Rumpel

She called to me.

I heard her walking through my doors, softly whispering my name and begging me to come out to speak with her. She looked lost and afraid and so damn scared that it tore me in two.

I clung to the frame of my door with white knuckles and terror bleeding through the whites of my eyes. I knew what I looked like. I looked like an idiot. Like a bloody arsehole.

My female was there, in my ancestral home and calling to me, and I was too damn terrified to move. My heart bled as I heard the soft trembles of her voice.

It was the day I’d fought so hard for, the culmination of decades of planning and plotting and destroying my soul. It was all happening. It was finally here, and I was too bloody afraid to move.

Giles cleared his throat behind me.

I’m sure he did not understand what was going through me. I knew I didn’t—I barely understood any of it. The only thing I knew with any kind of certainty was that I’d been haunted by her kiss two years ago and every night since.

I’d felt something in Shayera that night, something powerful. I’d felt the ghost of my bride.

It was why I’d pulled away from her and why I’d run away as I had. Everything about her terrified me.

I wanted her with a passion that terrified the living hell out of me. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t focus. For years, my only goal had been the creation of her, and I’d accomplished that, but she was different in so many ways. In fact, I’d nearly lost all hope of ever recovering my Shayera until the night of that bloody kiss that’d scared me witless and made a fool out of me.

My mouth was dry. My stomach heaved. My knees were weak. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go to her.

Giles cleared his throat again. “Sir, should I—”

“Yes,” my voice cracked, “yes, send her away from here. To another part of the castle, I care not. Just move her, Giles. Get her away from me. Now.” My voice cracked and shame gripped me. I couldn’t seem to stop shaking. Closing my eyes, I rested my throbbing forehead against the doorframe and swallowed the ball of bile trapped in my throat.

I sensed my man’s hesitation. I knew what it must look like to him, and I wished to the Underworld I knew how to stop it. But I also knew that if I released my grip on the door, I would fall on my face. Panic and terror ate away at me like leeches at a bloody wound, and I didn’t at all know how to make it stop.

Only one thing in all the worlds could ever make me so weak, and it was her. It had always been her.

“Eventually, sir, you’ll have to talk with her.”

Strained laughter spilled off my tongue. There were no words in me, just maniacal laughter. I was falling apart, and I didn’t want him to witness my shame. Squeezing my eyes shut and hating the fact that I couldn’t keep from letting the tears spill, I said, “Do as I’ve said, Giles.”

I buried my face, praying to the gods he would not see it. On Delerium, my ruin would have been complete for the way I acted now. Demone were powerful, arrogant warriors and prideful people. It didn’t matter if your heart broke. You never, ever showed it.

And yet there I was, shaking like a damn sapling in a strong wind. I was soft and weak and utterly broken.

“She will not hate you, sir. She cannot. Your twin flame—”

I growled.

He stopped speaking.

My body felt as though it were being ripped apart from the inside out. I scented the sulfur the moment he left, and I knew I was alone again.

Then and only then did I let go of the door. I slumped to the ground, unable to bear even my own weight as all of my misdeeds came crashing down on top of me. I’d committed deaths and been willing to torture her parents, and nearly to kill her own father to further my agenda.

She would learn it all, if she hadn’t already, and she would hate me forever.

I’d prayed for this day to come, but now that I’d heard her voice and smelled her smell, the horror of what I’d done to make it so came crashing down around me like a castle built on shifting sands.

“She will hate me.” I laughed as I cried, and my tears soon turned to streamers of blood.

~*~

Shayera

EVERYONE IN THE CASTLE was nice. I’d met a beautiful Demone maiden with hair of purest ebony and skin like polished night stone, who’d walked up to me and introduced herself as Dalia. Her smile was pretty, but her glances were shy, and I’d instantly taken a shine to her. There was another Demone too, who even now refused to leave my side.

Stunningly handsome, tall, and with the impeccable manners of a lifelong butler, he called himself Giles and had practically set himself up as my personal valet for the day.

