She snorted, the very unladylike sound the epitome of grace. “Please. You already have, haven’t you?” A shadow of bitter hatred burdened her expression. “Rumpelstiltskin wouldn’t dare show his face here now, anyway. We’re too strong.”
How easy it was to forget how much she hated me when she looked at me and smiled, and laughed, and didn’t at all know who I was.
Her parents had fostered hatred in her heart. For me. For my supposed army. For the nasty creatures she could see milling about in the woods late at night. In her mind, I was “her faerie,” but in her mind, I didn’t really exist. Her command over illusion and alchemy was so strong already, even before her awakening. Through her wishes and some of my efforts, it was simple enough to convince her I was little more than an imaginary friend.
I drew her out of the palace walls and into the town her parents had sufficiently ruined. What was once a quaint village now stood as one imposing block of square apartments after another. The shops and markets had been purged. The florists and jewelers and bakers were gone. Each week, the palace divided up rations; food and clothing was all people needed in times like these.
Half the city had been gutted and converted into towered housing Mabilia called glass-scrapers. The other half had been tilled for use as farmland to keep the ever-growing population fed. Any man of thirteen entered the army where they would learn to fight while working as a guard, a miner, or a builder. Any woman learned to mend armor, work the farms, or—if they wished—battle as well.
“What’s wrong?” Mabilia asked, breaking the silence of my thoughts. She laughed a bit. “Don’t tell me my mood is infecting you too.”
I glanced at her; she had no idea. Her home had once been confined but beautiful. Now it was little more than a mechanism for destruction. “I brought you something,” I murmured, reaching into my coat and drawing out the season globe. Her eyes widened, and we stopped in the quiet streets.
Long ago, they would have been alive at this time. Now, there was no reason to be out unless you were a lonely princess and her imaginary friend, trying desperately to escape.
“What is it?” She plucked the globe from my fingers and squinted at the delicate pieces within the glass. Her brows furrowed. “This couldn’t be…” Tipping it over, she gasped when the snowy gales shifted into a gentle rain. The droplets fell against thousands of flowers, each intricately placed and perfectly colored. “It’s not Dale. Is it?”
“Once,” I said, but it had never been quite that way. Even before…
“It’s precisely how I imagined,” she breathed, fixated on the shifting seasons. A tiny smile painted her lips. “But of course it is. I’ve outdone myself this year.” She shuffled through: summer and autumn and winter again, then spring once more. Pausing on each at different intervals, she sighed, deciding winter was her favorite. She watched each flurry drift, her smile melting away the longer she looked.
She didn’t need to tell me she wished her world was the one in the globe. In her mind, she believed her wishes had created the trinket. Something vibrant and free even if it was condensed. “If he had never touched my life, is this where I would live?” she whispered to herself, forgetting for the moment I was there, believing in her gutted soul I never was.
My back straightened, the hair on my neck prickling. If I had never… She wouldn’t exist. Her mother would have been beaten to death by her maternal grandfather shortly after he’d murdered her maternal grandmother. Her father would have lost himself in a rage fueled by the good intentions of his credence and killed the king, sending Dale into this same moment, one before a war, but a war without her.
Without hope.
No. She wasn’t that fragile mistress. She wasn’t frail and easily broken like hope. Mabilia was salvation. For both Dale and my people alike. She was salvation for the world that would forget, the one that would destroy, and the one that would be lost.
“Tell me a story,” she whispered, staring at the globe like her world rested within.
I took a deep breath and gazed at the sky. “A story? Since when do you like those?”
Her lips lifted in a small smile, and mine mirrored the action to match. I spun a recycled tale from fae lore, replacing our heroine’s name with hers—likely sacrilege, but for her growing smile, I didn’t care. She fought dragons and rode through plains upon her faerie steed, bolstering legend and carving her name into the world itself. As the theatrical rendition slipped to a close, her smile had fallen.
It took all my strength not to touch her then, draw her close, and whisper the truth, about everything. But I couldn’t bear to see hatred blister in her gaze, not tonight. Enough would happen tonight. And I couldn’t forfeit everything now.
She pressed the globe against her chest and stared up at the stars. “Thank you, my faerie,” she murmured, and a tear traced down her cheek.
My breath held.
She pinned me with those blue eyes that were an echo of mine. “I wish you were real.”
I vanished from her sight, my heart breaking, begging to stay with her, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I couldn’t become real for her yet, because when I did, all her joy would disappear.
Chapter 2
Awakened Nightmares
It replayed in my mind, again and again, watching Mabilia from afar as she turned with her gift pressed tight against her breasts and trudged back to the castle prison she had spent her whole life wishing to flee.
Her parents had raised her too well, too kind, too duty-bound. So though her heart was cracking, she never once tried to leave. She smiled as whispers choked her, claiming she was a witch’s bastard. She performed every task asked of her, using her abilities in ways that crushed her soul.
And when it was too much, she called me to her side. When she couldn’t smile anymore, she bid me near. When her eyes filled with tears and she curled up, she beckoned my invisible touch to comfort her and my silent words to help her. For just one more day. One more hour. One more minute.
Until this moment. When she screamed for me, and I couldn’t come.
