Her nostrils flared as she flew toward me, increasing in size until she finally dropped to the ground and held out her hand to me. I dropped the cold charm into her palm, and a second later she inhaled deeply, looking up at me with surprised shock. “W-w-what is this magic? I sense great power within.” Her surprised gaze cut to mine.
I nodded, the weariness of the sleep-deprived years suddenly crashing down around me. “Aye. It is. It’s a null ring, for her siren’s charm.”
“What?” She blinked and shook her head. “You cannot be—”
“I’m absolutely serious.”
She gasped. “Th-th-this is impossible magic.”
I nodded. “Indeed it is. Magic that can never be recreated again, in fact. I took the last bloom, you see. This charm is for her, Danika, to give her a life beyond this one. Beyond what she’s been handed. She deserves it.”
She clutched her fist to her chest and shook her head, causing the pearls in her hair to sway fetchingly around her heart-shaped face. “And you, Rumpel? Don’t you deserve it too?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I deserve exactly what I’ve got. Save my Carrots. That is all I ask.”
A look of heart-wrenching devastation scrawled itself upon her face. “Do you still not wish to know, Rumpel? How beautiful she is now and how much of a woman she’s grown up to be? The fiery flame of mane with its riotous curls winds down her back, and the flush of womanhood brightens her cheeks. Does none of that pique your curiosity? Will you still be so adamant in your belief that you have no place in her life?”
“I am tired, Danika. Far too tired for these games.”
She clenched her jaw. “Fine. Then I will tell you no more. But I will show you, because you are a stubborn ass, and I care far too much for you to just walk away.”
I turned my back even as her wand began its graceful undulation through the air. In seconds, I felt the pressure of her fairy magic pulsate at my back.
“Look or don’t look,” she said. “It’s up to you. But there she is, Rumpel. There she is.”
I didn’t sense her leaving so much as I felt the sudden absence of her behind me. Holding my shoulders ramrod straight, I told myself to eradicate the image. Don’t look. Don’t even entertain the idea of looking.
But before I knew it, I was turning around, and when I saw her, a sound like a wounded animal spilled off my tongue.
She was gorgeous, with skin smooth as pale moonstone, hair the color of fire, and eyes the icy blue of the arctic tundra. Shadows darkened the spaces beneath her eyes, the purple shade attesting to her lack of sleep. Her rosebud lips turned down at the corners, and the frown seemed permanently etched onto her face.
That’s just how she’d looked when I’d first met her, beautiful but aloof, and always with a hint of sadness radiating out from her. By the end of our life together she’d been the exact opposite. She’d had verve, passion, and a sparkle in her eyes. It hurt me to see her that way.
She was sitting upon her bed, staring out the window at the nighttime sky and clutching onto her night rail with long, thin fingers.
I finally saw the woman she would be, the woman I’d known. She was very nearly there. With a shuddering heave, I raised my hand and traced the still image with my finger.
“Oh, Carrots,” I breathed from the very bottom of my desperate heart. “I love you so.”
Chapter 7
Rumpel
Two years later
“Come to the ball,” Danika said, standing in the middle of my library and gripping her wand tightly.
I sat in my favorite chair, sipping on a mug of delicately flavored orange tea. I lifted a brow. “No, thank you,” I said, as I slowly turned the page of the massive tome sitting upon my lap.
It was a history of the original faes who’d created Kingdom and the plethora of creatures who now called this land home. I’d read this volume before, but I’d also read every single one of the other ten thousand books in my vast library, some of them many times.
She stomped her foot. “Blast you, man. Why not!”
I took a sip of my tea, swirling it around in my mouth. Three times in the past year, Danika had come to me to extend an invitation to Shayera’s birthday ball, a ball that I’d funded in its entirety and had planned down to the very last jot and tittle. Of course, the accolades would go to Danika. I didn’t care for the adulation. All I wanted was for my Carrots to have everything she could ever want for such an occasion. Her smiles were my only concern.
