by SL Perrine
“I didn’t want to scare you away. I couldn’t lose you again, and if we were to stay here, away from Ourobus, then you would be safe.” He looked down at our clasped hands and added, “I also wanted to see what your life was here. I got to live it with you for a while. I’m sorry I waited, but you're Renella again, and now we can open the passage, but there is one more thing.” I looked at him and he looked down at his hands holding mine.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There is a power that is greater than any other, made up of both buio and luce. That is what I was told we would need to defeat my father.”
“Well, where is it?” Excitement tore through me.
“Nobody knows. It was said that all would be reborn and we would find each other when it was available. So before we open the passage, we have to find it.”
Chapter -22-
Supper had been called, but I wasn’t hungry. I decided to wander the castle. I’d hardly realized I wandered to the small courtyard on the east wing until I saw the large arches leading to the open sky. The evening air was warm, as usual, but that evening, I’d been blessed with the cool breeze. The walls of the castle were tall around the little courtyard. I very rarely felt the breeze there. The night sky was so bright, I felt like I stood in a lit room. I wandered aimlessly to the back side of the pond and looked into the sky to find a star to wish upon.
“The entire castle at your disposal, and you come here?” Momentarily caught off guard, I gave a short scream at my quiet reverie being interrupted. My hand moved to my chest, as if that would help slow the beating of my frightened heart.
I collected myself as a proper princess should. “Yes, I enjoy the quiet,” I said in short.
“Hmm.” He grunted. I never did understand why men thought grunting was an acceptable form of communication.
“Why are you here?” I asked sarcastically.
“This is my home. I can wander as I please,” he insisted.
“I’ve been told this is my home now too. I guess that means I, too, am allowed to wander about as I please.” I walked counterclockwise around the large pond. There were five-foot sections of open space between each of the five marble columns surrounding it. I watched as Tyson walked the ledge encasing the water below, in the opposite direction as I.
“You’re going to fall.” I plucked a morning glory from its vine on the column. They grew wild through the entire courtyard and along the walls. If their vines were strong enough, I could climb up and over the wall. I so badly wanted to climb that wall.
“They say you come here often. You like this place above all, don’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s not cold here.” I looked down at my feet.
“Cold? What do you mean? Are we not nice enough to you?” His foot nearly missed the next ledge as he wrapped himself around a pillar.
“I didn’t say this place wasn’t mean, I said it is not cold. This place reminds me of home. The rest of the castle reminds me of a prison.” I found my voice and let him know I wasn’t meek. If we were to be married, I didn’t want him to think I was his stepping stone. As it was, we barely said two words to each other per day.
“A prison you say. Ha!” He laughed. "Well, Your Highness, you should be happy to know I feel the same way.” He reached the section I stood in, so I changed direction.
“Your home feels like a prison to you? You seem to feel quite at home here, sir. I do not believe you.” I held my head high and made for the entrance to the castle. As I turned, he leaned over and grabbed my skirt to hold me there.
“Wait, can’t we just talk? We are supposed to be bonding. Did they not call supper? Yet here we both are, avoiding each other and yet finding each other. What do you make of that?” His speech nearly won me, but I tugged my skirt from his hand and he lost his balance on the ledge of the pond. I turned and heard the splash behind me before the water hit.
“Look what you’ve done, silly boy.” I laughed uncontrollably. There was my betrothed, sitting on the bottom of the pond, looking at me with mud across his brow and a scornful look on his face.
“Are you quite finished, or do you think you could give me a hand out of here?”
“As you wish,” I said with a quick curtsy and raised my gloved hands, clapping my fingertips against the palm of my other hand.
“Ha ha, very funny,” he said. “Madam, please?” He actually sounded like he was pleading with me.
“Oh, I suppose.” I removed a glove from my hand and took his to help him up. As he rose, I thought he may have tried to pull me in, but an overwhelming heat seemed to omit from our hands. I felt dizzy, and before I knew it, he had me in his arms and we were splayed on the grass.
“Princess. Are you okay? Renella?” He looked down at me. His eyes were open, for the first time, to my gaze. They were the bluest eyes I had ever seen; as clear as the crystal waters of Pylira.
“Beautiful blue eyes.” I didn’t know what had come over me.
“What was that?” he asked in earnest.
Thankful he didn’t hear my mumbling, I shook out of his arms. I stood and smoothed my skirts. “I said 'beautiful blue skies.' The sky looks lovely this evening. I only just noticed. If you’ll excuse me.” I gave a quick curtsy and turned to head for my room, as I wondered what had just happened.
Chapter -23-
The band was not tugging at my insides. I felt him close to me, but he was nowhere to be seen. I looked around the room and tried to remember the day’s events. Ty had told me all about the curse and the spell cast on his clan by his own father. I had even learned my father and mother live, and have for one hundred years at least. I had been reborn a few times, waiting to be reunited with my prince. It sounded like a twisted fairy tale; one I couldn’t entirely wrap my head around. The Renee of Cherry Valley wanted to lock Ty and his uncles in a mental institution. That Renee insisted they were all mad. However, Renella lived deep within me. I could feel the urge to jump into action against everything threatening my happiness, my family, and my prince.
