I lay the loosely bound pages across my lap and read the impeccably neat scroll beneath the drawing of the beast. Veda crossed her arms, popping her hip to the side as she watched my finger traced over the indentations on the page as I read. Each word collected in my brain as I struggled to make sense of them. Bright and sharp puzzle pieces but with no full picture to follow.
"It says he kidnapped my mother. Held her prisoner. But that can't be true? They love each other. I've seen it, this is a mistake."
She shrugged. "Maybe you're right, but it seems like there are a lot of things your parents have kept from you. Do you think it's possible that it really happened this way? Maybe they love each other now, but do you really know how they met?”
I slammed the journal shut, dust moats erupting from the pages.
"I don't believe it. This is a book of lies."
"Fine. But what about the rest of the story? The part about the baby boy with golden rings in his eyes left on the doorstep of the castle?"
I jumped up and Veda retreated a step giving me more space for my anger to grow. "Enough. Why are you telling this to me?”
“Don't you think someone should? You've lived your whole life in the dark, Fallon. If these people truly loved you, why wouldn't they just tell you the truth?"
She pulled the book from my hands and flipped quickly through the pages, the spine opening on her perfect page like she'd read this a thousand times before. Maybe she had. Maybe my life was the story her father told her before bed, instead of the tales of dragons and far away lands like everyone else. But from the deep scowl carved across her face, I'd clearly been painted as the villain in this story.
"Right here." She stabbed her finger into the middle of the page. "And in the twilight on the fortnight, after the curse had been broken, the babe arrived wrapped in a golden cloak, his eyes the color of the sun. And the king and queen claimed the boy as their own and raised a bastard prince to one day claim the throne he did not deserve."
The world began to spin. The dim lantern light swirled into the night and back again, as my stomach contracted and this morning's breakfast teased a return.
I grabbed the arm of the ratty couch trying to make the world stay still for even just a second. This couldn't be true. Could it? There was no way. My parents loved me. They never said anything or even hinted that I wasn't theirs. I even looked like my parents. My wavy chestnut hair was just like my mother's, and the angle of my jaw and build were unmistakably my dad. I even had my mother's lone dimple on my left cheek. If I were someone else's child how could I ever look like them? Like they could change me to match the family portraits that hung in the grand ballroom.
"So you really didn't know?" Veda placed her palm on my shoulder and I blinked but cringed, the warmth of her hand bleeding through my shirt.
"No. But I don't how any of it could be true. My father is a good man. A noble king. He would never…would never hurt my mother. I can't be adopted. There's no way they would have kept something like that from me. This is probably just somebody’s idea of causing trouble. Sell this story to the newspaper and discredit my family's order. It can't be true.”
She pulled her hand away and wound the leather cord back around the fictional pages, then rested the journal on the small kitchen table.
“You could ask him if you wanted to."
I shook my head, the carousel of crazy still spinning in my brain, then narrowed my stare and looked at her, the words not sinking in.
"My father, I mean. If you wanted to know why he wrote those things. How he knows them. I can take you there."
“Of course. Let’s go." I stomped out of the cottage toward the edge of the mountain searching the sky for her magnificent bird. I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled, but Alizeh didn’t come.
"Fallon. I didn’t mean right now. My father is traveling from the Emerald City and it’s barely even daylight. You're going to have to wait." I turned around. Veda gripped her bare arms, contracting her body close, smaller than I’d ever seen her. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you already knew.”
I dropped to the ground and held my head in my hands. My father was a monster. Not just a beast, but a kidnapper. And my parents, my real parents, they didn’t even want me. Let me on a doorstep to be raised by strangers. This couldn’t be true. If this were true… “You should hate me. Me and my family, and everything we stand for.”
“Why would I hate you?” She sat next to me in the dirt, her knees pulled to her chest. “You haven’t done anything wrong, and you still have the chance to make it right. Be better.”
She placed her hand on my leg, but this time her touch didn’t soothe the demons in my mind. “But what if I can’t?”
6
25th May
"Are you coming, Fallon?" Veda called from the front yard.
I peered out the kitchen window. Alizeh had arrived, strutting around the mountaintop her bronze wings shimmering in the morning sun. Veda faced the edge of the cliff, her hands on her hips as she leaned back and let the sun warm her face. Strands of her hair blew in the morning breeze and I caught myself wishing to tangle my fingers in it, but shook my head to erase the thought.
"Just a minute." I wound the leather coil back around the journal and slid it into its place on the shelf. It's not like I even needed to read the pages anymore, I'd scoured over them so many times in the last twenty-four hours that all the words were committed to memory. Every horrible thing my father had done. Every detail of how I didn't belong.
I raced out of the cottage, closed the door behind me and took one last look. The quaintness of Veda’s cottage had started to grow on me, the quiet allowing thoughts to blossom like flowers of truth in the thorny garden of my mind.
"If you're having second thoughts, I can just take you back to the castle."
"No. I need this." I joined Veda and Alizeh near the edge of the cliff and stroked Alizeh’s feathers on her wing. The whole world lay before us as the sunlight glittered off the tops of forests and cities in the distance. "Unless you don't want to go?"
