The Jaded King

by Jovee Winters

  I guess it made sense. I wasn’t the same either. I was discovering the lengths I was willing to go to in order to bring my bride back, and I wasn’t proud of myself. What I did today, whatever I finally decided to do, I was going to have to live with my actions.

  In this new world, it was obvious to me that they’d chosen differently than they had in the other. I had serious doubts that, if I left things to run their course however they would, Shayera would be the end product.

  They could barely look at one another. I tasted Gerard’s truths, and though he’d locked eyes with the woman whose soul was half his, he hadn’t magically awoken. He hadn’t snapped out of the stupor.

  I wasn’t strong enough anymore to show them their past lives again, the love they’d once shared, the child that had been born as a result of that love. Gerard’s bitterness that had driven him to be wild and reckless in the last life was only just starting to grow.

  How could they possibly fall in love now? How could they possibly understand or remember what they meant to each other when, in this life, the only thing they wanted was to get as far away from one another as possible?

  I knew of Betty’s great love for her nephew, how she’d sacrificed so much of herself and her life for that boy. Should I have brought Briley through, too?

  If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have, but I’d been desperate, my mind consumed solely with thoughts of getting them together, as if by force of will alone, I could make them remember, make them fall in love again.

  Pacing back and forth as I raked my fingers through my hair, I told myself this wasn’t the way. I couldn’t do this. Shayera would never understand. She would hate me forever. I knew, however, that had our situations been reversed, she’d have gone to hell to get me back. She might hate me forever, but she would have to understand eventually. She had to.

  Because the option of living in a world without her in it was inconceivable.

  I took a deep breath. I knew what I was going to do. The path I was already taking, I’d chosen before I’d even gone to visit The Spider. I’d gone to her hoping she would see something I hadn’t, hoping like hell that somehow, she would have the magic cure to make it all right again, to soothe the savage beast that’d been awoken when the light had been taken out of my world.

  And not just the loss of my greatest love, but also the product of our love. Our children, who I’d tucked into bed each night. Who I’d run down the great halls with, pretending to be a dragon come to snatch them away, or a great and mighty knight come to save them from the monster hiding in their closets. I did this for the hugs and kisses I’d never again feel. I did this for Euralis who no longer remembered what it meant to have a mother like her. I did this for my people, my friends, who’d lost something so great that none of them could even begin to fathom the depth of that loss.

  The pain of Shayera’s wrath would be great. The sacrifice might wind up being too much for me to bear in the end, but I couldn’t live in a world that didn’t have her in it.

  Even if she hated me for it.

  Try, my love. You must try. For me...

  “Carrots.” My voice cracked as I spoke to the ghost of my forgotten bride, chest heaving as I clung to the very last bits of my sanity.

  When I looked into the stars, it was not a miasma of swirling, heated gases staring back at me, but the image of her smiling, looking at me with all the love and kindness in her pure soul.

  They are my parents...

  Shayera was as real as the kindness she thought she’d found in me. “My love,” I whispered to the stillness of the heavens, “I am not well without you. I am sick, Shayera, and grow daily sicker. I cannot do this. Do not ask me to live in this world without you in it.”

  A constellation of stars grinned back at me. Is it really so bad, my darling? No more nagging wife. No more... harridan, I think you called me.

  Even through my pain, she could always make me laugh. Despite it all, despite the madness splitting me in two, demanding I do wrong to make it right again, I wanted to please her. I always wanted to please her.

  I lifted a hand, reaching out for her. Her own starry one reached for me. But we could never touch, not like this, because this wasn’t real. She wasn’t real.

  Shayera was a memory trapped like a specter, haunting my soul. No one knew this war I waged. No one understood the depths I was willing plumb.

  I brushed my fingers against air, imagining for just a moment that I felt the spark of life, the warmth of her, flow through me. I hung on to that flame for all I was worth.

  “I will find you again, Carrots. My vow to you. My vow always to you...”