I rolled over on Ty’s bed, needing to process the entirety of it all. I feigned sleep to get away. My gaze stopped at the portrait. As I looked at it, I could almost feel the excitement of the day. I tasted the salt of tears before I realized they were falling from my eyes. As I wiped them away, Ty came into the room.
I felt the dizziness, but was able to stay upright. I let the memories flood into me as I maintained consciousness.
* * * * * *
The morning was warm and sunny as I sat on the veranda. I wore a long ivory gown covered in lace. My fire red hair lay in ringlets to my waist. I wore the biggest smile on my face. I couldn’t help myself from smiling. I had never felt so happy. As I sat and arranged flowers for our evening party, I wondered to myself how lucky I had been to have found my soul mate, and what’s more, I was already chosen to be his bride.
“Well, you look magnificent.” Sheree entered the veranda with a small box in hand. She wore a stunning midnight blue gown, the color of her realm. Her long blonde hair was curled and arranged on top of her head. Her eyes held the smile she could not project on her face, for fear of her husband’s wrath.
“Why, thank you,” I said, still smiling. I was blessed to have one of my mother’s dearest friends as a stand-in all the time I had been separated from her.
She sat on the bench next to me. “Why do you do these arrangements yourself? We have staff for that sort of thing.” She fussed at an arrangement.
“I enjoy working them myself. I want to make sure they are perfect,” I said with a giggle.
“The beauty of the flowers doesn’t compare to the beauty of the love we will be celebrating,” she said as she held my chin so I looked at her. “Can you put them on hold for a moment? I have a gift.” She held her hand up.
“Oh, a gift? I rather like gifts,” I said as I turned away from the current arrangement I worked on. “You know, you really should not be giving me more gifts.” She looked at me, puzzled.
“You’re giving me your son,” I said in earnest.
She laughed. “Well, that’s one thing we can be thankful to my dear husband for.” She looked lost for a moment. Her eyes went blank, until she caught her composure once more and grabbed my hand to place in it a small white box, wrapped in a navy-blue bow. “This is your gift.”
* * * * * *
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Ty came closer and wrapped his arms around me.
I snapped out of the memory when I heard his voice. “The morning of our engagement party,” I said. “I was so happy that morning. I couldn’t wait to share our engagement with our family and friends.”
His arms tensed and he held me tighter. “You remember?” He relaxed and sat back to look at me.
“A bit,” I said, not sure how to answer. “That morning, your mother came to me as I got ready. She wanted me to have something, but I can’t remember what it was.”
“I don’t understand.” He moved me so we were facing each other.
I looked at the portrait and was hit with the answer. “She gave me that locket,” I said, pointing to the picture. “Before the party, you remember? Then she wanted to speak with me alone during the party. That’s when she told me of my choice.” I looked down at my empty hands. “We wanted to defeat him, right?”
He looked at me, bewildered, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “Yes, we did. We discussed it, and you made the decision. It was the right one,” he said to reassure me.
“How do we know that? How do we know that was the right decision?” I asked with intensity.
“We know it was right because once we break it, everyone will come back.” He looked at me long and hard. “Then and only then, my father will have lost, and he’ll be gone. It will all be over. It was the only right decision to make.”
I looked at him. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, the same way he looked when we first discussed what my decision would be. Yes, I remember, I realized. I remembered it all. Renee and Renella were no longer two separate people, but one and the same.
“She told me if I wore the locket on the eve of our wedding, I would spare myself and all of the women. We could continue to live as we were, and the curse would be lost forever,” I told him.
“She told you that? Why didn’t you tell me?” The hurt in his voice only matched the expression in his eyes. Oh, how I wanted to cure his pain. I knew this truth would only cause him more.
“I didn’t tell you because the locket was spelled by dark magic, and no matter what the end result would be, I couldn’t do it.” The tears came back. “I wanted us to be together, but not bound by buio magia. So I wore it that day, since it was a gift from your mother,” I said, pointing to the portrait. “And later, I hid it away.” He slowly rubbed his hands up and down my arms as if to warm me from an invisible cold.
“Renee, you did what was best for everyone. I don’t blame you for any of this. This was his doing, and now that we’ve found each other; now that I’ve brought you back to me, we can end it.” There was so much more he didn’t yet know–things I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. He stood, wrapped his arms around me, and held me tight as I cried softly into him.
“I remember our life together; my family and friends. Most of it,” I said to him, even as I thought to myself, I remember things I wish I’d forgotten forever.
Chapter -24-
“Tyson, there’s a problem.” Hogarth poked his head into Ty’s room. He and I hadn’t moved. I used the back of my hand to wipe away the tears I had finally let fall freely. All the while, Ty stood holding onto me. At my confession, I doubt he wanted to let go at all, for fear I’d take it all back.
“What sort of problem?” Ty asked his uncle, still not letting go of me. My back was to the door. Hogarth couldn’t see me wiping my face on Ty’s shirt.
