“No!” I screamed, hugging my stomach tight. “You will never have her. You hear me? You’re a monster, a demon, a devil. Stay away from us!”
The broken mask he’d just been wearing was suddenly replaced by fury. Jumping to his feet, he looked down at me with all the haughty disdain of a King.
“You gave me an oath, Betty Caron, and you will keep it. I will return when the child is born.” Then he vanished.
I whirled on Danika. “He can’t have her. I won’t let him. He can’t have my Shayera!”
It didn’t dawn on me what I’d said until I’d said it, but the moment I did, I knew it was true. I remembered my baby. And I would die to keep her safe.
“Tell me I can do something, Danika, tell me I can do—”
The closing of her long lashes told me all I needed to know, and a terrible sound of agony and anguish dropped from my mouth. I hugged my stomach tight.
“He can’t have her.” My voice cracked.
“Rumpel isn’t the monster you believe him to be, Betty. But a contract made is a contract kept with him.”
“He tricked me.”
Her look was full of heartache and sadness. “I know, love. I know. I need you to hear me now, Betty, and listen not with your mind but your heart. You must trust even when it seems impossible to do so.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked around a shuddering sob.
“You must figure out a way to forgive Rumpel—”
“I will never forgive him!” I snarled, banding my arms tightly around myself, caging my fragile beautiful miracle inside of me. If I had to do this alone, I would. But I would keep her safe. Always.
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t need to. I won’t give my child to that monster.”
Danika’s lips turned down into a sad frown, and I wanted to hate her, too, because how dare she ask me to accept that ridiculous deal? How dare she?
“Realize that it was Rumpel who brought Gerard back to you. It was Rumpel that’s fought from the very beginning for you both.”
“Yeah, and how’d that turn out for me?”
She winced, and I hated that I’d turned my rage on her this way. I didn’t remember Danika completely, but I recalled enough. This female, this fairy, had once meant the world to me, and I to her. Deep down, I knew I could trust her. But I was a wounded animal tonight, and there was nothing left in me to give.
“I will send you home now, Betty. Kelly and Briley are already there waiting for you. I just want you think about one thing.”
“What?” I pursed my lips, wanting to go home because I needed to break down. I needed to let go. I need to sob until I heaved and could finally, finally release this pain. But I couldn’t do it around anyone. I had to be alone. I was scared and confused and hurting too much to let anyone see me break down that way.
“The night is always darkest just before the light.”
Turning my face to the side, I choked on the heated ball of tears sliding up my throat. And finally, finally she let me go.
With a whispered word of love, Danika flicked her wand, and I sailed through another tunnel of stars. I didn’t care where I went, so long as my family was there and sexy Frenchmen were not.
And in that darkness, I finally let myself go.
Chapter 16
Gerard
I sat alone in the tavern in the darkest corner of the room. It was well past the witching hour. Anyone sane was abed, maybe curled around a warm, welcoming body.
I fisted the tankard I held until my knuckles blanched. Why had I run away from her? Why had I left her like that?
Now that the fire was spent, all I felt was shame and humiliation.
I wanted to go back to Betty, but I didn’t even know where to start. What had happened with us tonight had meant everything, and was also deeply terrifying because I finally understood the truth—that I’d known nothing at all. I’d thought I’d known what love was, but that had been a perverted ideal and nothing at all like reality.
As I lost myself in drink, I let the memories blaze through me, not fighting them. I was slowly sinking further and further into despair as the magnitude of what I’d walked away from began to truly impress itself upon me.
Betty wasn’t just my great love, my world, or my bride.
She was my soul mate, a bond that was sacrosanct here in Kingdom. It was why I’d been able to find her on Earth when Rumpel couldn’t. Why I’d been able to feel her emotions as sharply as a blade to my heart. Her emotions were mine, and mine were hers, and right now, what I felt was a giant, gaping wound that I’d created when I left her.
The things I’d said I couldn’t take back ever. I can’t even remember everything I’d said, but I knew I’d hurt her deeply.
I had to go back.
And I would, once I found my nerve. I couldn’t leave her to think I didn’t care. I couldn’t do that to her. Whether she took me back now or not, I needed her to know I was sorry and how much I loved her still.
The love I had for her went beyond anything I’d ever felt or known before in my life. It was also why losing her had created this giant, gaping hole in my heart that I’d tried to fill with first Brigitte and then Belle. But they’d been pale imitations of the real thing. The irony that both their names began with a B wasn’t lost to me. It was almost like my subconscious had known the riddle of Betty had existed long before I did. But neither of them had been her. Which was why it could never have worked for us. Only Betty would do. Only ever her.
After a while, I began to sense that I was no longer alone at the table. When I glanced up, my companion wasn’t who I expected to see at all.
Rumpelstiltskin was back and staring at me, not with hate or malevolence, but something that looked an awful lot like regret and sorrow.
“The fae has taken her away.”
I frowned, but my heart immediately kicked into a gallop. “What? What are you talking about?”
He visibly swallowed before saying, “Your female. She is gone.”
I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing until I was already vaulting over the table and hefting Rumpel up by his shirt, giving him a wild shake.
“What do you mean she’s gone!”
I saw many heads turn my way, saw the flickering of candlelight play across their astonished faces, heard the music man stop his playing, but I didn’t care what they thought when they saw me.
The only thing I cared about was the gnawing fear that was threatening to overwhelm my last bits of sanity.
The sorcerer could have fought me. I knew his strength and his power. But I saw something in his gaze that said not only would he not fight me, but that he wanted me to hurt him, to wound him.
“Use that bloody connection of yours and find her again, Gerard. She is your bride. Don’t screw this up, or believe me, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
Why was he doing this? Why was he trying to help me? What did he want now?
Betty and I still owed him a boon. Suddenly, my blood ran cold because I knew, somehow, this had to be about that boon.
“What did you do?”
He scoffed. “I didn’t do anything, mongrel. That honor is all yours. She is with child. Your child...”
As he spoke, my blood turned to ice in my veins, and I saw the image of a feisty little girl, full of laughter and sunshine and sorrow.
Pain blazed through me, but it wasn’t mine. It was a memory of the child’s pain. She once experienced it so profoundly that I remember wanting to kill the thing that had dared to wound her.
“It was you,” I hissed, looking at him. “You hurt her. You destroyed her. You won’t have her again!”
Rumpelstiltskin looked astonished, shocked, and confused by my words. Maybe he thought I was speaking of Betty, but I wasn’t. I was speaking of my daughter and the unspeakable horror she’d lived through when she was still barely a child.
“You think I would hurt my—”
I didn’t
let him finish his words. I shoved him back against the wall so hard I knew it had to have knocked the breath out of him. He was shaking his head, looking at me wide-eyed and mumbling no over and over again.
“You will never have her. Never!”
Then I turned on my heel and ran. I ran with my heart pounding in my throat. I ran through the streets, ignoring anyone that called out to me. Instead, I listened to my heart, to the one driving rhythm that overwhelmed all other voices inside of me.
Here, it said. She is here...
I ran for miles, stopping only when I reached the next hamlet. Suddenly, I found myself nearing the end of a long, darkened street. A cottage stood there, surrounded by a white fence and a hedge of wild, overgrown rose bushes. A single light shone from the house, and a figure passed between it and the window.
My heart stopped. I’d found her.
“Betty,” I cried, with a soul completely shattered and bleeding out. I didn’t think I’d said her name above a whisper, but suddenly, she turned and stopped. Even through the glass, I felt her eyes on me, burning a hot hole through me.
A second later, she was gone, and my knees felt so weak I fell on the wet pavement, staring down at my hands, knowing I’d just lost the only thing in this world that could ever matter to me.
I’d lost her, lost my daughter, lost my family.
But then I heard the door open on rusted hinges, and Betty was running out, crying my name. I just barely had time to get to my feet before her tiny body barreled into me, she wrapped her arms tight around my neck, and she peppered my whiskered cheeks with kisses. Then she was slapping my arms and chest, grunting out how much she hated me for leaving her alone like that.
“I know, mon amour, I know. I deserve it all. I am a cad. A rake. A terrible—”
“You are the worst,” she sobbed, gripping my face between her tiny hands.
I shook all over. I was home. This was home. My Betty was my home. It always had been, and it always would be.
“I love you so much. Don’t you ever do that to me again, you terrible, odious, sexy, wonderful, God-I-hate-you-so-much man!”
I laughed, and together we kissed and whispered our undying devotion and affection to one another as I slowly and effortlessly made my way up the steps to the house, went through the door, and kicked it shut behind us.
I didn’t ask where her room was because I already knew. It had once been ours, where we’d built thousands of memories, and where we would again build thousands more.
I didn’t know if I would ever remember everything. Curses were terrible things. But I would remember what mattered most—my love for her, my devotion to her, and hers to me.
I laid her down on our giant bed, suffering flashes of past and present, remembering the countless other times I’d done just the same, and the many times she’d looked up at me with love and trust and adoration in her eyes.
I caged her small body between my arms and legs and stared at her soft pink lips. “Are they back, too?”
She knew without even needing to ask who I meant. “Kelly and Briley? Yes. They’re back. Danika brought them here. That cry we heard in our kitchen before we were zipped back here—that was her, transporting them. They’re fine. They’re safe.”
I nodded, and though I knew I should care more than I did, I didn’t at all. Kelly and Briley were second to my concern for her at the moment. I knew they mattered to Betty, and for that reason alone I worried, but for now, that was it.
Maybe once the pain of our separation wasn’t so fresh, and the terrible memories of what I’d done to her tonight no longer haunted me, I’d finally consent to leave this room. But for now, the only things that mattered to me were her and our child.
I framed her flat stomach with my large hand.
She looked into my eyes, and neither of us spoke for several long minutes before she finally said, “Her name was—”
“Shayera,” I finished and nodded. “I remember. I remember her, my love.”
Her chin trembled, and she wrapped her slight hands around my biceps.
“Gerard, how is it possible that we could have ever forgotten us? Our daughter? I still can’t remember everything.”
