Page 38 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

“What?” Zel faltered at the order. While before his parents were merely trying to detain him, now they drew their weapons. “I-it can’t be cut!”

“It can by you,” Lothar rasped.

He knew. He must have gotten the information out of Sophie and Gregor.

Ulrich hesitated to call out again and distract Zel while his attention was already split, but he knew how much more there was to Zel than his hair.

Even the massive amount of it wasn’t enough to keep Lothar down and fight his parents off at the same time, not when he was clearly hesitant to harm them.

They both went for Zel’s right arm, forcing one of their daggers into it, and wrenched it around to aim for the hair at the base of his neck.

“Wait!” Zel struggled, as an initial tendril was quickly sliced. “It houses my magic! If I don’t have all my power, you will never be able to kill him!”

“Pipers, hold!” Lothar ordered. In Zel’s distress, the hair had loosened some of its grasp on the guild master’s throat.

Zel was caught in a grapple with his parents, who although halted, had a good grip on his arm and could cut the remainder of his hair with only a few hacks—or slice open his jugular if he moved wrong.

“My hair is part of a ritual necessary to drain the sorcerer enough to weaken him. If you cut it, he will find a way out of that cage long before you find another way to end him.”

Oh yes, Ulrich would, he thought as he continued to grip the bars, sizzling skin be damned, and watched for openings to offer words of encouragement.

“Then will you submit to me?” Lothar glared from where he remained on his knees. “Or do I need to have your parents kill each other in front of you for this treachery? With but a word, I can have them turn their weapons on each other’s throats.”

“Zel…” Ulrich called to him softly, and held his stare when their eyes met.

“It is them or him, Rapunzel. And do not doubt young Rudy will quickly follow. Work with me to end the sorcerer, and I will let the rest of you live. Defy me, and your parents’ blood will be the first spilled.”

Zel closed his eyes, but then, with an exhaled release of tension, he said, “No, to be enslaved would be no life at all.” His eyes snapped open with their own severe glare at Lothar. “I will never submit!”

“Cut the hair, Pipers. Then fight each other to the death.”

“No!” Zel struggled valiantly against them, but his hair fell in swiftly sliced clumps until all that remained was a bob at his shoulders.

Ulrich shook the bars again, for he saw the defeat on Zel’s face despite the fury he had displayed in his defiance. That Ulrich could do no more than watch was worse agony than all his centuries of solitude.

Zel’s parents released him, immediately prying away the hair that had been wrapped around them. Lothar began to as well, now that the hair holding him had gone limp. Zel had moments to act before his parents turned on each other, and before Lothar disentangled enough to be a threat.

“Once they are dead,” the guild master said, “I will put one of their collars on you. But you will not be allowed to die. No. You will make a lovely pet for all to see that there are worse fates after crossing me.”

Ulrich felt the fire in him grow hotter like an echo of his blistering palms, for though he could not help directly, he could speak the truth that Zel had failed to realize.

“Zel! Your hair may have manifested your magic, but you are the source. You. And no force but your own disbelief in that can ever stop you.”

Their eyes locked once more, and with resolution fighting away the tears in Zel’s eyes, he gave a short, decisive nod.

Energy erupted from him with something almost like his hair tendrils, but these golden whips were made of pure sunlight.

The spectral hair tripped Gregor and Sophie before either could take any determined swipes at each other and returned to Lothar as fresh bindings, keeping him on his knees.

Zel grabbed his distant dagger with the incandescent hair as well and lurched it back into his hand—his left, since his right still held the dagger pressed into his palm by his parents.

He was marvelous to witness as he stalked toward a shocked Lothar, a true force of nature, even more powerful than Ulrich could have anticipated. He had never felt so proud.

“You menace—”

“That’s right,” Zel said, staring at one of Lothar’s hands that his tendrils of light forced to the floor and yanked outward.

Lothar wore several rings, but one in particular Ulrich recognized, for the symbol carved into it matched the bisected circle on his own palm.

“I remembered why that symbol looked familiar when I saw Ulrich’s. Long life, is it?”

