Rumpel

Danika had come for me, yanked me to the ball against my protestations. I didn’t want to be there and didn’t want to see Shayera, even though I desperately did.

She was the age she’d been when she’d first become mine. I wanted to drown myself in bourbon and remember her as she’d been then. And that had been my plan that night, until the wild, angry fae had shown up and shanghaied me against my bloody will.

“You threw her that damn bloody ball, so you will bloody well go and congratulate her, you big fat oaf!” she hissed when we arrived outside the doors of the great hall, stomping her foot. She shoved me from behind, causing me to stumble.

I rolled my eyes and dusted off my black cuffs. “I don’t have to do anything. You know the rules. I am not allowed to declare myself to Shayera until she has turned twenty-one. I’m rule bound.”

“Rules, schmules!” Danika asserted, glaring at me. “Since when did rules ever stop you before? Now I’m telling you, the girl must see you tonight. She must. She is at a crossroads, Rumpel. Fate has decreed that it is this night she will find her love. You must be here.”

Fire burned through my belly and my hands clenched. “Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe Fate doesn’t want me here tonight? Maybe I’m supposed to stay home? Maybe she’d be better off without me in her wo—”

Smack.

I was so shocked by the sudden stinging of my throbbing cheek that I said nothing as I stared down at Danika, whose mouth gaped open. She put her shaking hands over her mouth, and her blue eyes were wide and startled in her suddenly pale face.

“Did you just—”

“Bloody hell, Rumpel,” she grumped, “you make me so angry sometimes. I shouldn’t have slapped you. That said, you’re a giant disappointment to me right now. What happened to your fight? What happened to the man who forced Gerard and Betty to remember their once great love? What happened to the male who fought like a beast to make sure his bride would live again? I know what you said today, but I refuse to accept it. I will not accept this! You will not just tuck tail and run because it’s easier. Screw you, man! Grow a pair.”

I bit my bottom lip, forcing myself to control the sudden flood of adrenaline pushing through my veins. “That man is dead, fairy. I’m no good for Shayera, and I know that now. Look at what I’ve done just to get her here. I’ve killed. I’ve tortured. I very nearly killed her own father. There is no coming back from that.”

Her laugh was high-pitched and shrill. “Yes, and I’m sure she’d curse you up a blue streak for making sure she was born. You’re an idiot, Rumpel—”

“I’ve had just about enough of that,” I snarled. I wasn’t a very nice man at the best of times, and she was getting on my last nerve.

She sighed. “Listen to me, and listen to me well. I am a fairy godmother. It is in my nature to do as I am doing, especially when I know what the heart really wants. Yes, with love comes pain. Heartache. Sometimes such agony that it steals one’s ability to reason or even want to live anymore. But without the bitterness of love, the full ripeness and pleasure of it can never be experienced. Do you understand that, Rumpel? Hurting is part of the loving. Sometimes the very best part, because it lets you know just how much you’re still able to care. The world may call you a monster, but I do not see it. I’ll never see it. You’re worthy to be loved, my friend.”

I growled, wanting so desperately to give in, wanting so badly to walk through that door and see her, hold her, touch her, and make her love me as she once had.

“Give her a chance to love you back, beast. That’s all I ask.” She clasped her hands together.

Gods above. I glared at her, hating that her words were weakening my resolve. I was a wreck.

She scoffed. “Unlike the rest of the world, I do not fear the Dark Prince. Get used to it.”

“Oh, believe me, that fact has been made evident. I don’t like you, fairy.”

She stuck out her tongue at me. “Ask me if I care.”

“I’m going home.” I made to turn, but she yanked me back around by my shirt, gripping it in a tight fist. The faes were tiny but mighty and often underestimated. I felt myself grow angry as I stared down at her hand.

She quickly released me just a moment later, as though I’d scalded her. “Hear me and hear me well, Rumpelstiltskin, the Pink has spoken to me. This night, Fate’s hand will intervene. Shayera is destined to find her mate tonight. Whomever her eyes lock on at midnight is who she will choose. Even if she can never love him the way she loves you, she will remain always faithful to him. So walk away if you want, but know that you get no other chances. There will never be another curse, no second opportunities to make this right. If you leave, then go knowing that it was you and you alone who screwed this up forever.”

My chest heaved. Fury ate through my veins like a screeching demon. I’d told Betty years ago that nineteen would be Shayera’s time, that nineteen would be the age at which she would choose. Betty had kept me bound to twenty-one years, and if I showed up now I broke my oath to her.

