Chapter Forty-Seven

"You're sure this is the place?" Cassandra spoke.

She cast her gaze around the chamber, her obsidian heels unwavering in the shallow water that flooded the underground floor. Her luminescent eyes fell on the empty pedestal where the Mad King's Axe once lay, her eyelashes narrowing as she tilted her head. "How is this supposed to help me? Whatever was here, Varian and his little friends already claimed it."

The artifact once kept here is not what makes this place so valuable. The ghostly girl shifted eerily into view, slipping into existence like a piece of translucent paper through a crack. Pale ringlets floated about her heart-shaped face as she pursed her lips and folded her small, gloved hands. It is the power you bear that will unveil the chamber's true potential.

Cassandra frowned. "How so?"

Her ethereal companion frowned, skeptical. Did you not feel anything as you entered this place?

The uncertainty resurfaced in Cassandra's chest, tightening her ribcage and stilling her breath. She quickly cast it aside; she was here, she belonged here, with the power that was rightfully hers. "What is it that I'm supposed to do?" she demanded, less to the girl and more to the chamber itself.

The girl was the one to answer. This chamber, like all the others, is a conduit for the Moonstone's power. They are all connected to it, like beads on a string.

Cassandra considered for a moment, then her eyes widened. "So, what you're saying is that I can use this chamber –"

– To travel to the others, yes, the girl replied with a coy grin. Makes for a much shorter trip than what you'd previously predicted, doesn't it?

Cassandra stepped purposefully forward, ascending the dais to the empty pedestal. "You said the closest chamber was in the Haderon Forest." This way, she could bypass the kingdom's borders completely. Claiming the throne would be only a matter of days instead of weeks. It had already taken long enough to get to Tarapai without being discovered by Edmund and his band of deluded watchdogs. If she had somehow been able to reach the chamber at the dark castle, she would have made it back to Corona nearly two months prior. By now, Rapunzel would have assembled a means of defense, countermeasures against anything her former friend might do. But Cassandra knew that whatever the princess had planned, her former handmaiden could decimate in a heartbeat. Nothing was going to stand between her and that throne, to see the royal family at her feet, begging for forgiveness for their condescension and lies.

– Your hands on the pedestal, the girl was instructing. It's time to return home.

Martin seemed the least comfortable with the prospect of escorting both the princess and his convicted friend to Old Corona, with good reason: there was no hiding what they were attempting from Yaeger, who had immediately enlisted a handful of his top scouts to tail the small party, refusing any input from Rapunzel. "If you're going to be traveling in any capacity, for whatever reason," he ordered, "you are to be guarded by the best. If I could, I would see to it personally, but as it is, I must remain to protect his Majesty."

"I still think he's let his acting position go to his head," Martin had grumbled as they'd left through the gates, ignoring the stares Rudiger received from the city folk as they made their way across the bridge. Beth cantered patiently beneath him, keeping a steady pace as the reached the forest. Rapunzel's mount, Maximus, seemed passive as well, as if waiting for something to go wrong. It didn't reassure Martin in the slightest. Max was renowned for his legendary intelligence and stellar training. If the horse was uneasy, Martin would be foolish not to feel the same.

More to Martin's surprise, his companions didn't bother to answer his quip. Rapunzel seemed contemplative, her full lips pursed in a thin line, her brow knit down into a determined stare. She wore light, padded travel wear, reinforced with a thin layer of metal sewn between the leather folds. Her hair was longer, about her shoulders now, red highlights taking the place of her once-golden mane. She felt more human to him now, less like a myth and more like a real person.

Varian was silent as well, but his back was to Martin, shoulders hunched, his bow slung heavy at Rudiger's side. He glanced back once, and his face almost made Martin flinch: it was a mask of ash and fatigue, eyes narrow against the noonday sun, but the blue was bright with a vitriol Martin thankfully knew wasn't for him. Maybe it wasn't for anything. The young alchemist hadn't said a word as he'd been outfitted with a leather breastplate, a pair of pauldrons, his signature equipment…and a pair of iron shackles, the key to which hung around Martin's neck.

