Lisa’s boys were never allowed to go on any of the school excursions that went too near the woods. All three of them had allergies to nature, and the forests would kill any one of them.
In fact, Lisa wouldn’t so much as have a flower in her home.
But sometimes, when she thought people weren’t watching, she could be spotted looking through the window of the florist shop, staring at the roses and pots of soil.
A ghostly look of longing would slacken her face, and she would reach out tentatively, as if terrified of what the flowers would do to her, but desperate to hold them in her hands just once.
But that Monday morning, no one saw Lisa Watson at the florist window, or the fruit shop, and she never arrived to instruct her yoga class.
Not only that, her sons didn’t make it to their second classes of the day.
The three Watsons had just ... vanished.
The police checked their house in the afternoon.
They found splashes of blood that ran from the steps by the door, all the way up the chipped-wood staircase, with heavy boot prints printed into them, and a bloody handprint on the shabby door to Lisa’s bedroom.
Inside her bedroom, there was no sign of her—but everything she owned had been torn to shreds, dotted with drops of her blood.
Some of the nosier neighbours swore they saw some horses and strangely dressed people on the street.
Some even said they saw a man walk down the street earlier in the morning. A man who wore a high-necked black jacket with silver buttons, a dagger fastened to his belt, and boots with the toes dipped in silver. His ears were sharp like knives, they’d said, and his eyes shined like flakes of gold. A golden leafed crown had sat on his raven-black hair, and he carried a single item in his hand. A crown to match his own.
Those neighbours told the police, and anyone who would listen, that the strange man had dragged an unconscious, bloodied Lisa out of her home and stole away with her and her two sons.
But really, no one knew what became of Lisa Watson or her boys. They only knew that, whatever happened, she never returned to the town.
Lisa Watson was never seen again.
Affay’s Story
I refuse to call him my father, though I know well enough that he is.
We share the same smiles, as do he and Angus. But he hasn’t earned the title, the meaning that comes with the name. And he never will earn it, not after what he did to my mother.
Angus had gone so mad that he had been locked up for a whole year before the prince let him out. I’d been sequestered to a wing of the castle, where I was drilled every day on all the fae knowledge I should have learned at a younger age. That is what he said.
‘Should have learned’.
But with mother, I’d learned more than he could ever teach me. I’d learned how to treat humans fairly, because I am one, aren’t I? Fae blood is stronger, but I was grown in a human body, created by a human womb, and raised by a human who loves me.
I’m as much human as I am fae.
And that is something the prince could never have taught me.
Angus and I wait. We sit at the bottom of the staircase, and do all that we can for mother. Wait.
Her sentence is finished. The Runaway Ritual is at its end, and my brother and I sit close together, afraid to speak, because if we speak—if we say something that might upset the prince—mother’s fate could be sealed. And it isn’t yet.
The prince stands at the iron gate in front of two guards, and he stares down the courtyard to the mouth of the corridor. Mother is being led up by a guard.
Angus and I can’t bear to look at her. A whole year in the dance, then a whole year in the damp cells of the dungeons. She won’t look good. She won’t look healthy.
Mother won’t look like herself, and I am too weak to see her that way.
I want to rip the swords down from the walls and run the blades through the prince’s cold heart.
The rattle of the chains echo through the courtyard. I bow my head and cut my fingernails into my palms, hard enough to draw blood. The urge to run to mother surges through me, but I cannot misstep. Angus and I are as still as the prince. As still as statues. Unmoving.
Waiting.
Easton throws mother to the ground.
She lands at the prince’s feet, and still neither of her sons look. I want to scream that I will always love her, I want to tell her that I don’t avoid her for any reason other than her safety.
I want to hug her.
Mother’s cuddles—the ones I used to take for granted.
Out the corner of my eye, I see the prince stand tall. In one hand, he holds a dagger. In the other, he holds mother’s crown.
But which will he bring down on her?
My stomach is struck by a sudden bolt of sick, and I am forced to swallow back bile. Angus takes my hand in his clammy one.
He is older than me, by some years, but in that moment, we are both just boys. Boys praying their mother will be spared.
Mother moves, and we each hold our breaths. We do not look, but we watch for the movements out the corner of our eyes.
Slowly, she pushes herself onto her knees. It exhausts her. She sags at the prince’s feet, breathing hard and rough.
I do not think she knows we are here. Her sons, so close to her, but she cannot see beyond her own suffering.
The prince is quiet as he stares down at her, a cold and distant look on his face.
The guards expect the dagger to cut through the air and take her throat with it.
We hope for the crown to be lowered onto her matted hair, and for forgiveness to be bestowed upon her.
Forgive her, father, I want to say. Forgive her.
But it is mother who speaks, and both Angus and I cringe at the wretched sound of her hoarse voice.
“Rain...” She reaches out a bruised and sore-spotted hand, and rests her fingers on the toe of his boot.
He does not kick her away. He does not strike her down.
“Rain, my boys ... Be-before you do it … tell me they’re ok.”
