Kingdom of Villains and Vengeance

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  “Why didn’t you put armor on?” I demanded the instant they were out of sight. Dropping to my knees, I examined her wound.

  She limped back before I could touch her. “I don’t know. Everything happened so fast.” She threw another look into the blizzard. “This is my fault.”

  “It’s not. None of it is.” I rose.

  “Of course it is! The glass didn’t shatter until I broke the globe you gave…” Her eyes widened as her words faded into the howling storm. “This, too?” she squeaked. “You planned this, too?”

  “I have dreams of the future, Mabilia. Up until this point, there is very little I haven’t planned.”

  “You really are a monster…” Her words cut through my chest and clenched in my gut like fire. “Do you know how many people are injured? How many are fighting, probably dying, right now?”

  I did. I had had years to count the casualties, weigh them, choose the path that would see the most lives spared. “You can save them.”

  “What?”

  “You can save them,” I repeated. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? You only agreed to this when I told you we would all perish if you didn’t.”

  Befuddlement writ all over her face. “Why would you start this just to have me end it moments later?”

  “Because,” I held her baffled gaze, “you are too kind. I knew you’d need motivation.”

  “Rumpelstiltskin,” her voice cracked, “if you don’t start making some sort of sense right now…”

  “The humans can handle a little storm. They’ve been preparing to fight in a winter land for over a decade now. What they can’t handle are the fae. It’s time to create the new world.”

  Her eyes bulged, and she threw up her hands. “What? I’ve had two days to prepare for this! I didn’t even get to color my sketches!”

  “You’ve had a lifetime to prepare. You’ve been making worlds since you were four, Mabilia. We don’t have years to waste.” My chest tightened when sheer panic washed over her. She leaned off her injured leg and took short breaths.

  “So I needed motivation to appease your impatience? You really are horrid! What you showed me, that world with all that iron and technology, couldn’t happen in a week. Or a month. We would have had time!”

  “We don’t have a hundred years. The only time when this is possible is following the hallowed eve when Winter’s Howl and Celestine aligned. Also, it isn’t motivation to act quicker.” I crouched before her, and wrapped my hand around her ankle. She tried to pull away, but I held firm, drawing my hand over her wound. Her humanity was such a crutch when it came to injuries. “The price of a new world is impossibly steep. You must weave half your soul into it.”

  Her breath ceased.

  I looked up once her wounds had closed to find her staring at me in horror. “You…?” she choked. I nodded. Her head shook. “No. No, I won’t. I can’t.” She stepped away from me, toward the storm. Thoughts raced behind her eyes, and her short breaths turned erratic. Her shaking hands plowed through her hair. “Oh, god. It all makes sense. Oh, god.” Anger erupted in a hot wave. “That’s why you changed! Did you really think years of care could disappear in a few days?”

  “You can’t keep fighting to make me into the faerie you knew growing up, Mabilia!”

  “You’re willing to sacrifice yourself for your people! You’re greater than the imaginary friend I knew growing up!” Tears pooled and overflowed. “And finally you were real! You can’t just… Why did you even bother to be there at all if you knew this was where it would end?”

  Bitterness stung my tongue and fell like acid to my stomach. “To make sure everything worked. Nothing more. I crafted your love of creating. I built something between us, so I could learn how to best bring us to this point, so you would give the fae a chance and see they were worth saving.”

  “You don’t get to just do this to me,” she spat through gritted teeth, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “I love you! And you can’t just make that go away!”

  My heart pounded to hear those words, but I hardened myself and closed my eyes. “Half your soul calls to its other. This isn’t love. It’s an illusion that is impossibly hard to fight.”

  “It’s perhaps more real than anything else I’ve ever known.” Her hands clutched my coat. “We can find another way.”

  “I have searched.”

  “We haven’t searched together. Why didn’t you tell me sooner so we could have searched together? Instead of all this convoluted, dreadful—”

  “I couldn’t afford for you to get hurt toying with things you could never understand in the time we had.”

