Chapter 1 The Story No One Knew

"Everyone knows the girl in the tower."

Her voice came out low and raspy, almost like the sound of a page turning.

"The one with the golden hair. The girl whose hair was so long that a witch could climb up and down it. The girl who spent her childhood locked away from the world. You all know that story."

"Rapunzel," one of the children whispered.

"Yes. Rapunzel. A story told in books and movies, just like Mulan, Cinderella and Snow White."

The old woman adjusted herself in her chair. Eleven young faces stared back at her, their attention fixed on the fire burning in the hearth.

"Most of you know how the story goes. A King and his pregnant wife lived in a Kingdom. The pregnant Queen became terribly ill, and nothing the doctors tried could save her. Her husband, desperate to keep his wife alive, sent his men to find a flower. When it was found in a garden, they stole the flowers belonging to a feared witch. Those flowers were taken to the kingdom far from the witch's home, where they were used to prepare a cure for the Queen."

She paused.

"But the flowers were not ordinary flowers. They belonged to someone who had spent years protecting them. And when the witch discovered they had been stolen, she was furious."

"Was she angry because they took her flowers?" a little boy asked.

"More than you can imagine."

The old woman leaned forward.

"By the time the Queen recovered, the woman who owned those flowers had already discovered what had happened. She traced the theft to the kingdom where the flowers had been taken. But by then, there was something else she had learned."

She allowed the silence to settle.

"The woman who had stolen her flowers had given birth to a beautiful little girl."

"Rapunzel?"

"Yes. Rapunzel."

The old woman nodded.

"The witch decided that if the kingdom could take something precious from her without consequence, then she would take something precious from them in return. She came for the child shortly after her birth. Before the parents could understand what was happening, the baby was gone."

A little girl pulled her blanket closer.

"She took her to the tower?"

"She did. The witch raised Rapunzel there, away from the kingdom, away from her parents and away from everyone who might come looking for her. As the child grew, so did her beautiful golden hair. And eventually, the world came to know her as the girl in the tower."

"Then the witch was evil," another child declared.

The old woman smiled faintly.

"That is what everyone says. But tell me something. Does taking revenge make someone evil? Or does it make them someone who has been hurt? And if a person does terrible things because of what was done to them, does that mean they were always terrible?"

Nobody answered.

"That is the problem with stories. People remember what happened at the end, but they rarely ask what happened before it."

She looked around the room.

"Nobody asks who the witch was before she became a witch. Nobody asks where she came from, what she lost or why she hated that kingdom so much. Nobody asks what she was like before the tower, before the stolen child, before the world learned to fear her."

She settled back into her chair.

"I knew her. I knew her better than anyone."

Eleven faces tipped up towards her, bright with firelight and curiosity.

"She wasn't born wicked. She was born a princess. And she had a sister."

The old woman's eyes drifted towards the flames.

"Let me tell you about her last morning as just herself, before anything happened."

---

It all started with a love triangle between two siblings and two brothers.

But before the stolen child, before the tower and before anyone thought to call a princess a witch, there was Arrandelle.

Adrian, the eldest prince, always woke before the bells.

He just did.

By the time the first grey light reached the palace terraces, the elder prince was already dressed and heading for the training yard. He hated bothering the servants, and he hated sleeping longer than necessary.

Frost still filled the cracks between the training yard's stones.

At twenty-one, Adrian was dark-haired, broad-shouldered and carried the worn-out eyes of someone who had figured out young that no one was coming to save him.

He practised alone.

Left guard. Right guard. A long thrust.

Cold air fogged his breath. His sword arm, the left one, throbbed in that familiar spot along his forearm. It was a dull ache he never talked about.

Without thinking, he rolled down his sleeve.

"Early again, Your Highness."

General Marrick stood in the archway, his hands clasped behind his back. His thick moustache was dusted white from the cold.

"Habit, General."

"That's a good habit. Your father notices."

Marrick moved closer and lowered his voice.

"He won't say it, but he does."

Adrian brought his blade down.

"Does he?"

The general hesitated. He looked at the young prince as though there was something else he wanted to say. Whatever it was, he eventually let it go.

"Work on your left guard," he barked. "You drop it whenever your mind wanders."

Adrian raised his sword again.

"Yes, General."

Meanwhile, in the east wing, the younger prince started his morning on an entirely different note.

It took three servants to wake him.

Fredric slept deeply, one arm thrown over his face. Even when the youngest page finally managed to shake him awake, Fredric simply sat up with wild hair and muttered, "War?"

"Breakfast, Highness."

"Same thing."

He grinned, and the page, who had dreaded the moment, found himself grinning too.

That was Fredric.

He got away with things before he had even thought of doing them.

By the time he was dressed and, more or less, presentable, a small crowd of maids had gathered outside his door with invented errands. The cook had accidentally sent pastries to his room, and the stable boys already had a pool going on whether he would leave the palace grounds before lunch.

Two brothers. One palace. Completely different mornings.

