by Vivian Arend
Screwing up her courage, she began. “Mother was curious too; they discovered my affliction when I was five, apparently. We asked Danika what it was, the palpable energy that leaked out of me. My father and those of my own blood, like Briley and Uncle Kelly, are not affected by it, but they noticed how grown males looked at me. Anyone under the age of eighteen did not seem to be affected, which is why, of course they allowed me to play with Hamish as they did. I’m not sure why my magic suddenly seized him, despite his being only fourteen.” She shrugged.
“And Danika said?” He prompted.
She smiled. “Why are you so curious about me, Rumpel? Why the sudden inquisition?”
Clapping the railing one final time, he jerked his head and began leading her toward the island. “You intrigue me. Very little does anymore.”
“Hmm.” Stepping onto the island was a delight. The grass was thick and as lush as any carpet. Wanting to feel it on her feet, she slipped off her sandals and sighed when she wiggled her toes into the soft blades.
A large cream blanket manifested beneath the tree, and sitting, Rumpel patted the spot beside him. “Come.”
Because he didn’t sound demanding, she sat. But she kept herself to the opposite end of the blanket. Regardless of how this was going, she’d keep her distance. Safer that way.
Drawing his knees to his chest, he swiped up a fallen blossom and handed it to her, almost absentmindedly, but when she reached for it he hung on so that their fingers grazed. Just a slight touch, but enough to make sparks shoot out. Gasping, she yanked her hand back, cradling it to her chest. She should chastise him.
Grinning crookedly, he dropped the beautiful cream-and-pink petal onto her lap, but didn’t apologize for what he’d done. She knew he’d done it on purpose; Rumpel didn’t seem the type to make mistakes; everything he did he did was with deliberation and thought.
“You promised.” She licked her lips, mouth grown suddenly dry.
Holding up his hands, he chuckled. “Forgive me. I do try, Carrot, but I can only be so good.” With a wink, he flicked his wrist. “Finish your tale.”
“Sirens can be made, as Danika soon told us. Father’s dalliance with a river nymph caused his DNA, as my mother calls it”—she met his gaze for a quick second—“to permanently alter, ensuring that any future children they had would be cursed. Of course I’m sure the nymph didn’t see it as such, and when you can live in a river and run away from the predatory advances of filthy males, I can see where they consider it fun. For me, it’s been nothing but a trial. I’m not nymph enough to breathe below water and so I suffer on land. Once my parents discovered that reality, they knew I would be their first and last child.”
“But boys aren’t affected; they could have tried for more.”
Running her fingers along the grass, she lifted a knee and dropped her cheek to it. “No, but they had no assurance they’d get anything other than another girl. And I’ve had a good life, all things considered. Having Briley around was a lot like having a sibling anyway. I lost nothing.”
“The boy I met? He was a child—is he the same one you speak of?” With a flick of his fingers, a large bronze bowl appeared, brimming over with large, purple grapes. “Hungry? Eat.” He pointed, snapping one fat globe off the stem and popping it into his mouth.
Shaking her head, she drew up her other leg and wrapped her arms around them. “Yes, he’s the same boy, but he is off-limits. And anyway, I think it’s time you told me about yourself. Fair is fair.”
Plucking up another bloom, he began to strip one petal off at a time. Shayera was surprised how constant the blooms fell, and yet they weren’t drowned in flowers, almost as if a gentle breeze stirred at just the right moment to carry them away on the stream. There was a magical, very surreal atmosphere to this garden and she knew it was all Rumpelstiltskin’s doing.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he finally said.
“Dalia tells me you’re a prince. Not every day I get to come across an honest to goodness man of the crown.”
Snorting, he flicked the flower off his finger. “The chit needs to learn to control her tongue better. Who I was has no bearing on who I am now.”
He might believe that, but she didn’t. For one, there was a regality about Rumpel she’d noticed immediately, a manner of bearing that few could learn to master unless taught it from birth. It was in his cold aloofness, how he walked and talked, as a man used to giving orders and having them obeyed immediately.
“What happened, if I can ask? What made you leave Delerium and come here?”
Jaw clenching, he licked his front teeth and then abruptly got to his feet. “We are done here today. You may return to the castle.”
“What? I’m—” And she wasn’t sure what she’d meant to say after that because before she knew it, the garden was gone and she was back in the breakfast room, staring around dazed and very confused.
But the shock of being transported against her will soon wore off, replaced instead by a violent, frothing desire to punch that man square in his nose.
“Argh!” She stomped her foot. How dare he treat her this way? Hot one second, cold the next. It didn’t take a genius to realize she’d touched on a very sensitive subject, but the least he could do was act like a mature adult about it.
“Damn you, imp!” she growled and grew even more incensed when the echoing beat of his laughter pulsed through every empty corner of the room. Spine stiff and straight, she managed to regain her bearings and marched from the dining hall back to her room.
Three months, that’s what she had left. Three months and then she’d be free to go home. She’d fail every bloody test and this would be little more than a nightmare she thought of on occasion, a tiny blip in the scope of her life. She could do this, surely.
Slamming her bedroom door, she muttered Dalia’s name.
