With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (33 page)

We listened to another thud in the darkness.

Hobs pulled me back by my elbow and took my place at the window. He tried to spy it out for himself, all the while acting nonchalant as if he didn’t care what was going on down there. If it was for the benefit of the vigilant guards, he shouldn’t have bothered. All they would see was the leanness of his silhouette. After a moment of nothing, he turned to me. “You’ve got to be crowned before winter can end,” he said as if working it out. “It’s the only way to find your destiny.”

And then what? I had a life in the Otherworld. I didn’t want to get stuck here. I had no problem with going back to help raise Babs. Maybe Hobs could go with me, but there was no way I was staying in the Sidhe permanently. I couldn’t tell him that though. I could only handle one crisis at a time.

“If my mother still rules by midnight, none of us stand a chance. You lose your powers to her as soon as she opens the portals to the Otherworld. We’ve got to stop that from happening or he
will kill us all.”

“Wait a second. He?”

“The Otherworldly,” he confided. Ah, yes.
Rumpelstiltskin.
The human. “I know who betrayed us to him.”

“Your mother.”

He gave a single nod. “It all makes sense now. It’s part of some great prophecy. A mortal will come for the four treasures, and my mother must have been the one to find him, the boy who rolled up the world.”

“Rolled up the world? How do you do that?”

“No one knows that yet.” His eyes turned sober. “He’ll control all of our powers, even hers. She thinks she can stop him by making a deal with him, but he’ll turn on her too. If my mother would only listen . . . but she can’t feel. She doesn’t care.”

Not even for her own son.
I didn’t like that look of hopelessness on his face—except . . . wait! The hag did care about some things. Wasn’t she trying to exchange
me
for the four treasures? Well, there was no way I was more important than the treasures, and the Otherworldly would know that. No! Neither of them planned on sticking to their deal. Everyone else would get caught in the middle of their fight.

My legs had grown weak, and I couldn’t stop the shaking that spread from my aching head. I sat down on the hard bench that jutted out from the wall and took out the swirly toy. Babs, Halley—no, I’d just call her Babs for now—appeared on the face of it. She was a slave in the Snow Queen’s quarters. They already had her polishing the ice on the castle steps to a brilliant hue. “She needs her faery godmother,” I whispered.

Hobs sighed. “They’re keeping her as bait. At any rate, she’ll freeze at midnight with everyone else if we don’t take care of this first. Let me see that.” It was the only thing I had of Babs, but I surrendered it. His eyes filled with concern when he saw the little girl, but then he shook the toy and changed the picture on it. I peered over his shoulder. The image became a haze of his mother. She was younger. A woman stood before her, an older version of the hag, and I could only assume she was her long-dead mother from another season
.
The ice princess closed her eyes as the woman placed a garland of holly over her dusky curls.

I listened to the passage of time speak out to us as the woman warned her daughter of the only thing that could destroy her:
“Your weakness is but one; though temptation may call, stay out of the light of the sun.”

Hobs let out a long breath. “And there you have it, her weakness.
You
. That’s why she’s turned everything to winter. Ever since the attack against our family and her banishment from the Seelie court, she grew colder and colder until nothing could penetrate her. It hurt her to feel. The cold keeps her heart properly refrigerated. She sent the sun away and deadened your powers. Now, the only thing we can trust is her merciless nature.”

“Well, she did try to give me that apple.”

His mouth twisted at the irony. “That was dumb. She knows she can’t defeat you unless you leave here. If you ate it . . .”

“She wanted me to eat it on the other side, so I’d forget all about you. I know her plan. I read it in the book of faerytales. It’s the Rumpelstiltskin story—that’s who I am, the child he wants.”

“Instead of finding his name, we had to find yours,” he said.

“And, your mother thinks she can trade me for the four treasures. I think the Otherworldly was waiting for me on the other side to take me.” He grew quiet and picked the fruit off the floor to study it.

