Bayou Fairy Tale

by Lex Chase

  With Taylor’s inspiration, he didn’t feel fragile.

  Without him, it consumed him.

  If he didn’t give it a name, or a face, he wouldn’t have to own up to it. His fears could be easily forgotten every seven days.

  But his fears did have a name and a face.

  It was Henri Corentin Devereaux, the face that looked back at him in the mirror.

  He could never tell Taylor how afraid he was. How he preferred silence instead of giving in to it. Taylor made him strong. Capable.

  And now Taylor would rather torture himself with the agonizing pain of sleep than face him.

  Corentin gnashed his teeth. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t!

  In a fight to keep his emotions in, he sent his grief into action. He roared and kicked the desk to the floor, sending it crashing with an echoing crunch that made his ears ring. His journal fell open facedown, scattering papers and trinkets across the tiled floor.

  Corentin took a breath, but it did nothing to quell his nerves. He stood and approached the mess of papers and photographs like they were newborn fawns in the forest.

  He sighed, resigned to it all.

  This is what he had become. Constantly picking up the mess of his life.

  He crouched and then one by one gathered the loose Post-its, photos, love notes, silly doodles, and Hallmark cards.

  His gaze softened. Instead of hurried and embarrassed, he contemplated each memento one at a time.

  On a pink Post-it, Taylor had written: “Don’t forget you’re awesome.”

  Corentin picked up a Polaroid of them at Christmas. Taylor had made an obscene snowman with a monstrous penis and was all too proud of his accomplishment.

  He chuckled softly and flipped over another Post-it.

  “Hey. I made chocolate chip cookies for you. But I ate them all. Sorry. LOL. IOU?”

  Corentin’s heart eased with Taylor’s tenderness. He picked up another photo. A breath caught in his throat.

  Ringo had photographed Taylor lying awake in Corentin’s arms as he slept. Another photo revealed Taylor sitting at his bedside, holding Corentin’s hand while waiting for dawn.

  Taylor always watched out for him. He was behind him every step of the way. To Taylor, being his true love wasn’t Enchant lip service. It was actually true.

  The tears found Corentin as he sat on the floor. He drew his journal into his lap and a pen rolled from a page into his waiting hand. He sniffed, smiling through his sadness. Corentin owed Taylor the same courtesy. If he was going to truly honor him, he had to be all in.

  But it meant facing the most deplorable thing he could have done to both of them.

  He took a breath and let his mind relax. Corentin’s hand did the rest, moving freely as the journal sucked his thoughts into its pages. There was no picking and choosing what to write down. There was no hiding from himself. Corentin had fallen into that darkness and taken it out on the one he loved.

  Taylor had enjoyed it and wanted more, but Corentin was too terrified to admit he relished the moment.

  It would always be something between them. But it was something Corentin determined they would get past. Taylor believed Corentin could be better. He needed to believe it himself. Even when all seemed hopeless, even as he fucked Taylor for his own pleasure, Corentin needed to keep trying to be better. But the fear remained that he never would.

  “Oh dear!” The familiar prim voice drifted in from the study doors. “This place is a maze!”

  Corentin let go of the pen, and it stayed in place vertically on the page, waiting for him to come back. “Hey,” he said to Honeysuckle with an exhausted smile. He sniffed again and then smudged away a tear with his thumb. “I’m okay.”

  Honeysuckle flew closer and knitted her dainty brows. “Henri, you are clearly not okay.” She held out her hand to his shoulder. “May I?”

  Corentin nodded and pointed to his shoulder with his chin. “Please.”

  She smiled and settled on it. She smoothed her skirts and properly crossed her ankles. “Please, sweetheart. What’s the matter?”

  “I screwed up.” Corentin resumed writing. He let his hand take over for him, and it moved on its own accord. “Bad.”

  “Oh, come now.” Honeysuckle patted his cheek. “You know you can tell me.” She turned up her nose and beamed with pride. “Pixie Enchant confidentiality.”

  Corentin rubbed the back of his neck. “I never had a fairy godmother before.” He smiled. “It’s nice.”