I lay in bed, staring at the cavern ceiling, my hands tightly wound in the sheets and blankets. My chest knotted, twisting so violently I could hardly breathe. Her father’s awakening had been pleasure. Her mother’s had been uncomfortable due to my presence in her mind. This, hers, was torture.
So much power packed into so young a frame, seeping out through every pore, changing every atom into her full self. It was like most faerie’s growing pains, but far worse. She was neither wholly faerie, nor wholly human.
She was an evolved, fragmented realization of the future. My other half.
I jerked up. I had to go to her. Consequences be damned. I—
“My lord.” Mythalzen stood at my bedside, his hand tightening around my arm. Lips pursed, he gave his head a slight shake. “You mustn’t.”
“Damn you,” I hissed. “She needs something to hold onto. No one else even knows.”
“You told me not to let you go under any circumstances.” His nails dug into my flesh, and I may have killed anyone else. “Not if you begged, not if you fought. I swore.”
He swore. On his life. Knowing it may very well have been taken from him for standing between us.
“She’s in pain.” So much pain. Suffering worse than ever before. She was spiralling through the universes her mind had concocted around her throughout her lonely years when she, like her mother, crafted stories out of wishes. Unlike her mother, the worlds she made could exist if she learned how to bring them to life. In time, I would show her. In time, it would be our fate.
But right now every filament lay wrenched out of her and spread throughout the endless chasms of broken pictures. She needed to pull herself back together. If I stepped in, if I touched her in this moment, everything I’d done would break apart. My magic would recognize me over her, and she would be cleansed. Useless.
No. I covered my face with my shaking hands, grounding myself through the pain of Mytha
lzen’s dredging nails. Even if I stepped in, saved her, and returned her to mere humanity, she would still be Mabilia. My Mabilia.
Tears collected in my eyes, and I forced them not to fall.
“I can’t do this to her,” I choked.
“You must.”
I had never felt so weak. So helpless. Even when her parents had stolen her away from me, I knew she would still grow safely, facing happiness and sadness as everyone must. Whatever she believed I was, I was still able to be there for her. Now, not being able to…
Heaving breaths filled my lungs. Her pleading screams scraped through my mind. She panted for her faerie, begged.
“Without this, we all die,” Mythalzen reasoned, his deer ears pinned.
Were we worth it?
His jaw set, and dark blooms of red stained my linen shirt, his nails unrelenting. “Without this, she dies. Alone. In the rubble of what could have been. Basking in the blood of her family, her people. Whether they loved her or not.”
“Stop,” my raw voice broke, and I cupped my hand over my mouth. Without this, everything I had worked for, broken myself for, would be for nothing. Steeling my resolve, I lay back down. Mythalzen released me, and I dwelled on the sting of the wounds as they eased closed.
When she learned this pain was my fault, she would hate me more. Whether she loved or hated me didn’t matter, though. In fact.
I closed my eyes, feeling the cold rush of tears turning to ice on my skin.
All the better if she hated me. I had caused her enough suffering. In the end, when my crown passed to her for however brief she would hold it during the transition of worlds, she didn’t deserve the burden of mourning over the monster.
IRON DEMONS FLEW PAST ME, horns blaring. A rush of more people than even had been packed into Dale took to cement paths on either side of a long stretch of black road. Faces down, they watched blinking, metal boxes.
A bitter smog filled the air, any hint of nature lost, any spark of magic gone or buried too far beneath the smoke. Buildings stretched, great glass and steel towers skimming the brown sky. A screaming howl of wind made me cover my ears and peer up as an iron bird zoomed through the clouds.
No. My chest clenched, weariness filling me. Not this dream. Not again.
Noise made my ears ache, not a single pleasant sound in the stream of engines and traffic. Machines hammered somewhere, at a distance. Birds squalled over some small bit of food. All around me was everything, everything the humans could have ever dreamed of, and yet…it was nothing near enough.
Their blank stares clung to endless entertainment, but not one smiled. Their trudging feet entered their automobiles, but the speed offered was too slow. They yelled, and honked, and sighed.
They had, like Dale, completely closed out the fae, but they hadn’t needed walls to do it. They had built a toxic world, and for what purpose? All the magic was gone. The miraculous abilities of their cars and phones and planes were so common-place that they never paused in awe or wonder of them. Life slogged by.
The tightening in my chest deepened, choking out my air. Rust climbed up my feet, ankles, legs. It took hold, and I crumbled away.
If nothing changed, we all would die.
When I blinked awake, those words repeated in my mind as always. I stared ahead, numb—numb to the pain, numb to the sights, and numb to the fear. Dragging one trembling hand to my face, I tried to breathe in the soft, secure scent of the earth around me.
When I looked for it, Mabilia’s heart beat faintly beside my own, exhaustion pouring into every thump. She had survived. She was ready. But I couldn’t bring myself to picture what I had to do next. The war would start soon, when the glass fell, and at that point, it would be time. Even if the future I saw lay centuries away, the salvation I planned presented itself only now.
