It was the day I’d fought so hard for, the culmination of decades of planning and plotting and destroying my soul. It was all happening. It was finally here, and I was too bloody afraid to move.
Giles cleared his throat behind me.
I’m sure he did not understand what was going through me. I knew I didn’t—I barely understood any of it. The only thing I knew with any kind of certainty was that I’d been haunted by her kiss two years ago and every night since.
I’d felt something in Shayera that night, something powerful. I’d felt the ghost of my bride.
It was why I’d pulled away from her and why I’d run away as I had. Everything about her terrified me.
I wanted her with a passion that terrified the living hell out of me. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t focus. For years, my only goal had been the creation of her, and I’d accomplished that, but she was different in so many ways. In fact, I’d nearly lost all hope of ever recovering my Shayera until the night of that bloody kiss that’d scared me witless and made a fool out of me.
My mouth was dry. My stomach heaved. My knees were weak. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to her.
Giles cleared his throat again. “Sir, should I—”
“Yes,” my voice cracked, “yes, send her away from here. To another part of the castle, I care not. Just move her, Giles. Get her away from me. Now.” My voice cracked and shame gripped me. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Closing my eyes, I rested my throbbing forehead against the doorframe and swallowed the ball of bile trapped in my throat.
I sensed my man’s hesitation. I knew what it must look like to him, and I wished to the Underworld I knew how to stop it. But I also knew that if I released my grip on the door, I would fall on my face. Panic and terror ate away at me like leeches at a bloody wound, and I didn’t at all know how to make it stop.
Only one thing in all the worlds could ever make me so weak, and it was her. It had always been her.
“Eventually, sir, you’ll have to talk with her.”
Strained laughter spilled off my tongue. There were no words in me, just maniacal laughter. I was falling apart, and I didn’t want him to witness my shame. Squeezing my eyes shut and hating the fact that I couldn’t keep from letting the tears spill, I said, “Do as I’ve said, Giles.”
I buried my face, praying to the gods he would not see it. On Delerium, my ruin would have been complete for the way I acted now. Demone were powerful, arrogant warriors and prideful people. It didn’t matter if your heart broke. You never, ever showed it.
And yet there I was, shaking like a damn sapling in a strong wind. I was soft and weak and utterly broken.
“She will not hate you, sir. She cannot. Your twin flame—”
I growled.
He stopped speaking.
My body felt as though it were being ripped apart from the inside out. I scented the sulfur the moment he left, and I knew I was alone again.
Then and only then did I let go of the door. I slumped to the ground, unable to bear even my own weight as all of my misdeeds came crashing down on top of me. I’d committed deaths and been willing to torture her parents, and nearly to kill her own father to further my agenda.
She would learn it all, if she hadn’t already, and she would hate me forever.
I’d prayed for this day to come, but now that I’d heard her voice and smelled her smell, the horror of what I’d done to make it so came crashing down around me like a castle built on shifting sands.
“She will hate me.” I laughed as I cried, and my tears soon turned to streamers of blood.
Shayera
EVERYONE IN THE CASTLE was nice. I’d met a beautiful Demone maiden with hair of purest ebony and skin like polished night stone, who’d walked up to me and introduced herself as Dalia. Her smile was pretty, but her glances were shy, and I’d instantly taken a shine to her. There was another Demone too, who even now refused to leave my side.
Stunningly handsome, tall, and with the impeccable manners of a lifelong butler, he called himself Giles and had practically set himself up as my personal valet for the day.
He’d found me roaming the halls like a silly little idiot, calling out Rumpelstiltskin’s name in a stage whisper. I’d felt like a complete moron when Gilles found me instead and bowed. I wasn’t even sure why I was there or why I’d ever once thought coming to this castle alone was a good idea.
Danika told me that once Rumpelstiltskin and I had been a fated couple. Mother and Father had confirmed it, so I’d rushed off like an air-headed fool in some silly little fairy tale romance to go find my prince and live happily ever after. But I knew better. I suspected that whatever I was feeling had more to do with magic and less to do with me.
I couldn’t possibly love someone I didn’t know. It wasn’t right.
The voice, the ghost of the other, had gone completely silent after the ball, and for two years I didn’t hear from her. I wondered if maybe I’d never heard her at all, if maybe that part of my memories had been nothing more than a dream or a strange and concerning nightmare.
But then I’d stepped through the gates of the castle and had heard one echoing word rattle through my head... home. It’d been her voice and as clear as day, and the chill of hearing it after such a long absence sent shivers down my spine.
The voice of the ghost was tied to the Devil in Black himself. My being there resurrected her, and though maybe it should have worried me, it didn’t.
That voice guided and comforted me. It flowed like deep, calm waters through my blood and told me I would be all right. I was doing the right thing. I was right where I needed to be. And soon, he’d see that too.
My day had been uneventful. A scullery maiden had fed me a quick meal of mutton stew and crusty bread, fresh from the oven. I wasn’t much for stew—I preferred heartier fare—but it’d taken care of my hunger.
