few months ago was right. We were … how did you phrase it … what each other needed under the circumstances. We weren’t made for the long haul. That doesn’t mean we should never have been, but you being metaphysically blackmailed into staying with a man who no longer has your heart isn’t the same as an act of true love. Is it?”
Rapunzel watched as both Ruby and Hazel let his words sink in. They were both guilty of trying to fabricate love, to force Belle and Donner together. For the sake of the realm. For the sake of appearances. For the sake of fulfilling what society deemed was best for a child—having both birth parents under one roof even if they were miserable ninety-five percent of the time.
“N
o,” Ruby finally said, standing up tall and smoothing out her clothes. “It’s not the same thing.” She swiped beneath her eyes and flipped her hair as if preparing for a photograph—or an execution. “So with that off the table, the triad was the next best option. And now there’s only one more.” She stared vacantly at Hazel, as if waiting for a train to arrive.
That’s when Rapunzel recalled what Grethel had told her about Ethan’s eyesight. When she dies, all of her magic dies with her. Killing Ruby would be the one sure-fire way to break Donner’s and Rye’s curse. Would it be swift and merciful? Or would Hazel draw it out, getting payback for everything her son endured over the years—be it Ruby’s fault or not?
It happened in the blink of an eye. “I’m sorry,” Hazel said, dropping her shoulders and curling all ten fingers up toward the ceiling. She then stepped forward and slowly raised her palms to the sky, as if they each contained twenty-pound weights and she was walking through quicksand. Donner yanked Belle out of the way a half-second before her hair began flying and Grethel conjured some sort of protective bubble around half the kitchen. But Hazel was already cocked and loaded. She stopped, dropped the imaginary weights from her hands, and flung her arms forward.
A blinding light hurled from the tips of her fingers, darted straight for Ruby’s forehead, then hit the outside of Grethel’s bubble and turned back. Hazel ducked just in time, then tried again with rapid fire.
Rapunzel ducked as one flash of light ricocheted over her head and blew a hole through an exterior wall. Donner hollered when another grazed her left shoulder and knocked the pot of water off the stove. Grethel hardly made a sound when the third rammed into the living room ceiling, sent a fog of sheetrock raining down, and severed a two-hundred-pound oak chandelier from the ceiling.
The crash was deafening. The bubble shielding Ruby fell instantly. Rapunzel didn’t see what happened next, but she heard it—a fizzling sound, like steak being tossed into an inch of bubbling oil. Before the dust even had a chance to clear, a tower of orange flew across the stovetop and zoomed up the curtains on the west-facing wall.
Rapunzel waited just long enough to see Belle leaping up the stairs two by two. Then she raced into the dust and tumbled into Grethel.
“Are you okay?” she hollered, the noise inside Snow’s cottage suddenly deafening. There was no response. She pressed her hands against both sides of Grethel’s face and moved it side-to-side. Then she stopped, remembering some rule about not moving a person after a serious injury. But the cottage was going up in flames. Was there a rule for that?
She looked up for help and tried not to panic. Snow and Belle were still upstairs. Ruby and Hazel were exchanging—she blinked a few times and shook her head. Yes. They were exchanging magical fire. And Donner was leaping around in the middle, hollering for them both to stop. In a matter of seconds, the reclusive little haven had become a claustrophobic war zone. Pie plates whizzed across the kitchen. Rain pelted the windows. Flames shot up the walls. And all the while, Ethan lay spread eagle on the wicker loveseat, staring out in a vacant trance.
She stomped to his side, concern for Grethel overshadowing all of her anger at his current condition—anger no longer directed at Ethan for drinking too much, but at Angus Kane for poisoning him.
“Ethan,” she hollered, grabbing his leg and clawing into it through his pants. “Grethel’s not moving. Ethan. Look at me.” His head pivoted on a perfect plane, as if his body contained metal and wires rather than flesh and bone. He gazed blankly back at her. “Ethan!”
The left side of his mouth rose half an inch, but quickly fell.
“Dammit!” she shrieked, twisting his collar in both of her fists. “Snap out of it, Ethan.”
His eyes flickered a bit as his body flinched, but his mind was still elsewhere. She held on harder, forcing him to focus, begging him to come back to her without saying a word.
There was a reason her wild romantic life had two bookends that both belonged to him. There was a reason she gave a fuck when she thought he abandoned her the first time—and the second. There was a reason she hadn’t sent him packing when she found out about Grethel. No one else in her history could have pulled even one of those things and still been in her life the next day. Ethan was different. The thought of losing him did something bleak to the way she envisioned her future—something that made her feel more alone than she’d ever felt in her life. And her life had some pretty lonely moments.