“Lord Rumpelstiltskin?” Mythalzen’s tired voice called me away from dark thoughts. He sat at my bedside, rubbing his eyes, and I frowned. Last night, all the world had rested on him, and he had fallen asleep? He didn’t even appear mildly repentive as he yawned. “Is it over?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. The worst of it was over when I’d finally succumbed and took a tincture to force me to rest. I’d need my rest for today, but as I sat up, every muscle in me aching and tight, I knew it had done little good.
“Breakfast,” Mythalzen mumbled, stretching out of his chair and clopping toward the door. “I suppose you’ll take it here this morning?”
I nodded, and he left, abandoning me to the silence of my thoughts. It mattered little now. Mabilia rested and would for a while. I could go to her without consequence. The beginning of the worst had already transpired. My magic flowing in her was no longer an entity I could call my own. She held half my soul and my spirit, but she had claimed the fractures as hers.
At last, I could touch her without reclaiming them.
But at last…she would know.
In the moment my flesh skimmed hers, she would recognize who I was if my scarred hands didn’t give it away first. It would all collapse to be built anew.
I laughed. Falling back into bed and covering my eyes, I laughed until gasping breaths shook my chest. I laughed until icy tears creeped down my cheeks. “So…this is how the beginning of the end feels…” Years of manipulation, plotting, scheming; generations of waiting; and this is where I landed, dreading it?
My Mabilia. My soul. I never had a chance. From the beginning, my only choice was to love her, but I had never loved anyone like this before. I had loved my people, my faeries, with a sense of duty, but to love a life so completely and fully that seeing any harm come to it brought what remained of me to tears? That was new. And I hated it.
If I could keep my secret forever and take her away from her cage, always be her faerie, I knew in a heartbeat I would. I would throw it all away for the time I could have with her, even if it were only the time her parents had stolen from me when they’d washed my forest in the blood of innocent creatures to find my name.
Just an hour to hold her, to feel whole once more, and I would trade in the future.
“Okayyy,” Mythalzen sang, marching back into my room with a tray, “we have your favorite this morning, my lord. How wonderful is that?”
I peeked beneath my hands at his dumb grin and sighed. He had arranged the nuts and berries into a sort of hair on the platter, setting two eggs for eyes and mutilating a slice of buttered bread into a smile.
Looking at him, I cursed beneath my breath. All my brief fantasies fell apart, and I knew if I could, I might take an hour, but I wouldn’t if it meant I’d take this idiot’s future. “That’s repulsive,” I commented.
His brows shot high. “It’s a complete breakfast.”
“I have a strict rule about eating things with faces.”
He stared at me very sternly, lifted a finger to point at one fried egg, then whispered, “This could have had a face. And it’s your favorite.”
He got me there. Sitting up, I snatched the tray with a sigh and ate, letting my dream and the memories of Mabilia’s crying pleas drift away. As long as she remained in rest, she was at peace. And as long as she was at peace, I could proceed with what I had to do.
Chapter 3
The Truth Revealed
Panic saturated the air, hanging in it like the scent of a rotting carcass. I moved through the castle halls invisibly, choking on the thick, grimy tang of metal. Guard after guard passed, but I ignored them. Hands shaking and skin prickling, I stopped before the throne room. Once, the door had been wood displaying an elaborate scene of forested mountains. Now, it—like everything else in this accursed place—was iron.
Was this where the world began to descend into my nightmares? Did Dale’s influence encourage the progress of steel and science to defend against the fae before forgetting us completely? Very rarely did I receive the full process of how my dreams came to be, but I had gotten quite good at filling in the empty pieces.
Now, however, I had more concrete m
atters to attend, and the sooner I could remove myself from this place, the higher chance I had to survive. Lifting a pocketed hand, I knocked against the door and gritted my teeth when the fabric of my clothes didn’t entirely mask the heat leaching through the metal.
Guards from within opened the way to the throne room, and I took a deep breath before marching inside.
“What is it?” King Daryl asked, narrowing his eyes on the empty space where I stood, still hidden. Instinct forced his hand to his blade. “Show yourself, faerie.”
The sparse guards in the room stiffened, gazes wary and searching.
Just as well. The iron in the room choked my glamour away a second before I beckoned it to fall. Queen Aurea gasped and stood, plucking a dagger from the belt at her waist. “You,” she spat, only the barest hint of fear trickling into her voice. “I should have known. Where is she, Rumpelstiltskin? What have you done with her?”
Swords rasped from their sheathes, and I clutched my fists in the pockets of my coat. A thin layer of sweat beaded on my forehead. “Why don’t we talk privately?”
Daryl’s face hardened, familiar. Every day he looked more like his father, but there was something there…something more. Silently, with the barest look alone, he counseled with his wife, then nodded. “Leave us.”
“Your Majesty, he is weakened. We could—” The captain of the guard stepped forward, but Daryl stopped his complaint with a single raised hand.
“He has Lia.” Together, we sneered. I at that name, and he at me.
“Couldn’t you have shortened it to ‘Mab’ at least?” My skin boiled, the flesh seeming to peel back, raw.
Daryl didn’t answer me until every guard had left, then he stepped down from his throne, Aurea at his side. Blade extended, he pointed the lethal weapon at me. “Where is she?”
Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance Page 27