He’d found me roaming the halls like a silly little idiot, calling out Rumpelstiltskin’s name in a stage whisper. I’d felt like a complete moron when Gilles found me instead and bowed. I wasn’t even sure why I was there or why I’d ever once thought coming to this castle alone was a good idea.

Danika told me that once Rumpelstiltskin and I had been a fated couple. Mother and Father had confirmed it, so I’d rushed off like an air-headed fool in some silly little fairy tale romance to go find my prince and live happily ever after. But I knew better. I suspected that whatever I was feeling had more to do with magic and less to do with me.

I couldn’t possibly love someone I didn’t know. It wasn’t right.

The voice, the ghost of the other, had gone completely silent after the ball, and for two years I didn’t hear from her. I wondered if maybe I’d never heard her at all, if maybe that part of my memories had been nothing more than a dream or a strange and concerning nightmare.

But then I’d stepped through the gates of the castle and had heard one echoing word rattle through my head... home. It’d been her voice and as clear as day, and the chill of hearing it after such a long absence sent shivers down my spine.

The voice of the ghost was tied to the Devil in Black himself. My being there resurrected her, and though maybe it should have worried me, it didn’t.

That voice guided and comforted me. It flowed like deep, calm waters through my blood and told me I would be all right. I was doing the right thing. I was right where I needed to be. And soon, he’d see that too.

My day had been uneventful. A scullery maiden had fed me a quick meal of mutton stew and crusty bread, fresh from the oven. I wasn’t much for stew—I preferred heartier fare—but it’d taken care of my hunger.

After that I’d been shown my room, all the way at the very end of the west side of the castle itself. All the activity seemed to happen on the east side of the castle. The west wing was eerily silent, especially at night.

Dalia had dropped in earlier, literally appearing in the center of my room from thin air and carrying a bundle of freshly laundered sheets in her arms. She’d made quick work of tidying my bed, but didn’t linger to talk with me afterward.

I sat on the edge of the bed, patting the plush mattress and staring woefully at the small shelf of books against the far wall. I wasn’t much for reading. At least if I’d had a pot of paints and some canvas and brushes, I could have endured the isolation better.

I’d already walked down the hall, confirming my suspicion that I was absolutely alone in this wing of the castle. There was a plethora of other rooms, but every opened door had revealed decades worth of dust accumulation upon the furniture and even the coverlets. There were thick, large spider webs in the corners, and when I turned the switches for the lights, they seemed hesitant to even come on, flickering several times before finally lighting up the rooms.

In none of the rooms were there pots of paints, which only increased my dejection at being cast aside this way. “Honestly,” I groused, “what did you expect, you stupid airheaded girl, a ball held in your honor?” I returned to my room.

Rolling my eyes, I slapped my palm against the thick four-poster bedframe of richly polished mahogany. No expenses were spared in the place. Wealth dripped from every crack and crevice. Even the abandoned rooms suggested wealth and luxury.

I don’t know why it hurt that I felt so abandoned. But bloody hell, I did. Curling my lip, I turned to glare out the window. I loved the outdoors and getting to see nature first thing in the morning, but there was nothing but darkness outside, interrupted only by occasional flashes of brilliant lightning.

Thunder rolled through my room every so often, but at least the screams of the woman were blessedly silent in there.

I hated the empty, cold, desolate place. Why had I come here? What had I been thinking?

The little devil on my shoulder told me exactly what I’d been thinking, that there I’d find Rumpel, and soon all my questions would have answers.

It had been a complete waste of a perfectly good day. The next day, I wouldn’t sit idly by. I was there, then, for however long he allowed it, and I didn’t plan to leave until he at least granted me an audience with him. At that point, I wasn’t certain that the man I remembered at the ball was anything like my imagination had puffed him up to be. But I had to put an end to this maddening and growing obsession to discover who he really was and how I fit into all of it, and the only person in all the worlds who could help me do that was refusing to even speak with me.