It was true that I’d gone to Shayera when she was nine, but that had been a life-or-death situation and outside of the promise I’d made. I’d break any rules to keep Shayera safe, but beyond that I was a man of honor. There was nothing as sacred to me as my word, because a man was only as good as it. But as I stood there in that moment, those words became a complete farce, an absolute lie that I’d spoon-fed myself for years, because the truth was that there was one thing far more sacred to me than anything else.

And she was inside that room.

I swallowed hard, noting that Danika had vanished, leaving me alone to wrestle with my demons alone.

If I walked through the doors, I’d break my oath. If I didn’t, I would lose the only thing that had ever mattered to me, the bonds of family. Euralis would lose his mother. My people would lose their joy. And no one but my son and I would ever know the great depths of that loss .

I stepped inside the room, where I heard nothing and saw nothing.

Except her.

My eyes stayed trained on her as I moved like a shadow within. She was dressed in green silk taffeta. Her skin was radiant, almost glowing, but not from the sirens curse. She beamed from within with the effervescence that had always been uniquely hers.

I clutched at my throbbing chest. I’d not physically seen her since the night at the beach. I’d interacted not at all, telling myself it was for her. I’d convinced myself that I did it so that she might live a happy life, one filled with children and a husband who could be the type of man she needed.

I shook my head and moaned as I finally caught sight of another male with her, a man, a giant oaf who moved as though he had boulders for feet. He touched her far too frequently. And his ears poked out too far from his head. He was covered in freckles and had a ridiculous-looking face, and I hated him with the strength of ten-thousand suns.

I wanted him far, far away from her. Wanted to curse his name. Wanted to wound him. Hurt him. I wanted him dead.

And then the male leaned forward and kissed my bride.

The blade of that wound cut through my heart like steel, and I hissed. But the worst of it wasn’t just the kiss. The worst was the smile that laced her lovely lips afterward.

I growled, the sound coming from deep within me.

A bell tower chimed. One, two, three, and on, and on, and on, until it hit twelve. Shayera stilled and looked over at me.

I snarled.

She ran.

~*~

Shayera

I TORE INTO A ROOM, any room. I wasn’t very particular. The cries of my mother and father and even Donal immediately ceased.

I looked around and noted that I was in the Wonderland room, but I was in a part I’d not seen before. Should I turn back around? Then I heard the beast’s snarl, and I squealed, running through a heavy set of iron doors and into a world full of radiant darkness.

It was a world of lights in the night. Everything—the flowers, the trees—glowed. Even the brook that ran beside me gleamed with a hypnotic-blue phosphorescence.

The beast’s breathing grew harder and harder, and then... It jumped me from behind, landing powerfully on my back and dragging me down with it.

I screamed. “Let me go! Let go!”

We rolled on the carpeted grass. He was long, muscular, and unbelievably strong. But he held me like the finest of China, as though I might break at any moment, and it would break him if I did. His frame trembled, and that’s when I looked up, sucking in a sharp breath at the sight of his face in the moonlight.

This was no animal, but a man, who was sharp and angular and mind-blowingly handsome. But it was his eyes that snared me and held me fast. They were blue, mingled with the flame of red. I gasped. “You! I remember you!”

Callused fingertips banded tightly around my wrist. “Don’t move,” he said. And I heard it, the same, deep husky voice that’d haunted my dreams since I was a child of nine.

I began to shiver.

I felt his gaze rake my face like hot coals. And my skin prickled and danced with heat and fire. My trembling breaths were ragged. My breasts brushed his powerful chest whenever I inhaled.

His eyes closed, and he looked like he was in excruciating pain as he fought to check his bestial nature.

Kiss him... The thought echoed in my head. The feminine devil’s voice was small at first, but the longer I ignored it the louder her command grew, until my mouth began to tingle for his touch. I felt desperate that he do it, so that I could feel alive again.

“You’re the Man in Black,” I whispered, my voice sounding deeper and huskier than I remembered it ever sounding before. In fact, it sounded an awful lot like the devil in my head. I shivered. “You’re a bad man.” I wasn’t sure why I said it. Maybe nerves, or maybe because a dark part of me thrilled at the idea of having power over something so powerful.

Here, kitty, kitty... That devilish voice echoed powerfully inside of me. My breathing hitched, and my fingers curled into my skirts as I flexed my nails.

