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.
Act II
Letter to Carrots
I saw you kiss a boy today. You have no idea how close he came to death.
Have you ever felt agony? And I do not mean the death of a cherished family friend, or even the loss of a family heirloom, but the soul-rending pain that steals one’s breath from one’s body and leaves you feeling misery of the most acute kind?
It was not that you kissed the boy that broke me, but the smile upon your face once you’d done it. The look of joy and wonder in your eyes only I had ever been able to breathe into you.
Your mother was right that you can find love again. I think I should let you go, my angel. And yet the thought of it brings me to tears.
I punished you for it. I made you believe I felt nothing when you touched me. But Gods, you couldn’t have been more wrong. I sent you away because I did want you. Too much. I felt myself coming alive again, in a way only she’d ever been able to make me feel and I know it’s stupid but I felt horrified by my reaction. For so long my only struggle was to make you mine and now that you’re here, I can’t begin to describe the sensations coursing through me.
I wanted to take you. I wanted to own you. I wanted to make you remember me. And I was ashamed because in that one moment of purity and joy I felt as though I’d also cheated on you.
On the memory of you.
Your memories of me are gone. Maybe for a time. Maybe forever. Who can say for certain with magic like that?
Tonight I know what I must finally do. I cannot be around you anymore. It hurts too much.
I am leaving. For good. To where, I haven’t a clue. I can’t watch you fall in love with another and wish you well. I can’t cheer you on in life if I cannot take my rightful place beside you.
I have loved you with a love far greater and deeper than anyone else in all the worlds and I will love you until I return to the dust from which I was made.
You will own my dark soul forever.
But this burden I cannot bear any longer.
Goodbye, Carrots.
May you always know the very best and truest of happiness and joy in this world.
Chapter 10
Shayera
Not a moment went by in the next two years in which I wasn’t haunted by that night. I’d called to Danika to me so many times, begging her to tell me where—and who—he was, but she never would. Though she’d comfort me with her arms and her gentle loving words, she would never give me what I really needed.
Mama and Papa wouldn’t talk to me about that night. It was as if something in them had broken too. I was alone with my misery, and every day only got worse. I wanted to find him again, beg him to forgive me, and tell him that I had changed and was different. Never in my sane and rational mind would I have considered doing that to anyone, but something had overtaken me that night.
I closed my eyes and remembered the fiery arrows that’d been shoved through my heart when he’d said those four words to me: “I don’t want you.”
Even though time had passed, the words left me aching and vulnerable. His careless comment had hurt me so violently that I’d forgotten myself, forgotten who I was and what I could do.
All I’d wanted was for him to want me as desperately as he’d made me want him. A part of me had begun to fall in love with him that night, and all I’d wanted was for him to say it back.
I was also deeply and horribly mortified that I’d used him in that way and by my actions. Mostly, though, I was mortified because of what I’d been capable of doing.
Never in my life could I have imagined myself being so evil as I’d been to him that night. If he hadn’t survived the touch of my skin, I would have doomed him to a fate he hadn’t deserved.
I blew out the candle on the cupcake that’d been set before me.
Only Mama, Papa, and Danika were there for my twenty-first birthday. Ever since that night at the ball, I’d lost all taste for revelry, hating myself with a shame that grew wider and deeper every day.
A tear slipped out the corner of my eye. I felt empty and hollow.
“Make a wish, papillon,” Papa whispered to me.
I shook my head and brushed at my wet cheek. “I don’t want to. Not anymore.”
He looked at Mama with a worried frown. Creases covered his forehead, and Mama closed her eyes, looking weary and old all of a sudden.
Danika spoke first. “Twenty-one officially today. And now, all past sins must come to light.” She shook her head and looked at my parents, and for the first time I spied something on her face I’d never seen in her before.
She was disappointed in them, in me. I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. I was a disappointment, and that was a truth I could not escape. All I wanted was to fix what I’d done that night, but I couldn’t go back and undo it. In the privacy of my room, after hours in the very deepest part of night, I’d called to the Man in Black, hoping that somehow he would hear me, and that he would come to me. But he never had.