I leaned against the brick wall. “If I can just stay here until after midnight, I think that might do the trick.”

He shook his head, still staring at the apple. “If you stay here, you fight her . . . and if you fight her, you win. It’s the cycle of the seasons. Summer always defeats winter, and you’re the summer, my beautiful Habonde. The only problem is that she’d never be crazy enough to take you on.”

The tiara repeated the warning in my head, even as I blurted it out, “I can’t break a promise to a faery! I can’t fight her. She’ll hurt Babs if I do!”

He watched me thoughtfully and then a slow smile spread across his face. “You’ve always been a rule breaker.”

“But you told me not to . . .”

“If you break the rules, you become one of us. Join in our revelries, go to our balls . . . eat our food.”

That didn’t sound like a good plan to me. I didn’t want to be one of them. I wanted to go home. Be with my family. Now that I had a heart, we could be a real one. I listened to the tolling of the bells outside. Eleven o’clock. Only one hour until the stroke of midnight. My eyes went to the apple. “Anyway, it’s poisoned.”

“Perfect. The only way they’ll let you through those snowcapped doors of the palace is if you’re dead.”

I gasped.

A pinecone sailed through the window and bounced off Hobs’ head. I hoped it would leave a welt after what he just said. He rushed to the window. Another pinecone hit him straight in the face and he hissed in pain. “Hey!” he shouted below. “C’mon! You’re
not
still mad, are you?”

“Who?” I pushed Hobs aside, trying to see through the night air. Bugul. I recognized that massive bulk anywhere. Only he could’ve taken out our guards. He was just a shadow below us, which was a little easier on the eyes. He pumped his fist. “What’s he trying to say?” I asked.

Hobs squinted into the darkness. “He wants to tell us something.” Bugul acted it out. “Nymphs took you prisoner?” Hobs called out. Bugul waves his arms more frantically. “There’s a dance?”

I elbowed Hobs hard in the ribs. “Hasn’t that muting spell worn off yet?”

“I suppose so.”

At his words, Bugul’s grunt turned into a roar with the return of his voice. “Are you brain damaged, Hobany? The king has never looked kindly on your shenanigans. I’ll tell you that.” His voice sounded strangely cultured for a Leprechaun wearing leather and rags. “It’s about time you let me speak!”

“Time-dependent spell?” I asked. “According to who?”

Hobs smiled distractedly.

“I’ve half a mind to turn you over my knee!” Bugul shouted. “Spoiled, thoughtless, selfish . . .”

Hobs gave me a pleading look, but no way would I allow him to put the mute back on Bugul. “What?” I asked him. “I’d say he’s got it right, don’t you, after what you did to him?”

Hobs was far from chastened; looking far too pleased, he shouted down the tower. “Sorry.” Strangely, I didn’t detect the sarcasm this time.

“That’s all you have to say? After ditching me I don’t know how many times . . . and leaving me to face that lovesick . . . thing? I’d rather you turned me into a frog!”

“Don’t even think about it,” I warned Hobs in an undertone.

“I would never!” Hobs sputtered, clearly for Bugul’s ears since he had ulterior motives to get us out of here.

Bugul wasn’t finished with him. “Carrying around forbidden faerytales!”

My eyes shot to Hobs. “Forbidden what?”

He shook his head. “Another silly rule no one follows—one designed specifically for faeries actually, not for mortals. The Twelve in the high courts wouldn’t like that we have a copy, but what they don’t know . . .”

“They’re higher than your mother?” I asked. “The Twelve?”

“Well, yeah. They’re different, like judges.”

“Why haven’t they stopped her?”

“How can they?” Hobs looked genuinely confused. “She hasn’t broken any laws.”

“You have stupid laws. You know that?”

True to form, he was delighted at the insult. “That’s what I was trying to say. So you shouldn’t care when we break them.” He turned back to Bugul, dipping his head out into the darkness. “Now if you could get us down from here.”