“Listen to me,” she heard herself saying, pleading, giving in. Her cheek brushed against his chest, then hovered by his chin. She felt her entire body jolt. “I need you. I’m sorry that I’m still learning how to show it, but you have to know that you’re it for me.” She stopped, realizing what she’d just said. Donner had been right. She’d taken it for granted that Ethan knew those things, even though she’d never made a conscious effort to tell him.
“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I was too busy punishing you to let you know how I really felt, to let you know I was so raving mad at you because I love you so freaking much. And I’m sorry I was distant with your family. It’s not because I didn’t care to make a good impression. It was because I was sick over making a bad one. Literally sick,” she added, recalling the soul-churning nausea on the plane, the disgusting ginger tea she couldn’t keep down, and the ten minutes she’d spent looming over the toilet before settling into bed. “I wasn’t guarded because I thought it was pointless for me to meet them, like you said. Or because I don’t want to have—” She paused, not wanting to get carried away. “Or because I’m opposed to the idea of discussing starting a family with you someday.” Much better. His eyes seemed to stop on hers now, seemed to be trying to focus. “I just don’t know how to be part of a family like yours. And I’m terrified that if I do get close enough to become a part of one, I’ll lose them. Just like I’m terrified of losing the love of my life and my mother right now. So please. Fight your way out of this poison fog you’re in, lift your ass off of this couch, and help me get Grethel out of here.”
As soon as her last word left her lips, Ethan drew in a sharp breath, locked his eyes on hers, and wrapped both hands behind her head. Suddenly, it was as if they were locked inside one of Grethel’s magical bubbles, away from the growing fire, away from the screams of panic, away from the world going to shit all around them.
“You’re not going to lose anyone,” he said, pulling forward and planting his mouth firmly against hers. A thousand bolts of electricity surged down her spine, through her arms and out her toes. Then came an intense heat—the sort of heat that came from cinematic love, or bananas flambé, or the walls of a two-bedroom cottage burning to the ground.
Her eyes opened just in time to see Belle and Snow sprint down the stairs and race out the front door holding Rye. She looked at Grethel.
“We have to carry her o—”
“Already on it, love,” Ethan chirped, hopping to his feet and struggling to push the chandelier away. She was bending down to help when a third figure shoved them both out of the way, tossed the wood aside as if it weighed nothing, and lifted the injured fairy into his arms.
“Belle’s orders not to let you die,” Donner said, winking as a flaming beam plummeted off the kitchen ceiling and crashed into the sink. “Now are you two finished making up, or do you need to consecrate it in a burning building?”
Rapunzel looked at Ethan, then at Donner, then at the trees swinging through the air outside like balloons in a tornado. “I think we’re good,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
The first things to pelt Rapunzel as she crossed the threshold were a raging, soaking wind and ice-cold air. The next thing was Belle, panicking and crying and bouncing all at the same time. She was babbling a million broken words a minute—something about help being on the way, a question about Grethel, an angry remark about Ruby, and more praise for Donner coming to the rescue.
“Okay, let’s get something straight,”
Rapunzel interrupted, sick of this tune already. “Donner didn’t rescue you. Angus wasn’t going to kill you and you were perfectly capable of zapping yourself out of there at any time with that bracelet. I’m not saying what he did wasn’t noble, but let’s call it what it is and say—”
“That risking everything to come back for me broke his curse?”
Rapunzel paused, then gave her a flabbergasted look. It wasn’t like Belle to crack jokes during times like these—or at all, really. She scoured her for head injuries and asked if she was feeling okay. “Are you alright? I mean besides the fact that Snow’s house is going the way of the Phoenix and that you just found out I was right about Ruby being a villain all along, are you okay?”
Belle grabbed her friend’s shoulders with both hands and squeezed. “Pun, I’m fantastic. Did you hear what I said?” Her eyes were dancing back and forth and her face could have lit up a nightclub—or was that just the reflection of the flames? “Donner’s act of true love broke the curse! Didn’t you notice? Ruby’s powers are back. We were so obsessed with kisses and romantic love that we forgot about all the other kinds—like a parent for his child. Donner gave up his chance at escape to make sure Rye didn’t lose me, too. About Rye though. . .” She drifted off for a second, her eyes panning to the right, then down, then all the way to the left, then back at Rapunzel. “Well, the important thing is he’s going to be okay.”
Rapunzel stood there, stunned, as Belle pulled her into another huge hug and ushered her towards the tree line. Everyone but Ruby was huddled beneath a swath of ancient evergreen boughs, which provided a makeshift shelter from the rain. Ruby was front and center in the yard, dousing the inferno with some magical ice concoction shooting from her fingertips.
