by Laura Kenyon
1703—The princess pricks her finger on a spinning wheel hidden in the highest tower of the castle. All life in the kingdom immediately falls into a deep sleep. (Note: Mercifully, the lack of engine-powered vehicles and electric appliances kept the death toll during the Great Sleep to a minimum. The timing of the curse was also fortunate, as most people were dressed in warm clothing. Only fifty of the island’s two thousand residents were confirmed dead when the spell finally broke, with causes ranging from frostbite to heatstroke to asphyxiation under the weight of eroding buildings.)
Draping her arm around Morning, Dawn trudged up to the last drawing. She didn’t know if she could take any more. Swiping at her eyes with her sleeves, she took a quivering breath and examined the sketch. It was crude, but clearly depicted a polished young man kneeling on the floor while a woman threw her arms around his neck and sobbed. Her face expressed intense gratitude, relief, and love.
Dawn crunched her teeth together. Once again, the artist had quite a bloated imagination. Had Dawn illustrated her “rescue,” the princess would have been in the corner of the room waving a lamp at the stranger, demanding to know what was going on and why she woke up with his tongue in her mouth. What’s more, Davin would have been standing in the doorway, watching in terror as this interloper manipulated his true love into marriage.
Then she heard Morning’s awestruck voice. “Wow, Mom,” she said. “How come you don’t draw anymore? That’s so good.”
“What?” She shook her head. “No, sweetheart, I didn’t draw that.”
Morning pressed her finger into the caption and nodded. “Yea, it says right here that you did.”
Dawn pinched the bridge of her nose and refocused. She forced herself to read the words.
2003—While exploring the island for Tirion Enterprises, his new start-up real estate venture, King Hunter of Regian discovers the sleeping princess and breaks her curse with a kiss. They marry within a week. (Note: Queen Dawn created the above illustration as a wedding gift to her husband. It is a photocopy. The cherished original remains with the King.)
Dawn opened her mouth to say something, but the words cracked in her throat. She had drawn that. She remembered it, but … had it been doctored? She knew this wasn’t how they’d looked moments after Hunter broke the curse. She hadn’t thrown her arms around him in gratitude, because she was terrified and confused and had no idea what was going on. But the woman who’d drawn this, a week later, wasn’t going for historical accuracy. She’d wanted to express how she felt about her soon-to-be husband. And evidently, she’d seen Hunter as noble, safe, and loving. When had that changed?
She leaned in so close that her nose touched the glass. The man in the picture looked a lot like the man she’d seen over the last week. Come to think of it, he bore a strong resemblance to the Davin she’d imagined for a decade, too—more so, she might even say, than the one she’d met in the woods.
She didn’t know what to make of it all. For years, the past had been a glistening, rose-tinted utopia locked beneath a ball of glass—and she’d wanted to slip inside of it so badly. But now, someone had taken that globe and smashed it wide open. And suddenly all that sparkle was gone. Suddenly, all that remained were stones, and secrets, and edges that no longer fit.
“Come on, Mom.” Morning was tugging at her hand. “All that’s left are boring things, and I’m sleeping over Mariel’s tonight. Remember?”
Dawn peeled herself away and followed, suddenly feeling like the child.
On the way out, they strolled down a long corridor plastered with news clippings—headlines about the restoration, shots of politicians shaking hands, her husband standing in front of Parliament and yelling.
She came to a dead stop. Morning, still clutching her mother’s hand, flew forward and then back into her. “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart. Did I hurt your shoulder? Just give me one more minute, okay?”
But five minutes later, Dawn still stood there, staring in disbelief at an editorial from the Marestam Mirror. It was dated ten years back and written by the paper’s editor-in-chief. A Noble Effort, the headline read, Regian leader loses war.
