I blinked as I watched her slowly lift her arm toward me. Her gaze was steady, her breathing even.
“Don’t touch me.” I finally found my words, and they echoed with a vast emptiness of longing and incredible pain. Our twin flame burned brightly in my palm, casting a soft golden glow upon her features, adding shadows to the hollows of her face.
Beautiful was the only thought in my head.
Her hand paused in midair. “Why not? You called my name. You woke me up. You came here for a reason tonight, Rumpelstiltskin. Why?”
I shook my head because I did not have the first clue why I’d done it. “I vowed to stay away.”
She wet her lips with the tip of her little pink tongue and my heart rammed against my breastbone. I dug my fingers into the wall behind me, pressing down on the soul threads in my palm. But I didn’t want to hold onto that bloody wall. I wanted her. I wanted to shove the threads back inside of me. I wanted to feel the fire, the heat, the wanting and the burning.
Damn it all to the Underworld. I still wanted her. I wanted to hold her, bite her, and sink into her wet and welcoming warmth, vowing to the gods and all the darkness above and below that never again would she be stolen from me. She was mine, and mine alone.
But I did not move from my spot. I could not.
“Don’t stay away.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know. You don’t under—”
“Then make me understand,” she shoved a red curl out of her eye, and the movement was so familiar and so perfect that it rocked me to my very core.
I shuddered.
“Don’t push me away. Not anymore. I want to learn you. I want to know you. I’m not the same, Rumpelstiltskin, but I’d hazard a guess that neither are you.”
I trembled because she was right. She was bloody right. I wasn’t the same, and never would be again. I had learned what it was to lose everything.
She took a step, and I froze, feeling weak and lightheaded and like a damn bloody fool because I was stronger than that. I was better than that. No one hurt me. No one.
No one hurt me except her. Except this.
I was a flame so close to being extinguished that all it would take would be one gentle roll of wind and I’d be gone forever.
She leaned in and I smelled roses and lilies, flowers everywhere. My lungs were soaked in their perfume. I watched her lean close to me. I told myself to turn away. Go. Leave.
But she did not kiss me. Instead, her lips hovered just over my own, so close that I felt the static of her energy brush up against mine, and I wanted to sob because it was so damn perfect.
I love you.
I love you.
I. Bloody. Love. You. Carrots. I. Do.
My heart and soul screamed out in tandem.
“Kiss me, Rumpelstiltskin,” she murmured sweetly, and my knees buckled. I flinched and dug my fingers into the stone behind me so hard that I was sure I’d left a permanent impression behind.
I remembered another moment with a woman, a beautiful red-headed siren sitting before me in a library. There was no light but a candle’s glow all around as the siren’s power had rolled and raged through her out of control. She called me, tempting me and making me want her so damn bad that I would have fought the demons of Hell themselves to make her mine.
My relationship with Shayera had been built on tempestuous fire and an inferno of shared passions and sexual drive. But I’d lived decades with my bride, and I’d learned her far more deeply than just on a superficial level. I’d learned what had made her tick, what had made her cry, and what would make her look at me as if I was the only man to exist in her world.
I missed the sex. I missed the scratching and biting and the clawing, but what I missed more than anything was the knowing. I’d been as intimately familiar with that woman as I’d been with my own secret hopes and fears. And that... That was what I needed again.
With that realization, I was able to finally release my death grip upon the wall behind me. It startled Shayera, and she almost tripped on her heels as she stood up and moved out of my space.
“I will not kiss you. Not the way you want me to,” I said, my voice hard and low and full of regret and gravel.
Her mouth tipped downward and she appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Damning myself as every type of fool, I took another step toward her. But unlike me, Shayera didn’t continue to allow herself to be pressed back. She stood where she was, head held high, looking at me in the way that prey eyes a rattler coiled for the strike, with caution and uncertainty.
I was done fighting this. Maybe tomorrow I would wake up better able to walk away. Somehow, I doubted it.
I reached up for her face and gripped her chin tightly. Her skin was soft like the petals I’d so often thought of in tandem to her. I stroked her jawline, fascinated by the sudden ripple of gooseflesh dotting her pale throat.
She gasped and held onto my wrist with a small, loose grip. Her nails curved sharply, pointing toward my vein in a dangerous-looking way. Maybe I was morbid, but it would be a damn fine way to go. She would shove her nails through me, and I would sink into her embrace, allowing myself the freedom to fully give in to my desires. Maybe I’d steal a kiss, or maybe she would. There would be no more pain, just happiness.
But she would not shove her nails through my veins and I would not sink into her arms. It was a dream, just like everything else. A stupid, silly fantasy.
She cocked her head, brows lowering and I read the question burning in her eyes.
But instead I held up my other hand, the one with the soul thread in it, and turned her face so that she’d look at it.
“Do you know what this is?”
Her chest heaved as she struggled for breath. “Is that a—”
“It’s our flame. Our thread. You’ve seen me as I am, Shayera, as I truly am. A man and a monster.”
Her lips turned down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“At the ball,” I said harshly. “You kissed me that night. You slammed my body with your charm.”
