The Magic King Read online

  It took a second for my mind to process what I’d just witnessed. “You killed her,” I said, softly at first. But the moment I heard myself say it the horror of it consumed me.

  I understood then what I’d refused to see when she’d been sobbing before me. Much as I hated to admit it, Shayera had sinned against the siren by attempting to steal her soul orb. Shay hadn’t known what she was doing—she was only a child—and yet it wouldn’t have absolved that most terrible of crimes if she’d managed to pull it off. The harm that would have been done to the siren would have been immeasurable. It seemed understandable that her reaction had been what it had been.

  I looked up at Calypso, feeling cold and dead inside. “You killed her.”

  She shrugged. “Isn’t that what you wanted? You came here seeking vengeance, and I granted it to you.”

  “Not this.”

  She scoffed, causing her hair to undulate like tentacles around her slim frame. “Vengeance always comes with a price, Dark Prince. You wanted her dead. I heard your thoughts. I saw the cruel and barbaric images. You should be rejoicing, I made it simple for you.”

  “You aren’t who you used to be, Calypso. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  She lifted her hand, looking as though she meant to strike me. A flash of lightning curled menacingly through the dark gray sky. I never flinched or recoiled.

  Coming here had been a terrible and grave mistake. I was a killer, and I couldn’t throw stones. But it was one thing to feel something and another to act upon the terrible thoughts.

  Deep down I’d known that fate would hound Shayera, and that one way or another she could no more outrun her terrible destiny anymore than we’d been able to outrun the curse. But I’d come anyway.

  In the end, I was just as much to blame for what had been done to this siren as Shayera was for what had been done to her.

  “Leave my side,” the goddess hissed, “and never return.”

  Fat, punishing drops of ice-cold rain pelted my naked face. But I ignored it, staring at her for several long seconds and wanting to say so much more but knowing that ultimately my words would fall on deaf ears.

  I walked past her. Genesis rumbled to life at my approach. I didn’t look back as I straddled my bike.

  It seemed no matter what I did I screwed up everything I touched.

  Calypso

  I STARED AT THE WATER that was once a siren and felt a tugging in the deepest part of my soul.

  Walking toward the figure, I whispered, “Animas,” and immediately life flowed back into the water. The siren gasped, sat up, and stared at me with tears still shimmering wetly in her long lashes. Her hands wrapped around her throat and I heard her thoughts as clearly as though they were my own. Why had she been returned to the living? How had she incurred her goddess’s wrath?

  “Never curse a child again,” I told her and then gestured toward Seren, telling her without words to leave my side.

  “Yes... Yes, my Goddess.”

  The siren scrambled to her feet and in seconds had sailed over the cliff’s edge and into the waters we called home.

  I stood upon that cliff, feeling alone but contemplative.

  The Dark Prince suffered. I’d felt it keenly, through the very marrow of my soul. Clutching at my chest, I stared toward a sky that held no answers for me. It never gave me what I needed.

  I wasn’t even sure what it was I needed, other than I felt sometimes as though I’d lost the very best parts of myself and was nothing more than a shell, full of pain, misery, and blackness.

  I stood there for what felt an eternity before I began to get the sensation that I was being watched. It was a prickling on the back of my neck that made me turn, and when I did I saw a man, or at least the shadow of one.

  He was tall and powerfully built, and he stared at me with electric-blue eyes. I’d never seen that shadow man before, but I recognized him all the same. “You’ve been watching me,” I said.

  The shadow said nothing, only continued to stare.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Do I know you?”

  I didn’t think the shadow would answer, but finally it spoke to me. “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.”

  I gasped, though I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t know how the tears had begun to fall down my cheeks, either. I lifted my hand, wanting to say... Something. Anything.

  But from one blink to the next, the shadowman had left and my heart felt fractured and splintered into a thousand tiny slivers of woe.

  LETTER TO SHAY

  My greatest fear has been realized today. You have been cursed again, Shayera. And I was too late to save you. What good am I to this world if the one thing that matters most I cannot protect?

  I went to see a goddess.

  I thought I went to ask her to fix you. To recreate you. Make you anew. But as I stood there with water swirling about my face, inches away from death, I knew why I’d really gone. To have her take the decision out of my hands. To end me. To take away this pain once and for all.

  I shouldn’t return for you. I should walk away. Let you live your life.

  I should do a great many things, I imagine.

  And yet I never seem to keep any of my promises.

  Chapter 6

  Rumpel

  Letter to Shay

  Do you feel it, Carrots?

  I slice myself open. I bleed upon these pages. My soul has been breathed in them. If you knew me at all, you would know the great depths of my love for you. But I am a monster, selfish and unreasoning when it comes to guarding and protecting you. And you are perfection. Innocence and beauty breathed to life.

  How you must hate me. How you must despise me. I dream of a future together. But I know it cannot be. You are too pure and I am too soiled.

  Would you even miss me?

  Could you make a better life without me?

  You deserve better than this.

  You deserve better than me.

  I WANT YOU. I LIE AWAKE at night, shaking with an unbearable hunger for your touch. Your hands upon mine. Your skin pressed to mine. The scent of your body washes over me.