“After what you’ve done? I’ve half a mind to let you rot.” But Bugul was already dragging supplies out of an oversized bag for our great escape. “I have my orders, ones I plan to keep this time. Your mother’s gone too far. Besides, I’ve a soft spot for the little princess. She’s not half as obnoxious as you . . .” The rest of his words were lost in grumbles.

Hobs pulled away from the window. “Now you see why I put the spell on him? He won’t shut up.”

“Ratis!” Bugul shouted up at us.

Hobs pushed his head back out. “Nope, we’re the only ones up here, Bugul. Have you gone crazy?”

 “No, you fool! Her hair!”

The crinkles around Hobs’ eyes grew more pronounced. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s up there, in the walls. Oh, I don’t have time for this, you blackguard! Just listen. The woman gave me the code. Tap the wall three times next to the mirror; it’ll open up after you say her name. If I remember correctly, the code will be . . .”

“I know it,” Hobs interrupted. He strolled to the wall next to the spiraled staircase leading to an attic. “Of course the little minx would leave an escape hatch for us.”

I followed him. “She didn’t use it for herself?”

“Besides keeping her in, the tower kept things out . . .”

“The Otherworldly?”

He nodded and felt around the wall, his fingers sliding over the rough stone. As soon as he found the catch, he knocked once. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair,” he chanted the spell. He knocked again. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” After a moment, he knocked a third time. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.” A stone in the wall dropped, and I peered into the gaping hole it left behind. A thin strand of golden hair dripped over the opening’s makeshift tongue. Words were etched into the cavernous hollow behind it:

“Three days. Leannan Sith. Your fates are sewn; by hour of sunset you shall be known.

Fae, protector and protected of earth, your rule shall die in glorious birth.

Blood of Fomorian, mortal, and Fae; fulfills, breaks curses, the prophecies sway.”

 I turned to Hobs after reading it. “What does that mean?”

His fingers slid gently down the hair as he considered the words. “A spell of sorts? It sounds like something from the Norn.”

The Norn? They were the three crones who changed to three gorgeous cover girls in front of my eyes. They had blessed Babs in my home with a similar-sounding spell. Why had their words followed Ratis here?

Hobs reached up to touch the engraving. “This was meant for us.”

Before I could ask what he meant, Bugul shouted for us to hurry. Hobs sighed, grabbing for the hair this time. It didn’t look strong enough or long enough to do much of anything. I studied it nervously. “Are you sure about this?”

“Some Fae keep their power in their hair. That’s what Ratis did. She had the most beautiful golden hair—her power radiated inside each strand. It was as strong as she was honorable.” He tugged on it and it met little resistance. “See?” he said. “She was innocent of her crimes.” The hair grew longer and stronger as he pulled more of it from the hole in the wall. It twisted over itself, coiling against the hard floor like a golden snake. “Her hair mirrors the strength of her word, the power of her truth.”

My eyes slanted. That was quite the praise. Hobs liked Ratis. A lot. What had been going on between them anyway? “She never lied?” I asked doubtfully. We’d be putting our lives in Ratis’ hands—staking everything on her innocence, and Hobs seemed too blinded by her virtues to see that Ratis might not be everything he thought. “Are you sure she was framed?”

Hobs tilted his chin stubbornly. “We know who took the treasures from us, and it wasn’t Ratis.” He wrapped the golden hair around his arm, judging the distance from us to the ground with a quick glance. “You ready to do some rappelling?”

“Uh. You’re not really going to climb down on that stuff?”

“With you on my back. Just hold tightly to me.”

I nearly fell over at the idea. Hobs gave me a reassuring look. “You trust me, right? Ratis’ word is gold. She’s the most upstanding faery princess I know.”

Ouch. I was upstanding. I sighed. Okay, I trusted Hobs, but I didn’t know Ratis. She seemed way too good to be true, and he seemed way too blind.

“Hurry up, or I’ll take a torch to the tower and smoke you out of there!”