I growled and tossed myself back onto the bed. I knew I was acting a tad crazy, but there was an urgency beating in my breast. It was like all the years of pain and tears and hopes and fears had been leading me to that very point, to that very moment. I was finally there, and I didn’t want to waste a single precious second of it.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I closed my eyes. There was no way I would actually be able to fall asleep. I knew it.

The last thing I remembered was murmuring a sleepy “Rumpelstiltskin,” and then I remembered no more.

~*~

Rumpel

I TOLD MYSELF TO STAY right where I was, locked up in my den, to leave her be, to stop myself from going to her. For hours I wrestled with myself, and then I did the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life.

I picked up the bloody scrying bowl and called her vision to me. She slept like an angel, in just the way I remembered, with one hand tucked beneath her pale ivory cheek and her gorgeous rosebud lips slightly parted.

But there were grooves of worry etched onto her forehead, and she was moaning. She wasn’t resting well. Immediately worry gripped me, and I knew I was lost. My desire to be honorable and good and to give her the freedom she deserved from me hadn’t even lasted a day.

In seconds I was in her room, swathed deep in shadow and trembling from head to toe as the angel on my shoulder whispered to me that I should go no further.

“Carrots,” I whispered, my heartbeat going crazy when she stirred as though she’d heard me. The fingers of her right hand twitched, and for a second I imagined that even in sleep she reached for me as I would always reach for her.

“You’re in me, Carrots.” My words were broken but heartfelt. “All the way in me. I should stay away. But I can’t. I just can’t.”

Again she twitched and it was all I could do not to rush to her side and draw her into my chest. She was my woman. My heartbeat. My very soul. Gods above, she deserved so much better than me.

I clenched my hands into fists, and it was a minor miracle that my feet remained fastened to the floor. I watched her sleep for what felt like an eternity, fascinated all over again by every nuance, every movement and tiny sigh. I studied her, memorized each plane, each dip and groove, feasting my greedy gaze upon her when there was no risk of being caught.

I clenched and unclenched my fingers as I was suddenly assaulted by visions and memories of us in another time.

Laughing.

Dreaming.

Talking into the wee hours of the night from the very depths of our heart.

Making love.

Before I knew it, I’d walked closer. Maybe I’d shifted, maybe I’d walked, I couldn’t rightly remember, but I knew was I was suddenly standing by the edge of her bed.

I clutched at the bedpost with nerveless fingers, and my memories of a happier time rose up like a specter, mocking me, teasing me, and reminding me of all that I’d lost, such as her gentle and breathy moans whispering in my ear as she confessed how very much she loved me and that she would love and need me always. I closed my eyes, holding on to that promise.

She’d returned in some ways, but not in others.

She was my female and yet she was changed. She did not remember me, nor did she remember us.

Tears slid unchecked down my face as I opened my eyes and looked at her face covered in shadow and moonlight. I felt something dangerous rise up within me, a stupid, stupid emotion, to which I was rarely given over.

Honor.

Honor to do right by her. She deserved better than me. I tasted her purity, her innocence. I was none of those things.

“You said you would never leave me, Shayera. But you did. You left and now I am only half a man. I want you back. I need you. But I fear nothing of me would remain if you left me again... and I... I am too frail to bear it. Please forgive me, my darling. Please forgive me.”

I pointed at my chest and called forth the twin flame, the split soul she and I both shared. I pulled on it—that little golden thread of glowing love that was both she and I—and stared at the beating of it upon my palm.

Her stone of Veritas glowed only with threads of blue, which represented my love for her. But there was no love for me in there. She did not love me in this world, not yet. And maybe the truth was I shouldn’t allow it to take her this time. Maybe I should forge a new path for us, one where she could be free of me. Maybe that was how it should be.

I could be unselfish. For once in my long and miserable existence, I could do the right thing for someone else but that would not benefit me at all. I could let her go immediately. I could untether our soul strings. I could return the missing parts of her that she felt through the very marrow of her being. It was why she’d come. It was why she’d felt it so necessary to appear even though I’d left her years ago. Our twin flame demanded it, and that flame would not fade unless I severed our connection.