  “Between you and me, I’m the better one.” She gave a confident nod.

  Corentin snorted. He turned back to his journal as he scribbled through previous words with new words. “I let myself go in front of Taylor,” he said as he wrote. “I showed him everything. My dumping ground. How I hurt those people. I hurt him.” His lip quivered. “I hurt him and I liked it.”

  Honeysuckle blinked her disproportionately huge eyes. “Oh.” She didn’t need any further explanation.

  “But he liked it.” Corentin shook his head and his hair fell from its small ponytail. He laughed—a humorless, remorseful sound. “He liked it a lot.” He sniffed. “How could he? Did he even understand the danger he was in?”

  “Dear.” With a simple term of endearment, Honeysuckle brought Corentin’s worry to a full stop. “Taylor is Sleeping Dragon. As my husband says, he has a tac nuke for a soul. If anything, he could have hurt you. He could have easily killed you.”

  Corentin flexed his fingers around the duct-taped spine of his journal. She did have a point.

  “Ringo and I are well aware of your enjoyment of each other, and all that it implies.”

  His stomach clenched and his cheeks burned with the awkward conversation. He wasn’t some fifteen-year-old having the birds and bees discussion. He was a middle-aged man getting flustered over the idea of his much younger soul mate.

  “Taylor loves you,” she said. The kindness floated on her voice.

  “I know,” he mumbled and ducked his head, avoiding her gaze.

  Honeysuckle puffed a frustrated sigh. “Taylor loves you.” She annunciated each word and weighed down with the meaning. She took flight from his shoulder. The buzzing of her wings echoed through the cavernous study hall. “He’s devoted to you,” she said as she hovered in front of him. “Everything he does, he does for you.”

  Corentin’s grip tightened on his pen. “But I can’t do anything for him….” The confession hurt worse than any dagger.

  Honeysuckle threw her arms out. “Is that what this is? You don’t feel like you’re man enough for him?” She narrowed her eyes in scrutiny. “Henri Corentin, you are more than enough.”

  Corentin sighed and flicked the pen away. It skipped and rattled across the tiles. There would be another. He ran his hand over his face and considered his words. Anything he could say now would still come out wrong.

  “He deserves better,” he said behind his hand.

  Honeysuckle pulled a tiny fist to her chest and gasped.

  Corentin looked away into the distance of the study hall. He would avoid looking at her as long as he could get away with it. Forever was the ideal.

  “He deserves someone who can give him what he wants. What he needs,” Corentin said and dropped his hand across his journal. “Someone who can provide for him.”

  Honeysuckle puffed out her cheeks and grumbled in indignation. “You are letting your relationship grow stagnant. You know that.”

  Corentin looked down to his journal. Her words hit the mark like an icepick to the windpipe.

  “The moment you showed him something new, you panicked,” she said. “The moment you gave him a chance to understand you, you regretted it.”

  He remained silent and scratched the back of his neck.

  “Henri Corentin Devereaux,” she growled. “You will look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  What was he? A small child pulled by the ear? He pressed his lips together and raised his eyes.

  “Why are you holding you
rself back with him?” she asked, wringing her hands. “Why are you so scared? What are you afraid of? Commitment?”

  Corentin sucked in a sharp breath and glared at her wide-eyed. “Don’t,” he warned.

  She slapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my word. Is that your problem? All this time? You?”

  He frowned and silently fished out a folded pamphlet he had hidden by gluing two pages together. He held it out between two fingers and waved it at her. “Take it.”

  She blinked her wintergreen eyes as she took the scuffed, glossy paper. Honeysuckle carefully unfolded Corentin’s excessive creases. Her mouth fell open as she looked up at him and then down to the pamphlet. “Kay Jewelers?” she whispered as she opened it.

  “The circled one,” Corentin muttered as he flicked his finger at the back of the paper.

  Honeysuckle looked up at him over the edge of the pamphlet and then down again. She beamed with excitement. “Sugarpop. It’s a ring….” She bounced in midair and tossed back her head in a joyous laugh. “How wonderful!”

  Corentin hung his head. “I don’t know if I can….”

