Midnight for a Curse

by E J Kitchens

  Belinda’s sleeping self caught in the air and hung in the shaft in a blaze of crimson and gold that rose to burst into the chamber and overtake it. A blossoming vine of red and green and gold sealed itself about her finger. Her satchel rose into the air, pulling her along. Violet light broke all around her as tunnel gave way to chamber. The rose and vase floated from her satchel toward the blaze surrounding Prince Rupert.

  One crimson petal after another slipped from the rose to shift to fur and vanish into the stone. As the last petal fell, the rose disappeared, and the rainbow-play of light around Prince Rupert vanished.

  Time began to slow from it’s frenzied pace. Belinda crashed to the stone a few feet from the trapdoor. This time she felt the pain and heard her own gasp as she hit.

  Chapter 18

  Belinda’s vision merged. A stone ceiling high above, men moving all around. Sounds of chaos. Guards yelled as they pushed up from the floor. The chamber door crashed open once again. Robert staggered in, sword in hand and waist wrapped in a bloodied bandage. Winthrop and Lettie—wide-eyed and clutching a slipping and sliding two-layered chocolate cake to her chest like a lifeline to her former life—pushed in after him. A dozen villagers armed with non-standard weapons followed. They scattered as more guards in the Duke of Marblue’s uniform swarmed in.

  Pushing up to her elbows, her arms trembling, Belinda looked around for Beast—Rupert. Between the dashing feet of guards and villagers, she saw him, lying on the floor, unmoving, looking oddly small despite his height and muscular build. Beast’s clothes swallowed him like a father’s coat did a child. “Prince Rupert!” It’s your turn to wake up, Beast!

  “Kill the prince or he’ll hang you all,” the tall guard shouted, a strange authority to his voice. “And catch the duke’s daughter before they do!”

  Guards and villagers alike paused to stare at him.

  “Don’t listen to him! You’ve lost!” Belinda yelled, trying and failing to get her feet to work. She got her knees underneath her, then one foot, then she crashed back to the floor, letting out a scream of pain and frustration. As if a switch had been flipped with that shriek, everyone surged into motion again.

  Lucrezia snatched up a dropped sword as two guards lunged for her. Several men sprang toward Rupert, including Robert, his movements slow and puppet-like, as if every muscle were straining. He was still greenish and deathly pale.

  “Robert, no!” Belinda screamed.

  He staggered to the side as he hunched his shoulder to his ear. “Rupert! Get up, you bloody idiot! Kick me! Do something!” he bellowed as his sword jerked up as if of its own accord. “Lucrezia! Belinda! Help us!”

  Getting both feet underneath her, Belinda attempted to spring up, and found herself aided by two guards as they grabbed her arms. “Rupert, move!” she cried.

  The prince moaned and rolled to his side. Robert’s sword waved in a crazed fashion, then swung. “Move!” he bellowed again as his sword sliced down.

  A meaty fist grabbed Robert’s collar and hurled him to the floor. Robert’s sword clattered to the stone. Gaspard’s uncle, who was closer to fitting Beast’s clothes than any there, seized Robert by the jacket and ploughed a way through the melee, dragging the unconscious Robert with him.

  Belinda silently blessed the man as she kicked the guards holding her. Ignoring the assault as pathetic, they lifted her by the arms and forced her toward the unearthly guard.

  “Belinda! We’re coming!” Winthrop, his goal of getting Lettie through the crowd to a safe corner of the room not going so well, swiveled around toward Belinda, and nearly ran into a guard sparring with a villager. He kicked the guard in the back of the knee and swiftly spun Lettie, cake and all, in one direction as she tried to dart in another. “Just a moment!” he yelled. Lettie yelped as they ducked a swinging sword and dodged the long handle of a pitchfork. Winthrop pulled Gaspard’s pistol from his belt and used his long arm to rap the butt over a guard’s head, momentarily clearing a path.

  “Put me down!” Belinda growled, kicking her feet, but only managing to get them more and more tangled in her cloak. “I call forth Costume Number Two!” she yelled. Please, let it come with weapons and no cloak.