  I blinked, and she was gone. A roar burst from my throat, reverberating like thunder through the clouds.

  Gerard and Betty looked at me. I grinned, knowing there was nothing beautiful or kind about it. I was a wolf on the prowl, and they were my prey, come hell or high water.

  “Remember!” I boomed, causing them both to stumble, to hold out their arms to try and keep their balance. “Remember, damn you! Remember for her sake. Remember!”

  I tried like bloody hell to shove those memories through their brains, to wake them up, to unlock the curse gripping their souls. I tried with all my eternally-damned heart to will it so.

  But my magic was weaker now, and whatever they learned, it wasn’t enough. I could see it in the fear clinging to their faces, see it in the way they both eyed each other with wariness.

  I’d tried one last time for her.

  Now it was my way.

  Moving like a thought, I rushed them, heading toward Betty, arm extended, lip curled back, looking savage and feral. Gerard did exactly as I knew he would because, whether they knew it or not, he was her protector, her lover, her soul mate. He would always protect her, whether she asked for it or not.

  But it was not Betty I’d been aiming for. It was him. With a cry of evil glee, I gripped him by the throat, lifting him off the ground and letting the red of my true eyes bleed through the cool blue.

  Betty screamed, covering her mouth with her hands, seemingly frozen, and I wanted to shake her, to make that lioness inside of her awaken. She was a fighter with a warrior’s soul.

  Damn her to hell.

  “Wake up!” I snapped.

  Those words broke something in her, and the terror turned to a frosty rage that fed my own, making me laugh, the sound high-pitched and manic.

  “There you are. Bloody hell, it’s nice to see you again, Betty Caron.”

  “Screw you and the horse you rode in on!” She screamed then began batting at my arms, trying in vain to pry my fingers off Gerard’s corded neck.

  Terrible, gasping, choking sounds spilled off his darkening tongue. His eyes were bulging.

  My heart bled. “Do you wish him to live?” I asked.

  She shook her head—not in negation, but in disbelief—staring at me with something akin to horror, like she could not fathom the evil she was seeing.

  “You can save him!” I cried, shaking him roughly and causing his noises to come out even more pained and gasping.

  “What? How? Tell me how. I’ll... I’ll—”

  “A boon. Mine to demand when the time is right. Say yes.”

  She shook her head, again in disbelief. Gerard went limp.

  Please gods above don’t make me do this... don’t make me do this! My brain screamed, but no words came out. This was all I had. This was all there was. She had to say yes, she had to say—

  “Yes! Yes!” She sobbed, yanking on my arm. “Let him go. Oh my God, you’re crazy!”

  I dropped him. Gerard fell at my feet with a dull thud, unmoving, and for just a second, for one powerful, gripping moment, I feared the worst.

  Betty was on her knees, grabbing up Gerard’s head and placing it in her lap, gently rubbing his temples and crooning at him, begging him to live, telling him she was sorry, babbling words I didn’t think even she was aware of.

  Words like forever and I know
you. I know you. I know you.

  He gasped, and my knees turned to putty. Clamping a hand over my rapidly beating heart, I began to back up, mind blissfully blank, empty of the guilt and recriminations I knew would haunt me all the days of my life.

  I’d broken Shayera’s faith in me this night, but at least she would live again.

  After several tense minutes where Betty continued to pet Gerard’s forehead in a manner quite familiar, though I doubted she recognized that fact, and after asking him for the hundredth time whether he were truly okay, she finally turned to look at me.

  “You’re insane. You’re a madman. Send us home. Now.”

  I’d wanted her fire back, wanted her hatred, because it had fed my resolve, fed my nerves. But now... now it was just another pain slicing me open.

  I would never again know the comfort of a family, the easy smiles, the gentle acceptance, the long nights of speaking with Betty over tepid cups of cooling tea, feeling as though I hadn’t just gained a bride, but a mother, too.

  I swallowed the growing lump in my throat.

  “You are home, Betty.” I spread my arms, and I wasn’t lying. They were back in Lebanon, Missouri, the place of her birth. A woman of Earth had fallen in love with a Casanova from Kingdom. I knew their story by heart.

  The tale would be reborn again.

  But there were no fairies to make Gerard stay. No, there was only me this time. And this place wasn’t quite what she was expecting.

  Licking my front teeth, I slid my hands into my pockets and, with a nod, turned on my heel and took two steps. Feeling her look driving through me like a lance, I glanced back one final time. “Reality is often nothing more than a well-formed illusion. I will see you soon.”

  “Like hell you will!” She glared frosty daggers at me, but I didn’t have the heart to watch her venom grow.

  Not anymore.

  Chapter 7

  Betty

  When we’d been snatched up earlier, it’d been midday, and I’d already been an hour late to work. It was now evening, and the sky was turning a dark shade of tangerine along the horizon line. Fat, fluffy white clouds floated idly past.

  Was it really possible that, until just a few minutes ago, I’d been floating in space?

  It wasn’t often I thought about my parents. We’d lost them in a car accident when I was young. Kelly and I had only each other anymore, and now Briley. Usually, I could cut off thoughts of them, could turn my mind away from memories of my mother’s beautiful voice as she’d sing me and my brother to bed at night, or the way my dad would totally geek out when explaining to us the varied nuances and differences between classic Star Trek and the Next Generation and how—while Picard was good, great even—Shatner and Nimoy would forever reign as kings.

  It’d been Daddy that’d birthed in me a passion for all things nerdy and had me looking to the stars, secretly hoping and praying that “starmen” really did exist, that there was more to this effed up life than just death, disease, poverty, and pain. And all I could think was how much he would have loved knowing he’d been right, there had been more “out there.” Starmen were real and one was currently taking up residence on my lap.

  I wished for just a moment I could have told Daddy he was right. He’d been so right. My heart hurt thinking about him, but I could smile too, because somehow I know he knew.

  A masculine groan made my skin tingle, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I looked down into the face of Le Pew. I seriously needed to call him something else. It felt wrong, now, to mock him, even in the safety of my own head, after what he’d just been through.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I asked him again, shaken by his near-death far deeper than I’d thought possible after first meeting the irritating oaf.

  His eyes were closed, his face a tight grimace as he gently rubbed his fingertips over the blooming scarlet bruise beginning to form on his throat.

  Cooter had seriously—like, he wasn’t playing games—tried to kill him. So I guess all things considered, calling him Cooter wasn’t going to work. The man had morphed into Norman Bates right in front of my eyes.

  What I’d once thought of as passably handsome, I could now only see as monstrous. The dude totally creeped me out. I shivered, thinking about his threat to return. God, I hoped he never did.

  Le Pew coughed, wincing as he did, and I brushed my fingers lightly across his temple. I should really get going. Kelly was probably starting to worry about me. Tonight was sloppy joe night. I was supposed to be buying the foodstuff, like, literally right now.

  I was a terrible cook, but I could make a passable sloppy joe. Briley never complained, anyway.

  I wanted to move Le Pew off my lap, wanted to tell him I had to go. Norman Bates had dropped us off in the middle of a cornfield. I recognized it as being part of Old Man Boehner’s farm, just outside of town.

  That put me about twenty miles away from the nearest grocery store, and another ten from Kelly’s old farmhouse he’d renovated for Briley and him last year. I didn’t have a phone to call them and let them know I was okay.

  But when I opened my mouth to tell him it was time for us to part ways, the words got stuck in my throat. I’d never met someone who irritated me on every conceivable level, yet who I kind of, sort of halfway liked, too.

  Don’t ask me why. We didn’t know each other from Adam. Maybe it had to do with him almost dying and saving my life earlier. It no doubt helped, but for all I knew, he could turn out to be the same sort of psycho Norman had become.

  His eyes finally opened. The irises were such a deep and vivid blue that I swear I started to tingle everywhere. They were a shade of freshly-dyed blue-jean cotton. Gorgeous wasn’t even a strong enough word for it.

  Couple that with his dark hair and the swoon-worthy accent, and the man was some serious eye candy. The best part was he looked nothing like my ex. “Asshole James,” as I now thought of him, was sleeved up, had piercings everywhere—including his nethers—dressed mostly in black, and listened to early-seventies classic rock. He drove a Firebird and blew almost every dime of his paycheck souping up his muscle car. An automotive mechanic and exotic, sexy older man—that was what he’d been to me.

  Or at least, to the impressionable high-school sophomore I’d once been. There was an eleven-year age gap between us, which had only added to his appeal at my tender age of fifteen.

  Of course, I wasn’t fifteen anymore. I was twenty-five going on eighty. I’d graduated from college with a completely useless liberal arts major and psychology minor. I’d lived abroad in France for a year. And I’d begun to question what in the hell I was doing with my life.

  Staring down into rich blue-jean-colored eyes, I felt something reckless and wild rising inside of me. For so long, I’d felt adrift, looking for something I couldn’t name, growing more and more apathetic about life, knowing there had to be more, so much more, but never able to pinpoint what it was. I might look a wild child, a free spirit used to going whichever way the wind blew me, but I wasn’t. I dressed up the outside because it was my only way of working out the unhappiness on the inside.

  I sighed. Inside, I was a riot of nerves. He was a stranger, but I’d just saved his life. He’d saved mine. We were bound, tethered by unusual circumstances. There was more, though. Something was growing inside of me, spreading deeper and wider. That adventure I’d been looking for—was it him? Was he what I’d been waiting for?

  Heart racing and tongue feeling swollen, I opened my mouth, not even sure what I was going to say until the words came out. “You got a place to stay, Le Pew? Cause if you don’t, you can crash with me tonight.”

  He frowned. “What did you just call me?”

  I grinned, shook my head, and finally scooted out from under him, causing him to roll to the side so as not to bang his head on the ground from the sudden absence of my lap. But I needed space, some distance. Touching him felt like grabbing hold of lightning. I burned and tingled, and I was so darn confused by these strange,
electrifying emotions that I hoped he’d say no just as much as I desperately needed him to say yes.

  I kept telling myself to stop staring at him like I was trying to divine the mysteries of the universe, but I couldn’t seem to rip my eyes off him. I was drawn like a moth to his flame, feeling an unusual tug that made no kind of freaking sense. But the thought of this man walking away now, forever remaining a mystery to me... no, I didn’t like it.

  I was compelled to learn more.

  Nibbling on the tip of my thumbnail, I waited for him to say something. I wasn’t normally a shy person. I had no problem coming right out and saying what I thought or what I wanted. It was why I’d pursued James the way I had.

  I’d never given him a choice. So yeah, maybe the problems that cropped up from that doomed relationship were all on me. I’d own that. Of course, I’d been fifteen. I’d have died before admitting it then, but I’d been a kid with boobs. He’d been twenty-six. He should never have agreed to get with me. Yet I’d been broken by life and he’d been a lonely guy getting his ego stroked. In a weird way, we’d been travelling the exact same path, and for a time, we’d been what the other had needed.

  Today hadn’t been about me mourning the loss of James. If I was being honest with myself, things between us should have ended years ago. I’d known it back then, even as I’d fought like hell to make it work.

  I eyed the sexy giant in front of me, so different than anyone or anything I’d ever been around, and couldn’t help but wonder if I was doing more of the same, if this was nothing more than me being incapable of being alone again and forcing another square peg through a round hole.

  Sweeping fingers through his hair, he glanced over my shoulder and gazed unflinchingly toward the horizon line. His look was distant, like he really wanted to get away from here or me.

  I got it. My heart sank, and I balled my hands into fists. But I got it.