Fantastical

  So I let my friend go and started to read out loud.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Only Thing I Needed

  Tor’s hand tightened in mine. We’d just walked in his front doors and I was pulling away.

  “Where are you going?” he enquired.

  “I have to do something,” I said quickly and he stared down at me.

  “What?”

  “Something!” I cried, getting desperate. Time was wasting.

  He gave me an assessing look then he told me something I already knew.

  “Hurry, love, you don’t have much time.”

  I nodded, got up on tiptoe, curled my fingers around the back of his neck, pulled him down to me and touched my lips to his.

  “I’ll be back,” I whispered, let him go and started to rush to the kitchens.

  The fireworks were going to start at any minute and Tor and I were going to watch them on our balcony, a balcony that jutted out further than any of the others and a balcony, incidentally, that anyone from anywhere in the village and on the sea could see.

  This filled me with dread, being somewhere where everyone could see me with Tor (and they’d be watching).

  But I had to admit that the day had been pretty fantastic.

  Boris was right. Bellebryn knew how to give a party. The streets were filled with music. The businesses and houses were decorated with colorful garlands and bunting. There were puppet booths set up, giving free shows. Children dashed around with faces made up with face paint and circling vibrant streamers behind them. There were belly dancers, snake charmers and men eating fire performing for coins all of whom seemed, by the looks of them, to have come from faraway lands. The air was thick with clashing aromas because there were stands selling everything from roasted, honey-coated nuts to sausages on sticks to big, steaming pans filled with paella to flamboyantly swirling lollipops.

  Around every wind of the cobbled street (and, as was his duty during this huge street party thrown in his honor, Tor strolled down and up (and down and up again) the entire street, his hand in mine or his arm around my shoulders or waist), people were dancing, swinging around and even I’d been swept into the frolicking. Though I didn’t know the steps, I did the best I could do, laughed at myself because, I had to admit, it was kind of fun and I pretended the joyous looks thrown my way were real.

  It was fabulous.

  It would have been magnificent if I could have really joined in and believed that Tor’s people loved me as much as they pretended to or even a hint of how much they very obviously loved him.

  And now it was almost over, I was exhausted and I hadn’t had time to present him with his cake. The fireworks were the showstopper, ending the festivities at midnight. I had fifteen minutes to give him his cake or he wouldn’t get it on his birthday.

  And he had to get it on his birthday.

  I pulled up my skirts and I ran to the kitchens, coming to a skidding halt by my cake (I had found all the ingredients in the village, including the red food dye, thank God).

  It looked magnificent and someone had put small, blue candles in it. I’d talked to Perdita days ago about birthday candles and she’d informed me, looking confused but humoring me, that they didn’t do birthday cakes here, but birthday tarts and they didn’t do candles but sparklers. I gave in on the sparklers and even though some people used them in my world, I was disappointed. I had wanted to give Tor a piece of my world, which included, traditionally, candles.

  And there they were. And next to the cake was an oddly shaped, purple-wrapped package.

  “Your grace,” I heard from my side and I jumped when I saw Perdita as well as half a dozen of the cooks and cooks-helpers standing behind her.

  “Uh… heya, Perdita,” I replied, smiled and tipped my head to the women around her. “Eunice, Daphne, Sabina, Winnie, Pauline.”

  I got a bunch of smiles and mumbled, “Your graces,” in return.

  Then I looked back to Perdita. “You found candles.”

  “Talked to Rocco, the candlemaker, had them made special,” she told me and I blinked.

  “You had them made?” I whispered.

  “Seemed important to you, your grace,” she whispered back and I blinked again, this time to blink away the tears that sprung to my eyes.

  I knew she was doing it thinking she was avoiding my, then Tor’s, displeasure but that didn’t make me any less happy that I could give Tor a real from-my-world birthday cake, which was exactly what I wanted most to give him. I was so happy that I dashed to her and gave her a big hug with a loud, smacking kiss on her cheek.