  “I wouldn’t have cared. This hurts far worse than anything else could have.” Her forehead rested against my chest, and I fought the urge to hold her. “I won’t do it. We’ll try something else.”

  “There is nothing else.” My voice rose above the roar of the wind. “Do you really think I haven’t looked everywhere for another answer? The price is sacrificing half the wielder’s soul. For something like this, it’s always something precious.” I yanked my clothes out of her hands and turned, throwing out my arm. “Memories. Time. Lives. Only precious things are enough to spare more precious things.”

  “You’re doing this for Mythalzen.” It wasn’t a question.

  I swallowed, and my body sagged. “He’s only twice your age. For a fae, he may as well be younger than you. If I had the option not to leave him, I would have found it. I do this for all my people, but if it were only him, nothing would have changed.” I glanced at her. “I’m begging you. Do not make me show you what happens if you don’t do what I’m asking. I do not wish to see that prophecy again.”

  When she stood tall and lifted her head, defiance shone in her eyes, and I knew I wouldn’t have a choice. Approaching, I lifted my hands to set my thumbs against her forehead, and she closed her eyes, willing to accept whatever I was about to offer.

  Exhaling, I delved into the memory, the future if she didn’t agree to pay this price.

  Shadows crawled in the corners of the vision, clamoring for attention as they battled firelight. Stampeding footsteps marked with iron pounded through the caves of my former home. Blood and bodies lay trailed behind Dale’s soldiers. Ruthless, they carved their way through the monsters. Spells and attempts to quell the armed forces fizzled as the magic hit iron helms.

  Children slaughtered children.

  The memory shifted, focusing on Mythalzen. He sat alone in an alcove, his ears flattened against his head and his tail tucked. Each shaking breath that filled his chest jerked about in his lungs with every scream echoing toward him. Firelight skated over his skin; his golden eyes widened.

  Mabilia ripped out of my hold, panting, and I released a breath, even as the memory continued and crimson painted my mind. After my people passed, the wendigos found Dale and consumed it. Nothing remained.

  “If you hadn’t started this war…”

  “The war was always planned to start. Only now do we have the time and opportunity to save everyone. Time is running out, though. Once the redcaps retreat, your father will lead the armies to the ravine. Many will die on the descent to the caves. From there, only very few of the fae are able to get away. Then, wendigos, the lost souls from years past when some tried to leave Dale and enter these woods, kill everyone human.” Weariness clutched a hand around me. “You must weave my soul into the new world before then. You must start now.”

  Voice raw, she whispered, “How?”

  I offered my hand. “I will guide you to the spinning wheel; from there, your instinct will make it turn. Your mind bursts with enough imagination to create what you must. The only thing you mustn’t forget is to take all the magic from this world there. It will be a final spell, using your heartache as the price.”

  “My heartache?” she asked, her hand hovering above mine. “What do you mean?”

  “The torment I have caused you, what was unavoidable, will be enough. Teleportation is simple, lik
e an exhale. Take what is in one place and move it to another.”

  She clasped my fingers with one hand and cupped my cheek with the other. “None of this is simple.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her glassy eyes never moved off mine. “How can heartache be a payment?”

  “Emotions and pain are often the price of many contracts. There is power in things that cannot be touched because belief in what cannot be proven is stronger than anything that can be.”

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Her lips touched mine, as a final plea, but magic pulsed through the connection, and with the images of my nightmare playing in my mind, I found no strength to back down. I clutched her hand tighter and guided her forward, toward a glimmering spinning wheel. Like with her mother, I sat there, ready to thread the first piece of my soul.

  The wheel spun.

  My head grew heavy.

  Pictures of beautiful places coated with more magic than this world had seen in centuries lured me away. The touch of her lips was the last thing I felt, aside from the ice on her cheeks brushing the frost on mine.

  Chapter 9

  Queen Mab

  Some stories didn’t have happy endings. In fact, it was rare that any did, truly. For a prince and princess to live “happily ever after”, the witch must fall. For there to be joy, there must be pain. Freedom was not free. Nothing was free. With all things, there was a price to pay, and someone always had to pay it.