Sighing, I set my teacup gently upon its saucer and studied Shay’s godmother. She looked beautiful, dressed in a cloud of rainbows, with spiderwebs wet with morning dew wreathed throughout her long, luscious locks. Danika had her hope back. I could see the growth in her. And why not, when most of her happily-ever-afters had finally been restored? There were but a few left.
I sighed. “Why are you so insistent on this? I’ve told you my stance. I made a promise to Betty, and I will keep that vow.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re an arse.”
“So you say every time you come to visit me.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
She grumped. “Dammit, Rumpel. It’s been two bloody years since I showed you that image of Shayera. Did that not sway you at all? Even a little? I cannot believe that—”
“The charm? How is it working for her?”
Her face grew red as she glared at me.
I smirked. Much as I disliked being disturbed in my solitude, I’d always rather enjoyed Danika’s calls, mostly because she was a grumpy old bird, just like me. Like attracted like, I supposed.
“You know very well that she’s doing better.”
“No”—I shook my head as I reached for my tea once more—“I don’t. As I told you then, and I’ll continue to tell you now, I do not follow the goings-on with her. Not anymore.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
A hot niggle of anger wormed through my heart, but I clamped down on it. “Then tell me, how is Jericho?”
She hissed, exposing her tiny baby fangs to me. For all their sweetness, the fairies had a nasty side to them too.
I grinned, and tapped the warm bone China rim with my index finger.
“That was low,” she said.
I scoffed. “Just about as low as calling me a fool, I’d wager.”
“Damn you, Dark One. How am I to battle you when you always make so much bloody sense?”
Shoulders heaving and looking suddenly deflated from the nippy little Chihuahua she’d been just a second before, she plopped onto the navy colored duvet behind her and swished her feet, causing the bells on her ivory-orchid slippers to chime.
I chuckled. “Sorry to burst your bubble then, Danika. But I’m tired of the melodrama and the angst. I wish to live what remains of my life here in peace and quiet.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, remains here?”
I closed the tome, tapped my fingers upon its leather-bound spine, and shrugged. “I don’t know, though it’s been a running thought lately.”
“Leaving?” The whites of her eyes had grown large in her blanched face.
Again, I shrugged. “Nothing is settled. But it would do me good to explore the worlds. The universe is vast, wee one.”
“You would leave her? Just like that?”
I swallowed the hard lump in my throat, which always appeared whenever I thought of my dear heart. “I do not consider it so much leaving her as giving her the chance to do better.”
“Ha!” She scoffed and shook her head, looking perturbed and vexed at the same time. “You do beat all, Dark Prince. Well, let me just say for the record, that if you leave my Shay you deserve to suffer. Twice. Thrice. Tenfold!” When Danika grew upset her accent thickened to the point that it was near impossible to understand her, though I had no problem understanding that.
“Aye, Dani. Maybe I do.” I shrugged.
“Why, Rumpel. Please, just make this make sense to me?”
Settling back in
my chair, I extended out one long leg as I drew my fingers down the scruff of my jaw. I’d been thinking about leaving for some time now. It began right after I saw the image Dani had left me. The reality was that seeing Shayera hurt me as deeply that day as it had the very moment I’d lost her. But I was healing now. I didn’t cry from morning till dusk. I didn’t want to murder anything and everything that moved past me.
I had a relationship with my son again. It was new, but it was daily growing into something I was proud of. I’d neglected him for so long. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough anymore to open myself up like that again.
Losing Shayera had nearly killed me. And my obsession to get her back had nearly cost me everyone I loved and still held dear.
Danika sniffed. I glanced up and noticed the tears in her eyes. She had read my thoughts, but I hadn’t been shielding them. “You can’t leave her, Rumpel. That isn’t how soul magic works, and you know it. You will always long for her, and even if she finds another he could never be her twin flame. Could you really doom her to that life?”