That I could have ever believed myself content with Belle made me sorrowful. What a farce. What a joke to think that woman could have ever meant a tenth of what this woman in my arms did to me.
I shook my head. “I swore to you forever but forgot you the moment that curse ripped through. Forgive me, my love. Tell me we can make us right again. Tell me you still—”
“Gerard Caron, I will love you until my heart stops beating and I return back to the dust from which I was made. No matter what comes our way again, we will do it together. We will fight just like we did this time. And we will make new memories to replace the pain of the old ones. We have our daughter back. We have our life again. And even if we never remember it all, as long as I have you, I can conquer anything.”
I kissed her, and our kiss was wet with the mingling of our tears. I tasted her salt, and she sighed as she tasted my own.
“I will never allow myself to forget you again. You are my world, Betty Hart. You always have been, from the moment I saw you in that library.”
She gasped. “You remember that?”
I nodded. “Each second I’m with you, I remember more and more. But the one thing I never did forget was the way I felt about you. When I saw you on the pier, my soul trembled and rejoiced. I love you with all that I am, my bride. All that I am. And I am grateful about one thing in this new life.”
She frowned, and I couldn’t keep from touching her lovely face. Every second of every day, I would remind her of how much I adored her, how much I loved her, how much I cared.
The curse had stolen so much from us, but we’d fought through it, and we had each other back. But more than that, we had a fresh start.
“What?” she whispered.
“I remember the terrible man I was in that life, Betty. The one sentenced to death for my crimes. The strings of broken hearts I left in my wake. But those are just ghostly, half-formed memories of another man and another time. In this world, in this life, I did not become jaded. I was close, Betty. So, so close. But you found me, just like you did back then, and this time, you saved me from my demons. You made me whole before I broke completely. If I didn’t love you then, I absolutely do now. You are my life, my world, the very breath of my lungs, and each beat of my heart. You and our bébé.” I framed her belly, imagining I could already feel the kick of my daughter moving within.
Holding Betty’s hand in mine, I rubbed her knuckles and whispered, “Will you be mine again? Forever. For always. Until death do us part?”
Tears shimmered in her eyes as she whispered into the darkness that embraced us like a hug. “I am yours. Forever. For always. And not even death or curses can part us.”
~*~
Betty and I made love through the night and days to follow, slowly relearning each other again.
With each day that passed, we remembered more and more, until one day, it was like we’d never lost each other at all. I had my family back, and I would fight to the death before I ever allowed them to be taken from me again.
In Kingdom, happily ever afters weren’t just fairy tales. They were truth, and Betty was the only truth that mattered. She was my love, my world, my everything.
Epilogue
Betty
Gerard slept. Little Shay had had a rough go of it for a while, and he’d been dear enough to allow me to sleep while he’d played super dad. I couldn’t love that man more if I tried. I stared at my daughter’s sweet, cherubic face, asleep in her crib.
For months, Danika had come to visit with me, filling in the blank spots still left in my memories. There was one memory that nearly made me vomit when she’d first shared it—that of Shayera and Rumpelstiltskin. The monster still hadn’t come to see her, though he’d threatened to months ago. It was a constant concern for Gerard, what Rumpel planned
for our daughter.
I’d tried many times to talk with him about it, but Gerard was stubborn as a mule and obstinate when it came to the sorcerer. His name was verboten in our home. He was not to be spoken of, talked of, or in any other way acknowledged.
I believed deep down that Gerard forbade talk of Rumplestiltskin because he knew as well as I did that our daughter’s life and his were irrevocably tied together. And just like there had been no stopping Gerard and I from reigniting the flame, there would be no halting what was fated for our daughter.
Danika spoke of a time when we lived in harmony with Rumpelstiltskin, not just as friends, but as parents with a son. The very thought of it scared me—our precious little girl going off with a man who’d been willing to kill Gerard to get us back together so we could create Shayera again. Of course he would have had to have brought him back to life in order for Shayera to happen, but I’d seen his eyes that day. I knew Rumpelstiltskin had meant to do it. Would have done it if I hadn’t intervened.
I swallowed hard because a part of me still wanted to hate him for what he’d done. But another part, a selfish part, understood his pain. I didn’t know if I could have crossed the lines he had to get Gerard back. I’d been willing to leave him, to let him go, but I could see now that would have been the coward’s way out.
So maybe the sorcerer had been right to use the tactics he had. I doubted there would ever be a day I could learn to love him, but maybe, just maybe, I could learn to tolerate him for the sake of our daughter.
I brushed my fingers through her soft, wispy curls, and my heart melted in my chest.
“Dear, sweet baby, I will love you till the day I die, with all of my soul and heart. And I will always support you, no matter who you choose. But please, please choose wisely. Choose well. Choose only for love and love alone.”
Her tiny rosebud mouth suckled at my finger, which had gotten too close to her lips. Looking at her, I didn’t know how I could do it, how I’d ever be able to hand her over to that man, that monster.
Were they really possible, the stories Danika told me? Could they be true? That a man as vile as Rumpelstiltskin could truly have a heart capable of such fierce love and devotion?
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