What is happening to me? What is this madness inside of me?

He hadn’t been looking at me when I’d first started talking, but when I looked up he was staring at me. His face was a mask of both the man and the beast, and my heart pounded so violently in my chest I thought I might be sick from it.

Will he kill me? Eat me?

Kiss him...

I gulped. Something was terribly, terribly wrong with me, and not just because of this sudden and very unwelcome intrusion in my head, either.

Why do I not fear this obviously unstable male the way I should? Why is he even now lying on top of me with his legs twined with my own, and I’m not shivering with terror that he means to harm me? That he wants my siren’s magic for his own? I trembled with a bone-deep want so fierce and powerful that every beat of my heart screamed for him to touch me again and again and again, until my very soul was consumed by him.

He loves it when you rake your nails down the back of his head.

The voice was actually giving me dating advice.

This is it, Shayera, this is him. Your one true love. Your fated mate.

My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I was surprised he hadn’t heard it yet. I felt as though I’d lost my mind. But I heard the voice—as clear as day, I heard her. There was passion trembling in her voice, and the breathy whimpers of anticipation curled through her vowels.

Who... who is this?

I was crazy. It was crazy. I was having a conversation with a figment of my imagination. It’s just the stress of the ball getting to me. It has absolutely nothing to do with this overwhelmingly potent and magnetic man. Nothing. Nope. Not a bit.

The voice came back. You know who I am. I’m the little voice you’ve always heard. I’m the whisper of truth in your dream. I am she. I am her. I was you...

I was so shocked I could barely move. All my life I’d heard this voice, but always I’d managed to fight her off. Always I’d managed to bury her away, telling myself I was mad to give in to her. Through the years, I’d managed to bury her and to forget about her.

My chest ached. I’d thought she wasn’t real, that I’d been possessed by madness. But always she’d been in my dreams, always just there, a presence, an awareness within me but hidden just out of reach, flitting beneath the surface.

Not anymore, siren. He is ours. All ours. You may not know it yet, but you will. Do as I say, and nothing more.

I didn’t even notice when it happened, but I was no longer fighting him. In fact, my arms were banded tight around his chest, pressing him down, as though terrified that he meant to leave me. I was at war with myself. Wanting and not wanting. Loving and hating. I took a deep breath.

His eyes closed, and his long lashes flickered. “You kissed him,” he growled.

My spine stiffened.

It’s okay, it was fated, the voice said. He had to see it to act. I know him, Shayera, I know everything about him. Trust me. Just... trust me.

What the blue blazes is happening to me? I stared wide-eyed at the devil in black, not even knowing what to say and thinking I might truly be losing the last bits of my sanity at that very moment.

You’re not crazy. But I’ll be damned if I let you or him screw this up. The fate of our children rests in your tiny hands, siren. Do you trust me?

He looked at me, cocking his head, the arrogance so evident I choked on it, but there was something else there too. Something wild. Something desperate. He scented the air, reminding me again of his feral nature. It was as though he could sense the war inside me.

I trust you.

Then repeat after me...

My heart rattled in its cage as I heard the combative, angry words she wanted me to say. I didn’t want to say them.

I felt her push against me. Say it, siren. Say it now.

“So... so what?” I reluctantly squeezed the words out of me, and a fierce blush stole up my neck. “Who... who are you to—”

“Who am I?” he bellowed.

I flinched at his rage, but in my head I felt her smile. I felt her quicken and stir, felt her excitement, and it began to mingle with my own sense of dread. It made me feel light-headed and invigorated.

His face was a contorted mask of rage, fury, and another emotion, something so profoundly painful to look upon that I felt tears burning the corners of my eyes and I swore I could feel it too. Pain. I could feel it squeezing the life from out of me.

“Who am I! I am the one who killed for you. The one who never stopped. Day and night. Locked away with my madness. Consumed by it. You forgot me! And I hate you for it! I hate you! I hate that I still lo—”

I sobbed, hurting so deeply that it seemed his words alone could end me. Her voice abandoned me completely. I couldn’t believe I’d said that, because I would never have said that if not prompted by that voice. I should never have said those things to him.

Kiss him now...

Trembling with relief and simultaneously profoundly vexed by what she’d done, I let out a low growl, releasing my frustrations on him. I did the one thing I knew I shouldn’t but had wanted to do from the very second I’d spied him in the ballroom. I swallowed his words of hate with my mouth.

