Human Again

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  All because of Kiara.

  My heart swelled with pride standing beside her as we admired the rose bushes that would soon be in full bloom. I could hardly believe that the curse that had so haunted me for so long had also brought with it a blessing I could never have hoped for if I hadn’t been driven away from the palace.

  There was only one thing left that needed clearing up. Something that had been nagging at me since the deeper meaning in the words Kiara had spoken to me the day she came back finally started to make sense in my clearing mind.

  “Kiara?”

  “Yes?” she replied with a warm smile.

  “Why did you—How did you know what had happened to me?” I asked.

  Kiara turned her rich brown eyes upon me, looking straight into my heart to show me the truth in hers. “I couldn’t bear to think of how I’d left you,” she said. “And then you were just lying there—”

  “Kiara,” I said firmly, before she could ramble any more. “How did you know?”

  She looked at me with a question in her eyes, as if the answer was so obvious she couldn’t believe I hadn’t already figured it out. “The mirror showed me.”

  My heart stopped.

  All sound faded away.

  The faery said the mirror only showed one thing.

  Could it be?

  I dropped to one knee, just as on the night I’d given her the very mirror that had brought her back home to me.

  “Marry me?” I asked.

  This time she didn’t say no. She didn’t refuse me at all. She tugged her hand, forcing me up and toward her with it. And that was the only answer I needed.

  A warmth, a wonder, a wholesomeness so complete surged through me, a feeling unlike any I had ever felt before. Had I looked, I’m sure I would’ve seen a purple mist swirling around us, round and round until it misted away completely, the final breaking of the curse that had nearly destroyed me.

  I held Kiara with the large paws of my hands, and I held the entire world.

  I had a sudden urge to run to Ms. Potsdam, swing her around and reassure her that the day had finally come when we would all be human again. I wanted to step out onto the highest turrets of the castle and sound out my victory, just as I’d once given voice to my rage. I wanted to play every instrument known to man, to sing a song too rich for words, a melody with no end.

  But something stayed me.

  A word, a whisper, a warning from my past. The last time I felt anything like this was when Yarrow had put his hand over my heart and the darkness stirred beneath the serenity of his touch. It was when he’d cautioned about just how deep a beast’s claws can dig into a man’s soul, and just how tightly they hold on. When he told me about just what kind of mark they could leave, and how the ultimate defeat of the beast lay in its origins.

  A void. An absence of a love abruptly stolen. One only made possible because there was so much of it to lose. A potential once again manifesting itself because of all I now had.

  I can only fully understand it all these years later when I look back on the course our lives took from the decision made that day. For in many ways, Kiara had never truly been my prisoner, not until that very moment when she foolishly gave me her precious heart in exchange for the blackened, ravaged wreck that was left of mine.

  After Ever After

  My family only welcomed me back with open arms once they met Kiara, because even they could not deny such an incandescent being. The positive effect she had on me, would always have on me, was quite obvious to anyone with even a cursory glance. I suspect as well that Kiara was also a balm for their worst fears, namely that I would never marry, that there would never be a woman who would willingly choose to join her life with my wretched one even for the time it took to produce an heir. They must have noticed the calm she brought me, must have noticed how much clearer my eyes were, how much less torment was visible in their sky blue depths. I had noticed it myself before we’d packed up the castle to return to the palace at Panthrea, now home once more. Though Kiara and I would never forget the castle at Monsephe. It would remain our own safe haven, our own retreat for when we needed a break from the trials of court, and Kiara wanted to visit her faithful village friends.

  The wedding took place just a few short months later, neither one of us wanting to delay something that seemed too good to be true. Kiara’s family refused to attend, which must have been mighty difficult for Trina. I didn’t believe she turned down the royal ceremony at the palace without Leanna and the others very strongly leaning on her. Kiara’s father was also too sick to travel and it wouldn’t be much longer before he left this world. A part of me always wondered if heartbreak hadn’t struck the final blow.

  Kiara, of course, was radiant that day in a deep blue dress glistening with gray sapphires and blue benitoite that shone more from her innate light than the hundreds of candles later lit for the celebratory banquet. We danced together for the first time since my party over a year before, and just as then, everyone and everything faded away so the world held just the two of us and nothing else mattered at all.

  To tell the truth, I knew the wedding was a big celebration, as it should be for any crown prince and only son. I also knew who was there, what was served, but I don’t clearly remember much beyond that. The only images from that day still clearly chiseled in memory are the ones that hold Kiara, her glow illuminating anyone who was nearby.

  I know that Princess Lyla was there, which was the first time I met her, though Daimyon couldn’t attend because he was still fighting in the south with Prince Alex. Considering the faery tale that had grown around them, I could understand how she of all women had been the one to capture the Huntsman’s heart. She was beautiful, but in a way vastly different than Kiara. Kiara drew a person in with her warmth, a warmth that could reassure a dying man to the depths of his bones, a warmth more welcome than a bright spring day. She was radiant and heartening, sublime and comforting, the very peace and tranquility needed to tame a monstrous beast.

  Lyla’s beauty, like the woman herself, was much harder to contain. If Kiara was the light of the sun, then Lyla was the burning surface, the white, blinding heat blazing from its core. She was dangerous and she was wild, a beauty that raged in the surety that there was no other like it in the world. Like lightening, like fire, hers was a brightness so awesome and intense, it took all a man had to look away.

  If the need ever arose, I had told Kiara that Daimyon would keep her safe from me. Once I met her, I suspected the same of Lyla.

  After our marriage, life resumed where it had left off on the eve of my eighteenth birthday. I began to work alongside my father as he trained me to one day take over the throne. I won’t say that he was suddenly easy on me, that I wasn’t still subject to his occasional grunts and glances of disapproval, but he also began to treat me with some respect. Maybe it was because I’d fought the darkness and supposedly won, maybe it was because I had met a woman like Kiara and somehow managed to get her to love me. Either way, for the first time, I felt that he actually trusted me to rule the kingdom when he no longer would. For the first time, Adlard’s ghost didn’t ambush me around every corner.

  I had finished destroying the ruined painting of my family before we left the castle, made sure to incinerate every last bit of it not only to signal the end of the broken life that was, but also because I didn’t want Kiara to ever see it. She may have fully accepted me, but that didn’t mean I was ready for her to learn about every dark secret lurking in the underbelly of my past. Best to rid myself of as much as possible. There was so much awaiting in our future together.

  After the wedding, we sat for a new family portrait, in which I insisted Kiara be included. That meant Amellia’s husband was also added in, but whereas the idea of him once drove me into murderous rage, I easily shrugged it off then. Especially after I met him. If I ever suspected Amellia was meant to replace me in any way, I took comfort in knowing that her husband was nothing like my Kiara. Not only because he
was a rather plain looking man, but also because there was nothing about him that shone. His father may have been powerful, but his appeal stopped there: he was inarguably a thoroughly dull man. I towered over him, and I looked down on him as well.

  I wished my sister much happiness and banished any thought of competition thereafter.

  I never told Kiara the truth about that moment she saw in the mirror, when it showed my collapsed form among the remnants of a rose garden once so precious to me. If therein she saw the image of a lovelorn man giving in among the token of his heart’s fancy, then so be it. It was the moment that brought her back to me and I wasn’t about to correct her interpretation of it.

  She didn’t need to know that what had felled me was the beast launching its final strike, so that if she hadn’t been there when I awoke, I’d surely have come to look like the hideous monster spoken of in the faery tales. From the versions I’ve heard, that beast was supposed to still possess a kindness, a human grace despite his grotesque features. The beast that I was never lost its grace; I had become a beast specifically because I had lost my kindness, my compassion, and thereby my humanity. What Kiara really saw that day was a long overdue surrender to the darkness that had stalked me since my youth.

  Then, as soon as Kiara committed herself to me, things changed. Not only did I begin to regain the fire of life, but Kiara was no longer shy about her resolve to bring back the best parts of me. But it was more than that, as well. From that day forward, she regarded my struggle with a new level of seriousness in that my stability became her responsibility, as if she knew that her presence was the only buoy on this earth that could truly keep my anger at bay. Though, as time itself would show, her iron will wouldn’t be enough to undo the damage already wrought. As Yarrow had predicted, the faery’s curse had perverted an essential part of me, so that it always remained a gnarled root pushing against cobbled stones, fighting them to breaking and creating hazards for innocent passersby.

  I only once tried telling her about it, right before we were married to give her fair warning that our supposed happily ever after would not be enough to keep me at peace forever. I wasn’t entirely sure how to admit to her the cursed reality that she wouldn’t always be enough, that her presence was not strong enough to counteract all the damage that had been done in over twenty years of life.

  “You haven’t lost your temper in months!” she exclaimed in response, giving me a look that wondered at why I would bring up such sordid business best buried in the past.

  “But I still feel it,” I tried to get her to understand. “I know it’s still there.”

  “If it hasn’t shown itself then it’s as good as dead,” she reasoned.

  I gave her a doubtful look. “I don’t know about that.”

  Kiara took my hands in hers and forced me to look up at her. “Ignatius Azahr, do you forget that I’m here?” She raised our joint hands and kissed the knuckles on each of mine. “I’m watching over you, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  “If it does—” I began.

  “It won’t,” she cut in adamantly.

  “But if it does,” I insisted, “promise me one thing.”

  “I’m not locking you in the dungeon, Azahr,” she warned.

  I smiled and shook my head. Heavens, she was so stubborn, so beautiful. “Go to Daimyon.”

  “Why?” she asked, forcing her voice to keep from breaking, refusing the possibility I was insisting could still be a reality.

  I released one of my hands so I could stroke her hair. Kiara, my light, my fire, the single most precious thing in my life. “Because I trust him to protect you. From me.”

  Kiara shook her head at me, her ringlets whipping against her cheeks from the force of her denial. “I won’t let it happen,” she declared. “I won’t. As long as I’m here, it will never come back.”

  “Then you can never leave,” I told her.

  She gripped my hand fiercely. “I don’t plan to.”