  Often unwillingly.

  I didn’t know what would happen when my soul found itself threaded into the fabric of a new world. I wondered if perhaps I would dream, be allowed to watch over Mabilia and Mythalzen through the spirit of nature. Such was not the case.

  It was all white, eternally. And it was just as cold as I’d always known. Sometimes the white shifted, like snow falling, but in the end it blanketed me in a single sheet of solid ice. Loneliness crept into every crevice, chilling my unbeating heart.

  I hoped everything had gone smoothly. I prayed to whatever could listen to my mute wishes that Mythalzen had found a place to grow his family. I ached knowing that by now Mabilia’s humanity had seen her from this realm. Wherever her soul lingered, it was out of my reach.

  The days, though I couldn’t tell when each began and ended, slipped away.

  IT WAS NIGHT. Music whispered into my mind though I almost didn’t recognize it. The rise and fall of woodwinds melded into a harmony that reminded me so fondly of something lost and ancient.

  A puff of cloud formed before my eyes, and I blinked. Bare branches, dark as char, stretched above me, cutting a hundred designs in a navy sky spattered with glimmering dust. For the first time in ages, I breathed, feeling my lungs stretch with air.

  It was night. It was cold. Music sang to me sweetly from some distant place.

  I lay there for a long while, listening and remembering the sensation of limbs, staring at the sky in awe. It was beautiful. Power pulsed, running like blue fire in my veins, and the ice that had held me for years vanished.

  Where was I? Swallowing, I felt the ground to gather my bearings. Snow, lighter than should have been possible, pillowed my bed upon the ground. When I brushed it away, icy blades of grass peeked through the drifts. They gleamed in the light of the full moon.

  My heart pounded, a thunder of anxiety flushing over me. If I was alive, did the spell work? This place smelled different than the earth I’d known. Magic floated in the air, brushing my skin in greeting.

  If I was alive, had Mabilia sacrificed herself?

  Throat raw, I sat up and peered at the woods. No, she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have remained conscious long enough to finish the spell, and here I was, in a world so woven with magic every part of it vibrated with life.

  I scrambled to my feet and stopped short. Lifting my hands, I stared at the scars patched over my skin. Steady, they no longer shook. “How…?”

  It had been an eternity since I last had full control of my hands. Could I dream? Had it taken me this long, staring at a blank slate, to dream?

  The music called my attention through the trees, and golden eyes flickered into my mind. My feet moved before I told them to. Soon I was running toward the sounds. They grew louder, and voices infiltrated them. Laughter spun, tripping and bubbling like a brook. My heart pounded as I broke from the woods to stop in the courtyard of a castle carved from ice.

  Mabilia’s sketch fluttered into my mind, and I held my breath, staring at the monument. Larger than life, the dark glass stabbed the sky, touching the stars. It reflected those gleaming lights and glittered like the night had cloaked it in galaxies.

  “Lord Rumpelstiltskin…?” The voice made me freeze. I turned slowly, disbelief coiling around my muscles. Tucked between the trees, just concealed enough to miss, was the little cottage Mabilia had drawn and called his. Standing before it, aged some but familiar, was Mythalzen. His hair lay over his shoulders. Tiny horns curled up on either side of his head. His golden eyes were wide, and when he blinked, they watered. Darting toward me, he threw his arms around my chest. “It’s you!” he sobbed. “Queen Mab said you’d come to, but…after all this time.”

  I had no words. It had been so long since I’d used any. My chest tightened the longer he held me, and eventually, I wrapped my arms around him, fighting the tears burning in my eyes. He was here. He was safe.

  “I missed you,” I whispered.

  He choked on his laugh. “Of course you did. Just think about how we all felt.” Pulling away, he rubbed his eyes, sniffed, and grinned sloppily. “It’s been a hundred years.”