After that I’d been shown my room, all the way at the very end of the west side of the castle itself. All the activity seemed to happen on the east side of the castle. The west wing was eerily silent, especially at night.
Dalia had dropped in earlier, literally appearing in the center of my room from thin air and carrying a bundle of freshly laundered sheets in her arms. She’d made quick work of tidying my bed, but didn’t linger to talk with me afterward.
I sat on the edge of the bed, patting the plush mattress and staring woefully at the small shelf of books against the far wall. I wasn’t much for reading. At least if I’d had a pot of paints and some canvas and brushes, I could have endured the isolation better.
I’d already walked down the hall, confirming my suspicion that I was absolutely alone in this wing of the castle. There was a plethora of other rooms, but every opened door had revealed decades worth of dust accumulation upon the furniture and even the coverlets. There were thick, large spider webs in the corners, and when I turned the switches for the lights, they seemed hesitant to even come on, flickering several times before finally lighting up the rooms.
In none of the rooms were there pots of paints, which only increased my dejection at being cast aside this way. “Honestly,” I groused, “what did you expect, you stupid airheaded girl, a ball held in your honor?” I returned to my room.
Rolling my eyes, I slapped my palm against the thick four-poster bedframe of richly polished mahogany. No expenses were spared in the place. Wealth dripped from every crack and crevice. Even the abandoned rooms suggested wealth and luxury.
I don’t know why it hurt that I felt so abandoned. But bloody hell, I did. Curling my lip, I turned to glare out the window. I loved the outdoors and getting to see nature first thing in the morning, but there was nothing but darkness outside, interrupted only by occasional flashes of brilliant lightning.
Thunder rolled through my room every so often, but at least the screams of the woman were blessedly silent in there.
I hated the empty, cold, desolate place. Why had I come here? What had I been thinking?
It had been a complete waste of a perfectly good day. The next day, I wouldn’t sit idly by. I was there, then, for however long he allowed it, and I didn’t plan to leave until he at least granted me an audience with him. At that point, I wasn’t certain that the man I remembered at the ball was anything like my imagination had puffed him up to be. But I had to put an end to this maddening and growing obsession to discover who he really was and how I fit into all of it, and the only person in all the worlds who could help me do that was refusing to even speak with me.
I growled and tossed myself back onto the bed. I knew I was acting a tad crazy, but there was an urgency beating in my breast. It was like all the years of pain and tears and hopes and fears had been leading me to that very point, to that very moment. I was finally there, and I didn’t want to waste a single precious second of it.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I closed my eyes. There was no way I would actually be able to fall asleep. I knew it.
The last thing I remembered was murmuring a sleepy “Rumpelstiltskin,” and then I remembered no more.
Rumpel
I TOLD MYSELF TO STAY right where I was, locked up in my den, to leave her be, to stop myself from going to her. For hours I wrestled with myself, and then I did the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life.
I picked up the bloody scrying bowl and called her vision to me. She slept like an angel, in just the way I remembered, with one hand tucked beneath her pale ivory cheek and her gorgeous rosebud lips slightly parted.
But there were grooves of worry etched onto her forehead, and she was moaning. She wasn’t resting well. Immediately worry gripped me, and I knew I was lost. My desire to be honorable and good and to give her the freedom she deserved from me hadn’t even lasted a day.
In seconds I was in her room, swathed deep in shadow and trembling from head to toe as the angel on my shoulder whispered to me that I should go no further.
“Carrots,” I whispered, my heartbeat going crazy when she stirred as though she’d heard me. The fingers of her right hand twitched, and for a second I imagined that even in sleep she reached for me as I would always reach for her.
“You’re in me, Carrots.” My words were broken but heartfelt. “All the way in me. I should stay away. But I can’t. I just can’t.”
Again she twitched and it was all I could do not to rush to her side and draw her into my chest. She was my woman. My heartbeat. My very soul. Gods above, she deserved so much better than me.
I clenched my hands into fists, and it was a minor miracle that my feet remained fastened to the floor. I watched her sleep for what felt like an eternity, fascinated all over again by every nuance, every movement and tiny sigh. I studied her, memorized each plane, each dip and groove, feasting my greedy gaze upon her when there was no risk of being caught.
I clenched and unclenched my fingers as I was suddenly assaulted by visions and memories of us in another time.
Laughing.
Dreaming.
Talking into the wee hours of the night from the very depths of our heart.
Making love.
Before I knew it, I’d walked closer. Maybe I’d shifted, maybe I’d walked, I couldn’t rightly remember, but I knew was I was suddenly standing by the edge of her bed.
I clutched at the bedpost with nerveless fingers, and my memories of a happier time rose up like a specter, mocking me, teasing me, and reminding me of all that I’d lost, such as her gentle and breathy moans whispering in my ear as she confessed how very much she loved me and that she would love and need me always. I closed my eyes, holding on to that promise.
She’d returned in some ways, but not in others.
She was my female and yet she was changed. She did not remember me, nor did she remember us.
Tears slid unchecked down my face as I opened my eyes and looked at her face covered in shadow and moonlight. I felt something dangerous rise up within me, a stupid, stupid emotion, to which I was rarely given over.