  Honeysuckle threw down the pamphlet and scowled. “You better.”

  Even in all of her encouragement, she didn’t understand. His temples throbbed from his dying anger and tears. “How can I?” he snapped, slapping his journal with the back of his hand. “After everything? After this?” He hefted up the journal in both hands and frowned. He dropped it back into his lap and then buried his fingers in his hair. “He’s a princess. I’m—”

  “Stop right there!” Honeysuckle huffed. “If you mention once again you’re a huntsman, I will vomit.”

  “I’m scared, all right?” he barked, and she jerked back. “You get that, yeah? If I were to go there with Taylor and put a ring on his finger, he’d realize he got in over his head.” He slapped a hand to his chest. “Sure, he loves me now. But you know what? It’s only been two years. Two years seems easy. But how about ten years from now? Or twenty?” He pointed and fought the urge to say the next thing that came to mind, but he said it anyway. “You know what? I bought the ring. I hid it in a coffee can in the back of the pantry. What do I do with it? Present him with a responsibility that he couldn’t possibly comprehend. That’s the worst thing I can do for us.”

  Honeysuckle put her hands on her hips. “So what?”

  Corentin clenched his fists and pressed his lips together to keep from making an even more irritated frown than he intended. “What do you mean so what?”

  But Honeysuckle caught on and wagged an angry finger. “You do not look at me in that tone of face, young man.”

  He tossed up his hands and groaned in frustration. “Fine,” he said, exasperated. “Fine.”

  She nodded. “Are you quite finished?”

  Corentin rested his chin in his palm. A pen materialized in his hand, and he impatiently tapped the paper. “Quite.”

  Her face softened, and she slowly smiled. “My sweet angel. I get it. I understand you’re afraid. But you made that step to get the ring without anyone knowing.” She grinned. “Which, that’s pretty clever, considering you hid it in plain sight.” She drifted down to the floor, bobbing once and then planting her feet. “You can’t change who you are or what you’ve done. And none of that matters to any of us. Take it from personal experience—Taylor was a difficult and awful child.” She pointed a finger. “I’m not saying that out of a place of jealousy. I mean it. Even Ringo didn’t know if he was going to make it as his fairy godfather. The stress of me taking care of Atticus, and him watching over Taylor, strained our marriage to the point that on Taylor’s wedding day to Phillipa, we were both ready to walk away.”

  Corentin swallowed. “I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”

  “And neither does Taylor. And he never will. It’s only been in the last two years that Ringo and I have finally figured out why he asked a stubborn, fat fairy to marry him. And why I said yes to a community college dropout with no ambition.” She sighed and watched him with big, hopeful eyes. “The point I’m making is, it’s you. You make Taylor better. He can’t change what he’s done. But because of you, because you found him under all the layers of anger and self-loathing, you make him into a better person.” She flicked her fingers dismissively. “You say he can’t handle the responsibility of what it is to be married to one Henri Corentin Devereaux. You, sir, wouldn’t know the first thing about what it’s like to marry Taylor Andrew Hatfield. That boy will eat you for breakfast.”

  Corentin smirked. “He’s welcome to try.”

  In a blink, Honeysuckle zipped to his eye level and then flipped backward, planting the perfect punt between his eyes.

  Corentin fell back and caught himself by his elbows before he could smack the floor. “What was that for?” he grunted.

  She yanked him up by his shirt collar and pressed her button nose to his hawked one. Pixie features always terrified him up close. He could see himself in the blackness of Honeysuckle’s pupils.

  “To knock some sense into you, fuckwit!” she growled like a caged bear. “Next time you decide to be a shit, I’m cursing you with a rash. And you do not want to know where.”

  Corentin swallowed, and she shoved him away.

  She smirked. “It’ll itch. Bad.”

  A young woman’s laughter drifted into the empty study hall, stopping Corentin and Honeysuckle cold. Corentin’s attention darted to the doorway, and then he frowned.

  The Cronespawn girl.

  “S-S-Sorry…,” she said timidly.

  Corentin pursed his lips. He still reserved his judgment about her. She had healed him, but she had also attacked him. “May I help you?” He kept his tone neutral.

  She nodded, and her slumped posture indicated her shyness. “Can I… come in? I came to see you….” Her speech pattern was stuttered and careful as she tried to form English.

  Corentin arched a brow at her. What the hell, why not? He held out a hand to the tipped-over desk. “Sit.”

  She drifted into the hall like a plume of smoke—effortless, light, but still a creeping omen. Instead of trying to right the desk and chair, she settled on the floor in front of him. She studied him in wide-eyed silence.

  He blinked. Well, wasn’t expecting that.

  Honeysuckle bobbed in the air, weaving to and fro. Corentin sensed her hesitancy to get too close. She put on her best smile. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, miss?”

  “Gabrielle,” the girl said, bowing her head. “Gabrielle Devereaux.”

  Chapter 23: Dark Magic Is Thicker Than Water

  May 9

  Idea, Study Hall

  CORENTIN SLAMMED his journal to the floor next to him. “I’ve hit my limit of getting fucked with for this week, and you just broke it,” Corentin snarled.

  Gabrielle recoiled and defensively raised her hands. “No. Please!” Gabrielle waved her hands. “Listen.”

  Corentin didn’t answer.

  She nodded, hopeful. “You’ll listen? Yes?” Gabrielle continued to watch him with a sense of shy wonder.

  Honeysuckle seemed at a loss for what to say. Trapped between a half smile and a half grimace, she turned on her matronly ways. “He’s had a rough time of things, sweet pea,” she said to Gabrielle.

  Instead of answering her, Gabrielle pointed at the journal. “It’s today, isn’t it? Today?”

  The hair on the back of Corentin’s neck stood. He reached out with his pen to the journal and tapped the pages. “You know about this?” How could a Cronespawn he had never met know about his curse? The list of Enchants who knew could fit on a cocktail napkin.

  She nodded, her sloppy bun flopping on the back of her head. “Your memory.”

  Corentin exchanged a sideway glance with Honeysuckle. He arched a brow in question, and she responded with a slight nod. He should hear Gabrielle out.

  “You should go find Taylor and Ringo,” Corentin said. “They’d be glad to see you. If… um….” He ran his fingers through his ha
ir. “If Taylor asks…. tell him I’m okay?”

  Honeysuckle drew her brows up in concern. “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Go on.” He tried to smile while the residual guilt about Taylor gnawed at him.

  “I’ll let you two catch up? I suppose that’s the phrase?” she asked as she looked between them. “I look forward to getting to know you, pumpkin.”

  Gabrielle maintained her wide-eyed stare as Honeysuckle fluttered off.

  Corentin turned back to Gabrielle, and they both openly looked at the journal and then back to each other. “How do you know?” he asked, resting his elbows on his thighs. “About it? How do you know?”

  The way she watched him made her nervousness more obvious than his anxiety of his journal in the open. “Can we… speak in Curse Word? My Common isn’t… very good.”

  Corentin laced his fingers together and glanced at the cathedral ceilings. “I try to avoid it when I can. But… og daeha.”

  “Thank you,” she said in their native Curse Word.

  “I asked, how do you know about the journals?” He had spoken quite a bit of their language while in New Orleans. It still sounded unnerving to him as he acknowledged a troubling part of his heritage.

  “I sent you the other one.” She kept her attention on the journal. Was she trying to read it? “It’s amazing.”

  “Where did you find the old one?” Corentin hungered for the answer but feared he didn’t want to know. “Do you have any others?”

  “I know of three of them.” She didn’t look up. She was obviously trying to read the pages. Corentin’s self-consciousness snuck up on him and he pulled the book into his lap. Gabrielle blinked and seemed ashamed for being caught. “I don’t have them. But I’ve been tracking their movements.”

  Corentin stumbled on her phrasing. He thought he heard her right but wasn’t sure. “Their movements? People have taken them?” He held out his hand in a half shrug. “What would someone want with them?” The possibilities hit him seconds later. Mundane science, for one. Enchants wanting his head, for another.

  “No, no.” She shook her head. “They are moving. The journals are trying to find you.”