  Still holding her arms, I leaned back and whispered, “Thank you.”

  Her hands pried mine from her arms but held them between us where she gave them a tight squeeze. “My pleasure, your grace,” she whispered back.

  I smiled at her and then cast my smile around to the others before I raced back to the cake, saying, “And thanks for letting me use the kitchens.”

  “We were honored to have you with us,” Eunice stated.

  “Yes, it was fun!” Sabina put in and I looked at her.

  It was fun. I had pretended then, too, when I was baking and they were cracking jokes and making an effort to include me in their frivolity, that it was authentic. I hadn’t cooked anything since I came to this world, except basting the rabbit that first night with Tor. I forgot how much I loved to do it. It was even better doing it for Tor. And even better, pretending to enjoy it around people who were pretending to like me. And, in a weird way, the whole thing worked.

  “We’ll have to do it again,” I told Sabina, reaching for the cake.

  “Wait!” Daphne cried and the women rushed forward as I stilled.

  “This is for you,” Pauline said, picking up the package and handing it to me.

  “For me?” I asked, taking it and studying her.

  “Yes, for you,” Winnie stated.

  “But, it’s not my birthday,” I told them, moving my eyes to the package in my hand.

  “No, but we thought…” Sabina started then faltered.

  Eunice picked it up from there. “We weren’t very nice to you when you, erm… first got –”

  “Just open it!” Daphne exclaimed and I looked at her to see she was bouncing on her toes in excitement.

  “Okay,” I whispered, worried and wondering what the package would hold, hoping it wasn’t poison.

  I opened it and as the wrapping fell away I saw I held an exquisitely carved, purple glass bottle in my hand.

  “Your scent,” Perdita stated and my body jolted as my head snapped up.

  “We asked Josephina, the perfume maker in town, to create something just for you,” Pauline put in.

  “No gardenia.” Winnie smiled.

  I blinked at them. Then I opened the stopper to the bottle, brought to my nose and sniffed.

  The bottle wasn’t exquisite. The scent was. Subtle and fresh, almost beachy but with a flowery essence.

  It was sublime.

  So sublime, no poison could smell like that.

  I looked around the faces.

  Did they… could it be? Did they like me? As in, genuinely?

  “Do you all… like me?” I asked quietly and got confused looks.

  “But… of course!” Sabina cried.

  “You’re sweet,” Daphne said.

  “And funny,” Eunice added.

  “And you saved a wild bird,” Pauline put in.

  “You make our prince happy,” Perdita stated and my gaze locked on hers. “Blissfully so,” she finished.

  My heart leaped.

  “Do you think?” I whispered.

  “Your grace, I’m sorry, but I took a swipe of that icing and let me tell you, if he wasn’t blissful before, which he was,” Winnie put in then grinned cheekily. “When he tastes that, he will be!”

  Holy crap! They liked me!

  “God, I hope so,” I breathed and they all laughed.

  Yes! They liked me!

  Th
en Perdita jumped and ordered, “You must go. You don’t have long before the fireworks start.”

  “Oh God!” I cried, set the bottle down and mumbled, “I’ll come back for that.”

  “We’ll take it to your rooms,” Eunice offered, picking up the cake and handing it to me. “And we’ll take the others away,” she said, I caught her meaning and my smile trembled as my face got soft, then she cried, “Just go!”

  Perdita slid a thin stick between my fingers under the cake and said, “The candles are lit in your rooms. You can use that stick to light your cake candles so you won’t get any wax on your beautiful icing.”

  I stared gratefully into her eyes and gave myself a long moment to do it.

  Then I whispered, “Thank you,” and she smiled and that smile lit her whole face.

  All of it.

  Even her eyes.

  Not fake.

  She liked me!

  They all did.

  Hurrah!

  I smiled at all of them and then rushed out of the room, balancing the cake as I went thinking joyous thoughts that maybe, just maybe, I was finally going to be really happy in this fairytale world.

