Page 39 of Zel (The GriMM Tales #2)

Fifteen

ZEL

L othar was dead. Zel’s parents were safe—and they had called him Zel. Why he had ever doubted they would heed his wishes seemed so silly now. The Thieves Guild might not be able to act independent of the Queen, but that was another day’s fight.

The night was theirs.

And Ulrich would soon be Zel’s.

“Do we need to await an appointed hour?” Zel asked once they’d returned to the tower.

“The appointed hour is now, for we must finish before midnight.”

“We have plenty of time.”

“Yes…” Ulrich seemed to hesitate, frozen where he stood.

“You are certain the loss of my hair won’t affect the ritual? Ulrich? Are you well? What else—”

Ulrich lifted him by the waist and kissed him.

All Zel’s anxiety over this night flooded out of him. So much had remained bundled up inside him, even with the battle won, but to feel Ulrich’s claiming lips and hungry tongue, the rest fell away like Zel’s hair had fallen at his feet.

“I am not sure if we have enough time for that ,” Zel hummed, “but I could be persuaded.”

“I am afraid not.” Ulrich chuckled.

“Afterward then.” Zel kissed him again. Outside of that awful cage, Ulrich was a godlike presence, equally sparkling and shadowed like an entity of the night sky, but something else seemed to be dimmed in him for his lips turned downward once this new kiss broke.

“Why do you look sad? Did… did my brutality with Lothar change your view of me?”

“Never. Nothing could.” Ulrich held Zel’s cheek, and though the fullness of Zel’s braids was gone, his bob of hair still brushed Ulrich’s blackened fingers and brought them to life. “Ferocity in response to being wronged is justified. And as your parents said, you were marvelous, Zel.”

“Then is it my hair? Do you miss it? I do. It must look awful right now.”

Ulrich held Zel’s other cheek and kissed him gently. “You are as radiant as ever.”

“Then tell me what we need to do so I might shine even brighter.”

“You have partaken of my rapunzel for twenty winters, and thirty days longer while in my presence. You have proven worthier than I ever could have imagined and made it to this preordained night. The rest now is simple.”

Ulrich drew them back from the center of the room and raised a hand, drawing in the air what then manifested on the floor as glowing violet symbols.

A bisected circle large enough for them to stand in, only this time, in the center of the line was a smaller circle interrupting the division. Ulrich led Zel into the glowing ring, positioning Zel in the top half and Ulrich in the bottom.

Energy surged within Zel as soon as they were situated, as if the symbol of prolonged life—an exchange of it, given the center circle?—heightened the magic about to be shared.

Zel thought perhaps he heard something outside, but Ulrich clasped his hands, keeping Zel’s attention on his beloved. He had the sudden wish that he was in his mother’s wedding dress instead of his assassin garb, but there would come a time to don it again.

“We entered this circle together, and so all you need to do now, Zel, is to absorb my magic with a willing kiss.”

“How though? What do I do differently than a normal kiss?”

“For me, it became second nature after ages of feeding on souls. For you, once our lips are sealed, imagine you are drawing out my power, feeding on my aura, my essence, my soul, and it will begin to enter you.”

“That’s it? I just have to imagine it?”

“Same as when you use your magic to braid your hair. Will it, and it will be.”

Whatever haunted Ulrich’s eyes as Zel clutched his hands, lifted onto his toes, and invited Ulrich to once again lean down and press their mouths together, Zel knew that his devotion, his love could banish it.

This kiss was softer than the others, and at first, Zel wasn’t sure how to begin other than enjoying the connection.

He tried to imagine drawing out of Ulrich all the beauty and galactic splendor the sorcerer exuded, to drink it down like wine.

The first surges of power stole Zel’s breath away, and he pressed their lips together more firmly.

The next was less a torrent and more a steady flow.

He fought to maintain that capacity, taking it in like being flooded with…

light? Joy? No wonder devouring the essence from another soothed Ulrich’s pain. It felt incredible.

“That’s it,” Ulrich said when Zel paused for breath, “just like that, little cabbage.”

Zel tugged Ulrich closer, sealing their lips again, though neither crossed the line of their respective halves of the circle.

He returned to draining Ulrich’s magic at the same steady pace, but there seemed to be no end to it.

The longer the exchange continued, the more Zel could feel how much there was to take.

The more he took, the better it felt to taste the next gulp.

And the rougher Ulrich’s blackened hand felt.

