Just one.
“Who? Who?” Betty blinked, shook her head, and turned to look at me with wide frantic eyes. “Who is—”
I watched Belle, dressed in her Sunday best—a gorgeous summery-yellow gown that hugged her curves tightly—saunter by with Adam Prince.
Adam was an unfortunate-looking man. Tall and monstrously huge, he towered over Belle’s slight frame. He was also disgustingly hairy. There was hair crawling out of his ear cavities for, gods sakes’.
Rumor had it that, long ago, he’d been under a curse of sorts. I wasn’t exactly certain of the particulars. All I knew was Adam’s family was wealthy and owned not just our village, but many of the neighboring ones as well.
Belle was moving brusquely out the door, yanking on the train of her gown, which Adam trod on with his big, ugly feet every third or fourth step.
“That is Belle and—”
Betty gasped. “Beauty and the Beast? No effing way.”
My brows drew down. “What are these words you’re saying? Effing? I take it it means nothing good?”
A high-pitched giggle spilled off her tongue before she shook her head and ran a hand down her unicorn’s mane. “This is unreal. I mean, I accepted the fact that you were a starman hours ago, but this... this...” She pointed to Belle and Adam’s slowly-diminishing figures in the distance, her words trailing off.
Adam was attempting to grab Belle by the elbow, to no avail. She kept shoving him back on his heels and whipping a finger underneath his nose. Even though I could not hear the words being said from this distance, I had no problem understanding the gist.
Belle’s brown eyes, which I’d once thought the prettiest things in the entirety of the world, sparked with a dark thread of anger. Adam’s head hung low. He looked shamefaced and mortified.
My gods, that fate could have been mine. The thought was so overwhelming that I felt a wave of dizziness flash through me. I’d been blinded by my own obsession with her, by my belief that Belle loved me as dearly as I had her.
But Brigette had always known. And what had my friend earned for her honesty to me? Nothing but my scorn.
I felt raw, wounded, and as angry as the darkest depths of Hades’s fiery underworld at my own stupidity and blind belief in a female who’d not deserved my heart. I thrust out my jaw as that seedling of fire began to curl and sink deep into my very marrow.
I’d been a fool. The entire village must have had a good laugh at my expense.
Shaking her head, Betty drew me away from my poisonous thoughts. I stared at the pretty pigêon, wondering what sort of dark deeds she hid in her own heart. What terrible secrets did her smiles conceal?
I’d studied her interactions with her family, the way she’d so easily laughed, especially with the boy, Briley. She was so different than Belle.
But was she?
Was she really?
Was I being a fool yet again? All these memories rolling through me, memories of her and I, were they clouding my good sense, making me see an angel where only a monster lived instead?
What kind of dark spell had Rumpel cast on us?
I clenched my molars, bearing down sharply, to the point that they began to ache, but I was lost and confused and, frankly, heartsick by my own stupidity.
“I can’t believe I’m about to ask this, but”—she looked at me with her piercing chocolate-brown eyes, so similar to Belle’s own that it caused my heart to squeeze painfully in my chest—“what is this world? Because it sure as hell isn’t Earth. I know that.”
My brows dipped. “How did you come to that conclusion in the span of a few minutes?”
She shrugged and flicked her wrist to encompass the whole of our surroundings. “Daddy taught me about Occam’s razor.”
My nose wrinkled. “Who is he?”
Her full mouth twitched as she absentmindedly began to twirl a length of her unusual, yet lovely, candy-colored hair around her finger. “Not a he. It’s a scientific principle meaning the simplest answer is usually the right one. My brain keeps telling me that I’m dead, and this is some twisted version of Heaven, but probably Hell since I’m not exactly having that much fun here. But my heart—”
She pursed her lips and suddenly stopped talking, wrapping her arms around her knees as she stared back at the tavern with a hard, almost glaring look.