The first touch of his skin to mine was an exquisite tempest that scalded me, making me want to scream, to sigh, and to sob. This was it. It was the passion I’d always desperately needed. The excitement and verve for life came from the touch of a wicked, wicked man.

The touch of my skin to his unleashed something in him, a cruel gentleness that I craved and wanted more and more of.

My beast. My tempestuous devil. Her voice crooned like a lover’s heated caress, making me blush to hear it. I felt as though I was listening in on something private, but also so desperate for more of his dark and terrible touch that I just didn’t care.

His hands dug into my hair, fisting it tight, and making a mess of my pins and scattering them everywhere. I hissed, bowing into the strength of his grip, even as I too clawed and scratched at his throat.

The back of his head, siren. Do it. Slave to the commands of the devil inside my head, I did as she commanded and clawed him good. I couldn’t believe I’d so blindly trusted a voice, and yet the second I did it, it was like something in him stirred.

He became a deadly and terrible beast. His touch turned frenetic, and the way he curved his body into me, stabbing my thigh with his rigid thickness, I cried out in ecstasy, knowing it could never, ever get better than that. It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t possible.

He was a stranger to me, and yet I felt something all-consuming with him, something I knew I would never find in another, no matter how long I searched.

“You kissed him,” he snarled, and his kisses began to turn rough and violent. His hands gripped coils of my hair, and it was my turn to cry out and bow up to meet the violence of his grip and thrusts.

The devil in my head laughed, drunk on him. Somehow she felt this fire too. I didn’t know how she could—dark magic, most likely—but I didn’t care. Nothing mattered except that, just then.

I wasn’t afraid. I wanted more of the beast. I wanted him to consume me. I bit his bottom lip so hard I felt a tang of metallic blood land on my tongue. He roared, and it was my turn to laugh.

I didn’t know who I was in that moment. All I knew was that I was a slave to the terrible man.

“I’ll make you forget him. Only me, Shayera. Only ever me!” He parted my mouth with his tongue, causing our teeth to bang painfully together.

There was nothing tender about this. It was a claiming, a consuming of me. And I bloody loved it. The devil was quiet, but humming and twitching inside of me.

I sighed into the heat of his touch and felt burned alive by the warmth of his wet tongue shoving down my throat. And I shoved mine down his, fighting him in the only way I knew how, with passion. With my lust. And with my body.

Our kiss wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t soft like Donal’s had been, which had left me feeling empty and aching inside. No, this enflamed me and made me crazed and insane and desperate for more and more and more. I was alive in a way I’d never been before.

“My beast,” I whimpered, hearing her voice echo through mine, and that’s when the magic ended.

He shoved away from me so fast it made my head spin. He snarled as he wiped at his mouth, looking down at me with such stark coldness in his gaze that I suddenly felt naked, bereft, and painfully exposed.

His hands shook.

Had he heard her too? The whites of his eyes were large and flooded with terror. He’d heard her—I knew he had—which meant I wasn’t crazy. The devil was real. The ghost from my past was... me. 

“Y-y-you felt that too, I know you did,” I whispered.

His lip curled back as he sat on his knees, looking savage and animalistic as he gazed down on me. He was a giant of a man, all rippling muscle and strength, and I wanted him.

I wanted him to take my lust. My fire. My passion. And I wanted him to give me his. I reached out for him, but he snapped at me as he pulled even further away. “Go away, female. Go away before you cause me to break my oath any more than I already have.”

“But... But—” I reached out for him.

“Don’t you get it yet? I don’t want you!” His voice was like a demon’s. It burned through my blood, making me reckless and stupid.

“You don’t want me?” I said it softly, my voice high-pitched and reed thin. It sounded as though I was on the verge of tears, but I just felt cold inside. Dead. Empty.

His eyes narrowed to sharp slits, and I shivered at the obvious breadth of his power curling against my flesh, scalding me and leaving me feeling weak and bereft. But that agony soon turned to the first flickering spark of anger.

How dare he? How dare he chase me that way. Kiss me that way. Tell me all those things he just said, only to now turn around and tell me he didn’t want me! I clenched down on my molars.

No way would he send me away like a meek little child who didn’t know what she wanted. I was going to make him want me and make him need me the way he’d made me want him.

It was wrong. I shouldn’t do it.

Oh, yes you should. Make him remember us, siren. Make him remember. Her voice was little more than a scratching whisper, and already I could feel her fading from me.