She shook her head. “I’m... I’m so sorry, Rumpelstiltskin, I didn’t mean to hurt yo—”
“I’m not sorry for that.” I shook my head. “I was mad at first, violently angry at you for doing it, because you could not possibly understand what it was like for me and how badly I wanted you. So I shifted to my true form. Do you remember?”
I hoped to the Gods she remembered. I needed her to know that for me, that night had been more than just trying to survive the onslaught of a siren’s full charms, but also that I’d fully and completely entrusted her with my greatest secret.
She blinked. “You were a devil. A beautiful, gorgeous devil.”
I trembled at hearing the husky quality in her voice. My old Shayera had always loved my true form most. I desperately needed to know what she’d thought of me then. But the words got stuck in my throat.
Shayera took a small step toward me, further erasing what little space existed between us.
It was all I could do not to grab her, shove her against the wall, and plead with her to love me forever and never to leave me again. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook. “N-n-no one can look upon my true form unless—”
“—unless they are your heart’s true mate,” she whispered, licking her lips. “I know.”
I snapped my eyes open and looked at her in wonder. “You... You know? But how? Who told you?”
Her smile was soft and so damn sweet that I felt it rip through me like a blade. She framed my bristled cheek with her wee little hand and cold fingertips, and the wash of her breath on my lips made me burn. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. I know you and I have history, Rumpelstiltskin. And I came here to learn it. So please, don’t push me away. Not again. I could not bear it.”
My heart stuttered, because it seemed that no matter how much I wanted to give her the best life possible without me in it, there was a part of me—the biggest part—that would never
be capable of letting her go. Not with our threads still joined. Not like this. “I have a way to fix it,” I whispered. “I have a way to free you of this torment. No more questions. No more false desires. Don’t you want that?” My heart suddenly roared and pleaded with me to take it all back and tell her I lied, but I did not allow it. She deserved the chance to choose that time, just as she had once before.
She stood absolutely still, staring at the glowing golden spool. I wished that I could read her mind and that I knew what it was she was thinking. A minute later, she reached up and closed her hand around mine, so that the glow emanated from between the cracks in my fingers.
Shayera’s other palm gently scraped my jaw, and I was no longer in the dominant position. She was. “Don’t kiss me then, Rumpelstiltskin. Don’t even touch me, if that’s what you need. But I want to know who you are, and I hope you want to know me. Give us a week. Just one week. If you decide that you still aren’t able to move on from the ghost of her, then I’ll leave.”
“You may decide you don’t want me, either,” I said.
She shrugged. “I may. But don’t we deserve to know that first? Don’t I deserve a say in any of this? I lost my way, Rumpelstiltskin, and all I’m trying to do now is figure out who I am.” Then she guided my hand that held our threads together and pushed it into my chest. The twin flames lit me up from the inside, warming me instantly, flooding me with emotion and need and want so profound it was hard to stay standing. I gripped onto her shoulders, needing her strength. And she was there, letting me, holding me up with her arms around my waist, without my even needing to tell her how weak I was.
I loved her so damn bloody much. Gods, why is this so hard? Why am I so scared? I released an unsteady breath the moment I felt the light sink all the way back into me. Her goodness was my light in the darkness. The only compass of kindness I had left in me came from her entirely. “You won’t like what you find in me, female. I know you.”
She shook her head. “You knew her. You don’t know me. Maybe we should change that.”
“How?”
“Walk with me. Somewhere. Anywhere. I very much love to walk.”
But I was already shaking my head. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to withstand her presence for anything longer than short intervals. Truth was, it was taking every ounce of self-control I possessed not to toss her down onto the mattress and rut her like the bloody beast that I was. I badly wanted to sink into her warmth and become one with her again, crying and roaring at the same time.
I hated this confusion. I hated my fragility. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see that side of me, maybe ever. I’d opened myself completely to her before. The loss of her had been the very worst thing I’d ever been forced to endure, and I just wasn’t sure I was strong enough to do it again. Weak as it made me, it was also the truth.
“No.” I said, my voice gruffer than I’d intended it to be.
Her eyes grew wide and a vein throbbed in her neck.
I cleared my throat and tried again. “It’s only that I happen to know that tomorrow someone will come to you, someone who needs you greatly, and I couldn’t—can’t—intrude.”
“Who?” she whispered.
I shook my head and clenched my jaw. “It’s not my place. But you should head to the library in the morning, I reckon he’ll be there waiting for you.”
She swallowed. “And you? Do you also need me?”
I could have heard a pin drop it was so quiet. “I don’t know,” I whispered. It was a damn bloody lie, and it sat like rot on my tongue, but I was a coward tonight and I would not deny it.
She shrugged and stepped back, moving out of the curve of my body. I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from crying out. I wanted her back. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t my Shayera. She looked like her, she smelled like her, and it was enough. I reached for her, but she shook her head, and my hand dropped like a stone back to my side. I felt empty and hollow inside.
“When you touch me,” she said, “I light up like a candle. I blaze. I glory in your caresses. And I feel something coming alive inside of me. I want it, Rumpelstiltskin, so badly that I would do terrible things for it. But not like this. Not this way.”
“Not like how?” I rolled my wrists.
“Not like that.” She pointed at me. “Not when I see you wanting her. Not when I know you imagine it is she and not me that you touch. I don’t want that. And once you’ve had your fill of me, you wouldn’t want that either. Because then I would never be enough. I refuse to be compared to a specter. Only me. That’s who you get. And if that’s not good enough, then I go. Let us try, for one week. If it is not me that you see by the end of the week, then we sever this bond and I move on forever.”
I trembled, my heart hurting and soul aching because I wanted her gone and I wanted to sob at the thought of her ever leaving me again.
“I don’t think I can survive you again, Shayera. I’m not sure I even want to.”
Her smile was sad. “Maybe you’re not the only one to feel that way, Dark Prince. Ever thought of that? The stories Danika told me, they were of a proud and arrogant and wonderful Prince. All I see before me is a man making excuses.” Sounding angry and confused, she flicked her fingers in my direction. “A man who to save himself any more hurt is willing to hurt me in the process.”
I flinched, hating that in such a short time she could already see through me. She’d so easily understood what it was I was doing.
“You aren’t the man I expected, either. And maybe that’s the point, Man in Black.” She wrapped her arms around herself, looking small and vulnerable, and I hated to see it.
She turned her face to the side, but not before I was sure I caught a sparkling sheen of wetness glittering in her eyes. Already, she was bringing life to this realm. Moonlight pierced her window. I’d not seen the moon’s glow in the many years since I’d moved to this wretched place. But that had always been part of Shayera’s charm for me, the way she sparked my imagination and the way she brought me back to life slowly, but surely.
She did not like what she was seeing. I’d known that would happen, but hearing her say it wasn’t easy to bear.
“What’s the point?” my voice cracked as an ache spread deeper and wider in my chest.
“We will never be the same again. But maybe...” She shrugged. “Just maybe, together we can be better.”
I stood there, shaken to my center by the idea that she might not want me too. She was terrified of what I’d do to her, scared I would hurt her. I gulped. “I would never hurt you, Carrots.”
Her eyebrows knit together, and her chin wobbled. The endearment had slipped off my tongue as easily as breathing, and I instantly winced, expecting her to take me to task for it. She would have every right to demand an explanation for what it meant, though it was obvious by the way her finger suddenly danced through the tips of her long red hair that she’d understood well enough. “Goodnight, Dark One”
I nodded, turned to go then stopped and without turning back around said, “Call me Rumpel.”
“Did she call you that?”
I clenched my jaw, wanting to say no, but she would know it for a lie. I said I would try and I’d meant it. It was not easy for me to be soft, vulnerable. But for her, I would try dammit. I would try. “Aye.”
“Goodnight then. Rumpel.”
I shuddered, clutched at my heart, which twisted in violent spasms, and forced myself to breathe. She sounded like my Shayera. So much of her was my bride. So much. I’m done fighting it. One week. I still have that to give. One week. “Meet me in the library when the sun goes down. I will help you discover who you were. Goodnight, my Carrots.”
Then I left, not wanting to remain behind and see her reaction to a name I’d once given to a woman who’d meant the whole bloody world to me.
Chapter 14
Shayera
I could not tear the silly grin off my face. He’d been here. In my room. Last night.
Laugh
ing and tossing my hands up, I flipped the sheets over my head and kicked my feet like a crazy, silly girl. I still smelled him. His scent of burnt cherries and cloves lingered in my room like a lover’s imprint.
His rejection, his obstinate and prideful arrogance, had wounded me. But it was morning. And, miraculously, there was light—bright blazing sunlight—tearing through my window. It was no longer dark in Never.
Hopping from my bed, I felt my purpose for the day growing. I would make that man see me, once and for all. What had felt like rejection the night before seemed different with fresh eyes in the morning.
I rushed to the window and stared out, hoping to find some birds or trees, but there was nothing but white. An infinite span of glorious, glorious sunshine made me smile.
As a little girl, I’d been haunted by dreams of a strange, empty world, full of nothing but darkness within the clouds. It was much like Never had been. But there were times in the dreams when the darkness would give way to such natural beauty that I’d wake up with tears in my eyes. I’d always thought the dreams silly. But they suddenly felt real to me in a way they hadn’t before.
I smelled the sulfur an instant before I saw the Demone. Twirling on my heel, I knew my smile of greeting must have looked ridiculous.
I was sure Rumpel had come for me. The letdown of seeing Dalia and not Rumpel was swift and violent. “Oh,” I said, smile slipping instantly.
Pretty Dalia gave me a crooked grin and shrugged. “I’m... I’m sorry, misss. If you’d rather I returned at a later—”
I batted her words away. “No, I’m sorry. I thought you were you Rumpel.”
She blinked. “Rumpel?” His name was a soft whisper full of confusion.
My grin blazed again. “Aye, your Prince. He visited me in my room last night.” I laughed and began to dance around on the balls of my feet, feeling like a girl with a silly schoolyard crush.
Dalia laughed excitedly. “Did he, now? He came here? To your room? Alone?”