by Laura Kenyon
Their eyes caught—defiance at first, and fear. But as the moment passed, Belle’s frown began to soften. He’d just given her the only answer she really needed: He’d come back because he couldn’t stand to be without her. It had been selfish, yes, but love has a tendency to do that. It makes us foolish and hopeful enough to think we can defy all the odds and figure out a way to make everything right. He couldn’t have possibly predicted what wound up happening that night—no more than she could know what would have happened had he kept driving.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she finally said. “I’m glad you didn’t keep driving.”
Gray’s mouth opened in disbelief. He swayed a little in her direction, but then shoved his hands into his pockets and looked away. Fear was still holding him back, but Belle would wait—just as he’d waited for her.
“I have frozen yogurt if you’re interested,” he said after a good five minutes of silence. “I assume you’re heading back to Tantalise tonight, and you don’t have the best track record with desserts at Snow’s place.”
Belle smirked at his cheap rampion brownies quip. Then her eyes panned the ceiling and her toes dug beneath Beast’s warm fur. “Actually, I think I’m going to let Snow have him until the morning. How about some wine instead?”
One of Gray’s eyebrows rose while the other fell, a move that sent a whole colony of butterflies swarming around her stomach. “But I thought you said alcohol gets into the milk and—”
She silenced him with a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry. I have it covered. We both deserve a night off from everything outside this cabin.”
Gray agreed, albeit hesitantly, and scurried off to grab two goblets and a bottle of chianti. A few minutes later, he popped in to place these on the table, zip out again, and return holding a massive piece of cardboard between his outstretched arms.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said, halting and balancing his cargo on his feet. “I should have given it to you yesterday but … remember that painting you had over the mantel in the lounge? The one that showed the forest changing through the seasons?”
Belle gripped the arm of the couch and refocused on the cardboard. “Yes,” she said, her voice cautious. She did love that painting. But it had been a gift from Angus. There’s no way it could have survived the fire.
“Well, maybe the universe decided to cut you a break after all,” he said, flipping the cardboard around to reveal the exact same painting.
“Oh my God,” Belle said, rising to her feet and rushing over to inspect it. There wasn’t a scratch on the thing. A little ash that wiped right off, sure, but the canvas was intact. Ruby’s words from the hospital replayed in her head: Only magic could destroy magical charms.
“Where’s the frame?” she asked, the urgency in her voice catching him off-guard.
Gray scratched his head. “I … ummm …. This is how I found it. I’ve been keeping it in the crawlspace. I’m sure we can get another frame though.”
Belle sucked on her cheeks. “So the metal frame disintegrated in the fire but its canvas painting came out unscathed?” She shook her head and then started pacing the room. “It’s a charm,” she said as Beast stood up to shake. He could sense the storm coming long before Gray. “It has to be. There’s no other explanation. That smooth-talking snake put a charm in my inn, in the very same room where Donner went completely berserk. Can that really be a coincidence?”
“Well,” Gray said, obviously not following. “Donner went nuts because he’s cursed.”
Belle shook her head and kept pacing. It didn’t add up. It had never added up. Yes, Donner was cursed. She didn’t deny that. But she’d never seen him lose control like that in the past, even at his absolute worst.
“Strange things happen in fires,” Gray said as Beast scampered out of the room. “Filing cabinets melt around reams of paper that survive because they’re so tightly packed. Things close to the floor only get smoke damage. Maybe this got knocked off the wall, fell facedown, and then got buried under everything else. You can’t assume that this is a charm.”
“You’re right,” Belle said, grabbing the corkscrew. “But Ruby said only magic can destroy a charm so let’s find out for sure.”
Gray inched back as Belle lunged toward him with the corkscrew. “Belle! What the heck are you—”
He gasped as her fist slammed down onto the canvas. Once. Twice. Five times with gusto as Beast fled the room.
