But she knew, and she simply petted my cheek over and over again and whispered to me of her eternal love until the demons fled and I could breathe again. I could think again.
“I love you,” I whispered with my whole heart.
“I know,” she said back. “I know.”
Shayera
I CLAPPED MY HANDS, watching in awed wonder as Euralis climbed higher and higher on powerful wings like an eagle’s as he surged deeper into the sky.
For so long, Never had been a world of shadows and darkness, but there was light, and it was everywhere, bursting from leaves on the trees and flowers in the ground. It was a world teeming with colors and verve.
The air was cool, just shy of cold. But I loved it and had dressed appropriately for it. I wore a velvety-black cowl robe to help ward off the worst of the chill. The sky was no longer obsidian, but a steely shade of blue-gray with wispy white clouds floating above.
The woman’s screams were almost now a melody in the background, a haunting, familiar song that covered my body in goosebumps, but that also made me feel oddly safe.
Rumpel had told me everything about her, including who she was and her role in the curse itself. Harpy had been the one to take the darkness out of Galeta, who’d once been The Blue but was now The Pink. I’d sat in open-mouthed shock the night he’d told me the story. And though Harpy’s taking of the black seed had been the catalyst for the curse to be unleashed, I saw her not as the enemy, but as a heroine. She’d sacrificed her life to free Galeta.
Though the years without Rumpel—and everything we’d lost—had been torturous, we were rebuilding. Already, our family was beginning to grow. Soon we would have our life back as it had once been, perfect and free of future curses. No one told me that, but I knew it deep in my heart, because I heard the words in her song.
She’d done all of that to save us all, and I couldn’t hate her for that. So long as Harpy cried, the world would be safe.
I didn’t know how we would free her, but I knew that if anyone could, it was Rumpel. He’d done the impossible when he’d set out to bring me back, and yet there we were. I was where I belonged, in his arms, and he was back in mine too.
The only thing that would make it perfect would be if Euralis would finally open up to me completely. I sensed his holding back, and I wished I knew how to make him trust me.
I loved my son. My memories of the two of us were coming back to me daily. Maybe it was the ghost of the old Shayera feeding me her truths and her stories in my dreams. All I knew was I was beginning to remember with nearly perfect clarity. What holes remained were few and far between, and I found myself growing more and more impatient to get back to perfection. We weren’t quite there yet, but we were so bloody close.
Euralis wheeled around and spread his giant wings wide. I marveled yet again at the power and the steely strength of the boy. We’d not talked much when we’d met that day—he’d immediately set down the path and I’d walked alongside him, trying to match my stride up to his. Demone children aged and grew slowly.
In a way, I was grateful for it. I was happy that I could still view him as my son, and I anticipated that one day he could see me as his mother. I hoped very much that we were close to our breakthrough. I knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time, and I would wait, just as Rumpel had waited on me. I understood why he’d tried so hard to push me away, and it didn’t hurt me nearly as much as it had in the beginning, because I got it. I’d begun to understand that Demone loved with their whole hearts and souls in a way that I could never fully comprehend. The pain of losing me had nearly destroyed Rumpel, and though Euralis hadn’t remembered our past in the way his father had, a part of him did feel the loss of me.
I just needed to be patient.
We’d walked a good distance before he’d shifted, and I stood for over half an hour, watching him fly and wondering to myself just what kind of life he’d had.
The next time he tucked his wings into his body for a barrel roll, he did not fly up at the last moment, but instead aimed directly for me. My heart sped as I watched the magnificent, giant crow land so effortlessly that not even a tiny bit of dirt was kicked up. He transformed just a second later, looking handsome and regal as he shoved his fingers through his thick hair and stared deeply at me.
“Tell me about your life, Euralis,” I said into the thick quiet between us. “What was it like? Did you have friends?”
He gulped and glanced off to the side, and I saw Rumpel in him. In profile, I could see his father’s strong jaw-line, long nose, and slashing cheekbones. But I could see softer, prettier features too, such as a fuller mouth and a smaller face.
Caratina, Rumpel’s first love, was a part of him, and it didn’t hurt me that he’d experienced that love. I was glad he had, because every choice he’d made had led him directly and ultimately to me.
Euralis shrugged, and judging by the way his mouth had pulled into a sharp frown, I sensed I’d inadvertently touched on a sore subject for him. I clasped my hands together, feeling as though I should apologize, though I wasn’t even sure what to say.
“I...” He trailed off, looked at me, then grimaced. “I don’t have many friends.”
I swallowed, telling myself to keep my mouth shut. I shouldn’t enter this land mine with him, especially because I don’t have the first clue how to navigate these waters. I had never been good at heeding my own advice. “Why not?” I smiled softly when he looked at me as though startled I’d ask him that.
