Rumpel

I was worried. Very worried.

The next day was Shayera’s ninth birthday. I paced the length of my chamber floor, running my fingers through my hair. It was the day in the other timeline when the siren’s curse had activated for her. When that happened, Hamish, a boy from her village who’d once been her friend, had been consumed by her siren’s draw and had tried to rape her. Gerard had nearly beaten the boy to death causing the villagers to view their family as a pariah and making Shayera’s life a living hell.

For years, I’d been carefully monitoring Shayera’s progress, being sure to keep any and all boys, save for family, away from her. I’d made Hamish’s and his family’s life enough of a torment that they’d long since moved to another village. I was taking no chances, and so far, keeping her safe was working.

But I couldn’t keep from feeling anxious and terrified that it wasn’t enough.

At all costs, I had to prevent Shayera’s transformation from human to siren. It’d been a curse that had almost completely ruined her life. Gerard hadn’t been cursed by the siren in this life as he’d been in the last life. A terrible type of desperation and madness flowed through my veins because I knew that it could still happen someway or somehow.

In my many years of life, I’d learned one very important lesson. If something was fated, it was bound to happen, no matter how hard one might try to prevent its manifestation. Fate was its own terrible kind of magic. But even knowing that, I had to try.

A sliver of golden sunlight was just beginning to crest over my cloud realm. It would still be night at the Carons’ home. I should leave them be. No doubt they were aware of the significance of the day, and Betty had forced that promise upon me.

I could not interact with Shayera until her twenty-first year. I clenched my jaw, furling and unfurling my fingers into tight fists. I should leave this be. “Bloody hell.” I swiftly strode off, jerkily swiping my hand through the air as I called a travel tunnel to me.

The worst that could happen was that Gerard would try to kill me. I scoffed at the thought. Let him try. Her safety would always be my priority.

In moments, I was stepping out of the dizzying tunnel of swirling starlight to stand upon the steps of the Carons’ modest two-story home.

A flash of light caught my attention and had me looking toward Shayera’s room. Is she awake? Does she see me stepping out of the tunnel of stars?

The need to go find out for myself, to catch even just one glimpse of her, was unrelenting. I gripped the stair railing so tightly that my knuckles blanched bone white. I was bound by my word. I couldn’t see her like this.

Not in this form.

The decision was taken away from me, however, when the front door was unceremoniously yanked open to reveal Betty standing there, wrapped up in a velvet-blue robe and staring at me with wide eyes, perplexed. Her hair was a cascading waterfall of mahogany brown around her trim shoulders.

Wild-looking, clearly she’d just woken up. She rubbed at her eyes while frowning. “Rumpel, what are you doing here?” she hissed before glancing over her shoulder, no doubt to her bedroom, where her giant oaf of a husband still snored.

Betty was a beautiful woman, far prettier than anyone Gerard should have been able to acquire on his own. She was also brilliant and wise beyond her years. Though I didn’t always like her, I still felt a deep connection to the woman who’d once been as close to me as a mother.

I hated that she kept me away from Shayera, even though I also understood why she did. “You know what tomorrow—”

“Quiet!” She scowled and shot a glance over her shoulder again before pushing me down the steps. She invaded my space with hers and shut the door soundlessly behind her. I followed her down the yard until we were a fair distance away from the house. “Do you think I’m an idiot, Rumpel?” she all but growled. “I obviously know what tomorrow is.”

I shoved my fingers through my hair. “Do not let her out of the house then. Take no chances. Keep her away from Briley even. Protect her, Be—”

She sliced her hand through the air, silencing me. “You know how I feel about this. Shayera is not your concern, not yet.”

I heard what she didn’t say. Maybe not ever...

Terrible words exploded in my head, but I swallowed them all, reminding myself for the thousandth time that Betty was Shayera’s mother and I couldn’t unleash the beast on her the way I would with anyone else. I shook my head. “She will always, always be my concern, no matter what you might want. Shayera and I are as tethered as you and Gerard.”

I could read the same sort of simmering rage in her dark-brown eyes as I felt in my own heart. “Be that as it may,” she said in a calm tone, though I could hear the slight angry burr behind it. “Prince is always by her side. That beast will allow nothing and no one to harm her.” As she said it, she cocked her head, eyeing me with a hard, penetrating glare.

I clenched my jaw. “What if he’s not enough? What if—”

She shook her head. “I’ve always wondered if, secretly, that beast is you because of the way it treats her. The way it protects her.” She inhaled deeply, her nostrils flaring as her anger burned brightly  into me. She obviously wanted me to say something, but there was nothing to be said. “You have an alternate form, Dark One.” She challenged me with her eyes to deny it. “And while I may not recall what it was, I know that somehow that beast is tied to you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged, again giving her nothing. The beast was far more complicated than even she knew, and in an instance such as this, it was better if I said nothing at all. It was just one of those things I couldn’t explain, so I wouldn’t bother trying.

She closed her eyes. “Just promise me you’ll keep her safe. That’s all I care about anymore. Keep her safe. And as far as her siren nature, like I’ve told Gerard multiple times, I don’t think it can happen to Shayera again. Last time, the curse was tied to Gerard’s sins, sins he did not commit in this time.”

I gulped. I wanted so badly to believe that idiocy, but I lived in the real world, where terrible, dark curses rolled through a land built on happily-ever-afters and wiped them out as easily as the sun sets every night. “Magic is strange, Betty. It doesn’t always do as we wish it to. Please, for the gods’ sake, keep her in this house today. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

“And Prince?”

She was baiting me. Betty was sometimes too damn smart for her own good. She was also Shayera’s mother and one of the girl’s fiercest advocates. Though we weren’t always on the same side, I had genuine respect and admiration for her. If I couldn’t raise Shayera, she would be safer with Betty than anyone else in all the worlds. “He will be around.”

“Hmm.” She sniffed before giving her head a slight shake.

It was the closest I could ever get to telling her the truth, which was convoluted and confusing at the best of times but the truth all the same. “Keep her home, Betty, no matter if she cries. Please. It’s only one day. After that, we need not worry.”

She licked her lips, but her hard gaze never left mine. After what felt like an eternity, she nodded slowly. “I want to say that you don’t, but you know Shayera. She’s stubborn and wily.”

I snorted because I knew those traits of hers well. “Aye.”

Betty’s eyebrows rose. I could tell she didn’t want to have this conversation with me, and she didn’t want to see the look of fondness on my face. Her daughter was only nine, and I was a grown man completely in love with the budding woman to be, which must have been disconcerting.

I thought that if I were in Betty’s shoes, I might kill me, or at the very least brutally torture me for thinking romantic thoughts about the girl. But it wasn’t the child I loved, it was the woman she would become. She was the woman I’d once had, who’d made a happy life with me as the mother of our children. She’d looked upon me with such love that I had dared to believe someone as kind and pure and lovely as she was could be capable of loving a terrible beast like me.

It never had been the child I wanted, but I was curious. I couldn’t think of anyone else in all the worlds who would have an opportunity like the one I was getting. I could go back in time, as it were, and watch my bride become the woman I would one day know, for whom I would one day walk over a bed of coals, for whom I would literally kill.

As a parent, I could only imagine how Betty felt about the situation. It made me uncomfortable as hell too. If I had my way, none of it would ever have happened. The curse would never have existed, and I would be with my bride right now. I would miss out on seeing the genesis of her, but I would trade it all to have her back in my arms, with her looking up at me with love and adoration, not fear and distrust.

My eyebrows dipped as I rubbed at my aching chest. My heart hurt. It always felt just one beat away from shattering completely, but I hung on for her. Always for her. The hate, the agony, every bit of what I was experiencing was only ever for her.

I sighed, remembering where and with whom I was. I glanced up at Betty. Her full mouth had thinned into a tight line of displeasure. “You will not keep her home, will you?” I asked.

She tapped a long red nail against her bicep for several tense moments before finally speaking. She didn’t answer my question. “When Gerard and I had Shayera, we began with many holes in our memory, and some of them—sadly—are still there and likely will always be. But one thing we knew for certain. Our daughter had been cursed in her previous life because of her father’s sins.”

“If, as I believe you are saying, you think that Shayera is safe because Gerard never became the cad he’d once been, then I can only tell you that I’m afraid to bank on that theory.” I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes, rubbing at the aching bridge of my brow.

She spread her arms wide and shrugged. “I know, okay. I know. I, more than anyone, doesn’t want to see my daughter suffer. Believe me. But I also know something else. We were stifling Shayera before, and that is no kind of life for our daughter. I don’t want to give Shayera free reign tomorrow to traipse only-the-gods-know-where without us by her side, but I also can’t keep her locked up on her birthday like some sort of rabid animal. It’s not fair to her. She’s a wildling. She needs the outdoors and trees and nature to thrive.”

“I know,” I growled. “I know.”

“Then?” She shrugged again.

I knew her “then” meant “Then what would you have me do?” I was surprised to hear her confess her doubts and fears so freely to me. We weren’t friends anymore. We barely even tolerated one another. Gerard still didn’t know of our secret meetings, and I wasn’t sure Shayera’s father would ever think well of me. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a smidgen of hope that maybe, by some miracles of the gods, Betty and I could be restored to something resembling friends. I doubted we’d ever be what we’d been, but if the mother didn’t hate me then the daughter might not, either.

I turned to the left, staring at the foggy woods Shayera loved so very dearly. Betty was right. There had to be a compromise between keeping her safe and keeping her guarded at the same time.

“Tell Prince to come. Tell him he’s welcome—”

I cut her off. “It doesn’t work—”

She held up her hand, silencing me. “I’m not asking you to explain the particulars to me, Rumpel. But I’m no fool, either.”

I clicked my front teeth together and rolled back on my heels.

She scowled. “Just tell me that you’re a gentleman, Rumpel. Tell me that you do not dishonor her by peering in at—”

“What kind of devil do you take me for!” I snarled, my upper lip curling back as I felt my eyeteeth lengthen and thicken from my rage.

But Betty didn’t cower, and against my will, I felt proud of her for it. No one deserved to guard my bride unless they were willing to fight the monsters too.

Shoving her face close to mine, she whispered through clenched teeth, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe one who insists on hanging around even though she is little more than a babe, who’s broken his oath to me. I specifically stated there was to be no interaction of any sort.”

She believed I was Prince. Breathing heavily, I had to fight the urge to give into my bestial nature. Only the knowledge that she was Shayera’s mother stayed my hand. “I am no monster. I do not lust after the child. I never have.”

“But you do lust,” she snapped.

I growled. The sound was low and terrible, and at that Betty did scoot back on her heels a tad. “Call me a murderer. Call me a blackguard. Call me Satan himself.—I don’t give a damn—but never, never impugn my character in that manner again. Do you understand me?” My terse voice trembled with a fury that tore me up from the inside out.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I-I-I’m sorry, Rumpel. You didn’t deserve that.”

“No, I didn’t. You have no bloody idea what tortures I live through day in and out. You were lucky, Betty, that you didn’t remember and that you didn’t know all that you’d lost. You were damn lucky that you didn’t have the misfortune of loving someone who no longer even bloody existed!” I balled my hands into fists. “Do you even fathom the nightmares I survive on a constant, daily basis? Do you understand what it is to wake up each day and know that the one person in all the worlds who was destined just for you is now nothing more than a child! It drives me insane and makes me sick to my stomach. Damn you for thinking that! Damn you straight to the Underworld!”

She shook and trembled as fat tears spilled down her cheeks, and I hated myself for putting them there. But I couldn’t—wouldn’t—take it back, because she’d hurt me more than she could possibly imagine.

I was making the best of the nightmare that’d been handed to me. Unless someone walked in my footsteps, they couldn’t possibly understand the pain that knifed through my soul, day in and day out.

Swiping at her cheeks, she glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “I know you’re going through hell, but so am I. So. Am I.” She tapped her chest with her forefinger. “Don’t forget that. I’m a mother of a child. You’re a man, Rumpel, a full-grown male of thousands of years. Try to imagine what this is like for me and then maybe, just maybe, we can learn to move beyond this.”

Contrary to what she might have thought, I got it. I was a father. Whether or not my children existed in this realm, they still survived in my heart. I believed that someday they would have life again. If any male had come for my daughters the way I came for Shayera, I would have gutted him. I also understood the hypocrite I was because of it. Shame beat at my chest. “I never claimed that I had it worse than you,” I said softly, my voice thick with regret. “All I want you to remember is that I’m doing the very best I can. For her and for you. That’s it. I’m not perfect, Betty. But I have honor. I would never harm her.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, I don’t imagine you would. And though I struggle to understand this reality, I also know you had a hand in making it. Truly, Rumpel. Forgive me, and I promise that I will never again throw out such callous and hateful words.”

I’d loved her once, and the love pulsed again. I only felt a tiny burst, but it was enough to let me know that, in many ways, the Carons were—and always would be—my family. Regardless of what came for Shayera and me, they were burrowed deep within me, where nothing and no one could extricate them.

I didn’t always have to like my family to love them deeply. I sighed heavily. “Prince will come. How far will she be allowed to explore?”

“Gerard and I were thinking of a picnic by the lake. It’s her favorite place here.”

I nodded. “She would love that.”

Betty returned the nod. “So... tomorrow. As a family. We all vow to guard and protect her and never to let on what this day actually meant in the other life?”

My skin felt cold and clammy as I wondered if Betty even knew the significance of what she’d just told me. Based on the steady, unflinching look she gave me, I knew her word choice had been purposeful. We were nowhere close to what we’d once been, and yet I knew that maybe someday we just might be. “Agreed.” I could not shake the threads of anxiety that suddenly twisted my stomach into knots. What if we’re being fools? What if our desire to keep her happy will ultimately harm her? What if—

“You cannot think that way,” Betty said softly.

I frowned and looked up at her. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

Her smile was sad. “Maybe because I think the very same thing nearly on a daily basis. Those thoughts are poison, Rumpel. They’re cancer. Don’t let them in. Don’t give them free rein. If you do, she’ll pay. And I love her too much to let that happen.”

So did I.