She shuddered and turned away, staring off the mountainside. "I'm just not sure if my father will be angry. He's never said I couldn't share his journals, but again, I've never really asked either. I haven’t even read them all myself."
I took her hand and rubbed my thumb along her bony knuckles and she softened, then gave me a half-hearted crooked smile. We'd reached an understanding—a closeness—built in the midnight hours of poring over books and stories searching for answers. A cause for the darkness and anything to back up the words her father had written so many years ago. We’d talked through a full day and most of a night until we both fell asleep beside each other on the cottage floor. When morning came, I still hadn’t figured out if I was happy to be leaving.
She squeezed my hand. "I'm sure it will be fine. Besides, you deserve to know where you came from. What your future may hold."
She let me go and mounted Alizeh’s back. The bird dipped lower to the ground so I could fumble my way up behind her.
She spread her majestic wings and I risked taking a glance down into the depths of the ravine. Veda didn't move, sitting stick straight in front of me. The urge to wrap my arms around her waist and make her feel better pulled strong, but I forced it down, instead I savored in the sweet scent of her as the early morning breeze swept through her hair and her dark strands danced in the upstream.
The muscles in Alizeh's back moved and I dug my hands into her feathers as she took a running start toward the edge of the cliff. We plummeted over the side before swooping back up through the sky again, the weightless sensation of freedom reigniting in my veins, except this time something didn’t feel right. I closed my eyes, my stomach slowly starting to twist into knots as we flew closer and closer to the truth.
Morning bled into afternoon, the sun rising high on the horizon as Alizeh crested the tops of the highest peaks in the Aborian mountain range. The splashes of green from the small patc
hes of forest disappeared as we soared beyond the clouds, the elevation too great for much vegetation to grow.
“Almost there,” Veda shouted.
She hadn’t said a word in hours, the silence prickling up my spine for the entire journey.
Alizeh leaned right and I shielded my eyes as a blinding glow appeared in front of us. In the distance a temple rose, the sun gleaming off the sloped golden rooftop. I peeked through my fingers and watched as Alizeh circled and landed across the mountain from the building.
I’d heard stories of the temples high in the Aboria sky, but I’d never actually seen one. They said the wisest of wise men lived and worked there, devoting their lives to the study of peace and higher ascendance. Once in a while, some of these wise men arrived in court with messages for my father, always so calm and centered compared to the city-dwellers of Mosa.
As soon as we stopped moving, I launched off Alizeh’s back and stared at the temple as it glistened, my soul feeling calmer already.
I held my hand out to help Veda down. She gave me a nervous smile and accepted then jumped the rest of the way to the ground in front of me.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yeah. Of course.”
She nodded and started off toward the temple. I reached my hand around her waist and tugged her back.
“Before we go though, I wanted to say thank you. You could’ve left me, miserable on the side of the street, but you didn’t.”
“I haven’t done much yet. We’ll see what my father has to say first.” She tapped me playfully in the chest, her hand lingering just below my neck. The warmth of her touch burned against my skin.
I peeled her hand away and held it by our sides linking my fingers between hers. “I’m serious. I owe you a lot.”
“We’ll work out a way for you to pay me back later. Let’s just deal with one problem at a time.”
“Okay, but I always pay my debts.”
She laughed, light and playful and I laughed along with her, letting the feeling take over and ease some of the dark thoughts still running through my brain.
“You’re a prince, remember? I doubt you have many debts.”
“Which means I have no reason not to make good on them.”
Her head leaned slightly to the side and I suddenly saw nothing but her deep, red lips. The way they curled when she laughed and quivered when she breathed. I ran the tip of my finger across the bottom one. The softness tickled against my skin. She gasped and I tried to pull my hand away, but I couldn’t, I just froze wondering how those lips might taste.
She puckered and placed a kiss on the end of my finger, then tugged my hand away. “Not here.”
I shook my head, the spell finally broken, although my hand still burned from her touch.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” She slipped out of my arms and headed towards the temple. “I’m not sorry.”
I followed behind her as the magnificent temple came into better view. Intricate markings etched the outer walls, an ancient language or maybe a magical protection of sorts, while statues of golden eagles perched proud on all four corners of the building. A babbling waterfall ran from beside the grand staircase, surrounding the temple with a small creek of brightly colored fish. Pinks and greens and blues of the most vibrant shades slithered through the cool clear water, and I had to fight the hypnotic call to stare at them all afternoon.
“I wasn’t expecting company. Veda, why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would’ve planned time for you.” A man in a long, sweeping robe appeared at the top of the staircase and started to descend. He seemed much taller than I expected. Broader. But maybe Veda resembled her mother more.
“Sorry, Father, it was a last-minute trip. I know you’re busy, but there is someone I want you to meet.”
He reached the bottom of the staircase, and scanned us over, absorbing every detail and making me feel very exposed.
Veda nudged me forward. “Fallon, please meet my father, Edwin Macario.”