“I am Demone,” he said, tossing out his arms as if that should mean something to me, as if I should understand why not from that alone.
I shrugged. “And I am a siren. And yet here we are, holding a conversation, awkward though it may be.”
A ghost of a grin flitted over his lips, as though he didn’t want to find the humor in my words but couldn’t deny that he did.
I shoulder-bumped him, feeling oddly happy to be in that place and in that moment with him. Though the sky was gray and the clouds seemed on the verge of pelting us with heavy sheets of rain, I was having a nice time.
The ghost of a smile turned into a full-blown one when he bumped me right back. “I missed your nonsense, heart of my heart,” he said. “Growing up, hearing you speak your girlish little riddles and nonsensical songs... I grew rather fond of them.”
My heart fluttered, because he and I had so much more history than I sometimes allowed myself to remember. I did not know the boy, but Prince had been my lifeline during my formative years.
“I would have liked to have played with a boy, I think. Another flesh and blood person. Why did you never show me who you really were?” I’d asked him this before but always felt like he’d held part of his truth away from me.
Crossing his arms behind his back, he led me around a bend in the trail, one that doubled back and took us in the direction from which we’d just come. His eyes looked far away as he spoke. “I didn’t want to confuse you, is really the long and short of it. I wanted your trust, heart of my heart—”
“Call me Shayera,” I said offhandedly.
His look was bold and frank. “If I call you anything,” he said, “it will never be that.”
My fingers clenched, sensing that I knew what he’d call me, but wanting to hear him say it all the same. “What would you call me?”
I’d had a dream the night before, in which I’d tended to a boy, holding him in my lap. The boy had deep obsidian skin and eyes the red of flame. I’d looked at him and he at me, and I’d woken up bathed in a wash of love so fierce that my throat had squeezed tightly from it.
It had been another memory, fed to me by the ghost of who I’d once been, she wanted my reconciliation with our son as much as I did. Is today to be the day, finally? Gods, I hope so.
I grabbed his hand when he still didn’t speak. His red eyes flicked down to our joined fingers with something looking suspiciously like wonder burning in his glowing eyes. His mouth parted.
“What
would you call me, son?” The last word came out hushed, trembling on my tongue. Fear choked me, and my heart rattled violently in its cage because I was so nervous that he would reject me calling him that for the first time.
He blinked, and I was sure there was a screen of heat covering his brilliantly jeweled eyes. “Mother,” he said in a voice very near a whisper.
My chest suddenly felt too tight, smothered by an emotion I was scared to put a name to. Moving in toward me, he gently cupped my cheek and held my gaze fast.
My knees grew weak, and I wanted so desperately to cry because I felt too much and yet not enough. Love, I was learning, was an endless, bottomless pool of emotion. Just when I thought I’d gotten close to tapping the end of it, I turned a corner, only to discover another ocean of it stretching out toward infinity.
“I would call you Mother,” he said it again, so very softly and tenderly. Then he pulled me tight into his chest, and I could feel the ripple of barely leashed emotions chained tight within him.
I curved my arms around his back.
He was nearly as tall as I was, but I was still his mother and he would always be my boy. He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead.
I trembled, my throat so tight I could hardly breathe. My vision blurred from the tears that had begun to fall and wouldn’t stop.
Euralis stepped out of my arms, bowed his head one last time, and looking up to the sky, he cried out at the same instant that he transformed into his great winged raven. He took to the air, screeching out a song that sounded full of love and joy.
“I love you too,” I whispered, and I knew he’d heard me when he blasted the winds with a piercing cry.
“And I, you.” My lover’s deep and resonant voice wrapped around me like a warm hug.
I sighed and leaned into the curve of Rumpel’s body. He hugged me tightly, holding me fast and keeping me grounded. I was home. And I was never leaving again. “I will never love anyone the way I do you, Rumpelstiltskin.”
He turned me around gently, tipped my chin up with his finger, and softly said, “Until I have no breath left in my body, I will never stop loving you.” And then he kissed my forehead, claiming, protecting, and devoting himself to me.
Harpy cried, and in her song I heard a whispered truth: this was forever, for real this time. For a very brief second I saw a vision—not a memory, but a promise for the future. In it, Rumpel and I were together with a sea of children gathered around our legs.
We’d hit a bump in our story, but we’d weathered the storm because that’s who we were. We were fighters. And we never quit on those we loved.
Forever and ever, we would live happily ever after.
Epilogue
Final letter
Betty turned the page in the book, tears dripping down her cheeks as she read the hope, despair, passion, and undeniable love Rumpel felt for her daughter.