In Arrandelle, nobody commented on it. Nobody ever did.

It had always been that way.

One prince earned respect. The other was loved.

People rarely realised how long an entire kingdom could survive on that arrangement before anyone stopped to count the cost.

Princess Athalia had already known about these two.

She stood beside the window on the third floor, still wearing her dressing gown. Her tea had gone cold in her hands.

At nineteen, she was tall and straight-backed, with dark hair and sharp features. She had the kind of beauty people called striking when they could not quite find the right words to describe it.

Her father, the late Prince of Corvane, had left her and her younger sister in King Jeremy's care when he died.

Six years had passed.

They had grown up in the palace, with rooms beside each other and everything they needed. They were guests of the crown, which was a polite way of saying they had never really been free to leave.

Down in the courtyard, Fredric ambled past with buns in both hands, laughing at something one of the grooms had said.

Athalia watched him.

She had watched him for two years.

Never openly. That wasn't how she did anything.

Through a gap in the curtains, over the edge of her teacup, or hidden in a crowded hall, she watched with a patience that cost her a little more every time.

She knew the way his shoulders moved when he was happy. She knew he scratched his ear whenever he lied, which happened often and usually about unimportant things.

She remembered her seventeenth birthday, when she had sat with him on a stone bench in the rose garden behind the chapel.

He had told her, clearly and without the slightest hint of teasing, that she was the cleverest person he had ever met.

That was it.

A gentle, kind thing. Meant for her.

But afterward, she had gone to her room, stared at herself in the mirror and whispered to her reflection.

"He's mine."

Stupid. Certain. The most reckless and earnest thing she had ever said.

She had never told anyone.

Not Arianna, who told her everything. Not the maid who did her hair.

A secret like that was a coin you didn't spend. You kept it hidden until the right moment.

"You're brooding again."

Athalia turned.

Arianna leaned against the doorway, half her hair pinned up and a black smear of ink on her chin.

At seventeen, she was small, brown-eyed and open-faced, with the sort of expression that made strangers trust her at fountains.

She carried a basket of linen she had no real reason to carry. There were plenty of servants for that.

"I'm thinking," Athalia replied.

"It's quieter."

"Looks more like brooding."

Arianna dropped the basket on the bed and walked over to the window, leaning against her sister's side.

"Is the tea awful?"

"It's cold."

"Definitely brooding, then."

She glanced at the courtyard.

"Come eat. Aunt Elizabeth says the Seatopian ships have docked, and there'll be oranges."

"I don't want an orange."

"Everyone wants an orange."

Arianna followed her sister's gaze towards the courtyard.

For a moment, something flickered across her face.

It disappeared quickly, like a candle shielded by a sudden hand.

Then she smiled.

"Hurry. I'm starving."

She disappeared through the doorway, leaving the basket behind.

Athalia stared at the empty entrance.

She had become good at noticing little things. A glance held too long. A cheerful voice that came a beat too quickly. Arianna was a hopeless liar, which made watching her attempt to hide something particularly strange.

All day, Athalia noticed things.

Arianna didn't touch her orange.

She skipped the afternoon lesson, claiming she had a headache. Later, when Athalia checked her room, she wasn't there.

The stable boys fell silent whenever the younger princess passed. One of them, a freckled boy, grinned down at his boots until she had rounded the corner.

By dusk, Athalia was alone, standing at the gallery window while the setting sun turned the gardens copper.

The rose garden's back wall had a small gate the gardeners used. It was always left unlocked.

As the first evening bell rang, a small figure in a plain brown cloak slipped through it. Her hood was pulled over her head, and she moved quickly along the hedge towards the stables.

Athalia knew that walk.

She would have recognised it anywhere.

A tall figure stepped out from the stables.

No cloak. No attempt to hide.

The man took Arianna's hands in both of his and bent his head towards hers.

From three flights up, in the fading light, Athalia could still see him smile.

Fredric.

She didn't move.

Her fingers dug into the window ledge so hard that the stone left marks against her skin.

For two years, she had kept her feelings hidden. She had waited for the right moment, for the right words, for the perfect opportunity to make Fredric understand what he meant to her.

And her little sister, who couldn't lie to save her life, had walked straight through the garden gate and taken him.

Below her, Fredric laughed at something Arianna whispered.

It was a soft, gentle laugh.

The kind Athalia had always imagined hearing when he was with her.

She stepped away from the window.

"No," she whispered.

But the word changed nothing.

For the first time in her life, Athalia understood what it meant to want something so badly that watching someone else have it felt like being robbed.

And she had no idea how much that feeling would cost her.

Not yet.

Because the story of Rapunzel did not begin with a baby in a tower.

It began long before her birth, in a palace where two sisters loved in very different ways, where two brothers were raised to become very different kings, and where one young princess was about to discover that love could turn into something far more dangerous.

Something she would spend the rest of her life trying to hide.

Something that would eventually make the world remember her as a witch.