Kingdom of Crowns and Glory

by Laura Greenwood et al.

  My eyebrows rose. “I have never been so insulted and so complimented at once before.”

  “How exactly is that a compliment?” She regarded me curiously.

  I flashed my teeth. “You think I’m cool.”

  Her eyes widened like globes, then her chest shook, and laughter peeled. The sound echoed against the narrow path. “You didn’t—” She cupped a hand over her mouth. “You’re unbelievable.” Her pace slowed until it stopped, and she took a shallow breath.

  I stopped just in front of her, smiling at the way her whole body laughed from her stomach to her eyes, but then a single tear traced down her cheek and shattered on the ground. My smile fell and, with it, her laughter.

  “I thought these moments between us were gone. It hurts knowing they should be, but I can’t bear the idea of letting them go.” She dropped her arm and clenched her fist. “You aren’t all bad. You did a lot of wrong things with good intentions. That means you aren’t all bad. And if you aren’t all bad…”

  My chest tightened when I realized I’d relaxed too much. “Everything I’ve done has been to use you.”

  “To save your people,” she protested. “And you couldn’t have found joy in it. I can tell when you get quiet and your eyes go distant. There’s sadness.”

  “You’ll find yourself very hurt if you try to justify me, Princess.”

  She frowned. “I’m finding myself very hurt if I don’t. If you have done everything selfishly, if you’re terrible and I’ve meant nothing to you, then that hurts so much more than trying. At least if I try, I have hope.”

  “Hope is fragile. You can rely on nothing built with hope alone.”

  “I don’t just have hope.” She huffed. “I have memories. Silent moments and secret times. Even when my mind was too muddled with other things to think about you, you always appeared when I needed you most, like you knew I was hurting and couldn’t bear it. You held my hand in war meetings. Told me jokes as I made weapons. Held me after I overheard the other children in the palace sneering behind my back.”

  Throat tight, I murmured, “You said you couldn’t forgive me.”

  “I can’t. I can’t forgive you. And I’m sure there are things you can’t forgive me for, either. I can’t keep track of how many sticks I’ve turned into swords. I’ve made countless weapons, knowing their intention would be to murder the fae, your people. Everyone has done unforgivable things.” She took in a shaking breath. “Everyone has something that haunts them.”

  I narrowed my gaze and knew I could have her in my arms in seconds if I wished. She seemed to want things back the way they were badly enough herself. But if I held her, if I assured her, if we mended what was broken, would I have the strength to give it up? It hit me then—as her eyes gleamed with unshed tears and desperation—that perhaps I was sparing myself as much as I told myself I was sparing her.

  How could I ever walk away from her if I let myself believe I was allowed to be whole once more?

  “You don’t understand, Princess,” I whispered. She stiffened, a chill going down her spine. “It doesn’t haunt me. The blood on my hands, the sins on my soul, were nothing but necessary. Maybe if there had been another way, I would have taken it, but as there wasn’t, I don’t regret anything I’ve done.”

  Hope went out of her eyes. “Why are you so intent on being the monster?”

  “Maybe I’d like you to see me for what I am.”

  A half-hearted scoff breathed out of her nose. “It’s hard when everything about you is a contradiction. Just tell me how I’m supposed to feel. It’ll make it so much easier.”

  “What’s the point?” I offered her a wry smile. “We both know you never do what you’re told.”

  Standing straight, she glared at me. “Should I hit you or kiss you?”

  “Probably both.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she plowed past me. “You’re irritating. But I have time to figure you out. Maybe the fae are immortal beings just for that reason. It’s impossible to understand them in a single lifetime.”

  Neither of us had that much time to spend together, but I rolled my eyes. “You would task your children with picking me apart?”

  “Certainly.” She fluttered her lashes. “I’m sure they’ll love to learn about their father.”

  All manner of breath left my lungs.

  She peered at me quizzically for a long beat, then smirked. “For my notes, the monster can blush.”