Danika, who’d been sitting quietly before her in a rocker that she gently pushed back and forth with the ball of her foot, wore a large smile on her face.
Betty looked up. “He really does love her, doesn’t he?”
The beautiful fairy, who fought so hard to make right the wrongs of that terrible curse, nodded slowly. “Aye, with all his heart. They return in two week’s time. You will have your family back again, Betty. All that they’ve lost will be restored.”
Betty smiled and hugged the book tight to her breast. She didn’t know whether Rumpel had placed a spell on the letters to soften her heart, but it didn’t matter. She was ashamed of her part in her daughter’s story, but in other ways she was also proud.
She was proud of the woman she and Gerard had molded together, proud of the life and of the man her daughter had ultimately chosen, and proud to call the Dark Prince her son again.
She sighed.
“He bade me give you one last letter, Betty,” Danika said it softly as she held up her star-tipped wand with a gentle swish and flick. Light suddenly radiated from the pages of the journal.
With a gasp, Betty tore open the book and the pages fell open to a new page, revealing a new letter, one she’d not yet read.
Her heart trembled because she knew what she would read before she read it.
“Be happy, Betty. Be so very, very happy,” Danika whispered as she faded into her tunnel of stars. She was off to go save the world as she’d already done so many times over.
Betty’s eyes were already scanning the pages, and happy, healing, big, fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
OUR LOVE IS A LOVE far greater than all the stars in all the heavens. I have learned to be whole again, and it is all because of her. She is my sun, my moon, my everything. As I am hers.
Soon, the evidence of our love will be again known to you. Our family has already begun to grow.
I love her, Betty, with all my soul.
And I love you too. Both of you. All of you. You are my family just as much as you are hers. Always remember that.
Until we meet again, ever your faithful servant,
~ Rumpelstiltskin
LOVE THIS STORY? THEN make sure to sign up for my newsletter so that you will always know when the next Kingdom book releases. Or, if you really want to get more immersed in the Kingdom universe sign up for my FB group where you’ll meet lots of other like minded readers who love to talk books and fantasy.
If you’ve gone backward with Kingdom and would like to pick up the series at the beginning make sure to check out Her Mad Hatter, totally free, and written by my previous pen name of Marie Hall. In fact, the first three Kingdom books are completely free, as is The Sea Queen of the Dark Queens spinoff.
List of Books written by Jovee Winters
Kingdom Series
(Dark Queens Series)
The Sea Queen, Book 1(Featuring Hades)
The Passionate Queen, Book 2 (Queen of Hearts)
The Ice Queen, Book 3 (The Snow Queen)
The Magic Queen, Book 4 (Baba Yaga)
The Dark Queen, Book 5 (The Evil Queen)
The Fairy Queen, Book 6 (The Blue Fairy)
The Centaur Queen, Book 7 (Greek Mythology)
(The Dark Kings)
The Mad King, Book 1 (The Mad Hatter)
The Jaded King, Book 2 (The true story of Gaston from Beauty and the Beast)
The Blue Moon Bay Series:
Welcome to Blue Moon Bay, a little seaside town full of vampires, shifters, witches, and ghouls. A town with a dark secret, a town that was once cursed by a black witch to be forgotten by the rest of the world except for once in a blue moon.
Cookies, Curses, and Kisses, Book 1 (Featuring Zinnia Rose) Releases in time for Halloween!
Short Stories
Stilettos, Curses, and Fur (Kasa’s story in the Mated to the Shifter Boxed Set)
Frosting, Curses, and Snowflakes (Jacqueline Frost’s story)
Kingdom books written as Marie Hall
Her Mad Hatter, book 1
Gerard’s Beauty, book 2
Red and Her Wolf, book 3
Jinni’s Wish, book 4
Hook’s Pan, book 5
Moon’s Flower, book 6
The Huntsman’s Prey, book 7
Rumpel’s Prize, book 8
Hoods Obsession, book 9
Her One Wish, book 10
A Pirate’s Dream, book 11
About Jovee Winters
She’s a NY Times and USA Today Bestselling author under her previous pen name, Marie Hall. She loves fairy tales and all things magical, but she especially loves taking stories and characters you thought you knew and twisting them up in such a way as to make you think. Maybe the “heroes” aren’t always the good guys and sometimes the villains are the very best people you could ever know. She’s a military wife and has lived all over the US and even outside of it too. Her favorite things in the world are chilly Fall mornings, long hikes through the woods, and imagining that somewhere in this world the magical really does exist, we just have to be willing to open our eyes to the impossible.
If you’d like to learn more about Jovee Winters and what her future plans are make sure to check out her FB page.
Jovee Winters, The Magic King
(Series: The Dark Kings # 3)
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