Mama shuddered, took a deep breath, and then looked at me. “There is one gift I can give you today, my sweet girl. One that I’ve withheld from you for far too long.”
I shook my head. “Mama, really I’m—”
“Non,” Papa grunted. “Non. Because if someone had done to your mother and I what we’ve done to you, I would murder them, Shayera. I am ashamed and embarrassed by what we’ve done.”
I gasped. What in the world are they talking about? What could they possibly have done? And murder? Papa is a pacifist. He never fights, and he believes very firmly in turning the other cheek. What is this insanity? Several seconds passed and still no one said anything. “Mama? Danika? What’s—”
“The Man in Black,” Papa said and closed his eyes, “his real name is Rumpelstiltskin.”
Mama hiccupped, covered her mouth with her hand, and looked down at her feet.
Something inside of me felt suddenly warm. Like a wee seedling shooting up from damp earth, I felt a stirring, movement, the hum of new life. I trembled and clutched at my shirt with nerveless fingers.
“And he loves you with all his bloody heart and soul,” Danika snapped, glaring at my parents, who were both staring down at their hands with shame burning in their eyes.
“You have to understand”—Mama looked up at me pleadingly—“we did what we thought right. We did the only thing we could do for you. You were a child, Shay. A child. And—”
Danika scoffed. “I told you he would honor the terms. I told you both, all along. You can’t keep destiny away, no matter how much you might wish it wasn’t so.”
“You should never have brought him that night. Not like that,” Mama hissed right back.
I couldn’t speak. I just gazed at the three of them, in shock.
Danika shoved a curl of hair out of her eye. “Maybe not, Betty. Maybe you’re right.”
“She had a chance that night,” Mama said softly, brokenly. She cried openly, no longer trying to hide it from me.
Papa gripped her thin shoulder and squeezed gently. “But you know as well as I do, my beloved, that it would not have been right. They are a destined match, and we have done them a great wrong.”
He said this to Mama but looked at me.
Mama leaned into his frame, burying her face into his chest and weeping.
“We love you, papillon,” he said. “You must understand that, first and foremost and above all else. What we did we did out
of love. We only ever wanted the best for you.”
I held up my hand, feeling broken and terrified but also wanting to cry because something in me was warm again. My soul felt like it was throbbing. It beat with warmth. “What in the world is going on here? Nothing is making any sense.”
Danika cringed. “Child, the telling of this tale isn’t a quick one. But you deserve to know. You deserve to know it all.”
The three of them spent hours telling me. And as they spoke of destiny and curses and a man I’d once loved in another time and another world, I began to cry. The tears didn’t stop once they started.
They told me of a monster, a dark man who’d been changed by love. By my love and that of the children who had been ours. They told me of my great love for him and the mountains he’d climbed, the nearly impossible hurdles he’d had to jump to find me again. He’d orchestrated Mama and Papa’s coming together in order to ensure that I was brought back into the world of Kingdom at the right time. He’d killed, over and over again. He’d very nearly killed Papa when he and Mama had stubbornly refused to believe that they’d been destined for one another.
Mama spoke of her own stone of Veritas and how it had brought Papa back into her life. I shook, remembering how at nineteen I’d thought the trinket a child’s story and nothing more.
I clung to my own stone of Veritas, still threaded through with deep veins of sapphire blue, and shook my head, unable to speak. My thoughts were jumbled and my mind swirled as I tried to comprehend the steps my parents had taken. At first I was upset, then I remembered how they’d always gone out of their way to show their love to me. I knew that, no matter what they’d done, they had done it out of love.
I tried to see things through their eyes. A man grown. A small child. A destiny out of their hands and out of their control. I remembered Rumpelstiltskin on the beach that day when I’d been cursed, and how he’d so casually and savagely ripped that stranger’s throat out. There was a cruelty in the Dark One, but it called to me. I knew my parents could never hope to comprehend, because on the surface he and I seemed so very different.