Goddess, I didn’t want my own heart to be racing as it was from seeing her this way, as scared and confused as me, and heart-achingly lovely. She smelled of lavender and the stench of the pond water from earlier—which was awful—and yet from the moment I’d spied Betty, I’d begun to feel things.
I felt a surge of fury followed closely by a violent wave of relief I couldn’t even begin to explain. My emotions made no sense. I was angry at her for it, too, blaming her even as I grappled with a need to press her to me and never, ever let her go again.
My voice was a gravely burr as I said, “What? What does your heart say?”
She sighed miserably. “That this is all very real. I’m scared to death because... why did Kelly call my name back there? What happened to him? Or, God forbid”—she gasped—“my nephew?”
I refused to touch her, to hold her, to try and comfort her. I was growing to despise womankind, all of them, even the good ones like Brigitte. I hated their ability to weaken me and make me soft, stupid, and malleable, just like Belle’s Adam. But when Betty’s eyes began to swim with tears, I found myself moving to my knees, yanking her to me by her elbows, and plastering her tight to my trembling frame.
When she began to shake, shoulders heaving with her silent tears, my heart fractured into a thousand splinters of anguish and pain. When I thought of Belle’s duplicity, all I felt was fire.
I’d known Belle the whole of my life, but nothing she’d done had affected me the way Betty’s sorrow was. Nothing made me feel such a frenzy of helplessness that I wanted to raze the town to a cinder if it meant making her smile again.
Hating my weakness for women, cursing myself every type of fool, I leaned over and kissed the crown of her head. And when her small fingers bunched into my shirt and she dug in tight, I, too, began to shake.
Who was this woman?
Why did my body feel so completely detached from my mind?
My mind wanted to hurt her kind, wanted to make a fool of women as they’d so often made a fool of me. Yet my body would die to protect her. I could not seem to let her go, no matter how much I willed it so.
We’d been enchanted, she and I. It was the only rational explanation for this. We had to break this curse the demon had set upon us. But a still, small voice in my mind screamed at me that that made absolutely no sense.
Why would the dark sorcerer care about Betty and I finding love? That was not the business he worked in. He made deals that almost always benefited him. He couldn’t care less about the happiness of others, not unless he, too, profited from the outcome.
Betty nuzzled my chest with her nose, sobbing quietly even as she mumbled, “What is happening to me?”
Knowing she was as confused by this as I was made me like her just a little bit better. Like it or not, she and I were in this thing together.
I wanted to despise her as I now did Belle, and yet somehow, my hands had framed her face. I was staring deeply into her eyes, covered by black framed glasses which I found oddly soothing, and she into mine, and again, my heart screamed only one word back at me.
Home.
I swallowed hard. One tear spilled unchecked down her cheek, and I brushed it away with my thumb.
I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to want her. Didn’t want to touch her, didn’t want to feel this strange, wonderful, all-consuming spark curling through me like heated fog. Didn’t want my limbs feeling weak and heavy.
Another tear trekked down her other cheek. Her thick lashes were coated in them.
“You should never cry, ma petite.”
A flicker of surprise breathed through her warm eyes, and her hands were sudde
nly on my wrists, bearing down.
“You’ve called me that before, haven’t you? In another life? Another time? I know I sound crazy right now, Gerard, but I swear it’s real. Isn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer that. I wanted to. By the gods, I wanted to. I wanted to tell her that yes, it was all real. That I felt the very imprint of her breathing through my soul right now. That her pain was mine. That her smiles and tears and laughter were all mine. That there was a catalogue of her engraved through every fiber of my being. That I would lay down my life for her, that she was all things, everything to me. That we’d made a life together once and it’d been the best damn thing I’d ever known in my entire existence.
But this hurt too much. It hurt to look at that dark place inside of me that threatened every second to erupt into a fiery inferno of pain and desire. That every minute we spent together, I kept recalling things that had absolutely no basis in reality, yet felt more real than all of this.
