by Tasha Black
They dashed down the stairs and she followed him through the big doors out to the lawn.
Fuddleman was already walking up with Nyx, whose coat shone like ice in the morning sun.
“Perfect timing, Your Majesty,” Fuddleman said in a pleased way. “He’s fed and groomed and feeling himself now, I reckon.”
“Good, good,” Cullen said impatiently.
“I hope we’ll see more of you around here, Your Majesty,” Fuddleman said hopefully.
Cullen reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin, pressing it into Fuddleman’s palm.
Jessica could see the pain in the little man’s eyes. He had not wanted money. He wanted his master’s attention, even for a moment.
She felt that tickle in her mind again.
“Thank you so much for your help,” she said warmly. “You have been so kind.”
Fuddleman turned to her with a big smile. “It’s my pleasure, my lady. Safe travels.”
Cullen lifted her onto the horse without ceremony and a moment later they were galloping along the path, Nyx’s hooves beating a swift tattoo away from his family home.
8
Jessica
Jessica closed her eyes as Nyx carried them away, the rumble of his hoofbeats like the roll of distant thunder.
She rode in silence, trying to access the memory that had threatened to surface back in the castle, when Cullen was being unkind to his nanny. She tried to let go of the present, and the feel of his strong arms around her.
She replayed his words in her head.
We really don’t have time.
Suddenly, her memory showed her a place.
Jessica is in a bright office building with glassy windows revealing the Philadelphia skyline. She sits on a white leather sofa, waiting to talk with Cullen about…
Something important.
But what?
She notices the angle of the morning sun and the way the buttery leather sticks to the backs of her thighs.
She is wearing a denim mini-skirt and a peasant blouse, Cullen’s favorite. But she feels out of place in this building filled with people in suits.
A young man in a bright blue tie behind a two-person desk presses an intercom button.
“Yeah?” Cullen’s voice on the other side is brusque.
“M-Mr. Ward, I just wanted to know—”
“I really don’t have time for this, Tim,” Cullen roars and hangs up. “Figure it out.”
“—what you want in your coffee,” the kid finishes quietly to himself.
The woman sitting at the other end of the desk laughs.
“He likes it black, new guy. Like his soul.”
“Why is he so mean?” the young man asks.
“Because he can be,” the woman replies with a wry grin.
Jessica peels herself off the sofa and heads for the elevator.
“Wait,” the woman calls after her. “The boss wants to see you.”
Jessica breaks into a run, smashing the elevator buttons without really looking at them.
Her eyes brim with tears.
She has made a decision…
“Here we go,” Cullen said in a weary voice, bringing her back to the present.
Jessica opened her eyes, wishing she could remember what she had been meaning to talk to Cullen about in her memory.
They had reached a bridge. Large planks of splintery wood stretched between stone monuments on opposite sides of a swiftly moving river.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked. “Are you not sure it’s strong enough?”
“No,” he chuckled. “There’s a troll here who guards the bridge.”
“Oh,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “That sounds unpleasant. Do we really need to use this bridge? Can’t we just find another way to get across?”
“We don’t need to get across at all,” he told her. “Which is precisely why we have to use this bridge.”
She only looked at him, confused.
“This is no ordinary bridge,” he explained. “It doesn’t just lead across the river. It can take you just about anywhere you want to go. Including back to the mortal realm.”
“I see,” she said, fascinated at the very notion of a bridge to anywhere. “Do we have to solve a riddle or something?”
“No,” Cullen said.
A shadow shifted under the bridge and a figure emerged.
A troll.
Jessica was pretty sure she had never seen a troll before. But there was no mistaking it - this was clearly the being Cullen was talking about.
He was large, wider than he was tall, with arms and legs the same color and texture as the grey stone anchors of the bridge, and a long beard that stretched to his middle, in the same striated brown as the splintered planks that formed the bridge’s floor.
A huge and well-used axe with a worn wooden handle hung from his left hand.
“Halt,” he said, in a voice as dry as its plank-like beard.
“Move aside, sirrah,” Cullen said without slowing Nyx’s gait.
“Halt,” the troll repeated, grinding his stony teeth and tightening his grip on the axe.
Cullen let go of Jessica’s waist with one hand, lifting it before him and flicking his wrist.
Another shadow moved under the bridge, but this one took no physical form. It unfurled like smoke, towering taller and taller behind the troll.
The troll, not seeing its smoky assailant, lifted his axe as if he planned to attack them.
But the shadowy column behind him had other plans. It sucked the weapon out of his hands and then let it drop at his feet.
The wicked blade sliced easily through the creature’s exposed foot, spilling blood into the muddy ground. Jessica had a momentary thought of raspberry syrup drizzled over chocolate cake.
“Oh,” the troll moaned in agony, falling to grasp his foot in his hands.