Her dark friend—or at least the closest approximation to one she’d ever had—materialized instantly, hand on her ebony cheek. “Oh, miss, you done it now. I told ye to keep your distance from the master. He’s a vexing sort of man, he is.”
Dalia looked lovely today. She wasn’t dressed in her maid’s outfit, but rather a plain black day dress that fell to her knees. Wearing simple lace up shoes and socks, and with her hair flowing past her elbows, she looked much younger than the initial nineteen Shayera had pegged her for.
Slumping onto the bed, Shayera groaned. “You did and he is.” She sighed. “But it’s hard when I’m so lonely for company, and while you’re fantastic”—she gave her a slight smile—“you’re hardly ever around.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but I’ve chores to tend to besides seeing to you, otherwise I swear I’d be here more often.”
“No, no.” She held up a hand. “I understand, believe me. I’m not used to this life of frivolity myself. At home I worked and cleaned and cooked, but there’s nothing to do here to while away my time. Do you mate?”
Dalia blinked at her blunt words and slowly sat on the edge of the bed. “I… well…”
Hopping into a cross-legged position, Shayera shoved her wild bangs out of her eyes. “And by that I mean, are there children here? I love kids, and they love me. They, unlike adults, cannot be affected by my charms, and I very much enjoy playing with them. They at least are real. And that’s what I need, some realness in my life right now.”
Yanking at a blue velvet pillow, she crushed it to her chest to still the deep, lingering sadness welling in the pit of her stomach, a mix of loneliness and a quiet yearning to see her parents again. She’d thought there could be nothing worse than living in that hamlet, but if she had to put up with Rumpel’s constant mercurial moods for the next three months, there was a good possibility she’d go insane.
Her mother’s words of the grass not always being greener suddenly made so much more sense to her.
Fingers toying with the hem of her dress, Dalia shrugged. “There are children in fact, but master—”
Shayera’s elation turned to d
isgust in a flash. “Of course. They cannot come out to play unless he gives the orders, have I got it about right?”
Dalia’s face scrunched up. “I reckon so, miss.”
Tossing the pillow, Shayera jumped from the bed and began pacing. “Dalia, I’m going to go insane trapped in my room. It’s not as though I require much, but I at least had Briley before, and my parents. Here, I feel completely isolated.” She nibbled on her lip, damning the lump in her throat that was trying to work its way free.
Shayera wasn’t one who often gave into sentiment and emotion, life was what it was, but she’d never really understood the strength she’d derived from her family unit until it was no longer available to her. Clenching her fists by her sides, she whirled on the girl.
“What is there to do here that is fun? That I can do by myself?”
“Well…” Dalia licked her lips. “There are the gardens.”
Shayera snorted and Dalia frowned.
“You don’t need him around to shape them, miss. You only saw the thunder and lightning because that’s what you assumed should be, though why you should is a mystery to me.” She grinned. “Think of whatever you want and make it very clear, and the garden can be the most beautiful place in the castle.”
She’d thought it because on so many levels Rumpelstiltskin reminded her of a devil, it’d seemed appropriate.
“I’ll trust your word on that, but I don’t think I’m up for going out there again.” She had zero desire to bump into the imp again. Not after opening up again—it was too humiliating.
“I suppose… the library?” Left corner of her lip tilting up, Dalia said it as a question.
“Yes!” Shayera jumped on it. Not that she was much of a reader. Mother had tried to instill a love for the written word in her, but the idea of reading for entertainment baffled her. But learning? Now that she enjoyed. And surely in a library there’d be books about Delerium, something she could study and hopefully learn something about him.
She still had no desire to hang out with Rumpelstiltskin, but the need to figure him out hadn’t waned one bit.
“Good.” Dalia stood. “Good.” Her red eyes twinkled. “Then it’s the library. Would you like to walk, or?” She held out her hand.
Chuckling and grabbing onto her stomach, Shayera shook her head. “I don’t think I’m quite over the last jump. Let’s just walk.”
Fifteen minutes later, Dalia left her in the library with the promise that she’d return the moment Shayera called for her.
Once the door closed behind the maid, she turned on her heel and gaped at the mind-boggling dimensions of the room. The ceiling seemed to scrape into eternity, and there had to be a mile, at least, separating each wall. There were large white columns spaced evenly and gleaming white marble cases with gold-trimmed shelves were lined all in a row. Way to the back there was even a spiraling staircase that led to a second floor.
In short, Mother would have peed herself to see this place. The thought made her chuckle.
“Goodness,” she breathed. Yet more evidence that Rumpel had a serious hoarding problem. “You are indeed a magpie, imp.”
Because Mother had tried so dutifully to brainwash Shayera into enjoying the library as much as she, she’d taught her daughter that the first place to look—especially in a room of this size—was the catalog shelf.
It stood tall and proud in the very center of the room. The clack of her shoes echoed hollowly through the place and made her shiver.
Running her fingers along the letters until she got to D, she opened the drawer and began riffling through the cards until she found Delerium. There were exactly five books on the subject.
Plucking the cards out so that she wouldn’t have to memorize the long digit, she walked up the staircase to the second level.