I would be careful. I would never harm her string. I would bear the brunt of the fire. I would scream out in agony all the days left of my miserable and short existence after I did it, secure and content in knowing that at least she was safe. She would live. She could marry someone good, someone kind and gentle and all the bloody things I was not.

I clenched the bedpost so hard that the wood groaned beneath my palm. By releasing her, I also released ever having our children returned to us. To me.

Is that not also selfish? Do they not also deserve life? A chance to be? I was depriving the world of their story. But only I would ever remember them. Only I would ever remember the heartache of losing our third daughter to pregnancy-related complications. Only I would remember the devastation Shayera and I had both felt as we’d stared at the perfect little mix of Demone and human in her arms, eyes forever closed. I could spare my bride all that pain, but she would also never know the joys.

Is that the better choice? I honestly didn’t know.

“I love you, my Demone Prince...” The echo of my old Shayera suddenly rang in my ears, and I gasped, twirling on my heels because the voice had been so clear, sweet, and bell-like. And there she was, just a spirit, just a floating memory that haunted me day and night.

She looked like fire and beauty. She was dressed in a gown of sheer translucent white. Her hair waved like enchanted serpents around her heart-shaped face. She smiled at me, her eyes radiant and aglow with the fire of love.

Behind me, I heard the soft, steady breaths of the same woman sleeping peacefully. “Shayera,” I whispered, reaching out my hand to the spirit as she reached her translucent one out to me.

But as always, we never could touch. She was just a ghost, a memory, a haunting sent to hurt me and nothing more.

Tears continued to stream harder down my face. “Don’t leave me,” I pleaded.

Her smile was soft and sweet as she lifted a hand and pointed behind me, to the woman lying on the bed.

I knew what she was telling me, and I shook my head. “She is not you. She is not you.”

Her brows drew tightly together, and my soul ached because already I could see her vision growing dimmer. Soon she would vanish, and I thought that maybe this time she would never again return to me.

I clutched at my chest.

My bride took a step toward me, and another, then another, until only an inch separated us. I felt a spark, a static curl of energy, envelop me like a warm hug. She’d held on for me as long as she could, but the curse had truly driven Shayera away from me forever. I had to let her go. But I wasn’t ready. I never would be.

I shivered, devouring her face with my gaze. I knew this time was goodbye and that she would never again return. My bride was leaving me.

She lifted her hand, and I hung my head, because I knew I would not feel it.

But then I did. I felt the soft glide and touch of her skin, and I smelled her this time, her scent of roses. I moaned. My blood boiled in my veins. My flesh shivered with goosebumps, and I wanted to look up at her but I was terrified that if I did, she would leave me, and she couldn’t leave me. She just couldn’t.

The twin flame I held in my hand blazed, recognizing the other half of itself in her.

“How... how is this possible?” I croaked.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she whispered, and suddenly my body was covered in ice.

I stumbled over myself to back away, because it was not my ghostly bride caressing me, but the Shayera of now. Of the present time. How had she gotten out of bed without my knowing it? How had she snuck up on me and I’d never even seen it coming? How? I never let my guard down around anyone, and yet I’d never been anything but vulnerable when it had come to my bride.

I wanted to flee, but my feet were firmly rooted to the ground.

I was a frightened, terrified animal. I wanted to kill something. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to rage. And I wanted to sink into her arms and sob until all the demons had fled and only she and I remained.

Dressed in a colorful nightshift the shade of the tropical waters of Kingdom, she looked like the prettiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

But I could no longer speak. Words left me. I was hollow. I was an empty shell.

“I see you,” she whispered.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I finally see you, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said again, slowly stepping closer to me. She chased me deeper into shadow, backing me up until I was pressed against the wall with nowhere else to run. I could vanish. I should vanish. Why am I not doing it?

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.