In it, the writer described how—in the months following their wedding, when Dawn was preoccupied with pregnancy nausea, dying parents, and her mother-in-law’s bloodlust—Hunter had launched a massive effort to reinstate Selladóre as an official Marestam kingdom. He’d gone head-to-head with Angus Kane and his cronies over the course of a dozen meetings, and even offered up Tirion Enterprises in exchange. When they still wouldn’t listen, he personally petitioned each of the other four monarchs in hopes of having Kane impeached.
I never took Hunter Tirion for a bookworm, but he must have spent hours poring through Parliamentary procedure books in order to find this provision, the journalist wrote. In all my years covering the realm, not once have I even heard of—let alone seen invoked—Article S7835, which allows all five monarchs to come together and dismiss the Prime Minister, restock Parliament, and/or veto the entire constitution.
It was Hunter’s final attempt to go against Parliament and restore his new wife’s homeland. Unfortunately for him, neither Braddax nor Riverfell felt the urge to share government resources with a sixth kingdom.
On the bright side, while he didn’t stop Kane from declaring Selladóre a National Heritage Site, he did quash talk of augmenting the island with another 100 acres of fill.
Dawn felt her lungs contract. Her heart was vibrating. Breathing suddenly took effort.
Until Hunter’s confession on the balcony, she’d never even imagined his company as a bargaining chip for Selladóre. And frankly, until now, she hadn’t really believed it. But even more than that, Hunter had directly defied—no, attacked—all of Parliament in order to do right by her. Everything she thought she’d known—from her perfect little past to Hunter’s neglect to the reason for her parents’ illness—had been wrong.
She’d been selfish. She’d been so exorbitantly selfish with a man who’d guided her, loved her, and stood beside her … when all she gave in return were cold pecks and bitterness.
And Davin? She’d painted him just as rosy as everything else. She couldn’t deny they’d had moments—moments that, like Selladóre’s wall, seemed so much bigger and stronger in memory. But he’d had moments with lots of girls. He was never the knight in shining armor she’d built him up to be. A knight in shining armor wouldn’t have left during the hardest decade of her life. He would have stood by her side—even if he thought she didn’t want him there—and loved her.
As a mother, she knew all childhood dreams eventually clashed with reality. It was a fact of life, an obstacle that had to be scaled in order to become a mature adult. But Dawn had never scaled it. She’d slapped Davin’s memory over her juvenile fantasies and blocked everything else out. She’d buried her face in her hands and passed blame. All this time, Hunter had been propping her up and taking none of the credit. He’d been giving her balance—often whether she liked it or not—and she needed that.
When she finally turned away, Morning was slumped against a bench in the corner, swinging her sneakers over the floor. As Dawn approached, she felt the sensation that she was seeing her life for the first time. This was her life now, and she was proud of it. She was done living in the past—whether three years ago or three hundred. She had to tell Hunter that she’d been wrong about so much and was determined to do better.
And she had to find a way to meet Davin, tonight, and cut things off for good.
Chapter Twenty-One
BELLE
Belle leaned her forehead into Rapunzel’s car window and exhaled. The glass fogged and then turned to clear droplets before her eyes. In the distance, a young couple was spinning around in the pavilion, not caring at all about the rain.
“Well they look nauseatingly happy,” Rapunzel said, probably to remind Belle that she was in the car too. The engine had been off for at least a minute.
“Newlyweds,” she replied, still glued to t
he window. “And yes.”
Belle had checked them in two nights earlier, when the groom burst through the front door clutching his sopping wet bride and tripping over his tuxedo pants. They’d broken down a mile from the inn and walked the rest of the way in the storm, but it was still the best day of their lives. Belle knew because they’d said it many, many times.
There was once a time she could imagine that kind of happiness, too. Years ago, and only for a few brief seconds. Back when her father was respected, her mother was still there, and her sisters were too caught up in frivolities to bother with her at all. During that time, she’d had shelter, freedom, and love. She’d had her books and her imagination. She’d believed a handsome man would come and sweep her off her feet someday. They would marry, have babies, and sleep every night wrapped in each other’s arms. They would live happily ever after.
And then Donner came along. He had all the trappings of a real life fairy tale. There was even a curse and true love’s kiss. Their story could fill history books—did fill history books. How could she not believe that was her dream come true? How could she possibly have suspected it would end up like this? That she was being thrown—no, throne—for one gigantic loop?
Oddly enough, she believed he did want to be a better man now. She believed that was genuine. But even if he pulled that off, it still wouldn’t give her the love story she’d imagined. It still wouldn’t give her the laughter, or the trust, or the conversations she never wanted to end. She’d seen that love story elsewhere. She’d looked it straight in its stormy gray eyes and kissed it. And now she had to send it away.
“Gray here?” she heard Rapunzel ask, somewhere behind her muddled thoughts.
Belle peeled away from the window. “Probably.” She pictured him pacing the floor in his cabin … or breaking ground on that greenhouse she told him not to build … or perched on the edge of the lounge sofa, waiting for her to come back. Whatever he was doing, Beast was probably with him—attached to his side because if anyone knew where his master had gone, it was the unusually animated human he’d met in the woods.
Finally, she pulled back the handle and half-rolled out of the car. Rapunzel sprinted around with an umbrella and a helping hand—and just in case she couldn’t walk twenty feet to the door.
“I’m not a cripple,” she said. But Rapunzel simply rolled her eyes and said she was aware of that.
“Accept help once in a while, will you? You still have your hospital bracelet on.” They took a few more steps, then: “Do you know what you’re gonna do?”
Belle scanned the pavement. It was clean and shiny from the rain. “Do about what?”
She didn’t even have to look at her friend to see the scowl. “You know what. About this cosmically fucked love triangle you’ve got going on. I just want you to know I’m here if you need to talk about it. And obviously what I said before about leaving the inn if you went back to Donner—”
“I’m not going back to Donner.” But even as she said the words, she knew they weren’t true.
Rapunzel nodded. “Of course. But just so you know … I was bluffing. I’m here to stay no matter what you decide.”
“Kay.”
“So…” She trailed off as they climbed the front steps. “Have you decided?”
Mercifully—or at least she thought—the door swung open before Belle could formulate an answer. It spat out a preoccupied man with a duffel bag hiked over his shoulder.
“Oh hey!” Gray’s bag fell as he reached out to hug Belle rather than knock her over. “You’re back.” He leaned forward so their eyes were at the exact same level, and practically palmed both sides of her head. “How are you feeling? Are you in the clear? Everyone missed you.”
Rapunzel stepped back as Belle tried to answer his questions without letting her emotions show. She could only look into his eyes for a second. Then she panned the porch and focused on his bag.
“Are you going somewhere?”
“Umm, yeah.” His hands dropped. He backed off a few inches. His eyes refocused on his shoes. “Car’s all done. Looks good as new.”
Behind him, Rapunzel shook off the umbrella and silently slunk towards the door. Her entire face was crinkled—mostly in pity. “I’ll be inside,” she mouthed. Belle gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“When?” she asked, one hand splayed across the bump she could now call her son.
“The mechanic dropped it off this morning. Perfect timing, right?”
She shook her head. “No. I meant when are you leaving?”
His lips tried to bounce into that signature slanted grin, but it wasn’t convincing this time. He was wearing the same vintage t-shirt he’d worn the first day they met, with the black jacket that fell halfway down his thumbs. “Well, everything’s packed so … I guess I was just waiting for you.”
Belle bit her lip and leaned into the railing. “But you’re leaving now?”
He followed, leaned beside her, and crossed his arms. They’d stood the same way almost two weeks earlier, when he tried to explain his condition. Evidently, she hadn’t broken it the other night after all.
She listened to the rain and tried to catch one of the dozen emotions folding through her—sadness at losing him, anger that he was leaving, relief that she wouldn’t have to cover up her feelings and push him away.
“Belle, you’ve got enough to worry about without me muddling things up.”
“That’s not true,” she said, though he had no idea how right he actually was.
He shifted his weight and looked at her, saying a thousand words without making a sound.
“You’ve got to do what’s best for that baby.”
“Gray,” she began, her voice barely louder than a whisper. “It’s not that—”
He held up his hand. “It’s okay. You have nothing to explain. Some things are just bigger.” He straightened up and opened his arms. This was officially goodbye.
Before she could make a conscious decision to move, she was plastered to his chest. She took a deep breath, smelling freedom and nature and happiness all wrapped into one. She wanted to absorb every bit of him through her pores. Like a bear preparing for winter, she had to stock up on the warmth of his skin, the tenderness of his touch, the hair that knotted together at the base of his neck.
Kiss him, her mind ordered. Squeeze him tight and never let go. Have your happy ending, to hell with everyone else.
The longer he stayed, the more her throat felt like it was holding back a blowtorch.
“Where will you go?” she asked, pulling away before the tears could take over.
“Oh, I’ve got a few ideas,” he said. “Haven’t tried shark diving yet.”
She gave a meek smile, and then held her breath. Anything else and she would split apart at the seams.
“I just want you to know,” he continued, “I’m not leaving here with a single regret.”
She shuddered as he gave her forehead a kiss and placed a gentle hand on her side. “Take care of the gremlin for me. Both this overeager one and the four-legged furry guy.”
A pop of laughter forced its way out, unclogging the pressure she’d been holding back and unleashing the tears she never wanted him to see. Their sensible restraint cracked. They lunged for each other, hot salt streaming down her cheeks, over his nose, into their mouths as they kissed … as they stood in silence, wanting to stop time … and as their fingertips slowly, inevitably broke contact.
* * *
Belle stayed on the porch for twenty minutes after he was gone. She kept hoping to see the car returning, kicking up clouds of dirt in a mad dash to get back to her. Gray would tumble out of the driver’s seat—leaving the engine running and the door open wide—and take her up in his arms. He’d say I love you, and you love me, and nothing bad can happen when that’s the case.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, Rapunzel skulked outside to tell her Ethan’s car broke down and she had to go get him. Then Nathan reminded her that Letitia was coming
in an hour to scope out the inn for her rehearsal dinner. And she’d be bringing both Kiarra Kane and her wedding planner.
“She has a wedding planner?” Belle asked, following him inside and pretending to be okay. “Then why is she making Penny do everything?”
Nathan sighed and tossed his hands in the air. “You know more about the way queens think than I do! Anyway, it’s that Epson person, who did Cinderella’s thirtieth birthday.”
She nodded, but she didn’t care. The name sounded familiar. Kimberly Epson. Her sister had been murdered by her own husband—the one who’d killed all his previous wives as well. At least there was one thing Belle didn’t have to worry about.
She was just heading to her room to change (somehow she’d gotten glitter all over her blouse) when the doorbell rang. Her heart leapt.
“Belle!” She was already running before Nathan’s voice reached her.
Could it be Gray? Could something have changed? Could—
She halted as soon as she saw the massive figure standing in the hallway. He towered over Nathan, who looked both terrified and awestruck in Donner’s shadow.
“I just came from the hospital,” he grunted. His entire body was tight.
Belle’s eyes widened. She hadn’t told him the prenatal appointment had been canceled. There’d been no need for it after her episode. “Donner, I’m so sorry. I forgot to call—”
“I had to read about your emergency in the newspaper.”
She could tell he was angry, but more than that, he was hurt. He didn’t even want to approach her.
“I’m sorry. Everything just happened so fast.”
“Are you all right? Is the baby all right?”
She nodded.
He let his fist loosen a bit. Then his shoulders.
“Good.” He smoothed his shirt and took three steps closer. “Now, do you have that answer?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
RAPUNZEL
“Now here’s your problem,” Sam Railey said between spits of chewing tobacco. His head was halfway beneath the hood of Ethan’s car, but at least he had the decency to hawk the black discharge over the side. “Carburetor’s caput. Looks like someone patched it up pretty good, but that was only gonna last you for so long.”