“I will.” Reclining, I peered at the ceiling. Each glowing speck of luminous crystal dust twinkled like a star. “When you reach the new world, spin stories of heroism. Let everyone who has ever thought less of you know they only continue to breathe because you were among them.”
He dragged his fingers back through his hair, gripping a fistful and taking a shaky breath. “I’d remain outcast forever if it meant you didn’t have to do this.”
Smirking, I glanced at him. “I’d let you, too.”
Water pooled in his eyes when he laughed, and his smile wobbled, falling with the first tear. “Please don’t do it. I can’t just…let you do this.”
I stood, stuffing my hands in my pockets. Walking around him, I approached the shelves of books and ran my gaze over the embossed spines. All the history and spells would likely find themselves lost to time. If fate chose, the humans would find them and create legends or fairytales, keeping our memory alive, longing for what they’d pushed away. “What’s a little half-breed mongrel going to do to stop me?”
His hooves clopped as he stood. “You don’t get to shut me out now.”
“I’m no good at it anyway,” I mumbled, facing him. “Take care of her. Promise me you’ll take care of her.”
Lips still trembling, he raised his chin. “And if I don’t?”
My eyes rolled. “You will. You’re attached to her.”
“I’m also attached to you.” His fists clenched, and he didn’t meet my eyes. “You’ve got it easy, Lord Rumpelstiltskin. You aren’t losing your best friend or the only person you could call family. You’re just leaving. You’re leaving all of us behind and calling the torture that follows our salvation.”
“New friends can be made, and families can be rebuilt. I never suggested it would be easy for any of us.”
He shook, rubbing his eyes and curling his arms around his lanky body. His brown nose quivered. For that instant, he was younger, smaller. He was the timid boy I had raised before he’d found weapons in sarcasm and pertness.
I wrapped my arms around him and sighed. My soul didn’t scream at the idea of leaving him, but it ached. I could only hope the world would be kinder to him than it was in his youth. “You remember what you must tell her?”
A noise halfway between a laugh and a scoff hit my chest, and he gripped my coat. “The King is dead. All hail the Queen.”
“Less monotone, if you can manage it.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to.”
I couldn’t afford tears, but my throat burned when I swallowed. My eyes closed, and the images I had shooed returned. Tears poured down Mabilia’s face. Her season globe rested clutched in her hands. A spark of anger ignited, and she exclaimed as she stood, smashing the glass on the edge of her dresser.
My eyes snapped open when the sound of glass shattering rattled the world. Mythalzen stopped breathing, and I clutched him, still save for my hands. “It’s time,” I whispered, stepping to action. I pulled away and gripped his shoulder, staring into his terror-filled gaze. “Go.”
“But—”
“You will be fine. You have always been fine. Even when the world was against you.”
“Because of you!” His breath stuttered, and I winced.
“Because of you. You’re strong. You’ve always been strong. It’s your strength that led me to spare you from the start. I knew you wouldn’t just survive in this world; you would thrive.” I released him and stood tall. “In case I’ve never told you, I love you, Mythalzen. Mabilia may have my soul, but I leave my legacy with you. Now, protect it and go.”
Eyes watery, he nodded. I listened to his hooves clop away for the last time, took a deep breath, and whirled out the door, tracing a path in the opposite direction he had gone.
The glass kingdom of Dale had fallen; the time of Mab had begun.
BILLOWS OF SNOW whipped against my skin, midday covered with thick clouds that washed the world grey. I trudged through the drifts, listening to the sounds of battle as they brewed. Redcaps shrieked, no doubt charging for the warm meat they’d so long been refused. Metal clanged. Screams chorused on the shrill wind.
An invisible contract link drew me to an unspoken meeting place, but I wasn’t surprised when the singing caverns came into view. I had never been near them during a tempest like this one, though. The wailing cries pouring from the mouth of the caves nearly blanketed the distant anguish.
Nearly.
I stopped within the shelter of the first chamber and released a pent-up breath. This was it. The end I’d planned for. The end I’d wished so many times didn’t have to come.
A form sprinted through the brush, colliding with me. I braced Mabilia by the shoulders, and her gleaming blue eyes met mine a second before she wrenched herself away, tossing a look behind her. A blood-curdling battle cry sounded. I squinted, finding half a dozen redcaps with raised spears.
I cursed, throwing my gaze over her body. No iron. Torn flesh around her calf.
I’d given her parents a very simple and very specific task, but they couldn’t seem to manage anything, could they? Growling, I pushed her behind me and dared the cretins to continue their advance. Even they knew better. Their wrinkled noses scented the ancient power flooding my veins, and hesitation made them slow. Whatever grumbled protests they uttered found themselves lost in the chaos as they retreated.
“Why didn’t you put armor on?” I demanded the instant they were out of sight. Dropping to my knees, I examined her wound.
She limped back before I could touch her. “I don’t know. Everything happened so fast.” She threw another look into the blizzard. “This is my fault.”
“It’s not. None of it is.” I rose.
“Of course it is! The glass didn’t shatter until I broke the globe you gave…” Her eyes widened as her words faded into the howling storm. “This, too?” she squeaked. “You planned this, too?”
“I have dreams of the future, Mabilia. Up until this point, there is very little I haven’t planned.”
“You really are a monster…” Her words cut through my chest and clenched in my gut like fire. “Do you know how many people are injured? How many are fighting, probably dying, right now?”
I did. I had had years to count the casualties, weigh them, choose the path that would see the most lives spared. “You can save them.”
“What?”
“You can save them,” I repeated. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it? You only agreed to this when I told you we would all perish if you didn’t.”
Befuddlement writ all over her face. “Why would you start this just to have me end it moments later?”
“Because,” I held her baffled gaze, “you are too kind. I knew you’d need motivation.”
“Rumpelstiltskin,” her voice cracked, “if you don’t start making some sort of sense right now…”
“The humans can handle a little storm. They’ve been preparing to fight in a winter land for over a decade now. What they can’t handle are the fae. It’s time to create the new world.”
Her eyes bulged, and she threw up her hands. “What? I’ve had two days to prepare for this! I didn’t even get to color my sketches!”
“You’ve had a lifetime to prepare. You’ve been making worlds since you were four, Mabilia. We don’t have years to waste.” My chest tightened when sheer panic washed over her. She leaned off her injured leg and took short breaths.
“So I needed motivation to appease your impatience? You really are horrid! What you showed me, that world with all that iron and technology, couldn’t happen in a week. Or a month. We would have had time!”
“We don’t have a hundred years. The only time when this is possible is following the hallowed eve when Winter’s Howl and Celestine aligned. Also, it isn’t motivation to act quicker.” I crouched before her, and wrapped my hand around her ankle. She tried to pull away, but I held firm, drawing my hand over her wound. Her humanity was such a crutch when it came to injuries. “The price of
a new world is impossibly steep. You must weave half your soul into it.”
Her breath ceased.
I looked up once her wounds had closed to find her staring at me in horror. “You…?” she choked. I nodded. Her head shook. “No. No, I won’t. I can’t.” She stepped away from me, toward the storm. Thoughts raced behind her eyes, and her short breaths turned erratic. Her shaking hands plowed through her hair. “Oh, god. It all makes sense. Oh, god.” Anger erupted in a hot wave. “That’s why you changed! Did you really think years of care could disappear in a few days?”
“You can’t keep fighting to make me into the faerie you knew growing up, Mabilia!”
“You’re willing to sacrifice yourself for your people! You’re greater than the imaginary friend I knew growing up!” Tears pooled and overflowed. “And finally you were real! You can’t just… Why did you even bother to be there at all if you knew this was where it would end?”
Bitterness stung my tongue and fell like acid to my stomach. “To make sure everything worked. Nothing more. I crafted your love of creating. I built something between us, so I could learn how to best bring us to this point, so you would give the fae a chance and see they were worth saving.”
“You don’t get to just do this to me,” she spat through gritted teeth, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “I love you! And you can’t just make that go away!”
My heart pounded to hear those words, but I hardened myself and closed my eyes. “Half your soul calls to its other. This isn’t love. It’s an illusion that is impossibly hard to fight.”
“It’s perhaps more real than anything else I’ve ever known.” Her hands clutched my coat. “We can find another way.”
“I have searched.”
“We haven’t searched together. Why didn’t you tell me sooner so we could have searched together? Instead of all this convoluted, dreadful—”
“I couldn’t afford for you to get hurt toying with things you could never understand in the time we had.”
“I wouldn’t have cared. This hurts far worse than anything else could have.” Her forehead rested against my chest, and I fought the urge to hold her. “I won’t do it. We’ll try something else.”
“There is nothing else.” My voice rose above the roar of the wind. “Do you really think I haven’t looked everywhere for another answer? The price is sacrificing half the wielder’s soul. For something like this, it’s always something precious.” I yanked my clothes out of her hands and turned, throwing out my arm. “Memories. Time. Lives. Only precious things are enough to spare more precious things.”
“You’re doing this for Mythalzen.” It wasn’t a question.
I swallowed, and my body sagged. “He’s only twice your age. For a fae, he may as well be younger than you. If I had the option not to leave him, I would have found it. I do this for all my people, but if it were only him, nothing would have changed.” I glanced at her. “I’m begging you. Do not make me show you what happens if you don’t do what I’m asking. I do not wish to see that prophecy again.”
When she stood tall and lifted her head, defiance shone in her eyes, and I knew I wouldn’t have a choice. Approaching, I lifted my hands to set my thumbs against her forehead, and she closed her eyes, willing to accept whatever I was about to offer.
Exhaling, I delved into the memory, the future if she didn’t agree to pay this price.
Shadows crawled in the corners of the vision, clamoring for attention as they battled firelight. Stampeding footsteps marked with iron pounded through the caves of my former home. Blood and bodies lay trailed behind Dale’s soldiers. Ruthless, they carved their way through the monsters. Spells and attempts to quell the armed forces fizzled as the magic hit iron helms.
Children slaughtered children.
The memory shifted, focusing on Mythalzen. He sat alone in an alcove, his ears flattened against his head and his tail tucked. Each shaking breath that filled his chest jerked about in his lungs with every scream echoing toward him. Firelight skated over his skin; his golden eyes widened.
Mabilia ripped out of my hold, panting, and I released a breath, even as the memory continued and crimson painted my mind. After my people passed, the wendigos found Dale and consumed it. Nothing remained.
“If you hadn’t started this war…”
“The war was always planned to start. Only now do we have the time and opportunity to save everyone. Time is running out, though. Once the redcaps retreat, your father will lead the armies to the ravine. Many will die on the descent to the caves. From there, only very few of the fae are able to get away. Then, wendigos, the lost souls from years past when some tried to leave Dale and enter these woods, kill everyone human.” Weariness clutched a hand around me. “You must weave my soul into the new world before then. You must start now.”
Voice raw, she whispered, “How?”
I offered my hand. “I will guide you to the spinning wheel; from there, your instinct will make it turn. Your mind bursts with enough imagination to create what you must. The only thing you mustn’t forget is to take all the magic from this world there. It will be a final spell, using your heartache as the price.”
“My heartache?” she asked, her hand hovering above mine. “What do you mean?”
“The torment I have caused you, what was unavoidable, will be enough. Teleportation is simple, like an exhale. Take what is in one place and move it to another.”
She clasped my fingers with one hand and cupped my cheek with the other. “None of this is simple.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her glassy eyes never moved off mine. “How can heartache be a payment?”
“Emotions and pain are often the price of many contracts. There is power in things that cannot be touched because belief in what cannot be proven is stronger than anything that can be.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Her lips touched mine, as a final plea, but magic pulsed through the connection, and with the images of my nightmare playing in my mind, I found no strength to back down. I clutched her hand tighter and guided her forward, toward a glimmering spinning wheel. Like with her mother, I sat there, ready to thread the first piece of my soul.
The wheel spun.
My head grew heavy.
Pictures of beautiful places coated with more magic than this world had seen in centuries lured me away. The touch of her lips was the last thing I felt, aside from the ice on her cheeks brushing the frost on mine.
Chapter 9
Queen Mab
Some stories didn’t have happy endings. In fact, it was rare that any did, truly. For a prince and princess to live “happily ever after”, the witch must fall. For there to be joy, there must be pain. Freedom was not free. Nothing was free. With all things, there was a price to pay, and someone always had to pay it.
Often unwillingly.
I didn’t know what would happen when my soul found itself threaded into the fabric of a new world. I wondered if perhaps I would dream, be allowed to watch over Mabilia and Mythalzen through the spirit of nature. Such was not the case.
It was all white, eternally. And it was just as cold as I’d always known. Sometimes the white shifted, like snow falling, but in the end it blanketed me in a single sheet of solid ice. Loneliness crept into every crevice, chilling my unbeating heart.
I hoped everything had gone smoothly. I prayed to whatever could listen to my mute wishes that Mythalzen had found a place to grow his family. I ached knowing that by now Mabilia’s humanity had seen her from this realm. Wherever her soul lingered, it was out of my reach.
The days, though I couldn’t tell when each began and ended, slipped away.
IT WAS NIGHT. Music whispered into my mind though I almost didn’t recognize it. The rise and fall of woodwinds melded into a harmony that reminded me so fondly of something lost and ancient.
A puff of cloud formed before my eyes, and I blinked. Bare branches, dark as
char, stretched above me, cutting a hundred designs in a navy sky spattered with glimmering dust. For the first time in ages, I breathed, feeling my lungs stretch with air.
It was night. It was cold. Music sang to me sweetly from some distant place.
I lay there for a long while, listening and remembering the sensation of limbs, staring at the sky in awe. It was beautiful. Power pulsed, running like blue fire in my veins, and the ice that had held me for years vanished.
Where was I? Swallowing, I felt the ground to gather my bearings. Snow, lighter than should have been possible, pillowed my bed upon the ground. When I brushed it away, icy blades of grass peeked through the drifts. They gleamed in the light of the full moon.
My heart pounded, a thunder of anxiety flushing over me. If I was alive, did the spell work? This place smelled different than the earth I’d known. Magic floated in the air, brushing my skin in greeting.
If I was alive, had Mabilia sacrificed herself?
Throat raw, I sat up and peered at the woods. No, she couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have remained conscious long enough to finish the spell, and here I was, in a world so woven with magic every part of it vibrated with life.
I scrambled to my feet and stopped short. Lifting my hands, I stared at the scars patched over my skin. Steady, they no longer shook. “How…?”
It had been an eternity since I last had full control of my hands. Could I dream? Had it taken me this long, staring at a blank slate, to dream?
The music called my attention through the trees, and golden eyes flickered into my mind. My feet moved before I told them to. Soon I was running toward the sounds. They grew louder, and voices infiltrated them. Laughter spun, tripping and bubbling like a brook. My heart pounded as I broke from the woods to stop in the courtyard of a castle carved from ice.
Mabilia’s sketch fluttered into my mind, and I held my breath, staring at the monument. Larger than life, the dark glass stabbed the sky, touching the stars. It reflected those gleaming lights and glittered like the night had cloaked it in galaxies.
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 33