Frosted (Frosted #1 | Jackunzel)

{ Chapter Twenty }

Rapunzel didn't even have time to scream. One moment, she was in Evanora Hailwell's tree home, and the next she was inside an enormous room with high ceiling and a beautiful view of what looked to be Corona. Apart from a leather-bound book and a few candles strewn over the surfaces, the room was clean, free of any personal gear.

"Argh!" Mother Gothel swiped at her ear, rubbing it free of chameleon saliva. She felt Pascal carefully creep within the curtain of her hair-and rightly so, as she saw Mother eyeing the very spot he'd just been in.

Nobody stopped Rapunzel as she stumbled back, moving until her fingers grazed the cool, stone wall of the room's corner. There was a window just to her left, but when she peeked at it with the corner of her eye, it seemed, to her utter dismay, like quite a far stretch down. The only other exit was a door along the right wall, right being where Mother stood.

She was trapped. Oh, so very trapped.

A smile slid over Kozmotis's lips as he lifted a lanky hand to motion at the open window. "You're free to attempt," he drawled. "But you don't have to be a prisoner here, Rapunzel. We're on the same side." There was a slight strain to his cheeks, wrecking his attempts for a comforting grin.

Rapunzel felt herself hiss, though her mind was swimming as she tried-and failed-to stop thinking of the window and what it entailed. What would her attempts at fumbling down the palace wall look like? Horrible. Disastrous. Fatal.

As if she would believe, even for a second, that they would let her go in the first place.

Her mind quickly wandered back to Jack, a grounding rock in her nauseating imagination. Was he okay? Were Kozmotis's fearlings and nightmares attacking him as she should safe in this room? And what about Flynn? Hurt filled her at the thought of him. She'd considered him her friend, yet he'd been on the other side all along. She should have been more cautious. She should have listened to Jack, but what Evanora had begun to confess... She needed to know more of it. And now her only source of truth was gone, and it was all her fault.

No.

It was all Mother's fault. Mother, who could very clearly see the dark man, too. Mother, who had obviously been able to see Jack when he'd appeared at her tower. Mother, who had lied about the plague, and so much more. Angry tears made her throat grow heavy, but Rapunzel did the best she could to hold them back. How much of her life had been a lie?

She flinched when Mother finished her slow approach, enough to dodge her lifting hand. Mother scowled, reaching again until her red-painted nail wove through the tangles of Rapunzel's hair. All the way down to her neatly cut ends. "When did this happen?"

Disgust filled Rapunzel. This woman who had raised her, whom she'd spent her entire existence looking up to, had just driven a dagger through someone's heart, and here she was now inquiring about Rapunzel's hair. Mother had told her she'd killed the infected before, but Evanora Hailwell had been healthy, and untouched my Mother's fantasied plague. She'd been a living being, with real thoughts, and real love. Did Mother feel any remorse for her death at all?

"Rapunzel," Mother warned, "you know how well I enjoy repeating myself."

Rapunzel felt herself shiver as she shifted back into the timid roots she knew far too well. But then she caught sight of a fine line creasing the edge of Mother's lip and a new realization dawned on her. How many times had she and the dark man attempted to convince her to their individual sides? They could have taken her unwillingly at any moment, yet they'd never once tried until now.

They needed her, she realized. They needed her for the powers she possessed. The powers they could not force her use in alliance with them.

Rapunzel looked up into Mother's large, grey eyes. She would not bring the Rettersonne's into this again. "I cut it." The words came out hard, stronger than Rapunzel felt in her bones. She did not look away, even as Mother Gothel's fingers clenched in her hair.