  About ten seconds later, however, I was cursing how far away our rooms were (because, seriously, it was a trek) when I made it there only to find the candles lit all around the room but there was no Tor to be found.

  I checked all the rooms (his bathroom, my bathroom, his dressing room, my dressing room, his sitting room, you get the picture), he wasn’t anywhere.

  Shit!

  Was I supposed to go somewhere else?

  I stood by the bed and tried to think of where I might have to go and it hit me that the balcony off his study faced the city proper, not the sea like the one off our rooms did. Maybe I was supposed to go there.

  Holding the cake carefully, I lifted my skirts in one hand and ran to his study as fast as I could without dropping the cake.

  When I got there, the double doors were mostly closed, one open an inch. I turned and put my booty in it to open it (I’d have to light the candles later, so much for my big reveal, I didn’t have the time) and stopped dead when I heard Algernon’s voice.

  “I apologize for calling you out at this hour but with her performance today…” he paused, “Well, as you know, the men are talking. She’s not herself. So not herself, it’s strange.”

  And Tor’s answer made my entire body lock.

  “She says she’s from a different world.”

  Uh…

  What?

  I said I was from a different world?

  He didn’t believe me?

  I thought he’d come to believe me.

  I heard Algernon’s sharp bark of surprised laughter before he asked, “A different world?”

  “Yes. A different world,” Tor replied. “Gods, it’s unbelievable. She lives it and breathes it. She’s even created words to go with it. She tells me extraordinary stories of the make-believe architecture and fantastical gadgets they have in her world.” He paused and my dazed brain imagined him shaking his handsome head in disgust at the same time it hazily recalled the many nights over dinner or when we were in bed when I’d tell him stories of my world and all the things in it when he went on, “I must admit, it’s stunning how clever she is, how sharp her mind. She’s astonishingly imaginative and she never forgets a word of it. She has to be making it up as she goes along but every lie she tells, she remembers and uses it again.”

  Every lie I tell?

  “How bizarre,” Algernon muttered.

  “It’s remarkable,” Tor said with what, if I wasn’t about to melt into a puddle of steaming heartbreak, I would have noted was clear respect.

  “So she’s playing you?

  “Indeed,” Tor answered. “I gave her permission to do so and clearly she took me up on the offer.”

  I stepped away from the door in order to lean against the wall beside it so my shaking knees wouldn’t fail me.

  He thought I was playing him.

  He thought I was playing him!

  Weeks of it! Nearly two months of it!

  He thought I was playing him!

  “You gave her permission?” Algernon sounded shocked.

  “Certainly. It’s living a lie but living Cora’s lie is better by far than living with the old Cora.”

  “It doesn’t make you angry?” Algernon asked.

  “Gods no,” Tor replied. “It comes with her sweet body, that charming mouth of hers, her skillful tongue and the possibility that she’s already carrying my heir.”

  Holy crap!

  “So you’re getting something out of it,” Algernon stated.

  “Every bloody night,” Tor replied and I felt pain sharp in my gut, like I’d been punched. “And if my wife lives and breathes her deceits with exuberant imagination out of bed, you can well imagine what she treats me to in it.”

  Algernon chuckled a low, manly chuckle.

  But I closed my eyes. Slowly.

  He thought I was the Cora of this world.

  He didn’t believe I was me.

  I was falling in love with him…

  Fucking shit, I’d already fallen in love with him.

  And he was using me.

  Using me!

  Using me to get his heir.

  He was trying to get me pregnant and enjoying himself doing it. And I was letting him.

  And enjoying myself doing it, too.

  But I loved him.

  And he did not love me.

  He didn’t even like me.

  He was playing me!

  Why, why, why did guys have to be dicks in my world and in fairytale world?

  Why?

  “Well done, sir,” Algernon stated as I made up my mind, straightened from the wall and then walked right into the room.

  Both men started when I did, their heads swinging in my direction.