“We believe your father has learned of our scheme,” he said. When I turned, I could see sweat beads forming on his brow. A man who enjoyed heat from a volcano sweat before me in fear.
“How could we know that with the passage closed?” Ty sounded worried.
“Let’s just say our friends have a way to communicate between the worlds, even with the passage closed,” his uncle said.
“Who, besides fairies, could do that?” Ty looked between his uncle and myself.
The mention of fairies hit me like a ton of bricks. My mind raced, but before I could tell Ty or the uncles, I had to act quickly.
“Exactly!” I startled them both. My tears were an afterthought as a jolt of electricity hit my body, and the fuzziness of my memories were no longer fuzzy. “Tyson.” My smile beamed at him.
“Renee? What’s the matter?” Ty reached out for me, but I stopped him.
“Not now, we have to find the others,” I said as I pushed past both of them and out of the room.
“Chase, Nolan! Ty, where are they?” I spun back around to face him, knowing he was right behind me in my pursuit.
“What is going on?” he asked, wildly confused.
“Tyson Cole, snap out of it. We need those two and we need to go find the rest. They’ll be coming here to meet us. We need them to finish this. Where did they run off to this time?” I stood there, waiting for him to answer me. Giving up, I ran for the front door.
“Oh, my Renella,” he said with a smile on his face. The pull of energy between us felt like it was supercharged, and he laughed.
“Renella? She knows who she is?” Gareth emerged from somewhere behind us. “When did this happen? How come I’m always the last one to know about these things?”
“Hush, Gareth! The girl has just come back to us!” Hogarth exclaimed.
“No! Just now?” Gareth was stunned.
“Some last night, some this morning,” Ty said to them both.
“Yes, I have most of it. The most important parts right now, as it seems. We need to go,” I said to myself, more than them. “A flash of memories is jumbled together in my head. The mention of fairies seems to have popped them in there. I’m trying to piece it all together, but all I can accomplish at the moment is the town border and… her.”
“Her? Her, who?” Ty was the one in the dark. I could see it on his face. He wasn’t thrilled by it at all.
“Nope, not saying.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and turned back to the front room. “Where are those guys? Chase! Nolan!”
“Why, are Chase and Nolan going to the border?” Ty asked enthusiastically.
“Hey, what’s all the yelling in here?” As if on cue, Nolan and Chase walked in the front door.
“We have to go, and you two have to come with us,” I said as quickly as I could while heading out the front door.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Nolan said and hurried after me.
Ty ran to catch up with us. When he did, he grabbed onto my hand. “Don’t do that,” he scolded.
“What?” I asked, looking around.
“Run away. I’m not letting you go again.” He brought my hand up to kiss my knuckles.
“Don’t worry, love, I’m not going anywhere.” I felt myself recharging, as if my body remembered how on instinct, which made me feel even more alive.
It took us about an hour, but we arrived at the town line and found a place along the trees to stop. The clearing around the edge of town seemed to serve as a protective bubble. The trees beyond the clearing could have been harboring a multitude of people.
“Okay, can I ask why we’re here?” Chase piped up first. “There are a lot of buio here.”
All eyes were on me as I tried to piece it all together for them. “Okay, so remember when Zechariah was at the party?” I asked them all, and they nodded. “Well, I heard the little guy when they were leaving. He said something about camping at the line. I didn’t understand why until I got some memories back.”
“Ty, it’s the bubble,” Nolan said.
“The bubble?” we all asked.
“The town. That’s what Chase and I have been ch
ecking on. Last week, I tried driving out of town to follow the guys up to the lake to go fishing.”
“You? Fishing?” Ty asked sarcastically.
“Shut it.” Nolan elbowed Chase as he laughed.
“I told you, it is funny,” Chase said to Nolan before turning to Ty and I. “Don’t feel bad. I had to ask too.”
“Okay, I’m done,” Ty assured Nolan. “What happened when you tried leaving town?”
“I tried telling you that night, but you were out of it. My car broke down, just like that. Shut off. It rolled backwards a few feet, started up again, and I hit the border and it shut off again. When I got out of the car and tried to walk over the border line, it was like I was walking but not going anywhere.” We all looked at him, wondering what exactly was going on. Ty looked as though he hadn’t really bought the story.
“I swear, I’m telling the truth. Chase will tell you. We were just here.” He nudged Chase.
“Yeah Ty, we were just here trying. It’s like you’re walking to that line of trees forever and never make it,” Chase added before Ty had to ask.
“I wonder why the barrier. It doesn’t really make sense,” Ty said.
“Actually, if you really think about it, it makes perfect sense, and I’m guessing it has something to do with the curse,” I said to the group. “Every maga in this world has got to be on their way here right now. I bet it’s in the curse somehow. Maybe they sensed or know you found me.” I answered their looks.
“That doesn’t make sense. How would they know to come here?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know, but obviously my family knew I was here. Maybe Ourobus had someone from the four clans spying for him.” They all nodded in agreement.
“Okay, so if they are all just hanging out here at the line, how do we let them know it’s time to come in?” Chase asked.
“Ty…” I held up my hand for him to take it. As he did, our hands became engulfed in a small, bright white light.