The room was well lit, but not by any light source she could actually see. There were no windows, so therefore no sun peeked through. It was more like the stones themselves cast a radiant glow—it made everything have a dreamlike quality to it.
One thing she could say for Rumpel: what he lacked in good manners, he more than made up for in the beauty he surrounded himself with.
Pulling out the first card, she studied the numbers and then looked at the placard hanging from the bookshelf; it was a match. But, the books were on the uppermost shelf and she was way too short to reach. Looking around, she spied a sliding ladder and jogged over so that she could push it into place.
Climbing up, she easily found the books and suffered yet another pang of disappointment. Her hopes for massive tomes detailing his rise and fall, just what Delerium was and why he’d run away, those were quickly dashed. The books, if they could even be called that, were no thicker than pamphlets. And though they were leather bound and clearly very old, she doubted she’d learn much, if anything.
But she’d come all this way. Sighing, she pulled the books out. At least it wouldn’t be hard to carry them all at once.
Back down the ladder, she hurriedly returned the cards to the catalog and then took a seat at one of several long wooden tables. The books were laced up.
Picking one at random, she undid the knot and gasped the moment she opened it, jumping in alarm because the book grew into a large volume. Its weathered pages looked as though they’d not seen the light of day for years, let alone centuries. Easily the size of her entire chest and just as heavy, she moaned when she realized this would definitely not be light reading.
“Oh gods,” she breathed as she tried to do a quick count of the pages inside, losing count after two hundred or so. “Nothing for it, I guess.” Placing her chin on her fist, she began at the beginning.
Hours later, back screaming from sitting in one position for too long, she blinked, only to realize how dim the room was now. She’d not noticed the torch that now glowed as if by magic from the center of the table, as she’d been completely engrossed in the war between the demone, which seemed to stem from the avarice and vice of King Dionysis and his lords. Dionysis desired a totalitarian rule. There’d been rumor and innuendo for years that the king’s blood was tainted, that he wasn’t well. Not until he’d declared war on his own people did the lords realize the rumors were true. But only one lord, Prince Rumpelstiltskin, had power enough to challenge the king’s authority.
The history of a land and peoples she didn’t know fascinated her, but exhaustion laid claim to her mind. Clearly the sandman wouldn’t leave her in peace this night, the evidence of his being here stared her boldly in the face. Brushing at the granules of sand, she yawned. After reading the same line six times, it was time to admit defeat.
She’d not even gotten a quarter of the way through the first mammoth tome. Sighing, she closed it and smiled with delight when, once she’d retied the laces, the book again shrank back down to a small size.
“Useful after all.”
Picking up her new treasures, she called for Dalia. But it wasn’t her maid that returned to her.
Gleaming amber eyes glanced at the books she held clasped in her hands. She was still angry with him, and clutching them even tighter to her breasts, she notched her chin and dared him to take them away.
Quicker than she could cry “no,” he’d plucked a book from her and flipped it from side to side before glancing back at her. “This is not light reading.”
He’d clearly been drinking again; she heard the smooth grit of whiskey in his voice. She hated that the sound of it should affect her as it did, should make her stomach take a dive and her legs feel shaky, that her breathing hitched an infinitesimal bit, that her heart banged against her ribs.
Good looks that masked the devil beneath. But body and mind were two separate things inside her, because while she could appreciate the outer, so far she loathed the inner.
“Where is Dalia?” she snapped.
Brow twitching, he flipped the book back to her. She nearly lost the others in her haste to snatch it out of the air.
“Where she should be. I can lead you to
your room.”
“Why? So you can snap at me again? Or make me feel like an idiot for opening myself up to you?” Thinning her lips, realizing what she was saying to him and how that must make her look, she sailed past him for the door. “I can find my own way.”
“No, you can’t. The castle shifts at my whim. I wish to walk with you—if you leave, you’ll be walking for hours.”
Hand on the knob, realizing he was probably telling the truth, she rounded on him. “Why are you doing this to me? Hmm? Why can’t you just leave me alone? You do not really wish my company, that much is obvious—”
“Is it really?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
Eyes thin slits, he moved into her sphere of space, his body so close that his heat wrapped with her own. He smelled of fire and whiskey and cloves. She wet her lips.
“You unnerve me, siren, and I find I don’t much care for that feeling. Why are you reading up on me?” His gaze flicked momentarily off her face and back to the books.
Able to take in a deep breath, body jittery as if she’d downed ten cups of her father’s coffee, she shook her head, hating that she’d felt even the tiniest bit flattered at the idea that she disturbed him.
“It’s always good to study your enemies.”
His smile was slow and sensual and she felt the movement of it like a caress on her flesh, heating her blood and forcing her to close her eyes. Sirens affected males, the more exposure the more need, but she could swear he was turning her own charms on her because as much as she detested him, she craved him.
Gripping the books tight when he leaned over her, careful not to touch him, an agony all its own, she waited until he opened the door.
“I’m not your enemy.” His sweet breath fanned her cheek.
Slipping out the door and planting a hand on the wall, she shook her head. The truth of the matter was she had no idea what Rumpel meant to do with her. Was this really just a game? The little bit she’d read of the demone led her to believe that perhaps it could be just that.