The shadow rose tall over him again, as if to attack, though the troll was not trying to stop them from crossing anymore.
Cullen’s big body was thrumming against hers, as if he were being filled with electricity.
“Cullen,” she murmured. “Make it stop. You’re hurting him.”
He raised his hand, but froze for a moment.
She held her breath until he flicked his wrist again, and the smoky demon retreated from the troll.
They moved on, Nyx passing close enough to allow Cullen to lean down to graze the troll’s head with the tip of his fingers.
The troll’s cries of pain stopped instantly.
Nyx’s hooves clattered over the uneven planks of the bridge, carrying them into a gathering mist.
“Did you just kill him?” Jessica heard herself ask.
“Of course not,” Cullen said stiffly. “I merely took some of his pain.”
“You took it?” she echoed.
“Yes.”
They rode on, engulfed by the mist until neither end of the bridge was visible. Jessica was sure they were going much farther than the length of the bridge, but no matter how far they went, the wooden planks continued below them.
“Is that why they call you the King of Pain?” she asked.
“They call me the King of Pain because I gain power from causing pain,” he told her. “Other people’s pain.”
The idea was terrifying.
The only comfort was how haunted and hollow his voice sounded at admitting it.
“The troll’s pain was enough to power our trip,” he said softly. “We’re through.”
She blinked and realized she could finally see something through the mist.
The bridge was ending, but the woods on the other side looked different - less lush, less alive.
She pulled in a big lungful of stale air.
“We’re home,” Jessica murmured in wonder.
9
Cullen
Cullen helped Jessica off the horse, trying not to notice the worried expression on her face.
All this talk of him being the King of Pain made
him nervous. What if she was growing fearful of him?
Jessica had spent twenty-five years in faerie, even if she didn’t know it. She must be sensing that somehow. It had to be the loss of her comfortable, predicable lifestyle that was worrying her.
She knows she can count on me.
Doesn’t she?
He turned to Nyx, who for once was still and silent. The big horse knew his master was leaving the realm.
“I’ll be back soon, boy,” Cullen told him, resting his forehead against Nyx’s.
The horse stamped a foot, already impatient for his master to return.
“I will come back,” Cullen promised him. “Sooner than last time.”
Nyx whickered and cantered away, back to his own side of the bridge.
Cullen had once wondered if he could bring his mount with him to the mortal realm. But the fae horse always felt cagey when he got too close to this side of the veil.
Cullen turned back to Jessica. “Ready?”
“Yes,” she said.
He tried not to listen to the sad sound of Nyx’s hoofbeats disappearing.
They stepped off the wooden bridge and onto a grassy circle, surrounded by trees.
“It’s just a five-minute walk,” Cullen told Jessica. “Are you tired?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m really here. There are so many people I want to see.”
He was glad that it was night. He had a little time before he needed to break it to her just how much the world had changed in her absence.
“Let’s get home first and get some rest,” he suggested.
“Home?” she asked. “Don’t you live in the city?”
“You’re remembering,” he said, pleased. “Yes, but I have a second home in Rosethorn Valley. I like to escape here in the summertime. You used to spend a lot of time here with me.”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “But it sounds nice.”
“I hope you like it as much as you used to,” he told her.
He offered her his hand and felt a surge of gratitude when she took it.
They headed down a path between the trees that followed the cliffside. He found his excitement growing for the moment she would see the house and its view.
It was hard not to think of the first time he had taken her here.
Centuries in the mortal realm had convinced him of the importance of wealth, and had given him plenty of time to accumulate it.
But Cullen had never really understood that money could bring more than raw power.
Not until he had put his money to work doing things that brought joy to the woman who now held his hand.
He was glad the years of her absence had only made him richer.
“Oh,” Jessica breathed.
They had reached the place where the trees fell away and the valley opened up below them. Moonlight sparkled on the curve of the creek far below.
“This is incredible,” Jessica said, turning to him with sparkling eyes that made the moonlit creek dull by comparison.
“You’re incredible,” he echoed, feeling drunk as a pixie. “Want to see the house?”
She nodded and he led her a little farther up the path.
Back in the fifties, a California builder had discovered the historic enclave of Rosethorn Valley and bought a beautiful piece of the ridge to build on.
But instead of putting up something in keeping with the William Price cottages that dotted the rest of the ridge, he brought in tons of concrete and glass and constructed a marvel of a modern home - half bunker, half paradise, overlooking the valley.
Cullen had discovered it for himself back when he was wooing Jessica. The owners were not interested in selling, of course, but Cullen had to have it. Ultimately, he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, and they scuttled off to Maine with a medium-sized fortune, to be near their grandchildren.
Cullen had put a crew to work immediately, removing the ruinous eighties wallpaper and seventies paneling, and restoring the place to its original elegance.