It took less than four hours to reach Old Corona, though it felt like the sun had frozen in the sky. As the village appeared before them, Varian's back straightened, and he pulled once on Rudiger's reins, gently forcing the giant raccoon to stop.

"Varian?" Rapunzel breathed. "What is it?"

Slowly, Varian shook his head. "It's…she's not here," he answered, his voice quiet and ragged.

"What?" Martin blinked. It wasn't like they'd expected Shay to appear in Old Corona – it was simply that the main road passed through the village. But if she had returned at some point to this place, it only made sense that Varian would want to investigate. "How do you know?"

"Because I can't feel it here," Varian answered, standing up in the saddle to look about, his head twitching back and forth as he aimlessly searched. "The Moonstone, it's not here."

Rapunzel had closed her eyes, breathing slowly. "He's right," she concluded. "It's not here." Which meant Cassandra wasn't here, either. Rapunzel wasn't sure why, but she had almost expected her old friend to be somewhere close by. But like Varian, she felt nothing, no echo of the power she'd once held. "You said Shay's cabin had been destroyed. You're sure that's the only other place she might be?"

"Well," Martin cleared his throat uncomfortably, "we assume it was destroyed. We haven't actually been back since…"

"Screw this," Varian hissed, grabbing the reins again. "I knew she would go back to that place."

"Varian, hold up!" Martin and the princess followed as Varian steered away, heading southeast. "What about your dad? This is our chance to set him free, he could help us!"

Varian halted again, the muscles in his back freezing. He deflated for a moment before answering stiffly, "No. With everything that's happening…he's safer where he is."

"Varian…" Rapunzel winced.

"No," Varian repeated, slowly shaking his head, like he was underwater. "I've thought about it for a while. Soon, but…" He fell into silence, pitiful and empty.

Martin sighed sharply. "It'll take us days to reach the cabin, and she may not even let us in."

The words reignited Varian's anger like a match thrown into a vat of oil. "She'll let me in," he answered, his words hot with vehemence.

The Haderon Forest was still blanketed in snow, but a few days later, as they neared the ancient trees, they felt no magic barring the way, no disorientation or sensations of vertigo. Beth was calm, and Maximus' head stayed level as they entered, following the path Varian took. He didn't need the map this time; he knew how to get there, like knowing the smell of water. After an hour, he saw the tree where he'd tripped, where the snake had spooked him, and he knew they were close. Rudiger could sense it too, and he quickened his pace without prompting, forcing the horses to fall behind as they picked their way carefully down the slope.

The clearing emerged before them, and at its center was a perfectly intact cabin, smoke rising in lazy wisps from the chimney.

Varian was on the ground, sprinting faster than Rapunzel had ever seen. He was at the door before she'd managed to dismount, and Maximus followed close behind her as she and Martin flew to the cabin steps.

"Varian, please!" Rapunzel insisted, trying to choke down the fear in her voice. "We don't know what might be –" She stopped in the doorway, her breath in her throat.

Inside the cabin, sitting at the table, was Caius. His blind eye took them in without a single hint of surprise, his armor stacked neatly by the fireplace. A kitchen knife was buried deep into the wood grain, humming with magical energy, unable to break free. Across the table's surface, polished to a gleam, was Spellbane.

Varian was in the middle of patting himself down, searching for a bow he didn't have. When he realized he didn't have a weapon (much less one he could use), he settled for his bare, chained hands and lunged at Caius's throat. Before Rapunzel or Martin could do anything, the boy was hoisted effortlessly off his feet and slammed violently onto the table by Caius' calloused hand, less than an inch away from the quivering knife. Varian swung his leg up and slammed his heel into Caius' shoulder, trying to leverage himself free. His attempt was nuanced, but ineffective: Caius' grip was firm, his ears undamaged as Varian swore and cursed the man's name.

"Where is she?!" His voice was a visceral howl.