The prince does not look at us.
His eyes are only for mother in her pitiful way. And I sense a shift. As does Angus—he squeezes my hand, tight, and not even our chests move with our breaths.
Everything is still.
Silent.
The prince slowly lowers himself to one knee.
He steals a gasp from a nearby guard as he offers both of his hands to his runaway bride. The dagger and the crown.
“Choose.” The prince uses a tone I have never heard from him before. One that strikes fear through me and comforts me all at once. “If you wish it, I might grant you the life I once promised you.”
I might...
Might...
The lies of the fae.
Mother’s hand is frail, spotted by moss and mud, and it shakes like leaves in the wildest of storms. She lifts it up from his boot and rests it on the crown.
Her head is bowed, as though she fears the sight of him and for that I cannot begrudge her. Perhaps my cowardice comes from my mother.
“I choose them.” Her voice barely carries it is so weak, but Angus and I hear it, and we dare to look over at her. “I choose my family.”
Mother’s words please the prince. He sheathes the dagger and takes the crown in two hands.
“This offer will never be granted again, Callie.”
And there it is—the return of the prince I know, the dangerous one who cut my governess into pieces for saying my blue eyes are too ordinary for me to be half-fae.
You have your mother’s eyes, he had told me as he had wiped his blade clean of brains and bone.
“I promise you,” he adds, his voice low, almost vulnerable, “I will never allow you to run again.”
I cannot believe it took me years to understand. I cannot stand the thought of it.
As I watch the prince lower the crown onto mother’s dirt-clumped hair, I realise. She chose the crown, but would it
have mattered if she had chosen the dagger?
The prince made his decision for her. He was always going to steal her back.
In that moment, on the staircase, watching as the prince lifted mother’s frail body in his arms and carried her away, I realise an awful truth.
The prince might love my mother.
Callie’s Encore
Fae flocked through the grand hall of the Highest Palace.
Even after a decade in this realm, Callie felt the unease of so many fae surrounding her. So she tucked herself on a windowsill at the far wall, clutching a goblet of fruity wine in her hands.
From a safe distance, she watched Affay accept praise and respect from lesser fae, in the form of platters smothered in riches, jewels and finely preserved meats.
Human servants were offered—all of which he denied—and several marriage proposals were made. Each time a woman or man was thrust in front of him by an eager parent, his amused eyes found his own mother across the hall, and they shared a mocking smile.
Affay might have been fae, he might have been celebrating his initiation and acceptance into the Knighthood overseen by his father, but he was his mother’s son, in all decisions.
Mother knows best, he would often say.
Wearing the ghost of recently shared smile, Callie brought the goblet to her lips and sipped the all-too pungent wine. She loathed it.
Human foods and drinks—the safe ones—weren’t supplied at the Highest Palace in nearly the same abundance as those for the fae. It was either fruity wine juiced from plums, or a wickedly amber broth that was sure to send the humans into a drunken frenzy, even with protections like Callie’s choker.
Too many nights at the Highest Palace taught Callie to be cautious with even the safe human drinks.
Rain once had to pry her off a chandelier where she’d latched herself for the sole purpose of destroying all of the candles.
She studied those very chandeliers from the safety of the windowsill, watching the black flames bloat every other moment.
“Still attempting to plot the demise of those flames?”
Callie blinked and swung her gaze to Angus, draped in his Knighthood ceremonial uniform—black trousers, fitted with the straps that pinned knives and daggers to him, and a proud black coat with a split tail and silver threads lining the cuffs and middle.
“You look so handsome,” she said and reached out for his hand.
“I do,” he winked. Still, he took his mother’s hand and gave a gentle squeeze before plucking a cherry from a nearby tray.
Angus bit into it, and cherry blood ran down his chin.
Rain flashed in her mind at the sight.
No matter the time Angus had spent under Callie’s charge in the human world, she knew now—Angus was his father’s son.
Angus waved his free hand in front of her face. “Did you drink the viskee again, mother?”
Worried lines marked his forehead.
With a snort, Callie scooted over on the windowsill allowing Angus to squeeze in beside her, and looked up at the thorny chandelier.
“It was your fault, you know,” she said, studying the black flames that engulfed little specks of white from the candles. “If you hadn’t told me that story about human souls being trapped in the flames, I wouldn’t have attacked them.”
Angus stifled a mischievous grin.
Callie rolled her eyes back.
Even her son wasn’t a safe harbour from fae trickery.
“Affay is enjoying himself,” said Callie.
“He is enjoying the lavishes,” corrected Angus. “Women, men, pretty humans, even prettier jewels—all thrown at his feet. He’s more like grandmother than any of us.”
The grin was wiped off Angus’s face the second Callie threw him a warning glare.
“Don’t,” she warned. “I won’t hear her name.”
Her sons’ grandmother was a wicked, vicious fae woman that Callie wanted to hear nothing of. The mere presence of her turned Callie’s stomach, and left her with nightmares for days.
The very first day Rain introduced Callie to his mother, the Grand High Queen, was the very day that the queen chose to host a Wild Hunt on the grounds.
Not unlike the Chase, human servants and prisoners were set free into the Shadow Woods, and hunted like animals. Callie still heard their screams in her dreams.
“Will you be taken back to the castle before grandmother arrives?” asked Angus. “Affay would ... Well, I know he would like for you to stay for the entire celebration.”
“Senah will take me home,” was all Callie said.
Since that Wild Hunt, Callie refused to be near the wicked queen. And Rain had tried—in all his vicious ways—to change her mind. But Callie had even gone as far as to destroy the portrait of his mother in the courtyard, just to remove her as much as possible from her home.
‘You want me as your wife, in our home? So make it ours. The portrait goes, your mother never comes to this castle, or I will leave you.’
Rain’d had little choice but to oblige.
After all, Callie’s Runaway sentence was long over, and Rain knew she stayed as his wife, not because he wished her to, not because she loved him—she stayed for her sons.
Callie could leave the fae realm and go back to a world she couldn’t face. But really, she doubted Rain would allow her to leave.
Callie had no illusions about her cruel prince of a husband. He would lock her in the cells if she tried to leave. He would force her into the eternal dance for considering it. In contracts and bargains, she was free. But in reality, Callie was the wife of a war prince.
There was no way out.
“After I go home,” Callie said, “make sure your brother doesn’t marry someone, or take a human servant.”
Angus nodded, his face grave. “Of course, mother.”
It had become an unspoken rule in the household. No more new servants. No more unwilling brides or grooms. And all romantic relationships had to have Callie’s approval, once it passed through Rain.
The little power she had after her punishment, over the years Callie stretched it into a thin blanket of influence that reached all the castle walls. A facade, but one yet to be challenged by any of them.
But if there were to be any rebels in the family, it would be her youngest son—the one who currently stole a kiss from a noble girl from the Eastern Lands, with the loveliest pale pink skin Callie had ever seen.
“Where’s Rain?” she asked. “Your father should be with Affay.”
Affay needed the imposing authority of his father, while so drunk on his celebration.
“Headed right for you.”
Callie traced Angus’s gaze to the clustered dance across the hall.
Rain stalked towards them, sheathed in his High Paladin ceremonial armour, not unlike Angus’s. Only, Rain’s coat was without a tail, embellished with golden threads, and was a shade of white starker than the fae realm’s moon. In that moment, Rain took her breath away.
His golden eyes were glued to her.
“Go watch your brother,” said Callie, with a tap to Angus’s back. “Before he steals a kiss from a girl who will cut out his tongue.”
Angus hummed a dark tune, for it was all too possible, and was gone in a blink. Callie had finally gotten used to the fast movements of the fae. Still, it left a tingle at the front of her brain, as though a headache battled to break free.
“You will leave shortly.” Rain towered over her, his hard gaze fringed by thick lashes. His voice was curt.
Callie arched her brow at him for it.
“Mother is coming,” he added at her steady glare. “And you look beautiful.”
Callie slumped on the windowsill, fiddling with the rim of the goblet. Her silky golden dress clung to her skin, and shimmered with the same hues of Rain’s eyes.
“I will ride with you, if you prefer it.”
Rain ran his sharp fingernail down her cheek.
She managed a forced smile
. “I want Affay to have at least one of us here for the whole event. And better you than me, because he’s trying to dance with a troll right now, and there’s not a whole lot I can do about that without…well, dying.”
Rain looked over his shoulder at the drunken son they shared. And sure enough, Affay swung the stumpy, grumpy, hairy troll around in a circle. His status as a prince’s son, and the heir to the throne, was all that kept him from being hacked to pieces by the frightful creature.
“I doubt I’ll be much help tonight,” added Callie.
Rain turned his lightening gold eyes on her.
He offered no comfort—there was little to say.
In the land of fae, Callie had no power. It was only within the walls of the castle that Callie could take control of her children.
But Rain ...
Whatever he commanded, happened. Whatever he said, became. And Callie was the human, rebellious bride who was once punished for stealing off with the prince’s children, before being dragged to a year-long dance and a second year trapped in an isolated cell whose walls and vines whispered all through the days and nights.
Now, Callie saw the dances as distant memories. Mere slaps on the wrist. Because nothing could have compared to the year of total isolation in the cell beneath the castle, where dirt stained the always-icy stone floor, and moss grew all over the walls.
Whenever she’d tried to sleep, the dirt turned to mud and pushed down her throat. While she threw it back up, moss began to grow down her hair and on her tongue. She was served one meal every three days—the only way she could tell time back then—and it was a good meal if there was little more than mouldy bread and near-rotten fruits.
“Callie.” Rain’s soft voice peeled her out from her thoughts, and she looked up at him.
Already, he’d set her unfinished drink to the side and taken her hands in his. He pulled her to her feet, never breaking her gaze.
“Where did you go?” he asked.
Callie offered a bitter smile, and understanding darkened Rain’s face.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 31