Free Fairest 02 - The Frog Prince by Adrianne Brooks Page A

labyrinth.”
    “Is David Bowie going to swing his hips and sing to me?”
    “Uh…no?”
    “Then it’s a maze,” she said, an air of finality to her words that made him wary of questioning her on the point any further. “It doesn’t really matter what we call it,” she continued, “We’re still lost.”
    “What are you getting at?”
    She stopped in her tracks, and Chris came to a halt as well, eyeing her suspiciously.
    “How long did it take you to get through the first time?”
    “A month,” he answered. She winced.
    “Well, we could wander aimlessly for another month, or we could cheat a little and save ourselves some time.”
    “How-?” His mouth snapped shut when she sent a significant look towards the walls.
    “No,” he said bluntly and Rachel snorted, walking over to the nearest behemoth as she answered.
    “Why not?”
    He didn’t respond and she could only assume that he didn’t have a comeback.
    “Toss me some of the clothes from the pack,” she said, eyeing the wall and deciding that the climb wouldn’t be as bad as she’d imagined. Some of the vines were as thick as tree trunks while others were as thin and delicate as shoelaces. Without the flames engulfing them they seemed lifeless and cold, though the thorns that stuck out from every side provided their own level of threat. Chris pulled out a shirt he’d grabbed from one of the spare chambers in the castle and ripped it in half. She didn’t protest when he insisted on wrapping the material around the palms of her hands. It was nice being close to him. When he treated her so carefully, it was hard to forget that she had to keep her distance from him. As soon as he’d finished tying off the strips of shirt, Rachel licked her lips and turned to the wall.
    She’d climbed walls before.
    It had been a part of her regimen at the YMCA whenever she went to exercise. She was good at it. At least, she had been. If the last 24 hours had taught her anything, it was that she had lost a significant amount of stamina and muscle strength thanks to that damned spell. The wall wasn’t that high, she thought to herself. The only reason it looked taller was because the clouds were obscuring the top. She could make a climb like this in her sleep.
    “What are you going to do once you get up there?”
    “Wait for you.”
    His brow rose. “Excuse me?”
    “Look. Why travel down here when we can just walk along the top and find our way that much faster?”
    He looked doubtful and she turned away from him in exasperation. Her plan would work. It had to. She wasn’t about to spend a month taking wrong turns only to end up god knew where. Moving forward, she gripped the first row of vines and pulled herself up off of the ground. She climbed steadily, hand over hand, feet sliding into crevices and body straining.
    “Rachel!” Chris’s voice reached her and she paused, looking down at him over her shoulder. “Come down from there! Now!”
    Rachel’s eyes narrowed at his tone, but when she tried to lift her leg to move higher, she found that she was stuck. Rachel tugged at her leg, glancing down to see what she’d been snagged on. Only to realize that vines had begun to grow up around her leg. Yelping, Rachel fell back. The vines released her just as her fingers lost their grip and Rachel screamed as gravity took over and drug her down. There was a burst of sound, and then Chris was there, catching her in his arms. He landed in a crouch, clutching her close and she wrapped her arms around his neck as her heart beat a panicked rhythm.
    “Did you just-?”
    “You can take the man out of the frog, but not the frog out of the man,” he said mildly. Rachel laughed nervously, burying her face against his chest as she collapsed in a shaking mass of adrenaline in his arms.
    ***
    They used the torn pieces of shirt from her hands to wrap up her leg where the thorns had torn into her skin through her jeans. The wounds were superficial, but Chris seemed