"Caius," Rapunzel seethed. "What are you doing here?!"

Martin's sword was free, ready to attack. "Let the kid go, old man."

Caius looked bemused, ignoring Varian as he continued to writhe and squirm, and the exasperated sigh he made told the room that no matter what demands were made, he was unmistakably in control of the situation. Still, Rapunzel's fists stayed clenched, and Martin's training held true. The witch hunter had deftly cleared Spellbane out of the way, the sword held securely in his free hand. His chair had toppled behind him as he'd stood, and he kicked it dismissively out of the way as he stared pointedly into Rapunzel's burning green eyes. "Two things," he explained patiently. "Firstly, the little hawk isn't here."

"We can see that, genius!" Martin barked, his patience suddenly snapping in two. "If you've hurt her –"

"Secondly," Caius continued, cutting Martin off in the same tone, "I'm doing exactly what the crown has instructed of me."

Rapunzel clapped her hands angrily at her sides. "How is this helping apprehend Cassandra?"

"All good things come to those who wait," Caius answered simply.

"That doesn't answer my question," Rapunzel demanded.

"You've been waiting here," Martin concluded slowly, his sword arm faltering as he realized. "Shay told you to wait here. For us?"

"So," Caius quirked an eyebrow. "You do have a brain underneath all that insecurity."

"She would never do that," Varian kept struggling, but his strength was beginning to wane. "She would never talk to you, she hates you!"

Caius spared Varian an almost bored look before looking back to Rapunzel. "An agreement has been made, the terms of which I am disinclined to share. Suffice it to say, there is a plan in motion here, one that will satisfy both my wish and yours."

"Explain," Rapunzel ordered between gritted teeth.

But Caius shook his head. "All in good time, your Highness. But know this –" He switched his grip on Varian and unceremoniously tossed the boy off the table "– Contrary to what you may believe, I mean you nor your zealous and misguided friends any harm."

"Varian," Rapunzel reached for him before he could try attacking Caius again, wrenching him backwards; Varian had just enough strength to give her trouble, but he was simply too burned out to fight for long. Simmering and sullen, he shrank back to her side, glaring bloody blue daggers at Caius' scarred face. "Where's Shay?" the princess continued.

"You will see her, in time," Caius answered, maintaining eye contact to assert the truth. "I have been instructed to escort you to her, when the time is right."

Rapunzel's eyes narrowed. "I'm thinking that time is now."

Caius raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" When Rapunzel's expression remained unchanged, he chuckled. "Well, then. We'll leave within the hour."

Martin scoffed. "That's it? You'll take us to her, just like that?"

"It's a simple reason, boy," the witch hunter answered, laying his hands calmly across the table. "I won't bore you by recounting the days I've spent waiting in this…wiccan's den. I, too, am impatient."

As he spoke, a sharp pop crackled from the fireplace, loud enough that everyone looked to it. As they did, the flames slowly changed from a healthy orange to an eerie, pale violet. "What the heck…" Martin wondered aloud. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Caius frowned at the ethereal fire, mildly disgruntled at the display of magic. "We seem to have reached a unanimous vote," he mused.

"Alright," Rapunzel placed her hands on her hips. "Everyone, tend to what you need and grab whatever items might be useful." She reached for Varian and turned him around, her hands firm on his shoulders. "Varian…I need you to trust me."

Varian refused to mee her eyes, hollow gaze pouring down somewhere around his boots. "I do trust you, Princess," he mumbled emotionlessly. "But I can't be like you."

"You silly thing," Rapunzel brushed the rumpled hair out of his face. "That's why we need you."

It was nearly dusk by the time they left the cabin, the fire hissing out with a wink as the last pair of feet crossed the threshold outside. The door closed tightly behind them, and the trees swallowed them whole once more as Caius led the way on foot, striding purposefully to the east. Rapunzel wasn't certain where they were headed, but she had her suspicions. Varian had told her everything about Haderon's tomb, the ancient Moonstone chamber that had been taken over by the mythical necromancer. She had been to a number of beautiful and terrible places since she'd left her tower, since she'd watched her old home crumble into a million pieces. Surely, she could handle a tomb guarded by the undead.

But even as she considered it, her back felt naked, her blonde hair absent and her hand growing cold the farther away she traveled from Eugene's touch. But her lover's presence was far too valuable to Yaeger, to securing the kingdom and reinforcing its defenses against the inevitable threat of Cassandra's rage. Rapunzel just knew she was coming: there was no mark on her calendar, no age-old prophecy to predict the day, but she knew, like the feeling she'd get every time she fell asleep at night, praying she wouldn't awaken chained at Gothel's side. Cassandra was coming, and the closer they came to Haderon's tomb, the more certain she became that the arrival was today.

Eventually, they arrived at the hidden egress, the snow swept away recently by Caius' hands. He stomped a bit at the crisp grass, crunching it out of the way as he reached down to open the trapdoor. "I suppose you would have me go first," he assumed correctly. With Spellbane at his back, he lowered himself down and waited for the others to follow.

"Wait," Rapunzel spoke once they were all inside the tunnel. "There's something I've been meaning to try. I've just been too scared to…" She sighed. "But I guess it was silly of me." She took a deep breath and held her hands out in a placating gesture, as if offering an embrace. From her lips poured the familiar song, one Varian had heard before:

Flower, gleam and glow

Let your power shine

Make the clock reverse

Bring back what once was mine

For a moment, nothing happened. Then a light began to glimmer from the base of Rapunzel's scalp, growing brighter as it spread from the roots to the tips, warming her skin as the tunnel grew bright with the light of her melodic spell.

For the first time in months, Varian actually smiled. "I'm glad," he said honestly.

Rapunzel smiled back. "Me, too."

"Let's go," Martin encouraged, and they followed Caius down, the way illuminated clearly before them by Rapunzel's celestial gift.

The chamber doors opened before them, and the tomb's must smell wafted into their faces. Varian shivered involuntarily, and Martin placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder as they walked past the pillars, cautiously eyeing Caius' back. The witch hunter stopped as a different light lapped at the toes of their boots – a violet light that sent a chill down Rapunzel's spine.

There, sitting atop Haderon's coffin, was Shay. Her pale face was slick with cold sweat, her hair was a ragged black mane, and her clothes were torn and stained nearly black by a strange, inky substance Rapunzel couldn't identify at first. As she looked up at their approach, all except Caius were taken aback by her change in eye color: her orange eye was now an otherworldly turquoise, and the other, once vivid red, was now an unsettling, sickly violet. In her off hand, hovering just about her fingertips, was the Moonstone half, glittering like a severed star over her palm.

"Heaven's sake," Martin breathed. "You stupid girl. What did you do?"

Shay didn't say anything at first. For a moment, she looked ashamed, as if she'd been caught filching from a trader's stall. "I…it had to be this way," she said in a voice barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" Varian finally found words, finally asserted his presence, and a volatile sense of life seeped back into his body, down his spine like hot wax dripping down a candle. "You just disappear for two months without a word, no warning, no sign of knowing what had happened to you, why you left, while your crazy uncle was sent to run about hunting down one of the most dangerous people in the history of this kingdom, and all you can say is 'sorry?'" His voice dropped to a disparate whisper. "I haven't slept in weeks!"

Shay had frozen at his seething outburst, shrinking into herself like a turtle in its shell. "I did what I had to," she answered bleakly, the Moonstone half twinkling behind her fingertips as they flinched. "If there had been any other way, you wouldn't even be here. But it is true, I am not meant to hold this," she held out the Moonstone before her, offering a painful grimace. "No one is, except you."

"Then why did you leave?" Varian begged. "Help me understand!"

Shay closed her terrifying eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "One, to protect you," she began. "Should the woman have come sooner, and had you still been in possession of what she seeks most, you would have been the target, and the capitol city would have burned."

It made sense, but Rapunzel was skeptical. "We would have protected Varian," she reasoned.

"Yes," Shay agreed, "and you would have failed. Cassandra does not walk alone."

Martin frowned. "Since when?"

"Since her encounter with the phantom, Tromus, emissary of Zhan Tiri." She took another shuddering breath, as if struggling for air. "The demon is nearly upon us."

"Cassandra is working with Zhan Tiri?" Rapunzel felt her knees go weak. She knew Zhan Tiri was a potential threat, but she'd never dreamed Cassandra would have gotten herself involved with the creature. "If she gets both halves of the Moonstone –"

"Zhan Tiri will claim its power as its own," Shay concluded. She shivered involuntarily, and the pillars in the chamber seemed to mirror the response. "The demon has deceived your friend. She doesn't know what wicked hand guides her on this path of decay."

Rapunzel asked the burning question: "How do you know all this?"

Shay reached a finger out and tapped the Moonstone half twice. "No one could have known. I didn't until I took the Moonstone, to see what was inside the woman's mind."

"Then how do we know she's not controlling you, like she did with Varian?" Martin pointed out.

A flicker of resentment shot from Shay's eyes to Martin's forehead, and he nearly flinched at the invisible impact. "If she was in control of me, you would all have been dead yesterday," she grumbled, almost moped. "Her control over Varian was weak and fleeting, and the strings she pulled were for a suit of treachery placed around him. Varian is safe here." A flash of violet fire erupted from her eye, and the strange black substance morphed deeper into her tattered skirt. Rapunzel realized with horror that it was the same material as the black rocks – a sign that Shay was in far less control than she was admitting. "He will stay safe," Shay continued, blinking the fire away. "She won't touch him again."

"Why?" Rapunzel pressed. "You endangered yourself with the Moonstone just to learn of Cassandra's plan?"

"It was necessary to determine the outcome of this war," Shay answered tiredly, "this conflict fought between the demon and the mages of old. The witches of Pleiades, the warlocks of Tarapai, the artificers of the south lands…Demanitus was the last great mind pitted against Zhan Tiri, and while he succeeded in sealing the demon away, it cost him everything. Your handmaiden would unwittingly do away with all the efforts over the ages to rid this beautiful world of Zhan Tiri and its evil. She must be stopped."

"And how do you plan on doing that?" Martin asked. "We don't even know where Cassandra is."

The chamber pillars shook again, more violently this time, and Shay's eyes flickered to Varian's pained face. "Varian," she murmured. "I need you to trust me."

Varian could feel it: something was about to happen, something that was about to change everything, and he was suddenly very terrified to face it. "She's coming here," he said out loud, his voice shaking. The memory of what happened in the Dark Kingdom resurfaced, and it made his blood run ice-cold. "How?"

"These chambers are connected," Shay answered, gesturing weakly around them. "Zhan Tiri has shown her the way. In a few moments, she'll arrive." She looked to Caius, her gaze nearly empty as she addressed her uncle. "Be ready."

"You should know by now, little hawk," Caius drew Spellbane out into the open, the anti-magic runes igniting across the blade. "I'm always ready."

"Not for this," Shay cautioned, shooting her uncle a nebulous glance. She stood shakily, knees nearly buckling, but her fists clenched around handfuls of violet flames. "This is the convergence, the moment in time when all things will hold breath and see. Even the Celestials don't know what is to come."

"What do you want us to do?" Rapunzel asked.

"Pray," Varian answered, grasping his bow as the ground beneath them ignited in rings and runes of burning white and blue. "They're here."

The ceiling rumbled like thunder, and arcs of electricity shot out between the pillars. Light shocked and sparked in front of Rapunzel's eyes, forcing her to close them and throw her arms up instinctively. The noise grew louder, almost deafening, and her hands clapped over her ears, teeth clenching until her jaw hurt.

Then it all suddenly stopped, and when she opened her eyes, Cassandra was there.

"Well, well," Cassandra spoke. "A welcoming party. How nice."