  I close my eyes and I remember roses. Everywhere, there are roses.

  I stood on the edge of a cliff tonight, hypnotized by the gentle rolling waves as they kissed the sands beneath. One more step and I could fall.

  It is not death that scares me, Carrots. It is living. It is the endless cycle of pain that eats away at me day in and day out.

  I watch you grow. I cannot stay away. I am in awe of your first steps. The trill of your laughter. The way your eyes gleam when you are excited and even how your rosebud lips turn down when you are sad.

  Every nuance, every facet of you fascinates me. I would move heaven and earth to keep you safe always, but I fear a day may come when I cannot save you from yourself.

  THERE COMES A TIME when it all stops—the fervor, the zeal, the masochism of always being around her when I knew she did not know who I was, when I knew I could never truly show her how much I cared.

  After that night upon Calypso’s cliffs, I ceased following up on my Shayera. Prince, too, had stopped. His reasons were his own, though I suspected I knew why.

  At first, the tortures of being separated from her were unimaginable. I howled madly at the moon, night after night, trapped within my realm of clouds, suffocating on the madness closing in on me and choking the life from my body.

  I went through a phase where I didn’t bathe and didn’t interact with anyone, save for Euralis, and only when he came to me.

  I was a wreck, and I knew it.

  I was also ashamed of my weakness and that I’d allowed the farce to continue for so long, thinking that I could straddle both worlds and not suffer so.

  I cut off all personal ties to Shayera. I did keep guards on her—my ravens, to protect her from herself—but I never went to her again. I didn’t watch her anymore. No more.

 
I had to do it for my own sanity. All things considered, that wasn’t exactly saying much, as I’d never in my entire existence been more insane.

  After a year, though, I finally bathed.

  And after the next one, I began to laugh.

  By the third year, I walked among my friends and servants again, and if I wondered about Shayera at all, it was an idle thought now and again. I never lingered on it. She was guarded and protected, and that was the best gift I could give her.

  There were even nights where I sometimes contemplated whether she would find another great love. It was true that there was only ever one soul mate, but in this life she did not know she’d ever found hers. But there were many great loves in life, and she would find another. Sure, the thought panged me and sometimes left me reeling in agony, but the depression and pain lessened over time.

  And then one day, Danika came to visit me. Years had passed since I’d seen the fairy godmother, but she’d not changed much, other than looking a little more mature, a little wiser in the eyes.

  She and Jericho had still not mended fences. She said they never would, until she was satisfied that her godchildren were reunited and happy again.

  I shouldn’t have done it, but I gave into curiosity and asked her about Shayera.

  I will never forget that scene because it’s burned indelibly into my mind. Blinking, she looked up at me with something akin to guilt burning in the depths of her dark-blue eyes. Her rosebud lips twisted up into a worried pucker and my skin shivered with fear and adrenaline.

  “Danika, what is it? What are you keeping from me?”

  Setting down her cup of tea, she leaned back in her seat and shook her head. “You are doing so well now, Rumpel. Do you really want—”

  That’s when I understood the illusion of all I’d done and accomplished, my false belief that I’d finally moved on, and that now Shayera could too. I leaned forward and growled, “Tell me now, fae.”

  She inhaled and glowered at me, but spoke nonetheless. “The girl lives. And she is as well as she could possibly be.”

  “What the devil does that mean,” I said in a low, shivering voice that echoed with the strains of gravel and grit.

  Never one to be easily intimidated, she leaned forward until our noses practically touched and hissed, “How the hell do you think she is, Demone Prince? She’s a siren now. Her world has shrunk down to four walls and a roof. She never leaves her home. She never speaks to others. She’s a hermit and she grows more and more despondent with each day that passes.”

  My heart physically ached to hear her say it. I wasn’t a fool. I’d known exactly the reaction Betty and Gerard would have after the cursing of their child, and they did what any sensible parent would do. They were forced to lock her up, for her own safety and that of everyone else.

  Weariness tugged at my soul and I grunted as I leaned heavily back into my seat. “I am a selfish bastard. She told me of her upbringing. The isolation she’d been put through. But she’d survived it then, Danika. She can survive it now.”

  “It’s not the same, and you bloody know it, imp,” she said the word softly, but with a definite tone of disapproval. “Shayera did not share her soul with another then. She does now. I don’t give a rat’s arse what Betty and Gerard or even you want anymore. You know better than the both of them that once a soul has been cleaved it will remain forever faithful and, in her case, tortured beyond what a young woman should bear. She is only fourteen, Rumpel, and even so she cries in her sleep night after night—”

  “Stop!” I held up my hand. “Tell me no more.”

  “No!” She jumped out of her seat and clenched her tiny hands into fists. “No, you need to hear this. You need to know these things. You cannot put on your blinders, not anymore. I won’t allow it. She suffers, and every night the suffering only increases. Betty and Gerard are at their wits’ end. They believe it’s the siren lure that’s done this to their daughter, but I know better, and so do you. Her soul needs to find its mate or she will never again know peace, whether she’s a siren or not.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d begun crying until I felt the cool splash of a tear plop onto the back of my hand. Sniffing, I swiped at my cheeks.