Honor.
Honor to do right by her. She deserved better than me. I tasted her purity, her innocence. I was none of those things.
“You said you would never leave me, Shayera. But you did. You left and now I am only half a man. I want you back. I need you. But I fear nothing of me would remain if you left me again... and I... I am too frail to bear it. Please forgive me, my darling. Please forgive me.”
I pointed at my chest and called forth the twin flame, the split soul she and I both shared. I pulled on it—that little golden thread of glowing love that was both she and I—and stared at the beating of it upon my palm.
Her stone of Veritas glowed only with threads of blue, which represented my love for her. But there was no love for me in there. She did not love me in this world, not yet. And maybe the truth was I shouldn’t allow it to take her this time. Maybe I should forge a new path for us, one where she could be free of me. Maybe that was how it should be.
I could be unselfish. For once in my long and miserable existence, I could do the right thing for someone else but that would not benefit me at all. I could let her go immediately. I could untether our soul strings. I could return the missing parts of her that she felt through the very marrow of her being. It was why she’d come. It was why she’d felt it so necessary to appear even though I’d left her years ago. Our twin flame demanded it, and that flame would not fade unless I severed our connection.
I would be careful. I would never harm her string. I would bear the brunt of the fire. I would scream out in agony all the days left of my miserable and short existence after I did it, secure and content in knowing that at least she was safe. She would live. She could marry someone good, someone kind and gentle and all the bloody things I was not.
I clenched the bedpost so hard that the wood groaned beneath my palm. By releasing her, I also released ever having our children returned to us. To me.
Is that not also selfish? Do they not also deserve life? A chance to be? I was depriving the world of their story. But only I would ever remember them. Only I would ever remember the heartache of losing our third daughter to pregnancy-related complications. Only I would remember the devastation Shayera and I had both felt as we’d stared at the perfect little mix of Demone and human in her arms, eyes forever closed. I could spare my bride all that pain, but she would also never know the joys.
Is that the better choice? I honestly didn’t know.
“I love you, my Demone Prince...” The echo of my old Shayera suddenly rang in my ears, and I gasped, twirling on my heels because the voice had been so clear, sweet, and bell-like. And there she was, just a spirit, just a floating memory that haunted me day and night.
She looked like fire and beauty. She was dressed in a gown of sheer translucent white. Her hair waved like enchanted serpents around her heart-shaped face. She smiled at me, her eyes radiant and aglow with the fire of love.
Behind me, I heard the soft, steady breaths of the same woman sleeping peacefully. “Shayera,” I whispered, reaching out my hand to the spirit as she reached her translucent one out to me.
But as always, we never could touch. She was just a ghost, a memory, a haunting sent to hurt me and nothing more.
Tears continued to stream harder down my face. “Don’t leave me,” I pleaded.
Her smile was soft and sweet as she lifted a hand and pointed behind me, to the woman lying on the bed.
I knew what she was telling me, and I shook my head. “She is not you. She is not you.”
Her brows drew tightly together, and my soul ached because already I could see her vision growing dimmer. Soon she would vanish, and I thought that maybe this time she would never again return to me.
I clutched at my chest.
My bride took a step toward me, and another, then another, until only an inch separated us. I felt a spark, a static curl o
f energy, envelop me like a warm hug. She’d held on for me as long as she could, but the curse had truly driven Shayera away from me forever. I had to let her go. But I wasn’t ready. I never would be.
I shivered, devouring her face with my gaze. I knew this time was goodbye and that she would never again return. My bride was leaving me.
She lifted her hand, and I hung my head, because I knew I would not feel it.
But then I did. I felt the soft glide and touch of her skin, and I smelled her this time, her scent of roses. I moaned. My blood boiled in my veins. My flesh shivered with goosebumps, and I wanted to look up at her but I was terrified that if I did, she would leave me, and she couldn’t leave me. She just couldn’t.
The twin flame I held in my hand blazed, recognizing the other half of itself in her.
“How... how is this possible?” I croaked.
“Rumpelstiltskin,” she whispered, and suddenly my body was covered in ice.
I stumbled over myself to back away, because it was not my ghostly bride caressing me, but the Shayera of now. Of the present time. How had she gotten out of bed without my knowing it? How had she snuck up on me and I’d never even seen it coming? How? I never let my guard down around anyone, and yet I’d never been anything but vulnerable when it had come to my bride.
I wanted to flee, but my feet were firmly rooted to the ground.
I was a frightened, terrified animal. I wanted to kill something. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to rage. And I wanted to sink into her arms and sob until all the demons had fled and only she and I remained.
Dressed in a colorful nightshift the shade of the tropical waters of Kingdom, she looked like the prettiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
But I could no longer speak. Words left me. I was hollow. I was an empty shell.
“I see you,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“I finally see you, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said again, slowly stepping closer to me. She chased me deeper into shadow, backing me up until I was pressed against the wall with nowhere else to run. I could vanish. I should vanish. Why am I not doing it?
The Magic King (The Dark Kings Book 3) Page 14