  I offered her a reassured smile and even bent to take her gratefully in my arms, but a part of me knew that brave words were not enough to fill a soul riddled with furrows from the beast’s claws. Even then, a low laugh rumbled through my core, all throughout my limbs so I couldn’t help but shudder.

  I knew Kiara would be as good as her word, I knew it in the way she had taken charge over my wellbeing, which only worried me even more. I wanted her to stay with me, wanted her to be safe, but there was yet a long journey ahead of me. And whatever would be, whomever I’d be, she’d as much promised that she would never leave me.

  I never had the courage to ask if she ever came to regret that solemn vow.

  My suspicions about the beast still within proved true a few years later. For about a decade following Prince Alex’s final victory of the border wars, the palace held a lavish celebration in honor of the last of our troops’ safe return home. That first year, all soldiers were invited in appreciation for their service. Each subsequent year, the invites rotated between the different units.

  One such year, about four or five years after the initial victory, I caught sight of the soldier who had been beside me that long-ago night when we raided the ogres. He was presentable enough, but the acrid scent of battle still lingered about him. I suspected that he was one such man for whom it would never leave, just as his face, and surely other parts of his body as well, had been scarred from the war he’d fought in. He physically looked more like a beast than I ever did, ugly scars marred his left cheek and the streaks along his forehead showed where he’d been marred by a gargoyle during the raid. He’d been promoted a few times since I’d seen him and I didn’t have to ask about what he’d done to know that every ribbon decorating his chest was well deserved.

  “Heaven bless us, you’re alive,” I said by way of greeting, offering my hand not as a prince to a subject but as a brother-in-arms.

  He shook it once firmly before pulling away and bowing, wise enough not to abuse the gesture. “Only by Heaven’s grace, Your Highness,” was his modest reply.

  “Then I am grateful to Heaven,” I said. “What have you been about, soldier?”

  The soldier shrugged. “Farming. Perhaps one day I’ll even find a wife like all men must.” He spoke by rote, showing no enthusiasm for his current circumstance.

  I tilted my head, and studied his expression. “Are you satisfied?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have guessed it of you.”

  “The prince must know there’s not much else for a man like me,” he countered politely.

  I frowned at him, and soon my mind churned with an idea. I knew what he was referring to when he said he hadn’t much else to look forward to. Here was a man who’d been raised and forged in the fires of war and a quiet life on a farm was not enough for him anymore. He could always learn a trade or apprentice to a craftsman, but neither appealed to him as he was so sure he already had one. The trade of soldiering. The trade of serving his king.

  “It just so happens,” I said, sharing a significant look, “that I’d like to assign a new captain of my personal guard.”

  “I’m sure His Highness will make the right decision,” he replied.

  “I will,” I confirmed, “as I’ve finally found the right man. What’s your name, soldier?”

  “Heitor, Your Highness,” he replied.

  “Captain Heitor,” I corrected.

  The soldier bowed low once more. “I’m honored, Highness. When do I start?”

  I shrugged. “Right now,” I replied.

  I wasn’t entirely certain how Jaxel or Kellan would respond to the news that I had appointed a captain over them, but I didn’t much care to worry about it then. Jaxel was more than capable of filling the position, and had been unofficially since we’d returned, but I was wary of ever allowing him to be too far from me. He and Kellan had to be kept as close as possible, as often as possible, just in case.

  Later that night, after most had already gone to sleep and the party was already winding down, the fe
w of us who remained were finishing off a final drink in a quiet corner of the ballroom. Kiara, who had made instant friends with almost everyone in attendance, was seeing the last of our guests out, so I had one eye on her and the other on the group.

  We were a handful of people, a mix of soldiers and noblemen, who had been prodding each returned hero to share their war stories throughout the night. It was a vicarious means for them to join a war they weren’t able, or were too cowardly, to fight in. As my focus was fixed on Kiara, I only paid them half a mind before one nobleman yanked my attention back.

  “His Highness fought in the first wars, if I’m not mistaken?” he inquired. “On the northwestern borders.”

  “I was there,” I confirmed.

  “We heard many reports of the prince’s brave deeds,” he went on, “but better to hear it from the source.”

  “I don’t have much to share,” I replied quietly.

  “I heard the prince felled a murder of gargoyles,” one of the soldiers eagerly, yet foolishly, chimed in. “Took them down with only a knife and his bare hands.”

  “Is it true, Your Highness?” the nobleman turned to me with unabashed awe.

  I looked down at my hands in response, seeing once more the blackness and red blood that coated them when I’d ripped the wings off the gargoyles’ backs. I hid the shudder that surfaced at the memory. What kind of man had I been? I couldn’t stand the awe that I was being regarded with now, couldn’t stand that these men wished to celebrate the barbarism of the beast I’d once been.

  As he saw I wasn’t about to answer, the nobleman turned to the soldiers instead, poking them for the stories that had been revolving about me and my part in the war. My hearing dulled as my heartbeat suddenly thudded loudly in my ears. Most of what they said was true, most of it was grossly exaggerated, all if was about the darkness I thought I had left behind.