  A poof of vibrant colors, mostly shades of violet with silver sparkles, surrounded her. An airy chill swept over her skin, and she suddenly understood the necessity of the bright, concealing flashes of light during transformations. Please, let this one have weapons. The light vanished with a thunderclap and sparkle.

  Belinda reached for her side and touched only gauzy fabric. She choked as she held out her bare arms above the carriage-wide, violet gown now billowing out around her.

  Of all the ridiculous—

  She could complain later. Where were her guards?

  The two men lay sprawled on the floor just beyond the gauzy violet fabric like felled bowling pins.

  Had her dress …?

  They stared at her, wide-eyed, not attempting to get up. Too shocked. She could understand that.

  She yanked up fistfuls of skirt and darted between them. And tripped on fine fabric.

  But her voluminous skirt did stop her from hitting the stone.

  Her skirt and two guards.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” they asked as they righted her. Their tone was concerned, their eyes approving … and seeking approval.

  I wouldn’t be fit to marry him.

  You would if you were wearing one of my dresses.

  Do they enchant people to approve of you?

  Belinda grinned a wicked grin, then hid it behind one of her sweetest, coupling it with a doe-eyed look as she gently broke from their hold. “Oh, thank you, gentlemen. I don’t know what I would have done without you. I’m trying to get over there.” She raised an elegantly jeweled hand to Rupert. “To him. Would you be so kind as to help me?”

  “Of course, my lady!”

  “Anything for you!”

  Belinda sent another wicked grin to Winthrop and Lettie as they stared at her, an unconscious guard at their feet. She nodded toward the corner of the room, then reverently grabbed fistfuls of her dress and marched after her two admirers, calling out encouragements to them and warnings to the villagers as the soldiers deftly cleared a way to Rupert.

  He was still struggling to rise, hampered by Beast’s clothes and his need to throw bits of broken table at a steady stream of assailants.

  Belinda had a sudden inkling of what Costume Number Three was. “I call forth Costume Number Three,” she said quietly, hoping her satchel, now a jeweled bracelet, still held its potions.

  Rupert yelped as he was swallowed by a blue thundercloud. He reappeared after a blinding flash and a clap of thunder. Belinda’s heart did a little flip-flop. Her Rupert. She’d agreed, and she wouldn’t take it back. He was her prince. And he was beautiful in all ways.

  His elegant blue jacket and crisp trousers that fit snugly over an athletic frame certainly didn’t hurt that impression any. He looked every bit a handsome prince, and a prince to be reckoned with. He had a sword at his side.

  Springing to his feet and taking a half-second to steady himself from his limp, he searched the room until his eyes found hers. He looked his thanks, and something warmer. Then leapt back as a guard swung at him.

  His hand fell automatically to his side. His fingers closed around the sword hilt and deftly drew the sword from the heavily decorated scabbard. Out came a long, gleaming, intricately carved showpiece topped with a jeweled hilt. “A ceremonial sword?” he bellowed as the jewels caught the light and sparkled. Gritting his teeth, he lunged forward with it anyway. His blade diverted from a chest-ward thrust to a very firm tap on the opposing guard’s shoulder. This was swiftly followed with another tap of equal violence on the man’s other shoulder, and was accompanied by a bewildered look from both Rupert and the guard. Whether by gravity or magic, the man fell to his knees, his sword landing at Rupert’s feet as if set there in offering.

  Belinda groaned. Seriously? The enchantr
ess was worried about blood spoiling the clothes she’d made?

  “What’s that, my lady?” her escorts asked, worriedly.

  “Nothing! You’re doing splendidly!” She picked up her pace, encouraging her guards to do likewise.

  Rupert’s mouth opened, then closed. “A ceremonial sword …” he stammered, then rapped the kneeling man over the head with the sword hilt and spun away to knight someone else.

  Her guards engaged a couple of soldiers coming in behind Rupert.

  Across the room, the tall man yelled, frustration evident despite the commanding smoothness of his voice, “I said to kill him! Stupid mortals. I’ll do it myself then!”

  “Prince Dokar! Don’t! Please!” Lucrezia screamed. She stood over Robert, holding a sword out awkwardly toward an approaching guard. He knocked the sword away and grabbed her wrist.