They stepped off the path and onto the lawn.
The house shone in the moonlight, its concrete smooth and pale like bone - as if it were the skeleton of a living creature.
In the years without Jessica that was how it had felt. He had stopped coming here long ago.
“Does it look familiar?” he asked her.
She examined the house for a moment, but only shook her head.
“Let’s go in,” he suggested.
They went to the door on the hillside and he fished a key out from under a planter.
Jessica laughed.
“What?” he asked.
“You hide a key under a planter?” she asked.
“Isn’t that what everyone does?” he asked.
She laughed again.
“What?” he asked again, smiling back at her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just thought that if you ever lost your key, you’d just wave your hand and say a magic word or something.”
“But then how would you get in?” he asked.
“I lived here too?” she asked.
“Wherever I am, that’s your home too,” he told her. “Everything that is mine is yours.”
“And there’s a key for me?”
“Yes, of course,” he told her. “You can come here whenever you want.”
She blinked away tears.
“Jessica,” he said helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I… guess it’s been a long time since I could come and go when I chose.”
Cullen clenched his jaw and tried not to think about the Queen of Silence.
“She was kind to me,” Jessica went on. “But I was her pet, not her friend. And I didn’t even know it.”
Cullen nodded, impressed that she was able to start piecing it together already.
“The fruit she was feeding you,” he said. “It probably made you feel happy, but it also made you forget.”
“That’s why you didn’t want me to eat it,” Jessica said.
“Exactly,” he told her. “As time passes, you will begin to remember all that happened in faerie. And I hope that what you remember is just what you’ve told me so far - that you were treated kindly, but kept on a short leash.”
She nodded.
“And, Jessica,” he added, waiting until she met his eyes to say what he had to say. “If you remember anything cruel, I will burn the Court of Silence to the ground.”
She nodded and shivered.
“I’m sorry, let’s get inside,” he said, putting an arm around her and opening the front door.
10
Jessica
Jessica stepped inside and her jaw dropped.
The entire first floor seemed to be nothing but wide-open space with a vaulted ceiling. And the whole back wall was two stories of glass overlooking the same incredible view of the valley that they had seen from the path on the way here.
She managed to wrench her eyes from the scenery long enough to scan the interior space.
The furnishings were covered with sheets, like so many homemade ghosts. But when she closed her eyes, she got flashes of the same space - bright and sunny, with the furniture exposed.
And there was one thing she definitely remembered.
“My typewriter,” she cried, dashing off to a small, sheet covered object by the window.
Cullen laughed.
She pulled off the sheet like a magician, and sure enough, there was her beloved antique Smith-Corona.
“You gave this to me for my birthday,” she said, looking to Cullen to make sure that was right.
He smiled at her and nodded, his dark eyes twinkling.
“I wrote my book on this,” she said, suddenly able to remember happy days at the little table, looking between her notes and the keys, working on Legends of the Rosethorn Valley Fae.
“Yes, you did,” he said proudly.
“And you got it for me, even though what I wanted was an old-fa
shioned noisy typewriter instead of a fancy word processor,” she remembered fondly.
“I remember the sound of those keys clacking away while I made my calls and did my paperwork,” he said. “It was the best sound in the world.”
“We were happy here,” she said, testing it out. It seemed right.
Maybe she had misremembered whatever had been happening in his office that day she ran to the elevator. Everyone had bad days.
“It seems like I haven’t felt happiness since then,” he told her. “Until now.”
The pain in his eyes made her heart ache, and she felt suddenly fortunate to have forgotten everything, not to have missed the goodness of this relationship during their time apart.
Maybe that was why she’d asked the queen to take her memories - so she wouldn’t miss Cullen’s love.
“I’m going to go see if there’s anything salvageable in the kitchen,” he told her, clearing his throat. “Feel free to look around. See what else you remember.”
He disappeared into a hallway she hadn’t noticed before.
She turned to look at the rest of the room.
The concrete hearth brought back a memory of a crackling fire, romantic music playing in the background.
It was cold in the house, maybe a fire was a good idea.
She went to the fireplace, remembering a little door next to the mantle.
Sure enough, when she pressed the panel it released. The space inside was filled with newspaper, starter sticks, logs and even a box of long matches.
She set up a few logs with some sticks and newspaper, humming to herself.
She had just grabbed a match out of the box and was preparing to strike it when she heard Cullen’s footsteps.
“No,” he yelled, running toward her and grabbing the match.
“Oh,” she said, startled at his outburst. “I just thought a fire would be nice.”
“It will be nice,” he told her in a gentler voice. “But I have to do something first. Hang on.”
She waited as he leaned over her and reached up into the chimney, sliding his hand around inside. A moment later, he pulled down a dusty package, wrapped in plastic.
