The Magic King Read online

  “You can trust me, Mama.”

  “Promise us, papillon. Promise me with all your heart and soul.”

  “I promise, Papa.”

  The worry didn’t leave his eyes, but his chest visibly rose and fell with his swift inhale and exhale. His long, dark lashes fluttered again, and I couldn’t help but wish I knew the real reason why my parents worried so much about me. Who was this man in black, and was he connected to a cursed siren?

  “Then you may play in the backyard,” Mama said.

  I gasped and clapped my hands. “Really?”

  Papa stuck up a finger. “Yes, but only here. Nowhere else. Never wander beyond our fence. No more sneaking off to the lake. Ever.”

  I felt a momentary flash of irritation because the backyard wasn’t where the real adventures were. Papa set his mouth into a thin line, and I knew that if I protested, they would snatch the gift away and tell me I was too young to understand this responsibility.

  I wasn’t dumb. Mama had a very smart brain, and she didn’t know it yet, but I did too. At times, I would wake up from a dream in the morning, remembering fantastical and wonderful things about a world that didn’t exist but that felt as real as the world I lived in, if just for a moment.

  In my dreams was a world where I read a lot, where I was tall and pretty and nice. And a man with kind blue eyes smiled down at me all the time. I was never scared because he was always right there with me. But when he left me, I was terrified.

  I dreamt of fire and magic, of talking about things that I was too young to understand, such as the theory of dark and light matter and why it was that he manipulated the darkness instead of the light.

  The ghostly echoes of our conversations didn’t always make sense to me. I couldn’t explain what dark and light manipulation was, only that he knew how to do it and that I liked it a lot, as the woman in those dreams.

  The tenor of his voice was deep, throaty, and rumbly, different than my papa’s scratchy one. It sounded as if he’d swallowed lots of rocks whenever he talked, but there was also a pretty lilting quality to his accent too. It was like no one else’s in the village. I liked it much more than anything I had ever heard around me.

  Once, several months before, I’d tried to tell Mommy about my dreams. Her eyes had grown big and wide and had filled up with tears. She’d quickly slapped a hand over my mouth and said in a whispered rush, “Never, never speak of this again, my Shay. Not in this house, where the walls have ears.”

  Her reaction scared me so badly that I never tried talking to her about them again.

  I licked my lips, staring between my parents as Mommy continued to hang on tightly to me and look up at Papa’s dark-blue eyes.

  Papa finally pried Mommy’s hands off of me and set me down, barefoot, on the plush carpet of verdant grass. I looked up at his handsome face, smiling but feeling a little sick to my stomach.

  After less than a minute, he leaned down and hugged me hard. “Remember I love you, papillon.”

  Then he turned on his heel and walked toward the house, but not before I saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. Mama looked at him as he walked away, and only once he’d gone back in the house did she look back at me.

  Her smile was soft but sad. And without saying anything else to me, she followed in my father’s footsteps. The thrill of adventure now completely gone, I sat down in the middle of the field, staring out at the expansive blue sky, feeling melancholy.

  And that was how he found me.

  A big dog came loping through the trees, wearing what looked like an impossible smile on his face, its long pink tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. He ran to me, making me shriek at first. He was so huge that I was terrified he was going to grab me by my throat and drag me off.

  But he didn’t do that. Instead, he whined when he got to my side, with his bushy tail thumping the ground over and over as he licked my face. He acted as though he’d lost me but had found me again, and he was over the moon with joy.

  Truth was, the second he licked my cheek, I felt that same kind of happy joy to be with him too. I had my best friend that I’d always wished for, though I didn’t know it then. He was large and friendly, with shaggy black hair and dark-brown eyes rimmed in deep red, and I called him Prince. I wasn’t sure why, but he seemed to like the name the second I said it.

  His thick tail struck the earth twice, as though telling me, “Perfect.”

  We became inseparable after that. At first, Mommy and Papa had been scared to see that big animal shadowing my footsteps, but eventually even Papa began to tolerate the beast. Then he would only ever let me leave the house if Prince was with me. Soon, I graduated from getting to play only in the backyard to being able to roam my hamlet if the mood struck me.

  Prince once ran off a group of boys who’d thrown rocks at me and had begun to call me names, telling me I was an ugly witch because of my bright-red hair. Prince attacked the one nearest us, biting his hand so hard that he split it open. The rest of the boys ran off after that, screaming about my demon dog.

  I didn’t really make many human friends because no one wanted to get that close to Prince. But I didn’t mind. Prince was nice to Briley, Mommy and Papa. Even Uncle Kelly only got growled at once or twice. I loved Prince, and he loved me. He always slept outside my window, and when the nights got really cold, Mommy would even leave the front door open for him.

  Prince never moved into the house, though I tried to sneak him into my room all the time. He would just whine and cry and pace underneath my window until I came out to him. So I stopped trying to sneak him in.

  For three years I loved Prince with all of my heart and soul. He was my pal, my buddy, and my very dearest love. “I never want anyone else but you, Prince,” I whispered to him just as the sun was beginning to set on the night before my ninth birthday. The apple-willow tree sat very still tonight, only lazily drawing the tips of its leafy limbs over my belly and tickling me.

  Prince licked my cheek, huffing his stinky doggy breath in my face, and I smiled. My ninth birthday was going to be a great day.

  Chapter 2

  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. “Bl
oody 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.