I’d already thought of everything she was saying, and then some. “Danika, you must understand that I’ve had years to reflect on my life, my choices, the pain I caused her, and the tortures I’ve endured just to regain her. Truth is, the first time she fell in love with me, I betrayed her faith in me deeply. I lied to her. All along. And my brave, beautiful girl learned of it, and she left me. And she was right to do so. I put her through hell, so how could I ask her to go through that again? I... I don’t think I’m the type of man that she could be proud of. Not anymore.”
“Then don’t tell her,” she blurted out, but no sooner did she say it then she squirmed. I knew she understood that would never do.
“I love her too much to try and pretend with her, Dani. There will never be another. There could never be, not for me. My soul has been twined with hers.”
“You nearly died the last time she left you. This will kill you.”
I closed my eyes and felt all of my years. Living a life eternal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. “I’m weary to my very core. All I want—all I’ve ever wanted for Shayera—is her happiness. And she can be happy with another.” I finally looked at her, only to note that her mouth had twisted into a puckered expression of disdain.
“I love you, Rumpel. I do,” she said with a shrug and a roll of her wrists. “But you’re a damn bloody idiot, and I don’t mind saying so. I will not let this happen.”
“I don’t see that you have much choice in the matter, wee one,” I snipped through clenched teeth. I didn’t want to fight, but I damn well would if pushed to it. “Why the hell do you care so bloody much, anyway?”
She took several gulping breaths, turning red in the face and looking far angrier than she had at any other time I’d seen her, which was saying something. Her white-knuckled grip on her wand let me know just how vexed she was with me. “You. You! Ugh! You want to know why!” she yelled and hopped to her feet, staring down at me like a wrathful Fury come to smite me, “Fine, I’ll tell you why. Because if you and Shay can be salvaged, then so can I. So. Can. I!” Tears rained down her cheeks, and for the first time I saw what I’d failed to see in her before. Danika wasn’t healed, not even close to it. Her mask was simply better than my own.
“Don’t you see, Rumpelstiltskin, this is about more than just you! Don’t you see, or are you too damn selfish to see beyond your own hurts?”
I sat stunned, too shocked to even blink at her outburst. “Danika, I don’t know—”
But it was far too late for words, as the wee fae had already vanished, leaving only a trail of her glittering stardust behind.
Chapter 8
Shayera
I do not know why turning nineteen stirred my blood and enflamed my passions the way it did. I was restless and edgy on my birthday. I remembered another time, when I’d turned nine. Those same feelings had haunted me then, and I understood on a very basic level that something momentous—portentous, even—was going to happen to me that day. I just wished I knew what.
Mama and Papa hadn’t wanted Danika to throw me the ball, and they especially didn’t want to allow just anyone to attend. I knew why, of course.
They didn’t want the gawkers, the busybodies, the nosy so-and-sos who came just to catch a glimpse of the siren, cursed no more, who lived amongst them. I’d become a bit of a legend in those parts, and even though I was freed of the curse, Mama and Papa were as vigilant as ever to keep me safe.
I didn’t mind, though. After years of isolation, I found I no longer had the stomach for adventure that I once had. The world seemed so much bigger and scarier, and I wasn’t sure of my place in it. What I’d gone through as a little girl had forever altered my concepts of good and bad, and the truth was, I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to leave the safety of the only life I’d known for the decade before.
A hand clapped against the doorframe to my room. I gasped, startled, and scooted around on my stool to note Papa standing there. He looked handsome as ever, dressed in his trousers and silky burgundy-wine vest, with his dark hair combed back.
I smiled.
“Oh, my petite papillon.” He breathed audibly and clutched at his chest. A definite sheen of wetness glazed his dark-blue eyes. “You are lovely.”
I brushed at my gown with cold fingertips, running them along the seam of the silky-green-corseted waist. “Do I look well, then?”
Danika had left me the gown on my bed this morning with a note that read, “Happy birthday, girl of my heart. May it be the best you’ve ever known...”
