Frosted (Frosted #1 | Jackunzel)

{ Chapter Twelve }

Liesa's pained yell would have been enough to send Rapunzel running to her aid, hadn't it been for Jack pressing her shoulders into the caravan floor. His ice blue eyes were wide, just as panicked as she felt, and yet they stilled her long enough for the clopping sound of hooves to fade away.

Rapunzel threw the fabric off of them as soon as his hands left her. She banged against the caravan's sealed doors, stumbling out onto her feet when they suddenly came loose. But when she reached the front seat where the couple were, Jack in tow, Rapunzel was surprised to find that it hasn't been Liesa who lay injured, but Zacharia.

"Do you know what it was?" Liesa pleaded, arms wrapped around her husband's shoulders.

"No," Zacharia answered weakly, back pressed into her lap.

"One..." Liesa mumbled. "We can't make it to Corona in one hour! Oh, Zach..."

"What's going on?" Rapunzel's voice pulled the Rettersonne's attention over to her. But there was something different in the way they were looking at her now. It was more of a studying stare now, like she was a complex piece of art newly displayed in a museum, in which they were trying hard to decipher the meaning of. "Is he hurt?" Rapunzel continued, already clutching thoughtfully at her hair. I could heal him if he is. She hadn't mentioned her powers to them as she'd recounted her last few days—she wasn't nearly as naïve as Jack Frost believed her to be—but she didn't mind helping the two if Mother had done them any harm. It was the least they deserved for the help they'd so selflessly given her.

Liesa finally broke Rapunzel's gaze when Zacharia groaned loudly in his struggle to sit back up onto his seat. "Poison," she finally said. "The witch poisoned him with... Well I'm not exactly certain what." She brushed a hand over Zacharia's wild, brown curls.

Poison. Rapunzel thought through the situation quickly. How could she heal poison? It was something she'd only ever read of in books. Desperate, she hurried up onto the seat to sit beside the couple. "I can help," she assured them, a bit more positive than she'd intended to sound. She knew sickness had never followed her—her body did its healing on its own—but there was no way for her to verify whether she could heal another person's inner wounds as well. There would be no loss in trying, she supposed.

The couple shared a brief look of uncertain, hopeful relief before Liesa nodded her approval to Rapunzel. Without another word, she shifted away from her husband's side and took the reins in her delicate hands. "Do what you can," she told Rapunzel as she cracked the reins.

Rapunzel slid closer to Zacharia's side as the caravan rolled fast beneath them and began to wrap her dirtied, and much too-tangled hair around his bulky body. She began her song after a quick prayer of luck to whomever dared listen, ignoring the sounds of alarm both strangers emitted when her hair obediently begun to shine. When she was finished, Rapunzel gazed down at Zacharia, hope filling her heart, only to receive no evident signs as to whether her powers had truly worked or not. She sung one last time for good measure, and released him from his hairy cage.

She and Jack carefully observed the man for the next hour while Liesa and the horse rode fiercely forward. She watched everything from the corner of her eyes. But as Rapunzel's heart began to soothe its anxious pace to closer they got to Corona, Liesa's eyes only grew more and more alert.

It wasn't until the half hour mark that Zacharia's ill state became alarmingly apparent. He drooped in his seat, rivers of sweat trickling over his temples from a heat Rapunzel could not feel with the wind whistling past her ears.

Panic raked Rapunzel as the realization set in, her gaze shooting up to meet Jack's. "It didn't work," she whispered to herself, turning back to Zach. "I don't understand. Why didn't it work? How do I make it work?"