“Pipers—” Lothar attempted to call out, but Zel leapt forward, brandishing both daggers that he crisscrossed to slice together through Lothar’s wrist, removing his hand. “Noooo!”

The rapid aging was instant, as with any such trinket that was a pale comparison to how Ulrich had become what he was. Zel’s parents remained paused, awaiting their next order, but no order would come.

“You bitch !” Lothar seethed, having become an old man in his seventies with his silver hair falling out in clumps, a worthy retribution of Zel’s having been cut.

“Actually…” Zel knelt in front of Lothar, who was bound by tendrils to the point of being forced into a subservient bow, “I was born a boy. Raised a girl. And apparently, have grown to surpass both.”

“Pi—”

Zel sliced across Lothar’s throat.

Lothar gurgled blood, but when he was about to go limp, Zel grabbed him by his remaining hair to hold his head upright and watched the light leave his villainous eyes.

“Hush,” Zel said as those eyes dimmed. “We do not mourn our marks. They are already dead.”

Perhaps this was the moment when Ulrich had never felt prouder nor more enamored by his betrothed.

As soon as Lothar was dead, gasps sounded from Zel’s parents. Their collars unlatched on their own, and the pair tore them from their necks before descending upon Zel.

“Sweet child!”

“You were marvelous, Zel! Marvelous!”

They embraced him, one on each side, uncaring of Lothar’s blood nearing them as they knelt. Zel’s sunlight tendrils dissipated, and he had already dropped Lothar’s head, but his daggers clattered to the floor now too, as he surrendered to their embraces and wept.

It was some time before Zel spoke, but even still caged, Ulrich wouldn’t have considered interrupting them. He gave them their moment, finally prying his fingers from the bars so his wounded skin could heal.

“Did you call me Zel?”

Gregor and Sophie laughed.

Then Gregor, who had spoken the name, said, “We read your letter.”

“Right before that bastard collared us,” Sophie added.

“We had heard you correct others, of course, but we assumed you preferred for us to use your full name, or you would have corrected us too.”

“We would have listened,” Sophie affirmed. “Even if we had chosen the name ourselves, your preference always would have trumped ours.”

With more tears threatening to pool in Zel’s eyes, whatever he might have been about to say was cut short by the door bursting open and a dozen or more Thieves Guild members entering. Someone must have noticed the unconscious bodies.

“How do I free Ulrich?” Zel demanded, leaping to his feet.

“Fifth stone up, centered behind the throne,” Sophie said. She and Gregor both stood, freshly drawing their weapons to defend against anyone foolish enough to go after their child.

Zel wasted no time rushing behind the throne to find the stone and pushed it into the wall. Fitting , Ulrich thought, as the two halves of the cage parted to free him. ‘Twas the similar depression of a stone in a wall that had started all this.

Ulrich let his aura pulse from him like a rolling purple mist through the room, and any of the guild members who had seemed twitchy backed up as if fighting the urge to flee.

“Your leader is gone!” Ulrich announced, as Zel stalwartly came to stand beside him, “but you needn’t make an enemy of me. Swear allegiance to your new leaders, the Pipers, and I will spare you. Refuse, and you will answer to me instead of their blades.”

An eruption of surprise filtered through the ranks upon recognizing Lothar lay dead on the floor and the sorcerer stood in their midst, but barely a member hesitated before taking a knee and holding their weapons blades-down toward the Pipers in fealty.

“Spread word among your ranks of what happened,” Ulrich ordered, even as more members continued to arrive. They too all dropped to one knee, even not knowing the full story. Ulrich looked to Zel. “We must finish preparations at the tower before the hour grows late.”

“Of course.”

“What are you going to do?” Gregor asked them.

“What all this was leading to,” Ulrich said, “and it requires Zel’s magic, which remains strong. You needn’t worry for his safety. Not with me.”

Almost as if the gods had planned it so, young Rudy appeared in the doorway with the next collection of guild members.

He did not take a knee.

“I will see you again,” Zel promised his parents.

Someone in the crowd muttered, “Did the sorcerer say his safety?”

But Ulrich swept them back to the tower, barely allowing Zel to hear Rudy’s final cry.

“Zel!”