  Heat crawled up my neck and fled out along my ears in a way that left an odd sensation in my gut. I could find no words to reply, so I kept myself as hard as I could manage and fixed my gaze on the jagged crystals protruding from the walls. She was impossible. She could play me like a flute, but I could hardly find strength to return the favor.

  Maybe in my heart I knew this was the last day before the end. The next time I saw her after this, she would sacrifice my being for my people’s new world.

  This was all I had.

  And I didn’t want to die with only a memory of hatred in her eyes. The torment and confusion was sweeter; it proved how much she cared. The hope was a delicacy. The love—if I dared to admit I saw it reflected there—was my reprieve.

  The contradictions came because my head and my heart were at war. One screamed; the other bled. I could find no peace.

  I SAT ON THE COLD ground with a hand trembling against my mouth and my lips pressed firmly together. The caverns sang around us, a chilling wind breezing through countless orifices to create a ghostly tune.

  Here in the innermost chamber, a place of prayer, sacrifice, honor, and love, I watched Mabilia lay sprawled beneath a thousand flushed, gleaming crystals, among scattered scraps of parchment she had sketched innumerable scenes.

  Nearest me lay an image of a forest wrought with thorns. Sentient thorns, the footnote claimed. I tilted my head to find ‘wiggle wiggle’ written along one ominous branch.

  “That’s the Waking Wood. It’s the passage between realms. The thorns only move for those they deem worthy enough to enter.”

  My brows furrowed. “You’re creating a passage between the worlds?”

  “Of course. How else am I going to visit?” Her lips pouted, and she shed another image into the collage, starting on another with wisping strokes. “I’m tired of walls set in place to keep me in or out.”

  I plucked another page off the ground, and my stomach convulsed. A palace. Unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Great spears of ice jutted out of the ground, blackened like obsidian. Every spire sliced through the clouds. A misting fog surrounded the base, and through it faint hints of razor-sharp holly bushes and rifts of snow marked the ground.

  It was astounding.

  Another page fell beside me, and I blinked at it. This palace was brighter, significantly. Seemingly the trunks of a hundred tediously placed trees, leaves and flowers bloomed all over the light wood. Lovely, perhaps, but heat radiated off the page alone. No winter fae would survive it.

  “That’s for your sister court,” Mabilia clarified, reading my thoughts. “If they still exist and I can manage it, they’re coming to the new world as well.” She added a final stroke to her current masterpiece, then stretched and sat up among the blissful chaos she had created. “I think that’s everything I want. Any requests?”

  “Food that grows well in freezing conditions.”

  She shuffled through the pages. “Already thought of that. These are frost berries. Brilliantly purple and best served cold.”

  The oval fruits hung in heavy clusters on the bush she’d drawn. Tiny flowers peppered the plant, hinting that more would come still.

  “What pollinates this?”

  “What?” she blurted. “I need to make insects too?”

  I nodded. “Every detail must be covered.”

  “If only you’d been honest with me sooner. We could spend years planning this and be nowhere near done.” She lifted a blank page, her brows furrowed, then lowered it. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
r />   I couldn’t risk her parents finding out. I couldn’t bear the idea of rejection. For as long as I could, I wanted to pretend that I wasn’t the person who had so harmed her family, that I wasn’t the person who needed to use her, that I wasn’t the person who had to leave her behind. “All things happen at an appointed time.”

  “Must you be so insufferable?” A sad smile curved her lips. Her pen met another new page, and she mumbled something about making Mythalzen a house. My lips parted to mention how he had hardly left my side since his birth, and, like now, his room would be next to mine, but I bit my tongue. And remembered. And wished I could forget.

  “I WANT TO MEET MY GRANDFATHER.” The words left Mabilia’s mouth no sooner than we returned to the ravine and ducked into the palace tunnels. I held the now-empty picnic basket. Her arms burst with her drawings.

  “Trust me. You don’t,” I said after a long moment.

  She didn’t flinch. “You’ve made it hard to trust you so far, Rumpel. In my parent’s time, people couldn’t have more than one child by law. He’s the only family I have besides them, and if he’s still alive, I want to meet him. I don’t mind if he’s difficult. Today’s my last day here, so—”

  “I gave him to the succubus. By now, he’s little more than a shell of what he once was. It will not be pleasant for you to meet him, though I don’t at all mean to imply it would have been pleasant to meet him before.” I worked my jaw a moment and avoided looking at her. “He beat your mother and your grandmother, Mabilia. I took him for the single purpose that you would never have the ‘opportunity’ to meet him.” I turned down a dim passage leading back to her room and called a few lights into being above our heads.

  When her footsteps stopped, I faced her, bracing for the argument sure to come next.

  Challenge rested on her face, but the angle she debated was not what I had expected. “Why protect me? If all you want is to use me, why protect me from someone who would have hardly been a threat in my position?”

  Simply, I said, “I told you I love you.”

  “You’re confusing me again.” Her cheeks heated, and she clutched the pages in her arms.

  My head tilted. “It’s no secret I care for you a great deal. You are in possession of half my soul.”

  Something injured flickered through her eyes, and she stiffened. “That’s why…” It looked like I had just hit her she looked so pained. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s never been me. That’s why this is all mixed up. You don’t like me; it’s your soul in me.”

  She couldn’t be more wrong, but I stared at her silently, deciding if I should tell her. I could spin countless lyrics and poems depicting all the ways she made me smile, all the ways I found myself entranced, but to what end would that bring us?

  “You’ve only just realized this?” My tone stayed level and cool, cracking only in response to her expression. I had killed her grandparents, tortured her mother, lied to her for years, but none of that seemed to compare to what I had just said. My chest squeezed, convulsing violently, so I added, “I have tried to distance myself and be honest with you now. My people need you, but I recognize I’ve hurt you deeply, so I’ve tried—”

  She passed me, shaking her head. “Save it, Rumpelstiltskin. Your efforts were appreciated. I don’t want bloodshed or harm to come to anyone, so you don’t need to worry. I’ll do what you made me for.”

  My heart broke as her soft footsteps drifted away behind me, but I reminded myself this was right. This was better for her. It had to be. If I were in her place, if I had to watch her disappear, if I had to make her disappear, I wouldn’t be able to heal from it if I knew she loved me as dearly as I loved her.

  Maybe with this and with her humanity she would stand a chance. If not, I was sorry. I hoped she knew I was sorry, though that did little good at all.

  Chapter 8

  All Prices Are Burdens We Bear

  Mythalzen shifted on his hooves, scenting the iron growing thicker in the air the farther we went into the caves beneath Dale. I had insisted he not come to drop Mabilia off this morning, knowing what would greet us, but he had insisted quite the opposite.

  If Mabilia hadn’t supported him, he’d have been back home right now, safe.

  Firelight met the azure hue of my faerie lights, and I stopped. Mythalzen halted behind me, but Mabilia took another step before realizing we had arrived. Aurea and Daryl stood in the path, alone. Clad in iron, Daryl held a broad sword—Mabilia’s work if I didn’t mistake the elaborate, and unnecessary, designs on the hilt—in one hand and a blazing torch in the other. The fire danced in his eyes, like a forest aflame. Tight relief filled both parents when they saw their daughter.

  “Are you all right, Lia?” Aurea asked, her voice quiet if not choked.

  “Physically or mentally?” Mabilia murmured. She startled when fear flashed across her mother’s face and corrected herself. “I’m fine.”

  “Who’s behind you, Rumpelstiltskin?” Daryl narrowed his gaze on Mythalzen, who, like last time we were in these tunnels, ducked behind me childishly.

  I met Daryl’s glare evenly. “My ward. He grew close to Mabilia and wanted to see her off.”

  “H-hel—” Mythalzen started.

  Aurea blurted, “Grew close?”

  “Where’s your armor?” Daryl added.

  Mabilia winced, her fists clenching around her bag, where her armor rested beneath her other clothes. She stomped away from her parents, ignoring when they jerked forward, and stopped before Mythalzen. “I am grateful you came. Instead of drinking yourself into a stupor.”

  His eyes widened, and a small smile lifted his lips. “No, I won’t let Esme live that down. You have my word.”

  “Good.” A shaky bit of joy found her mouth, but it never made it to her eyes as she reached for Mythalzen’s hand and squeezed. “Stay out of trouble.”

  Leaving him, and continuing to ignore her parents’ bated breath, she glanced at me. Any joy Mythalzen incited faded away. “I suppose this is it.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “If I thank you, would you have my soul, or does that not apply for us?”

  I fixed my gaze on her parents, watching color drain from her mother’s cheeks. “You could watch your words with me for their sake, but I wouldn’t use them against you, no.”

  Eyes dull, she said, “It was beautiful. Snow. And the caves. The crystals and the parties and the people. I’ll miss it.”

  I would miss her. I nodded.

  Her brows lowered, but anything she would have said died when her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her away. I released a pent up breath, regarding the woman with boredom. “Don’t look so distressed,” I hissed. “You have your child in one piece, and you’ll be rid of me soon enough.”

  “Yesterday wouldn’t have been soon enough,” she whispered.

  “Yes, because if I had never bothered you, you would have fared so well.” My lips curled back in a sneer.

  Mythalzen set a hand against my shoulder. “My lord…you needn’t provoke them.”

  “You would be wise to listen to your ward,” Daryl growled. “Very little keeps me from killing you right here.”

  “Oh?” I smirked. “Was that not already your plan? Pardon my confusion.”

  “Stop!” Fury sparked in Mabilia’s eyes. “Just stop. Both of you.”

  I clenched my shaking hands in my coat, meeting her gaze. She pulled it away in an instant.

  “Let’s just go home. I’m tired. I want my bed. I don’t want…this, whatever this is.” She flailed a hand in our direction, then dropped it limp to her side. “Mythalzen also doesn’t deserve to see what could come of this. He’s an innocent in your feud.”

  “None of them are innocent.” Daryl brandished his blade.

  I snarled.

  “Would you kill a father before his child?” Mabilia raised her head, narrowed her eyes on her father’s sword, then flicked her wrist. The weapon morphed back into what it had once been, a harmless stick.r />
  “Lia!”

  “I decided I didn’t want to know the answer.” She turned her back on me and pushed past her parents. “If you want to fight magic with a branch, be my guest. I’ll be in bed.” A waver of glamour settled in the air beside the scent of iron, and to everyone but me, she vanished, walking away.

  “If we find out you’ve done something to her…” her father warned, tossing the harmless twig aside.

  “I did nothing but show her the world past your cage, but I’m afraid you won’t have the luxury of revenge.” I angled my body to leave, catching Aurea’s eye before I did. “Your favorite nightmare is nearly upon us, child. Neither of you are to remove your armor today if you value your lives, and make sure Mabilia puts hers back on before she enters the forest. It’s imperative.”

  “What are you talking about?” Aurea demanded, but I had already turned, clutched Mythalzen’s shoulders, and called a glamour around us both, pushing him forward. We faded from their view, entering the shadows from which we had come, and returned to await the storm.

  IMAGES OF THE END danced before my eyes, and I stared drearily past them, wondering when exactly they would occur. I knew it was today. Ever since we dropped Mabilia off this morning, I knew it would happen sometime before the sun set.

  But when.

  “It’s today, isn’t it?”

  I raised my head, blinking off the splatters of blood painting the snowy ground, and looked at Mythalzen. He sat against my desk, his legs pulled close to his chest. Any usual humor or sass had gone, leaving him almost empty.

  “That’s why you sent Esme and everyone else deep in the tunnels.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed, splaying my fingers. “You should follow them.”

  His ears flattened against his head, and his hold around his legs tightened. “You’ve been there for me since the start. I’m not leaving you now.”

  A heartless laugh escaped my nostrils. “If anything happens to you now, I’ve done all of this for naught.”

  His gold eyes widened before his face crumpled with emotion. “Don’t make this my fault, my lord. Please.”