  A chill swept through Belinda. Prince Dokar—the unearthly guard was the Unseelie Prince, the fairy who delighted in all things malicious—he was the one who’d been aiding Lucrezia? Almighty, help us.

  Striding through the rapidly parting crowd, Prince Dokar flicked one hand to the side and snapped the fingers of his other. Belinda flew back, away from her guards. They, shaking their heads as if waking, disengaged from the fight. Her dress had lost its vibrancy. Rupert’s sword clattered to the ground and turned to ash.

  “Lady Violetta!” Belinda cried. “Help! Lady Violetta!”

  Ten feet away, Prince Dokar threw back his arm, then drew it forward, a sword, its blade gleaming ebony and etched in runes of blood red, in his hand.

  There was a cry and a commotion beside him as soldiers and villagers scattered, thrusting one another out of the way. Shoved by a guard, Lettie stumbled out from the crowd, Winthrop desperately reaching for her. She staggered into Prince Dokar. With a shriek, she smashed the cake into his shocked face. He screamed as if in pain and vanished in a cloud of thick black. Cake, platter, and a chocolate-covered rod crashed to the floor where he’d been.

  As if an order of silence had been given, everyone stilled and stared as Winthrop broke through the crowd. “It’s over,” he shouted as he drew a trembling Lettie to his chest. “Throw down your weapons.”

  “They’ll hang us all if they take us,” a guard shouted. “Get what prisoners you can!”

  And the chaos began again.

  Belinda, unable to get traction against her layers of petticoats, struggled, helpless, as a guard grabbed her round the waist. Still on his feet, Rupert leapt back over a fallen guard to avoid a blow, landed badly on his weak leg, and fell, two guards now bearing down on him.

  “Stop in the king’s name!”

  Chapter 19

  “I’m sorry we took so long, my dear.”

  Lady Violetta, in a gown matching Belinda’s, only wider, stood like a violet star in the center of the room. King Patrick, Queen Marianne, Lyndon, and a dozen soldiers grouped around her like obedient planets.

  Everyone, villagers included, dropped their weapons. Belinda’s guard dropped her.

  She landed with a squeal on the stone, but then Rupert was there, lifting her gently up and hugging her to him. She wrapped her arms about him in a fierce hug before pulling away enough to take in the newly arrived.

  “I thought you couldn’t transport a group of armed men,” she said, finding it difficult to sound cross when she was so happy.

  Lady Violetta lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Well,” she said, the corner of her mouth lifting in a sly smile as she gestured toward her companions, who looked fit for a coronation or wedding. “There’s nothing in the rules about not transporting for a ceremony. And as to a group, now that the curse is lifted, I feel years younger.” She regarded Belinda a moment, her expression pleased. “You look stunning, dear.”

  Belinda smiled. “I must remember to thank my seamstress.”

  Stepping from the circle, King Patrick raised his sword to the nearest of the Duke of Marblue’s guards, resting it just beneath the man’s chin. He glanced at Rupert. “What now, son?”

  Rupert stood a little straighter. “Sir William,” he addressed a man with a black physician’s bag, “tend Robert and the other wounded. The rest of you, take all those bearing the Duke of Marblue’s colors prisoner. The villagers are our friends.” He smiled down at Belinda before turning back to his parents. “Father, Mother, come meet your future daughter-in-law.”

  “What of Lady Lucrezia?” Lyndon asked.

  Lucrezia knelt on the floor beside Robert, an empty vial in her lap, her arms wrapped around herself. She looked up at Rupert, her face so stricken Belinda couldn’t help pitying her. “He said he’d heal him. Prince Dokar promised no one would get hurt. It was just for show.” She rocked forward, stifling a sob. “But you wouldn’t cooperate, Rupert. You wouldn’t marry me. It was promised. I had to do something.” Sniffling, she pushed herself up and faced the king, her hands out in a pleading gesture. “My father didn’t know. Prince Dokar and I planned this. Please, don’t blame my father. Prince Dokar promised no one would get hurt.” With another sob, she fled the room, yanking at the locket whose chain refused to break.

  The king’s guards looked to him, and after a glance at Rupert, he shook his head.