There were flashes of moments and times scrolling through my mind. A different me. A different her. A different world where she’d once been everything to me.
But she was a stranger to me now, just as I was to her.
My nostrils flared as I looked away, and my hands finally released her. But Betty grabbed hold of me with an unflinching and punishing grip far more painful than I’d expected from her.
She was shaking her head, and her eyes were wild and alive. “You can’t do this, Gerard. You hear me? You can’t do this.”
I swallowed hard, pulled my hands away roughly, and stood, putting space between us until, finally, I could breathe again without the specter of memories that could not possibly exist hounding me.
Her face crumpled, and it was agony not to run to her. Not to hold her. Not to whisper that she was alright, that no matter my own personal demons, I would never allow anything or anyone to hurt her again.
But I was a liar, because I was hurting her right now, and I couldn’t stop. Betty deserved better than the monster I felt myself becoming.
“It’s too late, Betty,” I said with hard shake of my head. “This is a curse, don’t you see? I don’t want you. And you don’t want me. Rumplestiltskin’s done—”
She’d gone absolutely still when I’d started speaking, but the second I’d said I didn’t want her, I’d seen the sheen of pain on her face, and it had gutted me. I wanted to take it back. Wanted to scream out that I was a liar, that I meant none of this. That I was a coward and terrified of my own shadow right now.
“How dare you.” She jumped to her feet, swiped at the tears, and pointed at my chest. “You’re a GD coward, Gerard Caron, and you deserve what you get.”
Then she turned on her unusual footwear and fled, running so fast my stunned brain didn’t even realize what was going on until I’d lost her.
The second I did, cold terror washed through me.
“Betty! Betty! Come back. Come back to me!” I ran. Like a madman, I ran through those streets, not caring who or what saw me, only knowing I needed to find her.
My heart.
My world.
My love.
Chapter 12
Danika, fairy godmother extraordinaire
I watched the scene unfold through the looking glass with a mournful frown growing ever larger on my face. What had Rumpel done?
How could he have possibly believed tossing those two into the wilds this way could bring about the type of outcome he hoped for? It was madness. But then, he was mad, wasn’t he?
Shayera had truly been Rumpel’s compass when it came to learning how to trust and open up his dark heart to another. Without her, he was devolving back into the blackguard he’d once been.
I squeezed my eyes shut, heart aching fiercely in my chest. Not that I blamed him. I, too, had lost my love. But I hadn’t been corrupt before finding Jericho. Rumpel had. I missed my love with all the fierce longing and passion of a woman drowning, but at my core, I was a fairy godmother. I cared about the lives and loves of my charges. And the Bad Five had always been my particular favorites.
Godmothers should never admit to having favorites, but I had and still did. I had to fix this mess. I looked back into the glass.
My heart grew ever heavier as I watched Gerard and Betty battle what their brains and their hearts said. Saw how it was Betty in this incarnation who was more open to the possibility that she wasn’t mad at all. Saw Gerard begin his spiral into the darkness that had nearly taken him from me in the last timeline.
Then, he’d been Kingdom’s greatest Casanova—hardened, ruthless, and callous when it came to trampling the hearts of the fairer sex. In that timeline, just as in this one, it had been Belle who’d been the impetus for his metamorphosis from an upright and genuinely kind-hearted man into one so cold, cruel, and conniving when it came to taking whatever he wanted from his lovers. His crimes had finally forced him to stand trial before the fairy council, where he’d been condemned to hang for his sins.
Betty had saved him from those demons then, but I wasn’t sure my sweet lass could save him from them now. She ran away, and my wings beat like tiny projectiles behind my back, creating a terrible buzzing noise that echoed in my ears.
Rumpel was a darn fool if he thought these two would ever find their way back again if left to their own devices. I should have stepped in when the bloody prince had tried to snap Gerard’s neck earlier, but Rumpel’s madness was also his brilliance, and I’d hoped he had a plan, something I could not see, some way to fix this mess that would leave me humbled and marveling. But I could see now there wasn’t.
Rumpel didn’t have the first clue what he was doing, but then, he wasn’t a godmother. It wasn’t his lot in life to bring happiness and joy to the lives of others. The only people he’d ever managed to be good for were his wife and children. Without them, he’d lost his way.
It was bad form to intrude on another’s mission, but I’d be damned if I’d see all my hard work flushed down the toilet this way. Once, I’d been Kingdom’s very best godmother, and by gods, it was time I started acting like one again.
Banishing the looking glass from my lap with a flick of my wand, I zipped out of my perch from the highest bough of the fire tree, the original tree of Kingdom that blazed blue as the sky above morning, noon, and night.
Knowing my charges as I did, Gerard would devolve into his madness soon unless I stopped this, unless I fixed this. Unless I could remind them of the true love and unending devotion they’d once shared.
And I could do this, because I was Danika, the very best and brightest godmother in all the land.
~*~
Betty
I wasn’t even sure why I’d run, only that I had to get away from his touch. I was going insane. That, or this was real, and something very, very terrible had happened to Gerard and I before.
Occam’s razor said this was real. Not an illusion. Not my imagination.
All my life, I’d always felt this yearning for more. I’d searched high and low for it with my drawings and imagination, then with James, college, and Paris. And though I often felt like I’d gotten one step closer to finding that elusive thing that would finally make me happy, it wasn’t until I’d met Gerard that it had finally clicked into place.
And I just knew.
In my soul, in the very marrow of me, I knew that he was it. And that was terrifying as hell. My mother had been fiercely feminist, teaching me value, self-worth, and that it was only in myself that I could find true happiness.
Though I knew she was right, I also knew that, until the moment I’d locked eyes with the infuriating Frenchman, I’d never really felt alive.
He excited my passions and my senses. He made me believe in the unbelievable—that things like love and happily ever afters were real and true and not just the stuff of fairy tales.
He wasn’t even all that nice to me. Not even close. But when I thought about his arms around me, and the way his big body had shook so hard when he’d held me, I knew with ever
y fiber of my being that he’d felt it, too. This was madness, this surety that once upon a time we’d meant the world to each other, but he kept saying things to me that let me know, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was remembering, too.
I wasn’t going to say any of this made sense because it absolutely didn’t. It just flat out didn’t. Past lives weren’t real.
At least, that was what I’d always believed, but not because I’d been taught that. Daddy had always been a science geek, believing that almost anything was possible. I’d humored him growing up, fascinated by his ideas and stories, but not because I’d believed as he had.
I hadn’t.
How could Martians and aliens exist? How could people from alternate dimensions be real? If they were, we’d see proof, evidence of their existence. But he’d had a type of blind faith I’d admired, even if I sometimes thought him silly because of it. Daddy had been a scientist at heart and had always tossed out little factoids that as a child, I’d thought fascinating and as an adult, had thought quirky, eccentric, and uniquely him.
So it was easy enough for me to make this leap. Easy for me to see the tunnel of stars and think that maybe my crazy father had been right all along. Easy for me to accept this because he would have.
He would have told me, “See, baby girl. Reality is only limited by your beliefs. It’s a big universe out there. Don’t fight it. Just believe.”
My feet pounded the pavement as I ran as far and as fast away from that gorgeous, obnoxious male as I could. And though I was ninety-nine percent certain that this was real and that I’d been brought here for a reason, I was also shamefully mortified that I was the only one who seemed to be accepting it.
I needed to get away from Gerard, from the terrible and wonderful things he made me feel—hopeless, excited, terrified, and devastated.
In all honesty, I felt crazy. One hundred and ten percent certifiable. I was running through the streets of a world where people dressed like old time knights of yore and women wore gowns that looked way too confining and burdensome to do anything other than walk at a steady pace. I was also confused and scared of everything.