Cursed Beauty

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

La Dame

A cry pierced the solitude of La Dame’s slumber. How dare the child wake her at such an hour? She rolled from her bed, planning to yell for one of her servants to care for the baby down the hall. Rapunzel. What a stupid name.

What possessed the sorceress to bring the girl back to her palace? Images from the night before flickered through her mind, moving pictures she cared little for. A fire wound through one sector of the village nearest the palace. The commotion pulled their queen near to see what was happening.

She could have stopped it. She could have saved the people who didn’t survive the raging flames.

But no one in Dracon would have been surprised at her inaction. Then she found her. A tiny baby someone had thrown from an upper balcony. La Dame caught the child and hadn’t let go until she returned to her home. No one would miss the babe. Her parents were now nothing but ashes.

All La Dame remembered of them was a woman wailing for her Rapunzel.

Where were the maids? Didn’t they hear the obnoxious piercing wail? La Dame pushed out with her magic, forcing the door to Rapunzel’s room open. The child thrashed in the crib one of the servants provided.

As soon as La Dame hovered over her, crystal blue eyes popped open, and the wailing ceased.

“It’s been a long day, little one.” She sighed. “You interrupted my sleep.” She’d spent the day on the other side of the wall in Bela visiting Aurora, the girl who would one day be hers. When she’d first placed the curse on the Brynhild family, she hadn’t imagined the relationship she’d develop with the Belaen.

Aurora hated her, but that was nothing new. La Dame couldn’t remember a day in her life when she hadn’t been hated.

One day, Aurora would be like a daughter to her, a family she’d never had. But only after the curse played itself out.

“Rapunzel.” She tested the name out. The girl looked up at her like she understood. “I don’t like having anyone else living in my palace.” She expected her servants to be mostly unseen unless called for. “Your parents died a horrible death, I’m afraid.” Yet, the baby was here. “So did mine.”

The difference was La Dame held full responsibility for what happened to her family. She angered her father every day of his life. He’d been a revered and loved king in Dracon decades ago, but when it came time to choose the successor for his magic, he’d chosen La Dame’s younger brother. The only way for him to inherit the magic was for her to die.

Her mother tried to stop the events that happened next. She tried to save her only daughter as a mother should, warning her of her brother’s treachery. But in saving one child, she doomed the other.

“I drove my brother’s own knife through his back, severing his spinal cord.” She smiled at the memory. “He couldn’t even move in his final moments. Then I went for my father.”

Her family was torn apart by their lack of love, as many families were. Her mother eventually succumbed to self-inflicted injuries, leaving La Dame alone in the world with untold power in her hands.

And a promise.

She’d take care of children whose parents chose themselves over their kids.

Which brought her to Aurora and Rapunzel. Leaning in, she dropped her voice. “You’re mine now, Rapunzel. And one day, once her curse has finished, you will have a sister.”