Kingdom of Crowns and Glory

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  “Why continue to hide it?” Mythalzen leaned against the armoire, sadness trickling in and out of his eyes. “If anything is going to go to plan, she has to find out. The sooner the better. And today is the day, isn’t it?”

  “No.” I slipped one glove on, then the other. “Things don’t need to start today. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

  Mythalzen snorted, but I knew I was serious. Tomorrow perhaps was the day things fell apart. I could only hope instead they wouldn’t, but something as frail as hope cracked and broke before it was of any use, and I knew better than to wish for things that could not be.

  Setting my crown down, I sighed. Already, the familiar pang lit in my chest, hollowing out a fraction of my heart. “I’ll be leaving now.”

  Concern rippled, and his folded arms tightened. “Be careful, my lord.”

  I didn’t reply as I disappeared, reappearing in the thick of Dale’s palace yard. Iron immediately burned my nose, scalding down my throat with every inhale and swallow. It spun in my gut, sawing the lining of my stomach away like gnawing piskies had gotten a hold of me.

  I breathed my way through it, adjusting as well as I could. Every day, it was worse. Every day, it was worth it. My muscles daring to spasm, I meandered through the gardens packed fat with crops and waited.

  Guards stared blankly ahead beside the doors leading into the ballroom. No older than fifteen, they had been shuffled into training, and their slack faces radiated an emptiness that loomed in their stares.

  Oblivious as they could be, an angel slipped between them out of the shining ball. Her bright blue eyes peered at each one, and she stuck out her tongue, before the chime of her laughter tried to bring me to my knees. Her eyes found me, and my breath held.

  They had tried their best to ruin her tonight. They had done everything they possibly could. They had twisted and pulled and pinned each and every perfect, straight strand of raven dark hair into some contraption atop her head. They had dabbed her flawless, pale skin with colors so similar to blood, her cheeks appeared splotched with the substance. They had even dressed her in a silver gown thread through with iron. It clanged when she walked, like she wore armor, but it billowed around her slender legs just above her knees, and they had left those alone, content to trap only her feet in heels. She promptly discarded those odd little shoes among the turnips and carrots.

  They had tried their best to ruin her; they had failed.

  “My faerie,” she murmured, a coy smile playing upon her lips, “is this the day you kill me?”

  My chest pinched. “Do you wish to die, Princess?”

  “Dreadfully.” Spinning round, she threw her arms wide, so used to glamouring herself she could shout. “Ah! To be free of you!” The spark in her eye was almost a reflection of Winter’s Howl, and it steeled. “Just watch how I’ll run.”

  If only I could wrap my arms around her and steal her away from all of this. With the iron congealed in the air and against her skin, it would be difficult. With my name claimed, removing power over her, it was impossible. The only way we left was if she decided to entirely on her own, or if a new contract allowed. Then I would lead her through the chasm of mines they wasted their lives in, stealing from the earth, and out into a frigid freedom she would adore.

  One by one the wind would snatch away the mess in her hair, the snow would melt the paint off her face, and I would give her a mantle so light, it would drift on the air itself, bearing her into the sky.

  Oh, darling. You wouldn’t have to run. You would fly.

  A tiny smile lifted my lips at the brief thought of her soaring through the air.

  “Okay,” she huffed. “I can withstand this no longer. Take me absolutely away.”

  Oh, what those words could mean. It was a shame and a pity their intentions were as innocent as her father’s had been years before. I leaned to peer around her at the waltzing forms within the ballroom and curved a brow. “Are you certain? It looks quite lively in there.” My lungs filled, searching past the sting of metal. “I smell food. Are you sure you want to leave the food?”

  She didn’t even look back and consider it. “You can’t call that food. Do you know what they do?” She moved close, iron wafting off her, but I met her where she was and waited for the secret she would share. “They cut the meat into teeny tiny little bits and put it on a thin, thin cracker. Then the itsiest-bitsiest dab of cheese goes on top. And on that?” She pulled back, folding her arms and rolling her eyes. “Well, I’m certain they just put a scrap of grass there and call it a day.”

  The feasts I could show her.

  I scrunched my nose, baring my teeth. “Sounds horrible.”

  “It is. Mother says I shouldn’t be picky.” She chewed her lip. “We have so much, and it’s special.” Her playful excitement drifted away into a calmness of one far older. Her spirit, linked to mine as it was, carried the same weight of my ages. And in the moment, that showed. “I just can’t be like them. I’m not happy in their little cage. I want a sky I can’t touch and the freedom to never stop trying to. But I don’t want it through war.” Her gaze pinned wistfully on the stars that gleamed through the iron glass, and she breathed softly. Without looking away, she reached for my gloved hand and closed her fingers around mine. “Take me away from at least one wall tonight.”

  Resisting the urge to bring her fingers to my lips, touching skin to skin, I squeezed her hand and smirked. “But, my princess, aren’t you afraid the fae will come for you?”

  She snorted, the very unladylike sound the epitome of grace. “Please. You already have, haven’t you?” A shadow of bitter hatred burdened her expression. “Rumpelstiltskin wouldn’t dare show his face here now, anyway. We’re too strong.”

  How easy it was to forget how much she hated me when she looked at me and smiled, and laughed, and didn’t at all know who I was.

  Her parents had fostered hatred in her heart. For me. For my supposed army. For the nasty creatures she could see milling about in the woods late at night. In her mind, I was “her faerie,” but in her mind, I didn’t really exist. Her command over illusion and alchemy was so strong already, even before her awakening. Through her wishes and some of my efforts, it was simple enough to convince her I was little more than an imaginary friend.

  I drew her out of the palace walls and into the town her parents had sufficiently ruined. What was once a quaint village now stood as one imposing block of square apartments after another. The shops and markets had been purged. The florists and jewelers and bakers were gone. Each week, the palace divided up rations; food and clothing was all people needed in times like these.

  Half the city had been gutted and converted into towered housing Mabilia called glass-scrapers. The other half had been tilled for use as farmland to keep the ever-growing population fed. Any man of thirteen entered the army where they would learn to fight while working as a guard, a miner, or a builder. Any woman learned to mend armor, work the farms, or—if they wished—battle as well.

  “What’s wrong?” Mabilia asked, breaking the silence of my thoughts. She laughed a bit. “Don’t tell me my mood is infecting you too.”

  I glanced at her; she had no idea. Her home had once been confined but beautiful. Now it was little more than a mechanism for destruction. “I brought you something,” I murmured, reaching into my coat and drawing out the season globe. Her eyes widened, and we stopped in the quiet streets.

  Long ago, they would have been alive at this time. Now, there was no reason to be out unless you were a lonely princess and her imaginary friend, trying desperately to escape.

  “What is it?” She plucked the globe from my fingers and squinted at the delicate pieces within the glass. Her brows furrowed. “This couldn’t be…” Tipping it over, she gasped when the snowy gales shifted into a gentle rain. The droplets fell against thousands of flowers, each intricately placed and perfectly colored. “It’s not Dale. Is it?”

  “Once,” I said, but it had never been quite that way. Even before…
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  “It’s precisely how I imagined,” she breathed, fixated on the shifting seasons. A tiny smile painted her lips. “But of course it is. I’ve outdone myself this year.” She shuffled through: summer and autumn and winter again, then spring once more. Pausing on each at different intervals, she sighed, deciding winter was her favorite. She watched each flurry drift, her smile melting away the longer she looked.

  She didn’t need to tell me she wished her world was the one in the globe. In her mind, she believed her wishes had created the trinket. Something vibrant and free even if it was condensed. “If he had never touched my life, is this where I would live?” she whispered to herself, forgetting for the moment I was there, believing in her gutted soul I never was.

  My back straightened, the hair on my neck prickling. If I had never… She wouldn’t exist. Her mother would have been beaten to death by her maternal grandfather shortly after he’d murdered her maternal grandmother. Her father would have lost himself in a rage fueled by the good intentions of his credence and killed the king, sending Dale into this same moment, one before a war, but a war without her.

  Without hope.

  No. She wasn’t that fragile mistress. She wasn’t frail and easily broken like hope. Mabilia was salvation. For both Dale and my people alike. She was salvation for the world that would forget, the one that would destroy, and the one that would be lost.

  “Tell me a story,” she whispered, staring at the globe like her world rested within.

  I took a deep breath and gazed at the sky. “A story? Since when do you like those?”

  Her lips lifted in a small smile, and mine mirrored the action to match. I spun a recycled tale from fae lore, replacing our heroine’s name with hers—likely sacrilege, but for her growing smile, I didn’t care. She fought dragons and rode through plains upon her faerie steed, bolstering legend and carving her name into the world itself. As the theatrical rendition slipped to a close, her smile had fallen.

  It took all my strength not to touch her then, draw her close, and whisper the truth, about everything. But I couldn’t bear to see hatred blister in her gaze, not tonight. Enough would happen tonight. And I couldn’t forfeit everything now.

  She pressed the globe against her chest and stared up at the stars. “Thank you, my faerie,” she murmured, and a tear traced down her cheek.

  My breath held.

  She pinned me with those blue eyes that were an echo of mine. “I wish you were real.”

  I vanished from her sight, my heart breaking, begging to stay with her, but I couldn’t. Not yet. I couldn’t become real for her yet, because when I did, all her joy would disappear.

  Chapter 2

  Awakened Nightmares

  It replayed in my mind, again and again, watching Mabilia from afar as she turned with her gift pressed tight against her breasts and trudged back to the castle prison she had spent her whole life wishing to flee.

  Her parents had raised her too well, too kind, too duty-bound. So though her heart was cracking, she never once tried to leave. She smiled as whispers choked her, claiming she was a witch’s bastard. She performed every task asked of her, using her abilities in ways that crushed her soul.

  And when it was too much, she called me to her side. When she couldn’t smile anymore, she bid me near. When her eyes filled with tears and she curled up, she beckoned my invisible touch to comfort her and my silent words to help her. For just one more day. One more hour. One more minute.

  Until this moment. When she screamed for me, and I couldn’t come.

  I lay in bed, staring at the cavern ceiling, my hands tightly wound in the sheets and blankets. My chest knotted, twisting so violently I could hardly breathe. Her father’s awakening had been pleasure. Her mother’s had been uncomfortable due to my presence in her mind. This, hers, was torture.

  So much power packed into so young a frame, seeping out through every pore, changing every atom into her full self. It was like most faerie’s growing pains, but far worse. She was neither wholly faerie, nor wholly human.

  She was an evolved, fragmented realization of the future. My other half.

  I jerked up. I had to go to her. Consequences be damned. I—

  “My lord.” Mythalzen stood at my bedside, his hand tightening around my arm. Lips pursed, he gave his head a slight shake. “You mustn’t.”

  “Damn you,” I hissed. “She needs something to hold onto. No one else even knows.”

  “You told me not to let you go under any circumstances.” His nails dug into my flesh, and I may have killed anyone else. “Not if you begged, not if you fought. I swore.”

  He swore. On his life. Knowing it may very well have been taken from him for standing between us.

  “She’s in pain.” So much pain. Suffering worse than ever before. She was spiralling through the universes her mind had concocted around her throughout her lonely years when she, like her mother, crafted stories out of wishes. Unlike her mother, the worlds she made could exist if she learned how to bring them to life. In time, I would show her. In time, it would be our fate.

  But right now every filament lay wrenched out of her and spread throughout the endless chasms of broken pictures. She needed to pull herself back together. If I stepped in, if I touched her in this moment, everything I’d done would break apart. My magic would recognize me over her, and she would be cleansed. Useless.

  No. I covered my face with my shaking hands, grounding myself through the pain of Mythalzen’s dredging nails. Even if I stepped in, saved her, and returned her to mere humanity, she would still be Mabilia. My Mabilia.

  Tears collected in my eyes, and I forced them not to fall.

  “I can’t do this to her,” I choked.

  “You must.”

  I had never felt so weak. So helpless. Even when her parents had stolen her away from me, I knew she would still grow safely, facing happiness and sadness as everyone must. Whatever she believed I was, I was still able to be there for her. Now, not being able to…

  Heaving breaths filled my lungs. Her pleading screams scraped through my mind. She panted for her faerie, begged.

  “Without this, we all die,” Mythalzen reasoned, his deer ears pinned.

  Were we worth it?

  His jaw set, and dark blooms of red stained my linen shirt, his nails unrelenting. “Without this, she dies. Alone. In the rubble of what could have been. Basking in the blood of her family, her people. Whether they loved her or not.”

  “Stop,” my raw voice broke, and I cupped my hand over my mouth. Without this, everything I had worked for, broken myself for, would be for nothing. Steeling my resolve, I lay back down. Mythalzen released me, and I dwelled on the sting of the wounds as they eased closed.

  When she learned this pain was my fault, she would hate me more. Whether she loved or hated me didn’t matter, though. In fact.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the cold rush of tears turning to ice on my skin.

  All the better if she hated me. I had caused her enough suffering. In the end, when my crown passed to her for however brief she would hold it during the transition of worlds, she didn’t deserve the burden of mourning over the monster.

  IRON DEMONS FLEW PAST ME, horns blaring. A rush of more people than even had been packed into Dale took to cement paths on either side of a long stretch of black road. Faces down, they watched blinking, metal boxes.

  A bitter smog filled the air, any hint of nature lost, any spark of magic gone or buried too far beneath the smoke. Buildings stretched, great glass and steel towers skimming the brown sky. A screaming howl of wind made me cover my ears and peer up as an iron bird zoomed through the clouds.

  No. My chest clenched, weariness filling me. Not this dream. Not again.

  Noise made my ears ache, not a single pleasant sound in the stream of engines and traffic. Machines hammered somewhere, at a distance. Birds squalled over some small bit of food. All around me was everything, everything the humans could have ever dreamed of, and yet…it was n
othing near enough.

  Their blank stares clung to endless entertainment, but not one smiled. Their trudging feet entered their automobiles, but the speed offered was too slow. They yelled, and honked, and sighed.

  They had, like Dale, completely closed out the fae, but they hadn’t needed walls to do it. They had built a toxic world, and for what purpose? All the magic was gone. The miraculous abilities of their cars and phones and planes were so common-place that they never paused in awe or wonder of them. Life slogged by.

  The tightening in my chest deepened, choking out my air. Rust climbed up my feet, ankles, legs. It took hold, and I crumbled away.

  If nothing changed, we all would die.

  When I blinked awake, those words repeated in my mind as always. I stared ahead, numb—numb to the pain, numb to the sights, and numb to the fear. Dragging one trembling hand to my face, I tried to breathe in the soft, secure scent of the earth around me.

  When I looked for it, Mabilia’s heart beat faintly beside my own, exhaustion pouring into every thump. She had survived. She was ready. But I couldn’t bring myself to picture what I had to do next. The war would start soon, when the glass fell, and at that point, it would be time. Even if the future I saw lay centuries away, the salvation I planned presented itself only now.

  “Lord Rumpelstiltskin?” Mythalzen’s tired voice called me away from dark thoughts. He sat at my bedside, rubbing his eyes, and I frowned. Last night, all the world had rested on him, and he had fallen asleep? He didn’t even appear mildly repentive as he yawned. “Is it over?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I replied. The worst of it was over when I’d finally succumbed and took a tincture to force me to rest. I’d need my rest for today, but as I sat up, every muscle in me aching and tight, I knew it had done little good.

  “Breakfast,” Mythalzen mumbled, stretching out of his chair and clopping toward the door. “I suppose you’ll take it here this morning?”

  I nodded, and he left, abandoning me to the silence of my thoughts. It mattered little now. Mabilia rested and would for a while. I could go to her without consequence. The beginning of the worst had already transpired. My magic flowing in her was no longer an entity I could call my own. She held half my soul and my spirit, but she had claimed the fractures as hers.