The sentence had been innocuous enough but—and maybe it was simply a product of my own nerves—there’d seemed to be a message hidden in it that I wasn’t quite smart enough to grasp yet.
The gown was, of course, magic. The moment I’d put it on, I felt myself transformed, different, even more mature-looking. My skin looked dewy—not glowy like a siren’s, but radiant all the same. My eyes looked big in my face, and I almost couldn’t recognize the woman who stared back at me in my dressing room mirror. When I moved, the gown appeared to change color, from a bright jeweled-green to a richer shade of forest-green. It was lovely, and in turn it made me feel lovely. The second I’d buttoned up the last button, a golden necklace with a dangling stone of veritas in the shape of a heart had appeared around my neck. The stone was cold to the touch and a pretty shade of navy blue with glittering threads of twinkling silver stars inside.
It was said that when two like hearts met and fell in love, the stones would blaze the color of true love and twine two hearts to one—not just hearts, but souls, so that no matter the time or distance between the lovers, they would always feel and know one another deep within the very darkest centers of their beings.
The stories were nice, but I wasn’t sure I completely bought into them, either. Sharing one heart and one soul didn’t sound plausible to me or even all that attractive, really. What happened if ten years down the road you realized you were no longer compatible? What if the magic stuck you with someone who was cruel and terrible? Was there no free will? No say at all in your future? Then what? You were stuck together because a pair of stones forced you to be?
I shuddered. No, thank you.
Besides, Mama and Papa were deliriously in love and they’d never needed the stones to make them so. I was pretty certain the stones were nothing more than a myth, and little else.
Still, it was a birthday present, and rather pretty at that. I patted the skin-warmed stone with my fingertips.
Mama joined us just then and pinned a rose blossom behind her ear. She looked flushed and hurried, but stopped the moment she saw me and gasped. “Shayera, oh my gods,” she whispered. Where Papa’s words were complimentary, Mama’s voice suddenly cracked and tears spilled out her eyes. “Oh, shoot. Darn it.” She huffed, swiping at her cheeks almost angrily. “Now, I’m gonna have to redo my make-up,” she lamented.
But Papa wrapped her up in his big strong arms an
d murmured into her ear, brushing his fingers through her long brown hair as he stroked her calm again.
My heart swelled at watching that stolen moment of undeniable love burning between my parents. Even after all those years, their passion was still just as palpable as ever.
That was the kind of love I wanted someday. Not a love destined by silly magic and fairy tales, but a love that would rewrite the books, a love that rivaled that of any happily-ever-after the fairies could ever pen for Kingdom.
I wasn’t sure I could ever find that, not with my affliction. I could hold hands now and touch a male without running the risk of him wanting to rape me, and that was everything. But every night I’d have to take off the charm, and then the dark curse was still just as powerful as ever. No human adult could resist it.
No, it was far better to flirt and have a bit of harmless fun and never, ever allow my heart to become entangled with anyone else’s. I’d only be setting myself up for heartache and pain in the end.
So on my birthday, I would dance, drink, and be merry, and I would absolutely stop thinking about happily-ever-afters.
I looked back at the mirror, pretending to be busy still getting myself ready as I pinned my hair up high, allowing a few fat curls to frame my face. I did it mostly just to give my mother time to gather herself again, which she did only a few minutes later.
Knuckling another tear from her eye, she sniffed. “I’m sorry, love. It’s just that you’re so beautiful and I can’t imagine how anyone could resist you.”
Turning in my seat, I looked at my mother with a soft turn of my lips. “I’m not going anywhere, Mama. You know this.”
Visibly swallowing hard, she nodded before giving me a clearly forced smile and pinching the corners of her eyes. “You never know who you might meet this day.” She blinked.
I glanced at Papa, but he’d looked away.
What are they hiding? “Do you know something?” I asked softly. My heart felt as though it had suddenly stopped beating. I was breathless, and my skin felt clammy to the touch. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The Magic King Page 8