“Not a dent,” she said, turning to repeat the same move on the wine cork, then pouring two Rapunzel-sized glasses of red. She held one out for Gray, clutched the other in her fist, and tapped the air. “Looks like we’ve had the enemy front and center all this time. Cheers.”
Chapter Eighteen
RUBY
Ten minutes after the phone call, Ruby Welles rolled off her frayed floral couch, trudged into the dark, laminate kitchen, and unearthed the bottle of Armagnac she’d been keeping for a just such an occasion. Absolutely nothing was going according to plan—not that this was much of a surprise. Nothing had gone according to plan in her life for decades.
As usual, cursing Donner Wickenham had been impulsive. Selfish. A crime of passion she immediately wanted to undo but lacked the expertise. Up until then, Ruby didn’t even know it was possible to resurrect a broken curse. Or, if that’s not what happened, to cast one upon someone from half a kingdom away. Some iconic fairy she turned out to be.
The first time it happened, six years earlier, he was so close she could have chucked a beer bottle in the air and nailed him smack in the nose. In hindsight, that’s probably what she should have done instead—though that wouldn’t have given him a shot at redemption. It wouldn’t have allowed him to meet someone as pure and good as Belle without sizing her up for a drunken one-night stand. And wasn’t that the whole point of her abilities? To better the people who needed bettering? To save the kingdoms that needed saving? Even if they went into it kicking and screaming?
But this second go-around was just plain irresponsible. It was the quintessential example of an itchy trigger finger. It was, if it ever went public, exactly the sort of mishap Angus needed to win his war against magic once and for all.
Ruby tapped her cup and plodded over to the window, which started at her nose and stopped just below the parquet ceiling. It was frosted around the edges with a giant stained glass sun in the center and tiny pink flowers dotting each corner. She still remembered the day her mother had it installed. “Just because we live in a basement doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see the sun,” she’d said. “Watching everyone’s feet all day is depressing—even if most of them do have very lovely shoes.” A cheeky teenager at the time, Ruby had called it tacky and old. That description haunted her now—now that she was a sixty-year-old spinster who owned an apartment overlooking Carpale Castle but spent most of her time in her dead parents’ subterranean hovel beneath (per the plaque on the Western Library’s steps) “over thirty-four million items of literary and historical prominence.”
Swirling her whiskey, Ruby took a long, wet sip and tried to process what she’d just heard. Belle’s call about the painting had been surprising, but not altogether transforming. They already knew Angus had access to all of Marestam’s confiscated charms. If anything, her discovery bolstered Ruby’s allegations against him. It supported her finger pointing and her declaration that he was behind everything that was going to hell at the moment—not just the Charmés disappearance and the movement to abolish the monarchies, but Donner and his child’s curse as well.
Elmina’s call, on the other hand … Elmina’s call changed everything. Elmina’s call told her that, in scapegoating Angus to cover up her own blunder, Ruby might have inadvertently pulled back the curtain on one of history’s most diabolical villains.
If her hunch was right—even though the eighteenth century fairy was only working with half the story—taking down Angus was going to be much more difficult than Ruby originally thought. But if the triad succeeded, perhaps th
e extent of his betrayal could work in her favor. Perhaps the people’s faith in true love and happily ever after and white knights and fairy godmothers would be restored all on its own.
Still, there were almost too many questions to count: For how long before the Great Awakening did Angus know about Selladóre? Why let Hunter Tirion take all the credit for breaking the curse? If Jacara’s powers really had blasted out from the broken spell like a dog in search of its master, could Angus really have caught them? And if so, could Ruby get her hands on them instead?
Feeling a sudden chill, she pulled a chartreuse cardigan off the ironing board, pushed two fluffs of graying hair behind her ears, and returned to the couch. Her eyes fell on the coffee table and the massive book that hung off all four sides. The words of her parents echoed in her head every time she saw it. “One day, the Western Library will have a new custodian, and you’ll be responsible for preserving Marestam’s history,” they’d said just a few days before their accident. They’d sat her down in this very room, with the Welles family register in the exact same spot as it was now, and explained that their family vocation was more than just a job—it was a calling. It would be her responsibility to not only record and catalogue the realm’s greatest stories of love, courage, sacrifice, and hope, they explained, but to protect them as well. “The Marestam we know can’t survive if it forgets where it came from. We are the keepers of the past, and without that, there can be no future.”