I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. I didn’t for a second consider how stupid I was acting, how selfish and spoiled. He’d made a fool of me and I would make one of him.

In one smooth movement I moved into his chest, and at the same time I twisted off my charm and slipped it down the hidden pocket in my gown. My siren magic activated instantly, obliterating everything in its path.

“No!” he cried, and terror breathed through his suddenly pale face. But my course was set, and it was too late to stop me.

I slammed my lips down on his and he roared even as his hands banded like steel around my upper arms.

I felt my power slide through his pores. He consumed it, absorbed it into his blood. When I heard his desperate growl, I shivered. He gripped my upper arms so tightly that I winced, knowing tomorrow I’d be bruised by it, but I couldn’t stop.

I slammed my cold palms over his scruffy jaw, holding him in a loose grip, but I felt him tense beneath me as though he’d been zapped straight on by lightening. He gasped and curled into my body, seeking more but whimpering as his mind became increasingly aware of the danger we both found ourselves in.

I was a siren with a siren’s hunger, and he was my male. I wanted him. I needed him. Gods above, what am I doing? What have I done? Why have I been so stupid? No human can resist my touch. I damned him, and for what? To salve my pride?

I sobbed. They would kill him if they got their hands on him, because they would have to. He’d be rabid, feral, depraved. Oh my gods, what have I done? The horror of my actions sank into my brain, and I swiftly released him. That stupid, terrible voice had gone completely silent. The flame of her was all but extinguished. Now it was just me there to face his wrath alone.

I went as still as a dormouse as I watched him watch me with rage glowing in his terribly beautiful eyes.

But then he changed. He transformed from a man into a true beast. His skin turned the color of darkest ebony. Horns curled upward from the crown of his head. His hair turned a shade of ash gray that looked striking against the dark musculature of his frame. I felt the curl of something long and powerful wrap around my lower leg and knew he now had a tail.

I gasped.

His eyes blazed like red flame.

“Oh my gods,” I breathed.

The Man in Black gently extricated himself from my grip. I was too numb to fight it. My jaw dropped because I couldn’t believe what it was I was seeing. He was a monster. A magnificent, gorgeous, demon male was looking at me as if he wanted to consume my soul. My chest heaved.

I heard clacking when he moved, and when I glanced down I noticed his black hooves. Demons did not exist in this world, and yet I did not know what exactly he was. Why aren’t I screaming?

Why isn’t he?

I’d given him everything I had.

“Grow up, Shayera,” he snarled. “Grow up. How dare you ever use your powers against me in that manner. Do you know what you could have done to another? Do you even fathom how stupid and selfish and bloody idiotic you just were? Do you?” The reverberations of his growl echoed frighteningly through the night. I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself, and finally the dam in me burst. Great, big burning tears of shame spilled, one after the other, off my lashes. “I’m...I’m sorry...I’m—”

Moving to his feet, he turned around, refusing to look at me. “Go home. You’re nothing but a child. She would never have done to me what you just did tonight. Leave my sight.”

The pain in his words was a spear of agony through my heart and my tears came in torrents then. I could no longer see him because I was blinded by them. Humiliation and mortification hit me hard and I couldn’t believe I’d done what I’d done. “Please,” I begged. “Please.” I reached for him, but he was gone. Nothing remained of the Man in Black. The space where he’d been was empty, and my heart felt as cold and hollow as his words to me had been.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, staring at the glittering bed of night flowers in bloom. But eventually I felt the arms of my Mama and Papa slide around me. Then Briley’s. Uncle Kelly’s. And even Danika was there, her dragonfly wings buzzing like white noise in the background.

They were all worried. They asked me what had been done to me and why I was crying alone in the dark. Danika was the only who looked over her shoulder, the only one biting down on her lower lip with a look that clearly showed her to be genuinely upset. But unlike my parents, she didn’t seem the least bit confused as to why. Somehow, I knew she’d known. She’d brought the Dark One here. But why? “Danika, I—”

She shook her head. “I’m glad you are well, love. I will go now and make certain everyone knows you are well.”

I watched in astonishment as she quickly flew off without a backwards glance.

What does she know? Who is the Man in Black, really? And what is his fate to mine?

A burning throb in the center of my chest tore me away from my tumultuous thoughts. I looked down.

My necklace with the stone of Veritas gleamed now. It wasn’t just violet anymore, but contained brilliant threads of incredible glowing blue.

I gasped.