  But I only had eyes for Tor as he stared at me walking across the room carrying the swirly, creamy frosted cake with its blue birthday candles that I’d wanted so badly and worked so hard to make for him (seriously, the kitchens in his castle were warm and jolly but the utensils and appliances were so far away from KitchenAid it wasn’t funny).

  “Happy birthday,” I whispered and even I heard the ache in my voice.

  When Tor heard it, I watched him flinch and the flinch was so reactionary he had no hope of hiding it.

  He knew I heard.

  Good.

  “Cora –” he started.

  “In my world,” I cut him off and moved my what I was sure were heartsick eyes to Algernon, “we don’t serve birthday tarts with birthday sparklers, as Perdita told me you do here. In my world,” I looked back at Tor who was frozen to the spot and watching me stop at his desk and set the cake on it, “we serve birthday cake with birthday candles.”

  I touched the stick to a candle on his desk, lit it and started lighting the birthday candles as I kept explaining.

  “So, for your birthday, since I have no money but I wanted to do something special, I decided to give you something that was special to me, a piece of my world, kind of literally. I scoured the city to find all the right ingredients and Perdita had the candlemaker make special candles. So here you are.” I gestured to the cake with a flick of the stick. “A my world birthday cake.” My eyes went to his. “My birthday present to you. And now what you have to do is make a wish, blow out the candles and your wish is supposed to come true.”

  Luckily, there were only ten candles (I guess I didn’t explain very fully to Perdita). I’d finished with them so I blew out the stick and set it on the desk.

  “Cora –” Tor started again, beginning to move toward me.

  “No!” I cried, lifting up a hand and he stopped.

  “I’ll just –” Algernon began, my head snapped to him and I dropped my hand.

  “Please, don’t go, you must have some cake,” I whispered, his eyes shot to Tor but he didn’t move.

  I looked back at Tor.

>   “You need to make your wish,” I told him. “Then blow out your candles.”

  “Sweets –” he started, my eyes closed and that tear in my heart didn’t split, it didn’t gently rip deeper.

  It slashed through my heart, rending it in two.

  I opened my eyes, locked them on Tor’s beautiful, blue, playing, deceitful ones and I felt mine fill with tears.

  “Make your wish,” I whispered.

  “Cora –”

  A tear spilled over and slid down my cheek.

  “Make your wish, honey.”

  I watched his eyes follow the trail of my single tear then they came to mine then he came at me.

  I whirled, picked up my skirts and ran.

  “Cora!” he yelled as I dashed out the door and down the hall. “Cora! Gods damn it, stop!”

  He was right behind me.

  Shit!

  It sucked that he was so tall and his legs were so freaking long.

  The staircase was in sight, the winding one that skirted the circular wall of the mammoth circular hall that led to the front doors. A hall floored in gleaming black marble veined with silver and blue. A hall that could house at least a hundred bodies whirling around in a waltz.

  A fairytale hall in a black, hideous fairytale.

  I didn’t make it to the staircase though. I was caught by the arm and pulled around.

  “Take your hand off me!” I shrieked.

  “Cora, calm down,” Tor ordered gently.

  I stilled and tipped my face to look at him, “Fuck you! Fuck calm! I’m going to find a wizard right now! And don’t you fucking stop me!”

  “Cora, gods, calm the fuck down!” he yelled back and it pissed me off that he’d picked up some of my language from my world that he didn’t even believe fucking existed that I wanted to go back to and I didn’t want him to have any part of.

  “Take your hand off me!” I screamed again, trying to pull away but failed when he let me go and his arms locked around me.

  “Listen to me,” he commanded.

  “No! No way! You’re not a jerk. You’re a dick! You’re a player! I fucking hate you! Which really sucks because about ten minutes ago, I fucking loved you more than anything in this, and my, whole, fucking worlds!”

  His body went solid and I took advantage, wresting out of his arms, I turned instantly and started running.