  As the king and queen neared Belinda and Rupert, Lettie, not daring to approach the prince, was busy trying to catch Belinda’s eye. She mouthed at her, “Why didn’t you tell me your escort was the prince!” She widened her eyes dramatically and grinned at her.

  From beside the king, Lyndon winked at Rupert, then nodded toward Belinda.

  Rupert caught that wink and wrapped his arms back around Belinda’s waist, tugging her to him. “There was something you said earlier,” he whispered softly, his mouth by her ear, “that I’d very much like to hear again.”

  “About what?” Belinda said, finding it very hard to breathe, much less think clearly, with Rupert so close and so very, wonderfully human.

  His mouth curved up as he lifted her left hand and kissed her ring finger, where a hint of the red and green and gold vines still lingered. “I think you know.”

  Oh.

  He tilted her chin up toward him, and Belinda felt the full force of those blue eyes of his, eyes that told her exactly the same thing she wanted to tell him but couldn’t say so eloquently. But she had to try. She’d promised to answer—and she’d answer every day for the rest of their lives.

  “I—I said yes, that I love yo—”

  Apparently getting the gist of her reply, Rupert interrupted her with a kiss.

  Though time for Belinda seemed to still in that perfect moment, the rest of the world spun around them, its chaos subsiding, its voices slowly coming back into focus.

  “Prince Dokar was here?” Lady Violetta exclaimed, alarmed, as she searched the room. “Where did he go?”

  “Vanished. In a powdery poof like that of a kicked mushroom.” Winthrop half sat, half collapsed onto the floor and buried his face in his hands. “My wife, my foolishly brave, wonderful wife threw an iron file into the face of Prince Dokar—storybook villain in the flesh. An immortal fairy prince.”

  Lettie paled and sat down heavily beside him, telltale icing on her dress.

  The king and queen, who’d stopped to listen to Winthrop, turned to Lady Violetta. “What can be done to protect them?” the queen asked.

  Lady Violetta’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly before she shrugged. It wasn’t a gesture of elegant indifference this time. “Always carry iron with you? Hope he didn’t catch your name or get ahold of anything of yours?” She turned to Belinda. “Belinda dear, what do you think?”

  But Belinda wasn’t paying attention. Rupert was kissing her. Again.

  Crossing her arms, Lady Violetta nodded curtly at Lyndon, who was trying to cover a grin. “Well, let no one say I can’t bring about a happily-ever-after.”

  I had a wish to grant by midnight. My own wish to amuse myself. I am a true fairy godfather—I search the mortal lands for one to be my servant, to amus
e me with plots for unsettling kit and kin and kingdom. My lady promised fair for a time, and when I say my lady, I mean it, for that’s what she is. Mine. Desperation and fear and ambition, they’ve gained me much over the millennia. From this woman they brought me a lock of hair in a bargain she didn’t understand. She belongs to me now. Everything of hers belongs to me. Her fate. Her control of the young lord. The king she’ll one day marry. I didn’t lose.

  There are other midnights. Other wishes to grant.

  —Prince Dokar, of the Unseelie Faerie

  Acknowledgments

  On this page should be written very grand words describing the author’s gratitude to her family, friends, and especially to her beta-readers, literature- and language-savvy friends who helped with the proposals, editor, cover designer, and others involved in the creation and beautification of her work. However, by grave mischance, a fairy’s spell converted her glowing speech into a plain, ordinary “Thank you.” Be assured, however, that those common words are no less heartfelt than the magnificent ones the author intended to grace this page.

  About the Author

  E.J. Kitchens loves tales of romance, adventure, and happily-ever-afters and strives to write such tales herself. When she’s not thinking about dashing heroes or how awesome bacteria are—she is a microbiologist after all—she’s enjoying the beautiful outdoors or talking about classic books and black-and-white movies. She is a member of Realm Makers and lives in Alabama.

  May she beg a favor of you? You’ve already kindly read her book, would you also leave a review? Those gold stars can power more than fictional worlds: they encourage, inspire, and help authors through hurdles so we can seek out the people looking for books like ours. It’s a daunting quest, and without you, fearless reader, it would fail. Will you join it? The map is before you: