I felt the tremors of Shayera’s light course all the way through me. I sensed her confusion and her fear.
The smirking, arrogant male toasting at the head of the table and feasting on the choicest cuts of meat was a cruel vindictive warrior, drenched in the blood of innocents.
Shame filled my body, my bones, and I closed my eyes, not wanting to see any more of that man and not wanting to admit that at one point that inhuman psychopath had been me.
Trembling fire, I clung tighter to my Carrots, silently pleading to the gods above and below that she would not leave me. I wanted her to stay, as she had once before. I needed for her to choose me again, but I knew she could not honestly do so unless she knew it all. So on and on the darkness went, until finally the day came that’d changed my life forever. Her.
She was dark of skin and full of breast. Her long hair was pinned high above her head with blood-red flowers. Her eyes were an unusual shade of twilight steel. Caratina had been her name. She was a serf, a servant. And up until I’d meet my Shayera, the greatest love of my life, I’d wooed Caratina, pursuing her with single-minded obsession. My wife, Queen Delanore, hadn’t cared, for she had her own gaggle of lovers.
Demone people were cruel, vicious, and blood-thirsty, the entire lot of them. Caratina had been a welcome breath of fresh air. She’d taught me not only true passion, but an entirely different way of being.
She’d been my blessing and my curse, and in the end, she’d been my downfall too. I’d sacrificed it all—my crown and my people—to be with her. I did all of it for her. Few of my guards and a couple of my servants had chosen to follow us into exile.
Caratina had born me a son, Euralis, and then she breathed her last. Our beautiful bastard child wasn’t royal enough to take the throne—my father would have killed him. I had no choice but to seek sanctuary in a world far removed from my own.
I showed Shayera everything, including those first hellacious years when I’d lost my mind, focused solely on saving my dying boy’s life. I’d fallen back into my old ways, bringing the worst of Delirium with me into my new life.
I’d played too many games to find a sacrifice—I had to feed to my child to give him the soul he’d needed to survive the loss of his mother. In Delirium, a child’s soul was half of the mother’s, but Caratina had died before she could give Euralis hers. The sickness had been slow and brutal on my child.
He’d turned wild, keeping only to his animal forms, which was a sign that he was of low birth. But I’d loved him desperately, as he’d been my last link to the only thing I’d ever learned to truly love. In trying to save Euralis, I’d destroyed countless others.
I grimaced at the memory, at my shame, at the depths of my depravity and the things I’d been more than willing to do if it meant saving his life.
Shayera’s flame was growing cold in my arms. She was not pleased with me.
And yet I could not blame her. I’d always been a monster.
Finally, she saw herself and her fire flickered, recognizing the face of the other, of my bride. That Shayera had been fiery, temperamental, and so bloody innocent. She’d intrigued me, enflamed my passions, brought me slowly back to life. So different from my gentle Caratina, Shayera had sparked fire back in my veins.
I watched myself pushing her away, never wanting her to get too close, knowing I’d lost myself from the very moment I’d spied the blue-eyed sprite peeking at me from within shadow in her parents’ kitchen.
Her flame slowly grew brighter and warmer. I felt her laughter shiver over my skin at her adorably naïve attempts at seduction. And then I felt her shudder when she witnessed our scene in the library.
That’d been the catalyst for me, the moment I could no longer deny my need for her. She’d consumed me with her siren’s flame, and I’d gone willingly to the sacrifice. Madness, need, and desire had been incited in me. There’d been no going back for either of us then.
We’d begun our sexual relationship even as we both tried to deny our mounting ardor. I’d known then that being with Shayera was more than just good sex, but I’d been so damn afraid. After Caratina, and the way a Demone’s feelings consumed them, I hadn’t known whether I could handle falling in love again. But I’d been unable to resist, unable to withstand her innocent charms.
I stared down at the spot of glowing gold in my arms. Shayera was still with me. A different version maybe, but so similar too.
I was a fool, just as I’d been then, to think I had any choice in the matter. If she left me now, I would wither and perish. I loved this female more than I loved myself and more than I’d ever loved Caratina. In whatever form she came to me, I would always need her and always want her. Even if she’d returned to me as a male, I wouldn’t have cared. I would still feel this burning, overwhelming desire for her and only her.
On and on, our life together played, and though Shayera was enraptured by our past, I could not focus on anything other than my present.
Why do I always fight her? Even then, I’d fought her.
Because I don’t feel worthy? Because she makes me feel things so fearfully wonderful that it is literally pain to me? Because I am a coward?
I was starting to think that maybe it was all of the above. She was here. She’d come here for one thing, to rediscover and remember herself. But there was no her without me, and there was no me without her. It was really that simple.
And if a curse comes through again? What then?
As I thought it, I glanced over at our memories and saw that very thing happen. I saw my last vivid memory of holding my first Shayera in my arms, and then she vanished like vapor and was gone to me forever.
Shayera’s flame trembled, and sorrow pierced my body like a dagger. But it wasn’t my own this time—it was hers. I frowned at the dimness of her light.
Should I stop this? Is it too much?
Her flame moved in toward me and I heard her sweet voice in my head whisper, don’t stop this, Rumpel. I need to see it. I need to remember.
Do you remember, Carrots? Do you remember me at all?
She didn’t answer me, only looked toward the reel, but her warmth flowed through my body like living waters, healing me, stitching me up, and giving me of herself just as she’d always done before.
I banded my arms tighter around her fire, caging her in and keeping her safe in my arms. I had another chance. I knew it. I felt it. She still loved me.
I sensed her warmth and her truth. It was there, beating as strongly as ever.
In the memories, I was a madman, raving at the sun and the moon and the stars. My face contorted with fury and madness as I stomped up and down the corridors of my castle. I saw myself sobbing, crying out, and hurting so badly that I thought I would finally die from the pain.
I saw myself bent over a desk, scribbling those ridiculous letters to my ghost of a wife, pouring my grieving soul out onto the pages as I tried to drink myself into oblivion.
I saw Giles and my servants come to me, asking me if I was all right. I didn’t recall throwing books and paperweights at them, but apparently I had. The only one spared from my wrath had been Euralis. But even so, I’d not been there much for him in the beginning. I’d been too lost to my grief, consumed by the weight of those emotions. A Demone male without his compass was a lost one. Only the love of Euralis had kept me from that darkness.
Little by little, I pulled out of that, but then shifted my focus to other things, such as creating Shayera’s dampening charm, watching over her as she grew, and chasing off anyone who might ever attempt to harm her.
I saw myself at that cave with the siren thief. Saw myself break his neck and rip his throat out.
The flame in my arms flickered and a plethora of her emotions slammed into me. I tasted her shock, which was a bright burst of sourness on my tongue, followed closely by disbelief and then many other emotions that I was sure I couldn’t possibly be reading correctly.
I blinked and looked down at my flame.
Sh
e was absolutely still, enthralled and mesmerized by my story.
In the memories I moved to the Dark Queen’s castle, where I sat at the table, brooding and contemplating my next step. I remembered that day vividly, because it was the day I’d decided that there was only one way to bring her back, and that had been through her parents.
I wished I could turn off the visions here, so she’d never have to witness what I’d done to her parents in order to make it so. I winced when I was forced to give a part of my powers to the Spider, and then how I viciously attacked her father.
On and on, the memories rolled, until I stood in the center of her low-lit room. She was only a babe, and I held her tightly. I’d never once looked at that memory. I’d never wanted to see my face, because the emotions of what I’d felt that night haunted me still. I suffered in emptiness and in the feeling that somehow I would still lose her. I knew that she was too good for that life, for that world, for me.
I did not look at the flame in my arms to see her reaction. Instead, I saw myself for the first time—a broken, desperate man who isolated himself from the rest of the world because of the actions he’d willfully chosen to commit in order to bring her back.
Suddenly, a trail of warmth framed my jaw, and I shivered, glancing down at the glowing circle of flame in my arms. That’s when I felt it, crushing, overwhelming, all-consuming love. But it was not my own. It was hers. And I shook. I didn’t know what to do with myself or my emotions.
“I... can’t,” I croaked, and then I cut off the memories. I stepped out of her arms as though burnt, and I fled. I left her alone in that room because I really was a coward.
She loves me.
I collapsed into my couch and stared off into space with unseeing eyes. She loves me. She loves me.
In that heavy moment, there was one person that suddenly came to the front of my mind. I didn’t know why, other than the fact that she was the one I’d always shared a piece of my true self with before. I was lost. I felt scared. I needed her guidance and her counsel.
But would she understand that, or would she send me away? Dare I try? Dare I go to her?
My heart raced like wild stallions in my chest, and I stopped thinking. I simply closed my eyes and raced through the shifting tunnels of light.
When I arrived at the cottage, the lights were low and the world was silent. I stared at the cherry-red front door, wondering whether I’d been a fool to go there. The air smelled thickly of flowers—of roses.
A shadow moved to my left. When I looked up, there she was. I’d not seen Betty until now, because she was so small, sitting on the stoop and steeped in shadow. Her beautiful face was brooding, contemplative.
“I had a feeling you might show up tonight,” she said softly.
I frowned. I’d not even thought of going there until moments ago. But then again, Betty and I had always had a strange sort of symbiosis in the past. Without saying a word, I joined her on the stoop, keeping an arm’s length between us. I didn’t look at her, and she didn’t look at me.
I clasped my hands together, just listening to the sounds of crickets and night creatures, feeling a lulling peace beginning to sweep over me. Some silences are terrible to hear, but this was not one of those. Betty and I spoke, we just didn’t always need words to do it.
I still hated what she’d done to me—to Shayera and me—but I’d always understood her motivation for it too.
“Is she safe?” Her gentle whisper sounded like a cannon in the thick silence of night.
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “Aye. She will always be safe with me, Betty.”
She continued to look straight ahead. She sighed, and finally she looked at me. That’s when I noticed the bright sheen of tears spilling unchecked down her cheeks.
I saw so much of her daughter in her face. Maybe that was why I’d always loved Betty, no matter how strained things had gotten between us. She was the mother of the woman I loved more than any other in all the worlds.
“I know, Rumpel. I know.” She sniffed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose with the back of her wrist. “Did you know that she lost her front tooth playing baseball one year?”
I frowned, wondering why she’d told me this, but couldn’t keep the smile from tugging at the corners of my lips. “What?”
“Yes. Wild, willful, crazy girl. Always running off to her next adventure. Gerard and I thought she would be the end of us one day. She’s broken I don’t know how many bones, shattered at least three adult teeth—all of which required Danika’s magic wand to heal. She beat up at least a dozen boys...”
I smiled. And then I laughed, and I didn’t stop laughing as Betty poured her heart out to me and showed me through her words all that I’d missed. We spent hours on that stoop together that night, sometimes talking and sometimes not. Neither of us moved, not even when the sun began its slow crest over the horizon.
“I love her.” I said it slowly, definitively.
She nodded. “I think deep down we’ve always known that.”
I studied her profile. “So why fight so hard to keep us apart? Why twenty-one, Betty? Why?”
I didn’t tell her that that kind of separation had cost us both dearly, didn’t tell her that I still grappled with my wants and desires versus what I thought I should do. She didn’t need to hear it, because I knew she knew it. My shoulders heaved, and my voice cracked. Tonight, it hadn’t been about the hurt, but about healing. About learning that maybe, just maybe, it was possible to forgive and forget.
I’d needed to speak to my friend, and she’d been there for me, just as she’d always been before. I was still terrified by the depth of my awareness and need for Shayera, and by that terrible sense of infidelity that still crept over me whenever I dared to examine the intensity of my desire for a female who wasn’t an exact carbon copy of my bride. I’d needed Betty that night, and she’d been here for me. That gift meant a great deal to me, whether she ever knew it or not.
“I wasn’t ready to lose her yet,” she finally said, shrugging and looking broken by that confession. “And I knew the second she saw you that I would. I would lose her all over again, and I just wasn’t ready yet.”
This time, when she cried it was I that held her. I wrapped her up and gave strength to another. I didn’t take—I gave. She clutched at my back as her sobs wracked her body.
It was done for me, the resentment and the pain. I would never again think poorly of Betty or even of Gerard, for they loved her as fiercely as I did. I could never blame them for caring that much. I kissed the top of Betty’s head, smelling that same smell of home—flowers and spices and chimney smoke—that I always remembered whenever I was around the Carons.
“Are you together again?” she asked after her tears had dried.
My chest ached at her question because the answer wasn’t a simple one. It should have been. Gods above, it should have been. I had Shayera back, and yet I didn’t know how to let go of the past, either. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “But I will never stop loving her. She is safe, Betty. For however long she deigns to stay with me, she will never come to harm again. I vow it to you. I vow it with all my soul.”
She nodded, and while she wasn’t looking I reached into the pocket of my vest and pulled out the worn and ancient leather-bound journal I’d written in through the years.
I heard the sharp inhalation of her breath. “Are those... letters? Did you write me letters again, Rumpel?”
I rubbed my fingers along the supple smoothness of the cover. Years of handling it had nearly rubbed all the color off the leather. It made my heart glad that Betty remembered the letters from before. I’d only ever given one person letters, and it had been her. I’d trusted Betty with my heart then, and I was choosing to trust her with my heart again.
“This journal,” I said slowly, “saved my life. The writing is dark in places. It’s also hard to read. But it contains my truths and the reality of the life I was forced to live without her. I w
rote it all down, every unvarnished and raw part of it. Read it, or don’t, but I thought that maybe it would help you to finally understand. To finally see me for who I really am.”
She grabbed my hand and squeezed gently. “I do see you, Rumpel. I do.”
I took a deep breath. “What do you see, Betty? Who do you see?”
“A good man. A man who put up with far too much, a man who endured Hell all on his own. I’m sorry for every part I played in it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I hugged her again, so tightly that I thought her bones might break, but she didn’t move. Instead, she sighed and hugged me back just as hard. We’d finally turned the page. Healing had begun, and I was glad of it. It would take time to get back to where we’d been, but I knew we would again.
I needed to return to the castle and get my mind and thoughts in order. I needed to see Shayera again, even though seeing her was as much pain as it was pleasure. I started to move, but Betty clutched at my shirt. “Just promise me that once you can, you’ll bring her home for a visit. I need to see her again, Dark Prince. I need to feel her and touch her and know that—”
“I vow it.”
She trembled and sighed.
Whether Shayera stayed with me or not, I would return her to her family. That was a vow sealed in honor for me.
Betty patted my cheek. “Good. Be well, Rumpel.”
“And you too, Betty Caron,” I whispered before taking up her hand and laying a firm kiss to her knuckles. “You too.”
Chapter 16
Shayera
He’d left me.
I blinked the tears away and clutched at my Veritas pendant, which glowed in a velvety shade of deep violet.
I loved him, and he’d left me. It was not the reaction I’d expected.
I’d stood in that library for what had felt like hours, hoping and praying he’d return to me, but he hadn’t. And I felt lost, confused, and betrayed.