  “What the hell should I do? I made a vow to Betty. I’m honor bound to—”

  “For gods’ sake, Rumpel,” she hissed, “you’re not magically induced to obey. It’s your own bloody honor that keeps you in chains this way. Betty did not know what she asked when she asked it.”

  “She is Shayera’s mother! I’ve already done them all such great harm. If I have any hope, any chance of—”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, slamming my mouth shut. Damn it all to the very pits of the underworld. The truth I’d buried deeply had just come spewing out of my mouth like hot vomit. All the careful lies and years of work I’d put in to get myself to a better place were crashing down around me. I was just as much in love with her as I’d ever been.

  “She’s little more than a bairn still.” I shuddered, closing my eyes and fighting to breathe.

  Those words seemed to strip the fight out of Danika too, and she heaved. “Gods above, but I know it. I know it, Dark One. I do not envy you, my friend.”

  I glared at her. “Go home, Danika. Leave me in peace. Fix the others. At least they stand a chance of a happily ever after.”

  “You do too.” She clasped her hands together and her dark eyes pleaded with me, but for what I didn’t know.

  I hated her for making me remember and for bringing it all back up. “Go home.” I said it softly but with conviction.

  Her wings buzzed loudly in the almost complete silence that echoed like a vast gulf between us. “I will leave,” she said and turned, flicking her wand to open up a time portal. But then she paused and looked back at me unflinchingly before saying, “If you love her at all, give her the peace she needs, Rumpel. Go to her, send her Prince, even. But do not abandon her like this. I love Gerard and Betty, but in this they are so very wrong. They speak with parental love, but in so doing, they are grievously wounding their daughter and you. You both deserve so much better than the hand you’ve been given.”

  In the hours after she left, I sat in deep contemplation, staring into the fire, feeling grieved by the thought of Shayera suffering, because she didn’t deserve to endure this fate. Not her.

  That’s when the idea was born. After decades of marriage to my bride, I’d come so bloody close to finding a temporary cure for Shayera’s siren curse. The curse could never be completely eradicated, but it could be transformed, and I’d been on the cusp of discovery.

  My books and papers had all vanished in the other time, but the curse of having such an exacting memory as mine might, temporarily, be turned into a boon.

  Standing up, I walked to my work room, and I didn’t leave it for the next three years. I worked day and night, getting myself back to where I’d been before the curse had ripped my world away from me.

  One night, Euralis came and sat with me. We enjoyed dinner together, and he made the most innocuous and innocent of comments, which finally cracked the code.

  “Father,” he said, “you should leave this room. Stop whatever madness has consumed you. Live a little.”

  Busy staring into my book of spells and herbs, I blew off the words he oft-repeated to me with a shrug and mumbled oath, the same as always.

  He didn’t let it go. “This quest of yours, it’s impossible, and you know it. Nothing changes for you. Nothing.”

  I stilled, wanting to snap at him, wanting to call him back to me and tell him that I wasn’t the unfeeling monster he thought me to be. I needed to explain to him that the only thing still holding me together wasn’t my love for Shayera, but his love for me. I needed him to know that I was aware I was a terrible father, and that I loved him to death, and...

  Then a light bulb went off in my head, and the answer was so obvious that I began to laugh like a madman, bending over and slapping at my knees. The answer had been in fr
ont of me the entire time, and I hadn’t known it because I’d been unyielding in my belief that I was on the right path. The impossible was impossible, in every place save for one.

  There was one place in all of Kingdom where rules did not apply, where up was sometimes down and left was sometimes right, and where magic created its own rubrics and madness reigned.

  The next day, I flew off to find the Hatter and exchanged several vials of good fortune spells for the one thing I’d always needed but had never known until just then: hope.

  The first blossom came forth from the hope tree during the third night of the month, under the soft glow of the full blood-red moon.

  I stirred that translucent flower into my kettle, and immediately I felt the magic, the rightness. With a shudder, I manifested a beautiful ring of gold with hands knotted together and holding a fiery ruby the same shade as Shayera’s wild hair.

  I dipped it in then breathed.

  The ring glowed like blue flame in my hand. It singed my fingertips, but I did not drop it. Instead, I stared at it with eyes shimmering with wet heat and a heart that finally felt hope for my beloved—true hope, the kind that released the shackles around one’s soul, even if only briefly. She was free, though not forever and not always. Although the power in the ring would suppress the siren magic to nearly null, every night she would be required to take the ring off, as it would dull her life force just a little during the day. But at least she could leave her home. She could mingle with others. She could begin to live.

  “Dani... Danika,” I cried out, voice hoarse from years of disuse.

  The tightening at my back let me know she’d come. “Rumpel?” she asked, sounding shocked.

  I turned and noted the high bloom of pink on her cheeks and her wide, bright eyes. I tipped the ring toward her. “Give her this. But say it was you. If they thought it was me, they’d never allow her to have it.”