Perhaps she’d taken the word “protect” a little too literally, but how could she possibly know? There were no Welles left to ask. There were no friends upon whose shoulders she could cry or whose ears she trusted enough to bend. There were only her beliefs, the tenets in this book, and the few words her disinterested teenage ears bothered to hear the day her parents told her everything.
When all was said and done, there was only Ruby.
For decades now, behind the international media corporation, the billion dollar name, and the faultless authoritative personality, there was only an orphaned teenage girl trying to make things right.
Chapter Nineteen
DAWN
Dawn didn’t fully comprehend the magnitude of what Elmina had told her until she came home and saw her two children in the living room, hunched over their schoolwork on opposites sides of the couch. Day had his bare feet on the coffee table, brown-bottomed socks on the floor. Morning was sitting cross-legged with her back straight as a flagpole, textbook perched inches from her nose. The local news channel, which filmed one half-hour program every morning and repeated it on an endless loop all day, was on but muted. There was a tall glass of water on each of the two side tables, and a half-empty bowl of microwave popcorn on the center cushion.
If the wackadoo fairy’s theory was right and magic was retroactively erased from existence, the people of Selladóre wouldn’t be the only ones to disappear. Their children—regardless of what century they belonged to—would fade away as well. Dawn had to make sure that didn’t happen. She had to stop Angus from committing genocide, intentionally or not, on an entire kingdom and an entire race. But first, she had to tell Hunter what was going on.
So after she’d tucked the kids into their beds, kissed their precious foreheads, and wished them goodnight, she poured two glasses of whiskey and joined him on the couch.
He straightened up the moment the cushion compressed, but didn’t look at her. His eyes remained focused on a yellow binder filled with line graphs and stock symbols and a whole bunch of other things she never bothered to understand.
“I need to talk to you,” she said, proffering the alcohol.
After a few seconds, he raised his eyes to the television, then the glass, and then, finally, to her. “No thanks,” he said, sending her blood pressure through the roof. “‘I’m not drinking tonight.”
Dawn resisted the urge to empty the drink right onto his binder—or his head. But at least his rejection was directed at the drink, not her request for conversation.
“Hunter,” she said, rotating so they were perpendicular to each other. “I know I deserve all of this cold shoulder, pulling teeth, humble pie stuff right now . . . and I’m not trying to get out of it. You have every right to be mad at me. If I were holding your shoes, I’d feel the same way. But there’s something I really need to talk to you about.” He angled his chin toward her and raised an eyebrow—no doubt intrigued by her proper use of four modern phrases … or at least she thought. “Please?”
Hunter’s shoulders rose and the binder closed. Slowly, he pulled his right shoe off of his left knee and twisted—just a little—towards her. “What’s wrong?”
Dawn froze. They were just two tiny words, but their tone and his body language and the concern in Hunter’s eyes made her feel as if … well, as if some higher power had reached down and told him, Enough. This is a ceasefire. Your wife is in pain.
She flinched as his hand landed on hers and moved the shaking glass of whiskey to the coffee table. He didn’t even bother with a coaster. Then he brought his hands back to his knees and waited.
Dawn rocked her jaw side to side a few times, as if she needed to warm the muscles before taking off. She decided to start with what happened at the hospital with Belle. She’d build on the familiar, with what he thought he already knew. After all, had he not found her memory box that night, all of this would have already been said.
He showed no emotion throughout the entire spiel. Then, when she came to a decent stopping point, he leaned forward and grabbed up his shunned glass of whiskey.