He marched toward us, his crimson red robe dragging just above the ground. For a stranger, he seemed familiar. The bold line of his jaw or the haphazardness of his salt-and-pepper hair maybe? Or maybe the calm serenity of the temple played tricks on the mind?
I folded one arm behind my back and bent forward, extending my open hand. “Hello, sir. I’m--”
“I know who you are, Prince Fallon. Few people in Aboria live their lives without knowing of you and the royal family.” He took my hand and shook it, abrupt and tough, his grip pinching my knuckles together.
“I’ve never been to the temples before. It’s an amazing view, it must be very relaxing.”
“Few people have, especially those of noble blood.” He headed back toward the temple and sat in a large wicker chair his hands crossed in front of him, hidden by the wide sleeves of his robe. “So why would someone like you venture this far to see me? I doubted the castle even thought of me anymore.”
Veda ducked around me and stood by her father’s side, the resemblance between the two immediate. The same thin nose and thickness in their cheeks. “I told him that you might be able to tell him about before he was born. About the curse. About where he came from.”
The man’s face soured. “And why do you think I would know about those things?”
“Because of your journal,” I said. “The one you left at your cottage. I want to know if the things you wrote were true.”
“No,” he said.
I waited for a minute, two, maybe three, the silence doing little to help the confusion.
“No, it’s not true?” I asked.
“No. I don’t want to talk about it. That was many years ago, many long years that I would much rather forget. I’ve devoted my life now to wisdom and quiet contemplation, I don’t need to raise such demons.” He shook his head, fierce as if convincing himself instead of just me. “Besides, the curse has long passed. There is no reason to speak of such things. Unless--” he raised a steady finger across his lips and the tip of his nose, “--it is no longer in the past.”
His stare narrowed, reading my face, waiting for a sign to confirm his suspicions.
I breathed deep. “And if it isn’t?”
The man’s eyes widened again and he shifted in his seat as he put his hands together in front of his face as if in prayer. “Very interesting. Very interesting indeed.”
“So you’ll help him, father?”
“No. Absolutely not.” The fascination disappeared into a glare of stone.
“Please, sir. I need to know what happened so I can try to fix things now.”
He pushed on the arms of the chair, standing before me again. “I owe you nothing, prince. Fix your own problems. Now go.”
He flicked his hand at me twice, then started toward the steps into the temple.
Veda looked at me, and our eyes locked in a silent plea. She frowned and charged after him stopping just before the creek.
“Don’t you always say ‘truth is the path to freedom’, Father? Who are you to deny someone on their search for enlightenment?”
Veda’s father froze, a proud grin breaking across his harsh expression. “My daughter, how am I to become a wise man when you are more clever than I? But what if the truth leads to further suffering? Is it not my duty to protect others?”
She stepped forward. “Only if he chooses to be protected. You’ve warned him. If he still seeks the truth, you must oblige his wishes as you are not the master of his destiny.”
Edwin turned around at the base to the staircase and leaned against the railing. He grabbed his chin and brushed the thick stubble as he pondered his daughter’s request.
“If he accepts the consequences of his request, then I guess I am not doing my duty as a wise man not to provide answers.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and Veda looked away, the simple gratitude blooming pink across her skin.
“It’s simple really. Once upon a time, as the storytellers say, t
here was an evil king. Selfish, ill-tempered, and generally a complete brute. One day he irritated the wrong person and suddenly he was cursed to become a beast--not much of a difference from his normal self, to be honest, just a bit hairier.”
My fingers curled into fists, my arms tensing as he painted a dark picture of my father. Maybe coming to talk to him wasn’t the best idea. Maybe I should’ve just gone home and asked my mother.
“And then one day an old man happened across his castle and he held him hostage. His daughter offered herself in his place, and the evil beast took her as his captive. He crushed that smart and beautiful girl until she foolishly believed she could change him and broke the curse with her love. Makes me sick to even think about it.”
He scoffed and started back toward us. Veda returned to my side, hanging on every word.
“That can’t be true. My father is a good man. He loves my mother more than anything. He’d never do something like that.”
“Oh really? It’s nice to know this nightmare has a happy ending. And then I guess that’s where you come in. The golden boy with the golden eyes who sits on the throne of lies.”
My pulse pounded in my temples, spots of light and dark flashed in my vision. A wise man? Or just a self-important jerk? “And why should I believe you?”
The man stopped and sneered, sensing my anger and from the delighted smile broad across his face, reveling in it.
“Because I was there, you fool,” he laughed. “I used to spend my time at the castle. Attending court. The glamorous, ridiculous balls. A wasted existence kissing the feet of a tyrant who kidnapped a girl and made her his bride. A girl who should’ve never been a queen.”
“If you were so important, why aren’t you there now? How come I’ve never heard of you?”
He splayed a hand across his chest and feigned devastation as his jaw dropped almost comically. I grit my teeth so hard they threatened to shatter. How could this guy and Veda be family? Her mother must be where she received her compassion as Edwin had none.
Fallon: Son of Beauty and the Beast (Kingdom of Fairytales Boxset Book 6) Page 7