Once Upon a Fairy tale: A Collection of 11 Fairy Tale Inspired Romances

by Danielle Monsch, Cate Rowan, Jennifer Lewis, Jeannie Lin, Nadia Lee, Dee Carney

  Langley had wanted her body. At least they’d both had true passion for one another. That soothed a small part of the ache.

  “Mère.” Langley sidestepped to stand in front of Zel. She should have moved away, but like yesterday when he’d taken her to bed, she couldn’t resist his closeness. It was like nectar to the practically extinct butterfly, she couldn’t seem to resist. “Put the gun away.”

  “I came to bring you two back.” Madame Gothel scowled at Langley. “You tried to run away, to take yourself to the one place you thought I couldn’t get to. But I’d long ago bribed one of the guards at the western gate. How do you think I got in to steal this creation?”

  Zel had wondered, but since her escape, she’d been confused and useless. She took a step around Langley and toward Madame Gothel. Close now, she only had to lunge to wrap her hand around the weapon. The older woman’s face grew pinched but still mocking. Zel wanted to wipe away the confidence imbued in Madame Gothel’s too-young visage. “We’ll find the guard and make sure he’s brought up on charges. Just like you.”

  Madame Gothel sneered and raised her other hand. In it, she held a flat device which she softly ran her thumb over. “Charges of what? Petty theft of a creation? You’ll cooperate. Now. Or I’ll blind our dear boy here.”

  Zel sucked in a breath. “You wouldn’t.”

  Behind her, Langley’s low, dire response gave her a dark premonition. “She would.”

  Madame Gothel circled around Zel, closer to Langley. “Those eyes. They’re not just for perfect vision. They have a tracking signature and controls so I can be sure of my heir. I’ve had enough of his little rebellion. It’s time he took his position seriously.”

  “Son.” Bovine made his confidence of Langley known in that one word, as if he were his son in reality. “Don’t worry. I already hacked into your eyes. She can’t permanently harm you.”

  Bovine had hacked Langley’s eyes? She’d missed something while she’d been numb and wishing for Langley’s touch, holed up in her condo. Now she could have him, if she still wanted him. All she had to do was get rid of this creature who posed as a human.

  Madam Gothel shook her head with a practiced moue. “There’s no way anyone can moderate the damage I can do with one swipe of my thumb.” To illustrate, she caressed the device with her thumb again. Zel’s mouth ran dry.

  The most cold-hearted mother in New Castle stared at Langley, not acknowledging Bovine, who had slipped from the room behind her. Zel’s pathetic moping seemed so stupid and useless, now. She had the skills to take this woman down, and all she’d done was let her walk all over her—and Langley.

  “You will not harm him. I’ll go back. Leave him out of this.” She would find another way out. No matter what. She hadn’t tried hard enough once she’d taken Langley to her bed. She hadn’t. Some part of her had wanted to explore her feelings more, and she’d stopped trying to outwit Gothel’s cronies, even when they’d visibly relaxed their vigil.

  Besides, if she could keep stalling, Bovine would get them help.

  “No, Mère. You’re not taking her back. You’re not taking my child.” Langley’s voice was colder than she’d ever heard it. He didn’t sound like the same man. He slid his hand in hers and squeezed. “Go. She won’t shoot you.”

  He dropped her hand and crouched. Swinging out a foot, he brought Madame Gothel down. Knowing what he’d do next, because she’d taught him the move, she expected him to lunge for the gun, loosened in the prone woman’s hand.

  But he didn’t. He halted, mid-movement, canted his head to the side and turned toward Zel as Madame Gothel scrambled up from the floor.

  There, before she could blink, his dark eyes faded until they’d gone white. His face blanked and he visibly shuddered. He insisted, “Go.”

  That bitch had blinded her own son. Zel’s entire body went hot, fury coursing through her. She rounded on Madame Gothel, who stared at Langley with a curious, frozen expression of shock and remorse. Tears coursed down her face and she muttered, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. Langley.”

  Zel lunged and gripped her tormentor’s hand, pushing it up.

  The mechgun went off with a zip. Ozone burned Zel’s nose.

  The ceiling cracked and sent dust raining down. She swung her foot around and behind Madame Gothel.

  “Stop,” Langley roared. His frustrated demand nearly distracted her. “Zel?”

  Not answering, she hooked the back of her opponent’s legs and threw her to the floor.

  “Umph.” Madame Gothel sucked in air, blinking up toward the crumbling ceiling.

  Zel kicked the mechgun from Gothel’s slack hand. Kneeling, she rolled her prisoner to her stomach and pulled her arms high against her back. Madame Gothel moaned. Zel nearly asked Langley to bring her something to tie the prisoner’s hands, but bit it back. He couldn’t see. Zel wrenched Madame Gothel’s arms higher. The older woman groaned louder.

  “Zel?” Langley’s concern growled from him. “Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine.” She kneeled in the center of Madame Gothel’s back. “I’ve subdued the prisoner. But I need something to restrain her.”

  “She’s okay, too?” Langley’s face had gone white. His hand reached out, searching in the air.

  This piece of trash was the person who’d given birth to the man she loved. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. The woman beneath her knee seemed to deflate. Gothel, who’d caused all this trouble, just sprawled on the floor without moving. This criminal would go away for a long time. Stealing Rapunzel wasn’t ‘petty theft’. Gothel hadn’t realized Mother would prosecute her for stealing research. Zel had never been so glad to be a ‘project’ rather than a human. “She’s fine. She’ll spend the rest of her life in rehabilitation, but she’s not physically harmed.”

  Langley walked with small steps in the direction of her voice. “Keep talking.”

  She did. She rattled on and on about how sorry she was for his blindness, but he didn’t seem to care. When he reached her, his hand swiped toward her, connecting with her shoulder. His hold tightened, nearly hurting her. His feet bumped into Madame Gothel, who gave up her silence and dissolved into a whimpering mess.

  Langley reached into his pocket and pulled out a link of golden rope. With a steady hand, he held it out. It was a small braid of her hair. She stifled the wonder and the questions. Making short work of it, she tied Madame Gothel’s hands. Zel stood, keeping half her attention on her prisoner and the other half on the man so close she could smell his clean, heady scent beneath the shock of ozone still lingering.

  “I’m sorry, Zel. I’d hoped…” Langley stared ahead, not seeing, his white eyes stark and cold. “You won’t want someone so… So damaged. And I have to go away. I have my duty.” He took a shuddering breath and grimaced. “I can’t do this.”

  “Bovine. He said…” She couldn’t remember what he said, but she could feel her heart breaking, right there in her chest, and she wanted to rush into his arms to reassure him but her legs wouldn’t cooperate. He thought he was damaged? A born human? He might have had a modification, but he existed. Not like her. Blindness was nothing compared to people treating another human as nothing. But it didn’t matter. Not if he left anyway. But, he didn’t have to stay blind. “Bovine can fix anything, but even if he couldn’t, I don’t care. I love you. No matter what.”

  The front area of the house erupted in chatter. Bovine strode in with a half-dozen agents fanning out behind him. In short order, the little condo was full and stifling with all the bodies crammed in, separating her from Langley even more. She couldn’t get to him with everyone in the way. Then he was gone.

  She’d told him she loved him and he hadn’t said a word, not even goodbye.

  Bovine led Langley out of the room. It was like a light went out in her.

  Instead of going to bed and nursing the ache in her chest, she let the operatives pull her to the side for questioning. Two burly agents took a subdued Madame Gothel away. />
  “Good riddance,” she muttered, and then she spent the next hours going over and over details of her abduction, imprisonment, and today’s confrontation.

  Finally, she’d had enough. She looked at the agent sitting across from her at her dining room table, and stared down the middle-aged man in a blue business suit. “Where’s Langley?”

  “He’s gone.” He started his questions over again while Zel’s world crumbled.

  Why would a person who could live in the privilege of the floating islands stay on the ground, in the smog, the crowded streets, and face the harsh day to day life in New Castle?

  Days passed with her mind whirling in place, stuck in the fact that landers belonged on land and the rich belonged in the sky.

  A week later, her life was still in unfamiliar tatters when she finally heeded one of Bovine’s messages to let him visit. While there, he talked her into letting him fix her hair follicles. Not that she cared, but it seemed to please him. By week two, she’d grown accustomed to the feel of the stubble on her head. By week four, she could face the sprouts of blonde in the mirror and not flinch.

  Months, could she handle months? Months of growth inside her and out, while her heart withered?

  After days and days of thinking about how to pick up the pieces, she’d made up her mind. Right now, in front of her, she had the papers Bovine had drawn up on her insistence, the first bio-creation to place an application for employment to Mother. She’d forced Bovine into arranging it and threatened to never leave her condo again unless her first mission was to take down Gothel Island. After the mission, she’d stay home until after the baby then return to Mother when she got the medical release back to work.

  Like the bulbs she gently nurtured into bloom each spring, she’d finally opened to life. She knew she was worthy of love. Bovine had always loved her. Her son would, too, as unconditionally as she already loved him. She gave to this world, even if New Castle didn’t know she did. Her research had helped create new discoveries. Her new job would keep the megacorps in line. Zel was worth fighting for. She was a woman, through and through.

  Her withered heart turned cold and angry. Her garden cluttered with weeds and overgrowth.

  Madame Gothel was convicted of theft—not kidnapping—and sent to rehabilitation. Zel heard Langley had attended the justice proceedings on days when Zel didn’t testify, but that had been the only word she’d had of him in many weeks. Bovine would answer no questions. She needed answers.

  The morning of her first mission, Bovine waltzed into the condo like he owned the place. Maybe he had the right. He did still own it.

  “Shut the door,” she groused. Of all the times she’d heard that from him, she couldn’t believe she had to say it to him. “I’ll not hear another word from you about waiting until I’ve had the baby to go.”

  She palmed the small bump beneath her filling breasts. The only thing that brought her any pleasure, any hope, was the life growing within her.

  Bovine looked at her in his way, a certain knowledge burning in his big brown eyes, the way he had since she’d announced her intention to infiltrate Gothel Island. He’d smiled for the first time in weeks. It irked her.

  He spoke as if to reassure her. “I’ve made sure an expert hovercraft driver takes you. I’ve secured the correct interview permissions, docking approval, and assigned you four bodyguards. If any harm comes to you, I’ll personally see to the decommission of that floating island.”

  “I can handle it myself.” She straightened the front of her suit and brushed a hand through her chin length bob. The nerves made her knees weak, but she headed to the door with a sure stride.

  “I have assurances. That’s the only reason you’re going.” Bovine’s stern declaration showed he cared for her, but it didn’t make a difference. She would’ve gone without his help.

  She walked out and turned her face up. Through the early morning smog, a line of floating islands cast shadows from the sky and onto the dingy skyscrapers. For as far as the eye could see—even mod eyes like Langley’s—the city sprawled while the rich didn’t bother to look down from their uppity ass mansions.

  One way or another, she had to have this reckoning. Gothel Island owed her.

  Chapter Nine

  ‡

  When the hovercraft approached the island, she didn’t recognize it. The first she’d seen it was at night. She’d left it by plummeting down on a braid. It was a large mansion of plaster and haphazard wings and her tower protruding from a central block. A bit ugly, in fact.

  “We’ve been given clearance,” the driver said. “I have orders to remain in the craft and keep it ready to go.”

  Behind her, four guards remained as silent as they had for the past hour since they’d left the Mother hovercraft garage. They climbed out, two in front of her, two behind, and spread out with their hands near their mechguns. Not wanting an audience when she confronted Langley, she’d have to ditch them. “Why don’t you stay here, too?”

  Like giant quadruplets, they remained silent. Their wall of heavily muscled gray suits followed her to the door of the craft bay where a woman met her.

  “I’m Monsieur Gothel’s assistant.” The woman nodded and gave a polite smile. “If you need anything while you’re here, let me know. My name is Mona.”

  “I don’t think so.” A snide remark implying Mona gave Langley anything he needed caught in the back of Zel’s throat. She subdued it. The little kick of jealousy surprised Zel. Mona was the opposite of her—short and curvy, dark hair, and a sensuality and assurance of movement. This was the kind of woman—every hair in place, no wrinkles, a perfect business suit that came to her knees—who could walk in those gorgeous heels and look perfect on the arm of Mister High Class Langley.

  A whoop echoed in the garage, a large space with only one other craft.

  Mona turned to the sound. “Stanley, watch the windows. Mind you, don’t break any more.”

  A gangly boy ran by kicking a ball. Behind him, more boys—nearly identical in looks but definitely so in wide smiles—chased after him. There had to be at least six, but it was difficult to tell as they ran past in a blur.

  “Don’t mind them. They’re just boys. Getting their energy out.” Mona smiled and led Zel out of the garage.

  A strange thumping started in the back of her head, a realization she didn’t want to think about. She didn’t want to know anything about those boys, though she had a strange feeling their presence had something to do with her.

  “Where are we going?” Begrudging even one question to Mona, she asked because they were heading past the labs and offices—all brightly lit from the sun that only shone fully above the smog—and toward the damned tower.

  “Monsieur Gothel has moved his offices for the time being.”

  Her heart beat furiously and she had to take several rough breaths as she started up the stairs to the tower. She stopped on the third tread, her legs rubbery, but she didn’t fall back into the wall of guards still silently following her. “I’ll wait for him in his old office, wherever it is. He can see me there.”

  Hand gripping the rail of the narrow and murky stairwell, Mona turned and though she was a stranger, the concern was apparent in the downturn of her mouth. “He hasn’t come down from there since his return.”

  Zel’s mouth ran dry. She gripped the handrail and lifted her heavy leg to the next step. Then she did it again. Every single step was a milestone, a relief to have mastered it, and an added weight on her hot and tight chest.

  “I called his old valet, Bennet, and he came to visit. Even he couldn’t talk him out of there, and we all know how much they care for one another.”

  “Really?” Zel didn’t know. She loved Langley so much it hurt but maybe she didn’t know him at all. She knew the particulars. What he was like as a child, how he’d lived. Where he went to college. That he was passionate about his cause. She’d memorized his body, the exquisite talent of his fingers, his tongue, the torturous rhythm of his
hips, but not what he liked to do for fun, what he enjoyed reading, who he cared about.

  Her heart raced so much she couldn’t hear her own steps. Did he care for another woman? Had he had a lover when his mother had trapped him in her plan? Perhaps that was why he’d left and had never come back.

  The anger she’d harbored for the past few weeks roared back to life and strengthened her resolve. She lifted her chin and climbed the steps.

  At the top, light shone through the open door. She paused at the landing where Mona had moved to the side and motioned her past. The door wasn’t simply open. It was gone.

  The chamber beyond had been her prison. The door that had kept her inside was missing. At her angle, she couldn’t see into the room. Only a small portion of a wall, barren where before she’d hung Langley’s album tablet, reminded her of how she’d spent her weeks, staring at those pictures or out the window waiting on Langley to come.

  “A moment, Ms. Denmark.” One of her guards had finally spoken. A gentle grip on her wrist held her back while the other three men moved into the room.

  Rumbling and quiet conversation came from inside, and she stood there, letting the guard keep her back, because that voice still had immense power over her. The hushed tones of Langley made her yearn.

  Then she remembered her bubbling anger. She pushed past the guards and gave them an emphatic order. “Get out.”

  They moved silently down the stairs with Mona. Zel stepped further in and was alone with Langley. In her old prison. The surreal circumstances nearly pulled a laugh from her chest but she constricted and choked it before it could escape.

  Langley’s slim figure stood rigid near the foot of her bed where a desk had been set up. He didn’t come to her, or blink. He didn’t even appear to breathe. He’d lost weight. Half circles darkened beneath his eyes. His hair had gotten longer.

  With resolve, she pulled the folded tablet from her pocket, and slid the album onto the desk with a deft throw. She couldn’t look at it anymore without a tear slashing through her chest. Langley glanced down and frowned at the small square and cleared his throat.