Zel paused once more, this time to look at their clasped hands. Ulrich’s cursed one was not merely sunken, it was more skeletal than ever, like the skin had rotted to black bone.

“It is all right. You are doing splendidly,” Ulrich said, but the strain in his voice caused Zel to look up again.

Despite seeming in pain, Ulrich glanced at either side of Zel’s head and smiled. Zel hadn’t realized it, but his hair was growing.

“Keep going,” Ulrich urged.

As boundless as Ulrich’s magic seemed, when Zel returned to kissing him, he started to sense an end to it, like an echo following the sustained stream to indicate when the well would finally be dry.

As Zel drank it in, slower and slower, he felt the growth of his hair cascade past his shoulders and down his back.

It was returning to its previous grandeur with the consumption of Ulrich’s potent power.

Zel willed some of its strands to coil around Ulrich’s wrist, and Ulrich sighed in contentment, relieved of his pain. But when Zel peeked down at the hand, it only looked slightly revived, not whole the way it usually reacted.

The well was nearly dry already. There was something very tempting about the last few swallows, promising more than the pleasure and fullness and power Zel felt, but he feared succumbing to that hunger and not being able to stop.

Then Ulrich stopped them both.

“That is enough.”

Ulrich’s knees gave way, and Zel clutched after him.

Though he felt an insurmountable strength within him now, he let them slowly sink to the floor.

It wasn’t only Ulrich’s shriveled arm that looked worse for wear.

The whole of him looked awful, pallid and limp with the loss of his glittering vivacity. “Was it too much?”

“N-no. It was exactly enough,” Ulrich answered weakly.

“I am immortal now?”

“No. And you will not be.”

“What…?”

Ulrich’s head lulled like he might pass out, and Zel swiftly lifted him, using his newfound strength that amazed him once he had Ulrich in his arms. He carried him with ease to the chaise and laid him down like Ulrich had laid down Zel when first exploring the truth beneath his skirts.

Violet eyes fluttered back to alertness, more a mauve-like brown now.

“I… will not die from this.”

“Thank God. Then what—”

“I will not die… until you remove my arm and let the curse consume me.” Ulrich tapped the dagger in the sheath on Zel’s belt.

“No.”

“You no longer have to fear the wrath of your guild master. You can live whatever life you want now, Zel, powerful, practically untouchable, but still mortal. And I am vulnerable enough to finally die.”

“I will not kill you.” Zel shook his head. “Please don’t ask that of me.”

“I wish I did not have to, but I am too weak to do it myself. It is why I needed an assassin to begin with. This is the only opportunity I will have to be set free. Take my arm, and the rest of me will rot.”

“Please… please .” Zel climbed onto the chaise with him, hating how the cursed arm was still mostly black and shriveled even with his hair wrapped around it.

The arm dangled from the chaise as if useless.

“Would immortality truly be a curse if it was with me? If we were together? Please, Ulrich. I love you.”

“And I love you, my little cabbage.” Ulrich lifted his head enough to press their foreheads together. “But you ask for forever after only a month in my company. What if you came to regret that choice?”

"Whether a life of twenty years or thousands, love can strike just as suddenly and is no less worthwhile. Or can you tell me you have ever felt for another as you feel for me?"

“I cannot.”

“Did you even truly miss another's touch until you had mine?”

“I did not.” Ulrich smiled softly.

“Then what I ask makes more sense than what you ask of me. Please , Ulrich. Stay.”

Ulrich’s eyes gazed at Zel with perhaps more wonder than ever before. “So clever for one so young. Perhaps with you, Zel, forever would not be a curse. But are you sure of what you ask of me—and of yourself?”

“ Yes .” Zel nodded.

“If you are certain, if you have no doubts in you at all, then—”

The sing of a rotating blade cutting through the air came faster than Zel could react. As he sprung upright, shielding Ulrich from whatever was coming, it did not occur to him to protect the part of Ulrich hanging off the chaise.

A handaxe lodged into Ulrich’s cursed arm beneath his shoulder, severing everything beneath it.

“Noooooo!”

As the remaining blackness and violet veins began to spread throughout the rest of Ulrich’s body, the power in Zel unleashed with such a fury that he levitated off the chaise.

His regrown hair spiraled around him like mythic snakes and lashed out at the attacker in the window, who Zel only realized was Rudy in the same instant that his hair threw him from the tower.