  “H-how?” I asked, but as I did, my stomach knotted. If it had been that long, there was no hope Mabilia lingered in this world or the other. My spirit descended. Without her…what was I to do? “Who presides over the winter fae?”

  “Queen Mab,” he said, a glint of humor sparking in his gaze. He took my hand. “Come on. She’s been waiting decades for this.”

  I followed him to the castle, my heart clenched. “She’s alive?”

  “Mhm.”

  “How?” I asked again, but my breaths shortened, that affirmation on repeat in my mind. She’s alive. She’s alive. She’s alive. Anything could have happened in a hundred years. Anything at all. But if she lived, if she was in reach, if the fae were safe in this new world… I couldn’t stop my thoughts from wandering. I couldn’t get a grasp on them.

  How could this be? What price had birthed this plane?

  Mythalzen threw open elaborately etched doors and drew me into the wash of music I had heard from my resting place upon the mountain. A held breath quieted the twirling fae. The music died.

  Before me, Mythalzen fell to his knee, bowing his head. “As you’d asked, I watched, and the day finally came. I’ve brought him, my lady.”

  The crowd parted, a murmur pitching as it did, to reveal a clear path to a dais. Two thrones sat upon the glass stage, Esme standing behind one with wide eyes and a massive grin. Seated before her was an enchanting woman, her beauty unmatched by any I had ever seen.

  None could ruin her. Her raven dark hair flowed in an ethereal breeze, framing her flawless, pale skin. A string of ice gems threaded the locks about the crown of her head and rested upon her brow. A gown of crystal embraced her, and it split on one side when she stood. Her slender leg and bare feet peeked from the silken fabric when she took a first step toward me, but she paused before reaching the stairs.

  Breath left her, and she brought her hands to her lips. It was then I found her eyes. Her perfect, bright, blue eyes. They glistened with unshed tears. “I thought it might be today,” she whispered.

  Her voice sent a shudder through me.

  “I hoped. I truly hoped it would be.” Two tears skated down her cheeks to shatter on the ground at her feet. “Welcome to Tir na Nog, my faerie.”

  All around me, eyes dug into my skin, waiting and watching with morbid interest, but there was only h
er. “How?” I choked.

  Her gaze narrowed, hardening. “Excuse me? That is not the greeting I waited all these years for.” She descended her throne, her gown chiming like bells as she walked to me. Mythalzen hurried out of her path, joining the throngs of spectators. The closer she got, the wider his grin and the harder my heart thumped. Stopping too close, she folded her arms.

  “This shouldn’t be possible,” I tried, breathless.

  “No. Try again.”

  “I was supposed to—”

  “Err. Nope.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. Lifting on her toes, she trapped my face in her hands, running her fingers into my hair and across my ears. A spark of something purely electric lit every single nerve ending in my body. Her lips collided with mine, melding perfectly. She breathed me in, leaving blistering fire in in my throat. I melted. My arms found her waist, but she wasn’t close enough. I pulled her flush against my chest, tasting her gasp on my tongue. I clutched her and trembled. Heady emotions swallowed so many questions, and I couldn’t think anymore.

  She was here. Right here. Kissing me. When she broke for a moment to catch her breath, I burrowed my fingers in her hair and trailed kisses across her cheek and down her neck, until my forehead rested against her shoulder and I was holding onto her for dear life. Tears burned in my eyes, and my breaths shook.

  “My faerie,” she murmured, “I have waited so long to say this: take me absolutely away.”

  I could do nothing but obey. The prying eyes and hushed voices of the ball vanished in a thought as I dragged us from the room effortlessly and reappeared in the courtyard surrounded by white teardrop buds. “How did you manage this?” I asked, still holding her.

  “Did you really think I was going to let you die?”

  “But the price—”

  “Half the wielder’s soul.” She cupped my cheek and met my gaze, brushing straying locks of her hair over a long, pointed ear—not at all the stubby mortal one I recalled. “I tried my human half; it wasn’t near enough. So I offered a century of longing, heartache, and separation from my soulmate.”