Chapter 14

Donovan unrolls the large tattered parchment onto the table in front of him, spreading it out carefully. The edges are torn, and the discoloured page feel rough against his hands as he flattens down the corners.

It's completely silent around him, with nothing but the sound of the wind whistling through the gap in the cellar doors behind him.

The flame of the glass lantern next to him illuminates the map before him, revealing each word, sketch, and intricate marking cutting across the page. The edges are marked with evenly placed lines, each noted with increasing numbers. A sketch of a compass is drawn in the top corner.

His eyes scan over the vast blue oceans, as well as the mainland and various islands surrounding them. The seven kingdoms are marked clearly in cursive lettering. They're scattered among the page, each title accompanied with an image of their respective crests.

He picks up the silver divider tool next to him, it's two sharp points branching out like a pair of scissors. He presses one of the points onto a spot on the parchment, carefully measuring the degree of the angle he holds it at. Slowly, he twists the tool and walks it across the map, from his current position, all the way to the Kingdom of Corona. He stops at the symbol of a golden sun encased in a violet circle.

Picking up the leather-bound journal on the table, he dips his feather quill into a bottle of ink before scribbling something into the book in cursive.

Rapunzel coughs from within the room.

Donovan raises his head to find her right where he'd left her, laying on the bed in the corner of the shadowed room. She's curled on her side, and her eyes are closed, but she's awake. He'd thought she'd been sleeping.

He sets down the journal. Distracted from what he'd been doing, he walks around the table and approaches her with concern. He hadn't noticed how unwell she'd looked until now.

As he sits on the stool next to the bed, he notices the way her face seems paler than usual, though her freckled cheeks are a deep pink. Her chest is heaving, as if she's working harder than normal to breathe. Her forehead glistens with a thin coat of sweat despite how cold it is down here.

He softly presses his fingers to her face, immediately noticing how hot her skin is to the touch. Her eyes are still closed as she coughs again, and he wonders if she even knows that he's there.

Something's wrong with her.

Donovan's first thought is that the potion he'd injected into her has something to do with it. The kid alchemist hadn't mentioned anything about side effects.

Then he tells himself that she's probably only sick. She had been out in the rain when he'd found her riding her horse. Though Rapunzel has been safe down here since then, he'd been worried she'd gotten away from him for good.

He won't be able to move her in this state.

He rises to his feet and begins frantically scrounging the room for something. He searches through the scattered mess on his desk as well as the various shelves lining the walls.

Finally, he locates a wooden box among the clutter, secured with a lock.

He places it on the table in the centre of the room, not minding the map and various papers left underneath. Retrieving the key from his pocket, he inserts it into the keyhole until there's a click. Opening the lid, he retrieves a long wooden tube buried beneath a collection of syringes and various other tools.

Returning to Rapunzel's side, he seats himself on the stool again. He shifts closer to her, though she doesn't move. Gently, he urges her to roll onto her back, which she strenuously does after a moment.

He leans over her. Hoping this will give him some answers, Donovan hesitantly places one end of the tube against her heaving chest, then presses his ear to the other end of it.

From what he's seen and learned previously, doctors have been known to use stethoscopes to determine diseases or other complications in a person simply from hearing their heartbeat, or any other sounds that may be occurring within their systems.

Rapunzel's heartbeat is loud in his ear – rapid, but present. That much he had already known. Not hearing anything else amiss, he slowly moves it lower as he continues to listen carefully. He trails it down her ribcage and toward her stomach.

For a while, nothing can be heard out of the ordinary. Then a low thumping begins to reach his ear.

He moves the stethoscope around her abdomen, wondering if he's imagining it. As he waits and listens closer, it becomes clear to him – a steady, rhythmic beat that is so low he thinks he almost would have missed it.

His gaze lands on Rapunzel's face once more – sweating and pale and contorted with discomfort. He isn't sure anymore if she's asleep, but she's whimpering softly and twitching her eyebrows as if she's in pain or perhaps having a nightmare.

Donovan's chest tightens with dread as he realizes what he's listening to. His mind scrambles for a different explanation, though he realizes there isn't one. It can only be one thing.

It's another heartbeat.

Rapunzel is pregnant.

King Frederic stares down at the scattered pile of letters in front of him.

They've all been opened – ripped envelopes and unread words splayed out carelessly on the low coffee table. Frederic sits on the pale floral sofa in the centre of the castle's drawing room, alone and in silence.

It's late evening, the dark night sky visible through the large, curtained windows next to him. The walls consist of pale blue panels, decorated with sconces and family paintings. The polished tile floor shares the same intricate golden patterns that line the high ceiling, harboring a glistening candle-lit chandelier.

Various sofas, lounge chairs, and ottomans decorate the room. There's a grand piano in the corner, with a vase of pink flowers resting on top. Bookshelves line the walls along with various decorative tea tables and cement statues.

The stonework fireplace crackles along the wall, it's dancing flames providing the king some sort of warmth within the dire castle.

Frederic stares blankly through the letters, studying them hopelessly as if expecting something else to happen, but it never does. He hadn't read a single one, but merely opened them with the hope he'd recognize the name at the bottom or at least the handwriting inside one of them.

But he doesn't.

"Frederic?"

He doesn't turn at the sound of the queen's soft voice entering the drawing room, somewhere behind him. After a moment, he hears the soft clicking of her shoes, echoing as she walks further into the room.

"Darling, what's wrong?" Arianna sits down next to her husband on the sofa, touching a hand to his burly shoulder.

Instant concern glosses over her eyes as she notices the glum frown on Frederic's face, and the way he hasn't yet looked over at her or acknowledged her presence.

"She hasn't written," he says after a moment, hopelessly.

Arianna realizes the letters then – the letters sent to them from all different addresses with every name imaginable from every kingdom. All except one, the one name he had hoped to find more than anything.

Rapunzel.

It isn't that Frederic had expected her to write to him, but he thought at least she'd write to her mother. Or Cassandra. Not that Cassandra would tell him if Rapunzel ever did that. But he hoped she would have given them something by now.

Though it's been two years since the princess' disappearance, Frederic knows she is still out there. He refuses to believe she is dead, despite his darkest thoughts and what the rumors may say.

He may not have spent his daughter's entire childhood getting to know her, but he knows she's strong, and brave, and as much as he disapproved of it before – she's a fighter. Probably a better fighter than anyone could ever hope to be.

In many ways, Rapunzel's determination has proven to be both a blessing and a curse in their family. It made her stubborn, that's for sure, and got her into trouble on more than one occasion. Though, Frederic likes to blame Arianna for her stubbornness too. But if it means that Rapunzel is courageous enough to survive out there on her own for this long, then Frederic tells himself that is enough.

He just hoped that after all this time, after two years of doing nothing but think about her and worry for her, that Rapunzel would somehow make herself known to them – just to let them know that she's safe, she's alive, and she's being taken care of. Anything to ease his mind.

Arianna desires it more than anything too. The queen has mourned for her daughter since the day she'd helped her escape the castle. Though she hasn't spoken of that night to her husband, Frederic's despair haunts her just as much.

He was never the same after Rapunzel left, and that breaks her heart.

Arianna strokes her hand down Frederic's arm next to her, "I'm sure it doesn't mean…" She attempts to convince herself that what she is saying is true, though her own darkest thoughts cause her to falter, "Perhaps she will write one day."

Frederic looks up at his wife then, desperate for reassurance. "Do you think she's thinking about us?"

Arianna grins weakly at that. She presses her lips together as the tears well in her own eyes. "Of course, she is."

He lowers his head again, sighing softly to himself. For some reason, that hardly eases his mind.

The king stares aimlessly forward as he dwells on the loneliness of the past two years, as well as the many years of Rapunzel's life that he had missed before that.

"I realize now I had been too hard on her," he reflects, his gravely voice speaking softly over the crackling of the fire. "If I could take it all back, I would. I would give anything, if it meant that I could at least see her… one last time."

For the weeks after the princess' disappearance, he had blamed Rapunzel. He had blamed Flynn Rider. He had blamed his own daughter for going against his word despite his best efforts to keep her safe. He would have blamed anybody that wasn't himself if it managed to ease his own guilt of what he knows he had done wrong. Now, he has no one to blame but himself.

By the time he had realized it, it had been too late.

"Oh, Frederic…" Arianna crumbles at the tears welling in her husband's eyes.

Even though they hadn't always agreed on the way they raised Rapunzel, Arianna had always seen the good in him. Despite it all, she loves him just the same as she did the day they had met, all those years ago. Seeing him so broken now leaves her wishing she could take all the pain away.

If they could go back to the start, to when Rapunzel had been only a child, when that little girl had brought so much life and joy to the castle that it made this place seem so much brighter, like a ray of sunshine as golden as her hair – Arianna would give anything to go back there again, and tell her daughter that she loves her more than anything in the entire world. And that she's so very sorry that it has come to this.

Arianna grabs Frederic's hands out of his lap, shifting on the sofa so she is facing him completely. He turns to her, squeezing her fingertips in his own. She lifts his chin with her fingertips, forcing him to look up at her. When he does, she presses her forehead against his.

They close their eyes as they breathe in their own mourning – together, as they always have been.

"All we can do now is hope that she is happy," Arianna murmurs softly, "Wherever she is."

And she holds on to hope.