A Whole New World (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,13

his orders.

“You cannot escape. Come now, lest it be worse for you!”

Aladdin leapt up onto the edge of the narrow stone balustrade that separated his sleeping nook from the city below. He held his hand out to the girl.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

The girl looked confused for a moment.

“Ye-es?” she said uncertainly.

That was enough for Aladdin.

“Then jump!”

He grabbed her too-slow-moving hand and yanked her up next to him. Then he leapt into the air, pulling her along.

She did scream; who could blame her? They were plummeting from rosy twilight into deep midnight as they shot several stories down through a crack in the ceiling of a building below them.

Their speed was broken by two very carefully tied tarps that Aladdin had installed in case of just such an emergency. Their landing, while jarring and painful, was made softer on the piles of sand that had been gathered there by centuries of neglect and wind.

Aladdin leapt up immediately, the girl’s hand still in his. She was right by his side, also too smart to take a moment to recover. But the door was suddenly filled by an unfortunately familiar silhouette.

He appeared too quickly for them to change direction.

Aladdin and the girl slammed into Rasoul’s chest.

“We just keep running into each other, don’t we, Street Rat?” he said with a tired irony. He grabbed Aladdin by his vest, shoving him off to the second squad of guards behind him.

Aladdin cursed. He should have realized something was up when the captain of the guard wasn’t in the tower with the rest. Rasoul had already reconned his hideout and planted himself by the escape route. Irritatingly intelligent.

“It’s the dungeon for you this time, boy. No escape.”

The girl, somewhat incredibly, began to attack the giant captain. Aladdin and the guards watched with similar surprise as she hit Rasoul uselessly in the chest again and again with her small fists.

“Let him go!” she shouted.

“Well, look at that,” Rasoul said, tossing her aside as easily as he had the monkey. “A Street Mouse.”

Aladdin felt his blood boil as the girl tumbled to the floor.

The guards began to laugh; even Rasoul chuckled as he turned to go.

“Unhand him.”

The girl stood up and swept off her robe. “By order of the royal princess!”

Rasoul stopped chuckling and the guards gasped.

Aladdin felt his stomach flip.

That girl, the girl he had spent the afternoon with, the girl who had leapt off the sides of buildings and pole-vaulted off others, who had charmed Abu and shared an apple with him, was not some rich girl off for a jaunt or running away from home. She was a princess. The royal princess.

Jasmine.

Her eyes were black and hard. Her back was straight; her arms hung gracefully at her sides as if she had too much power even to need to put them on her hips or cross them in anger. Her diadem sparkled.

“The princess…?” Aladdin said faintly.

It was said that Jasmine was beautiful; it was said she was quick-witted. Both of these were without question true.

It was also said that she was a witch with a tiger for a familiar. It was said she tore her suitors to shreds—verbally and, vis-à-vis the tiger, occasionally literally.

“Princess Jasmine,” Rasoul said immediately, lowering his eyes and bowing. “What are you doing outside the palace? And with this…Street Rat?”

“That is none of your concern,” Jasmine said. She put her hands on her hips and marched right up into the captain’s space as if he was no more to her than an irritating camel. “Do as I command. Release him.”

“I would, Princess,” Rasoul said. He seemed genuinely regretful. He flicked a look back at Aladdin. Maybe he thought it was all a bit much for a loaf of bread, as well? “Except my orders come from Jafar. You’ll have to take it up with him.”

Aladdin’s heart froze.

Why would the grand vizier care about Aladdin?

“Jafar?” Princess Jasmine was apparently thinking the same thing. But she managed to control her surprise, turning the question into a sneer of disgust.

The last thing Aladdin saw before the guards hauled him off was her concerned eyes hardening.

“Believe me,” she growled, “I will be paying him a visit.”

IF THERE WAS a moon or sun in the sky, it didn’t matter at all.

Underneath the tallest tower in the palace was the deepest pit in Agrabah, the bottom of which was lit by a single torch. No sunlight, moonlight, or starlight had ever touched its depths. The bottommost chamber had been excavated in the dead of a