by Laura Kenyon
Still, watching the King of Regian man a business call while his wife silently imploded at his side, Dr. Darling couldn’t deny that some marriages were, indeed, doomed.
“One hour a week,” Dawn muttered, her fists clenching and flexing in her lap. “I cannot believe that is too much to ask to make my marriage a little more tolerable.”
“Just give them memberships for the first year,” Hunter decreed into his phone, a titanium-backed contraption specifically made for hot-tempered businessmen. From the screen squinted Urvan Grogan, Tirion Enterprises’ fifth executive director in as many months. Dawn shot her arm out to grab it, but Hunter simply slid to his feet, laced his moisturized fingers through an airy blond mane, and began pacing.
“Pardon me, Your Majesty, but I don’t understand,” Dawn heard Urvan say as she stomped after her husband, struggling to grab the phone as it darted above her head and behind his back. Even her children were more mature than this. “You want to give four hundred commoners free reign of a brand new resort? But won’t that discourage the sort of clientele we want to attract? Ten championship golf courses, six international hotel chains, casinos up the wahzoo, and … well I don’t think broomball moms and rugrats are T.E.’s ideal—”
“Of course they’re not.” Hunter barked, essentially slashing the man’s throat with his tongue. Dr. Darling jerked up from his notepad. Dawn froze, looking like a frilly linebacker who’d just witnessed a paralyzing hit. Slumping back, she turned to lean against the window as Hunter—his cheeks bright red and nostrils flaring—defended his self-declared right to never be wrong.
With her forehead pressed against the glass, she could see a mass of clouds stretching from one end of Regian to the other. Unlike Carpale, where the grass was made of asphalt and metal towers blocked the sky at almost every turn, Regian was squat and sprawling. It still couldn’t hold a candle to the greenery in suburban Braddax or isolated Tantalise, but Dawn enjoyed her kingdom for its northern and southern coastlines, for families entrenched for generations, and for a fantastically dense forest mere steps from her castle’s back door.
She did not enjoy Regian for its century, its lack of a quality lace shop, or its King.
“Your Majesty,” Hunter’s minion was pleading. “Please forgive me. Of course you had a plan. Of course you were going to restrict the memberships. Of course this is just a ploy to get the tree huggers to pan their protest. You are the master, after all. I just haven’t been feeling well. Had some bad salmon at lunch. It’s affecting my judgment.”
Dawn shook her head. No wonder her husband spent every waking second expanding his already behemoth company. His employees treated him like a god.
“You’re an intelligent man, