Huntsman's Prey

by Marie Hall

  “And you’re sure of that?” Rumple lifted a blond brow, twirling the jewel-encrusted dagger between his fingers.

  “Yes,” Aeric nodded. “I’m sure of it.” He slapped the parchment into the imp’s chest and turned to leave. His debt had been paid in full. The rest was up to the bastard himself.

  Grabbing the sheaf and tucking it into his pocket with a tempered sort of glee, Rumpelstiltskin nodded. “I don’t trust you, hunter, and if you’re wrong—”

  “You know where I live. Got it, beelzebub.”

  The blond haired sorcerer nodded as he leaned back in his leather seat. His steel horse rumbling and purring with its need to seek out their next adventure.

  Aeric had been right the first time he’d seen the imp’s mode of transportation. The thing was part sentient and as mean as the devil’s dog.

  The cliffs they stood by whistled with the strength of the winds coasting up from the Seren Seas.

  “I’ve debated for months now whether to share this with you, because sharing isn’t really my thing,” Rumple laughed.

  “So why start now?” Aeric leaned against the slate shelf of a protruding rock. For months he’d been on the hunt for the so called ‘enigma’ a being that would supposedly lead to the destruction of Rumpel.

  Of course the imp hadn’t out and out told Aeric that, but he’d gleaned the truth from the bits and pieces of information he’d gathered.

  Rumpel was as powerful as they all said, but even the most powerful had that one enemy they all feared. But rather than wait for the destruction to come to him, Rumpel decided to find it first and end it.

  A solid plan if Aeric had anything to say about it. But now he was done and he was ready to go. Not back to court either.

  He was through being the Red Queen’s goon. Aeric was tired, it’d taken him months to get over the loss of her.

  He still couldn’t bring himself to even say her name. Some days were harder than others, but each day he could breathe just a little easier. All he wanted was solitude.

  Rumpel chuckled. “While your self-flagellation has been a delight, truly, there are… shall we say, mutterings of something strange happening in Wonderland.”

  “There is always something strange happening in Wonderland.” Aeric kicked at a rock, watching as it sailed over the cliff, tumbling end over end, before finally crashing and breaking apart into a hundred smaller pieces below.

  Revving his engine, Rumpel nodded. “Indeed. But humor me for a second with a riddle.”

  “Dear gods, what?” he snapped, at the end of his rope and desperate to go. As if three months of his life wasn’t enough, the imp was goading him.

  “What is blue and black and purrs like a kitty?”

  Head snapping up, eyes narrowing, everything inside Aeric went very, very still. “What are you saying?”

  His answering smile was his only answer.

  Breathing hard, Aeric didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Rumpel was lying. He had to be. Except there was a problem with that theory.

  In all the time he’d known the imp, Aeric had never once caught him in a lie. Either the man was really good, or he did not lie.

  Which meant…

  “Is she alive? Is Lissa alive?” Not even realizing what he was doing, Aeric was suddenly in Rumpelstiltskin’s face and grabbing hold of his collar, shaking him hard.

  Laughing, the imp swatted his hands away before brushing down his shirt and shrugging.

  “Where is she at? Tell me?” He licked his lips.

  “Where it all began. Of course.”

  “I owe you nothing for that answer, do you understand me, demon?” Aeric turned on his heels and called forth his sands, knowing he’d travel ten times faster in that form than in his current one.

  The echoing murmur of “we’ll see” was the last thing he heard.

  ~*~

  The moment Aeric stepped through into Wonderland nothing felt the same. The woods, while always tempered with that fine edge of sanity and madness, now seemed dull. Lackluster.

  The trees looked like trees. The grass like grass. The vines weren’t coiling out to grab him. The disruption Chrysalis had caused had now righted itself. Returning Wonderland to what it once was.

  And he was oddly saddened by it.

  Walking toward the stump where he’d first met Lissa, he dropped his palm onto it and stared ahead at the tree line.

  Why had he listened to Rumpel? Why had he allowed himself for a moment to hope? The flowers swayed with eyes closed, sleeping the sleep of the dead, as if exhausted from the terrors they’d witnessed and were now, for the first time in years, able to relax.

  Bugs chirped and sang, the rustle of moving grass from tiny rodents sounded all around. And there was no blue furred cat in sight.

  When he’d killed Chrysalis, he’d not properly grieved her. He’d known that. He’d not given himself the time to think on it, to really let his actions penetrate through his brain. He’d not said goodbye. Because he’d known if he’d done any one of those things it would have been too much. So he’d locked it all away.

  But now he could say goodbye. And maybe that’s what this was about. Maybe Rumpel, in some twisted perverted sense of kindness, had sent him here to release her.

  “Goodbye, Lissa,” he whispered to the breeze, “We may not have known one another long, but those days were the best of my life. You’ve changed me in so many ways and I can only ever be grateful to you for that. I just wish…” he sighed, knuckled the betraying hint of wetness from the corner of his left eye and sniffed, straightening his shoulders. “Yeah, so, goodbye, kitten.”

  “Goodbye? Goodbye why, man?”

  He turned on his heel so fast, his brain screaming at him the whole time that Wonderland liked to play tricks. Liked to show one thing, when the truth was vastly different. But his heart was pounding through his chest, trying to tear itself from its cage, because in front of him. Not ten yards away stood Lissa.

  She wasn’t nude this time, she wore a blue dress and blue shoes. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and there was a large black bow tied on top. She looked so heart-wrenchingly familiar that his throat squeezed shut, because it was too full of words he couldn’t bring himself to say.

  Her scent of wildness and spring rain undulated through the breeze, all around him, tickled his nose. Made his heart flutter harder.

  He curled his hands. “Are you real?”

  She took a step toward him and shrugged. “Maybe. But sometimes I don’t think I am.”

  Aeric laughed and she looked startled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “If you’d said yes, I’d have known you were a mirage. But only you,” he swallowed thickly.

  A slow smile spread across her face. “Could speak such nonsense?”

  His lips twitched. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  A thin black brow arched. “Maybe not, but you were thinking it, admit it.”

  Her eyes were no longer purely black, nor was she different parts of see through and substantial. It was Lissa. She was gorgeous. But she was different. More solid. Real like she’d been the last day he’d been with her.

  Aeric took another tentative step toward her. As if sensing what he needed, she closed the gap between them and when her palms skimmed the sides of his whiskered cheeks he couldn’t help the grunt of both pain and confusion that dropped from his lips.

  “So often when I’m with you I feel as though I repeat myself constantly,” he gave her a half smile, “but how did this happen?”

  Her eyes searched his and hidden within them was a wealth of meaning. Emotions he was almost too scared to believe.

  “You fixed me, Aeric. Just like I knew you would.”

  Shaking his head, he grabbed her wrists, because the thought of her letting go, of not touching him, was a thought too horrible to bear. Three months he’d been without Lissa, three months that he’d replayed the moment of her death over and over in his head. Hating
himself for severing that last tie that bound her to Siria, but that also ultimately killed her.

  “I killed you, Lissa. I didn’t want to… I didn’t—”

  She shook her head and shushed him, prying her wrist out of his grip so that she could place a finger against his lips. “No, you saved me. If that evil had remained inside me, I never could have healed. Reflection was too strong for us.”

  “Siria,” he corrected.

  Her lips twisted. “Chrysalis always knew her as reflection,” she said softly, almost sadly.

  “So you are two in one?” It was the one question he’d always wanted to ask her. The one question he’d mulled over late at night when he couldn’t sleep, could only think about who she’d been, what she was. “Does Chrysalis,” he huffed, not sure how to even ask this question.

  She frowned. “I am two, and I was separate. I never knew that I was anything other than me.” She tapped her chest. “I was always Lissa. And I’d seen the ghostly mirage of Chrysalis, but in some ways I believe Chrysa was shielding me as best she could. Protecting my mind from Siria’s poison, so that in the end—”

  “You could be her salvation,” he finished for her.

  She nodded. “Siria was very strong, stronger even in many ways than Chrysa herself was, making me unaware of the struggle was Chrysalis’ only choice.”

  He shook his head. Grabbing her hands and kissing the knuckles hard. “I don’t blame her. After I figured it out, and really had time to think on it, I realize she had no choice. But, Lissa, I have to know… How do you feel about me?”

  He could taste the adrenaline on his tongue, it was thick and cloying and bitter. His heart raced so hard he was sure she must be able to hear it.

  A beatific smile spread like sun-warmed honey across her pale, lovely face. “I love you more now, then I did then. Each day I’ve fallen a little harder, a little madder for you, my Huntsman.”

  His lashes fluttered. “So why did you not come find me? How long have you been alive? I know you died, I saw you. I saw your parents grieve for you.”

  Nodding slowly, she clenched her jaw. “Yes, you are right. I did die. The evil in me died. And it took weeks. My father could not stand the thought of putting me inside the ground, so he’d built a glass casket for me and set it within a field of wild poppies. My mother was the one to find me when my eyes finally opened. Do you remember the blessing that Danika placed on us the night of our birth? The one Chrysa told you about?”

  “That if you chose goodness you would be saved?”

  “Yes.” She nodded forcefully. “It was that blessing that ultimately woke us. Danika’s magic counteracted Siria’s vengeance.”

  Rubbing the petal like softness of her cheek with his thumb, willing his frothing emotions to calm, Aeric shook his head. “So your body expelled the darkness, and then you opened your eyes.”

  She blinked, and they were so much brighter and happier than he remembered.

  “But you said it was weeks. We’ve been apart months, Lissa. How long have you been awake?”

  Her lips thinned. “A month.”

  His heart sank, because that wasn’t the answer he’d have wished to hear. “And yet here you stayed.”

  “Here I stayed,” she echoed him, “yes, and here I shall stay.” As if anticipating his follow up question, her smile was bittersweet. “I can never leave here, Aeric. I tried. The moment I awoke. My…my father, it is tricky for me to think of him as such now when for so long I simply knew him as the Hatter,” she said as an afterthought, and then shook her head, “my father tried to warn me, but I was so determined to get to you I would not heed his advice.”

  “And what advice was that?” Aeric could only imagine, he’d obviously made a very poor first impression with the Hatter if he warned his daughter to stay away. A month lost, a month he’d thought her dead, and in all that time she’d not tried very hard to dissuade him of that notion.

  It was enough to make him drop her hands and take a step back as the pain and hurt began to turn to defeat. He’d thought he’d known Lissa, had felt her soul breathe against his own.

  “No, you don’t understand. I know what you and the Hatter…” she cleared her throat, “my father, went through. He explained that he felt responsible for driving you off in that way, because he blamed you for my condition. But truly it was more a father’s fears made manifest rather than him truly believing you to be the source of my,” her wrist fluttered, “malady. My father,” she paused, “told me that I might have problems leaving wonderland because of my dual nature.”

  Aeric narrowed his eyes. “There are many shifters in Kingdom. Look,” he held up his hand, stalling her words, “if you do not want to be with me, I understand, but please, after all we’ve been through, don’t lie to me.”

  Her mouth dropped and she quickly rushed into his arms. Aeric wanted to fight it, to send her away. But his traitorous heart wouldn’t listen. Instead of pushing her back he wrapped his arms tighter around her, clinging for dear life while simultaneously bracing himself to hear the words that would rip through his soul like a knife.

  “I never lied when I said I love you. And yes, there are shifters in all parts of Kingdom. But I am more than a woman who can become a cat. I am two personalities trapped within one body and only the madness and wonder of this place could allow something so bizarre to exist. Outside of these woods, one part of me would cease to be. My mother explained that on Earth split personalities are not at all rare and can in fact co-exist peacefully, but here in Kingdom it just isn’t so.”

  Was she lying? Could that really happen? Aeric had never known of another case like Chrysalis/Lissa. In the whole of Kingdom, he couldn’t honestly say he’d ever heard of this phenomenon.

  “Which one of you would die?”

  She shrugged. “I do not know. But were I to guess, I think it would be me.” Her eyes pleaded with him to understand.

  Aeric dug his fingers into her back, wanting to keep her always. Wishing there were some way to give her a piece of his own soul if it meant she’d stay safe. If she could be happy again.

  “But there is more. I love you, with all that is within me. But Chrysa does not. Your interaction with Chrysalis was very peripheral. She does not know you. And those are the real reasons why I stayed away.”

  He licked his lips. “But we could still be together. As we are now.”

  “I sent Rumpel to find you for me, to tell you, because I could not stomach the thought that you would never know the truth of me. It’s been so hard trying to work through this, to tell you that it has to… it must be…” she hiccupped and seemed to be swallowing tears.

  Of course Rumpel had been tasked with telling him. The imp never did a kindness without something in return and it worried him what Lissa had offered to pay him in exchange for that service, but right now it was more worrying that her body trembled and she looked defeated and shattered.

  Feathering kisses along the crown of her head, he shook his head. “Lissa, there is always a way. Danika once told me, that love, when it is real, is a magic more powerful than any in this world. Together we stopped Siria, surely we can figure this out. I do not wish to let you go. Not now, not when we’re so close.”

  “But Chrysalis owns claim to this body as much as me. I cannot always be me, and I remember you told me once that your hearts desire was to travel the worlds, not because it was your duty, but because you could. You were a free man able to roam and be yourself.”

  His lips quirked. “You remembered that?”

  She sighed. “I remember everything.”

  Tipping her chin up until their lips were so close they shared breath, he searched her hot gaze and felt his blood begin to heat. “Do you trust me, kitten?”

  “With my soul,” she was quick to assure.

  He loved this fragile, impossibly sharp-witted beauty before him with everything he had in him. “You’re all the adventure I’ll ever need. Who needs to see the worlds, when all I have to do is
walk through one of your father’s doors that leads to a million different miracles of wonder? Hmm?” His thumb stroked her lower lip.

  Her tongue lightly flicked the pad of his thumb and he sucked in a sharp breath, ready to take this woman’s body as his own, plunder her mouth with his tongue and brand her as his forever.

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” She asked in a tone so quiet he had to strain to hear.

  “I know now where I belong. I don’t need the world, not when I have you by my side. You’re all I ever wanted, I was just too foolish to realize it immediately.”

  She laughed and held his wrist lightly. “But there is still the matter of Chrysalis. What about her?”

  “You say you two can communicate now, right?”

  “Kind of. She’s opened herself up to me, so that I can ‘see’ and ‘hear’ what she does, but we cannot have back and forth discourse. She’s just no longer hidden from me.”

  He nodded. “But can you call her forth?”

  She cocked her head as frown lines bracketed the edges of her plump, pink lips. “Yes. But why?”

  “I just need to ask her a few questions is all.”

  Her lips thinned, but she didn’t ask him to explain further. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he recognized instantly the transformation from his Lissa, to Chrysalis.

  Chrysalis and Lissa were identical in looks now, apart from the bleeding heart tattoo that rested just beneath Chrysa’s right eye. But where his kitten’s eyes glowed with love, Chrysa’s were more wary, skittish.

  She inhaled deeply and immediately stepped out from the circle of his arms. “She has spoken with you then?”

  Her voice was an octave deeper. Her chin was held just an inch higher and her chest was puffed out a little more. All differences so subtle that if he weren’t aware of them, he’d never assume that the woman he loved and the woman standing before him were anything but the same.

  “You look the same as her,” he said.

  She nodded and brushed a hand down her front. “You understand the difficulty now, do you not, hunter?”

  He nodded. “I do. I seek her hand. I wish to take the vows of Veritas.”