“Okay,” he said. “So. To recap. The baby that everyone thinks Belle is still carrying is actually the two-month-old everyone thinks Snow White adopted.” Dawn nodded. “Cinderella and Aaron are missing. Ruby Welles believes Angus somehow took away Ruby’s powers and brought Donner’s curse back. And the plan to fix all of this rests with Donner’s mother, the witch who kidnapped Rapunzel, and the fairy responsible for your sleeping curse?”
Dawn nodded again. He was a good listener.
The brown liquid swirling around in his glass dropped a full inch.
“Do you have any proof against Angus? Or is that based entirely on what Ruby says?”
Dawn’s nod went crooked. “You don’t believe me?”
Hunter frowned. “That’s not what I said. I’m just wondering whether Ruby did something to lose her magic and is blaming Angus so these three fairies will come together and get it back.”
Dawn hadn’t expected this, but she was prepared. It was almost exactly what Elmina thought before she told her about Selladóre.
“Sweetheart,” he said, laying a soft hand on her thigh and capturing all of her attention. “I’m not saying you and your friends are wrong. I’m just saying you can’t leap to such grand conclusions on one person’s word—at least not without considering other possibilities. Have you tried just talking to Angus? I mean, I don’t doubt he would like to rule Marestam on his own, but I just don’t see him kidnapping two people or endangering a child in order to do so. You know how stressful parenthood can be, especially when you’re in charge of an entire kingdom on top of it. Maybe Cinderella and Aaron just decided to be irresponsible for a little while. This trip was supposed to be their second honeymoon, after all.”
Dawn felt a familiar sting behind her eyes, but forced her body to shut it down. The last thing she wanted to do now was cry in front of Hunter. That’s not the way she wanted to get him on her side.
“But if you are right,” he continued, “once you get some proof, you won’t need any magical assistance to—”
“Angus is the one who found Davin,” she blurted. Hunter’s jaw stopped mid-syllable. “He knew Selladóre was more than just an overgrown island, and he knew exactly when the curse was going to break. That’s why he brought you. And while you were with me, he was taking Davin away to Pastora to take over Perdemi-Divan so he could—”
“Wait.” Hunter’s head shook like a dog with an infected ear. “What?”
Dawn flashed a smile of pity. “I know. It’s confusing. His father started Perdemi-Divan three hundred years ago. He was apparently outside the kingdom when the curse began and was—for lack of a better phrase—locked out.” She sucked in as hard as she could, but felt the tears starting to tip past the edge of her eyelids. Curse it. Not now. “And, yes, that means Angus and Davin had a relationship long before the merger and I’m so, so sorry about that. I know how much you—”
“No, not that part,” Hunter interrupted again. The skin around his eyes looked suddenly flushed. “You just said Angus knew when the curse was going to break. What does that mean? I thought I broke the curse when I kissed you.”
Dawn stopped her breath, then forgot to exhale. Her chest grew two sizes.
“You did!” She lunged forward to grab his hands, but they were too busy cupping both sides of his whiskey glass … which was trembling. “Of course you did! I don’t know—”
“Because that sounds like Angus only invited me along because he needed someone to hold your attention while he absconded with the man you really wanted to be with.”
“No, Hunter that’s not—”
He drained his glass and pushed up from the couch.
“It all makes sense. Choose a king so her parents would push her into a marriage that would supposedly unite the kingdoms.” He dropped two metal ice cubes into the glass. “Mentor the corporate heir to ensure you’ve got an insurmountable foothold in a billion-dollar company.” He swung the liquor cabinet open and pulled out a fresh bottle. “Then, just when people’s faith in the monarchies are beginning to crumble, send the long-lost scion back here to plunge another royal marriage into scandal and make it even easier to knock the whole system over.” The ice cubes crashed together as he swirled his glass. “I guess I should be grateful that you chose me in the end—or at least that you chose your crown and your children—but a scandal’s still a sandal no matter how it ends.” He shook his head and gulped his drink. “Well, thanks for giving me the heads up, I suppose. It’s helpful to know we’re stuck in Angus Kane’s pocket until he decides to destroy us.”
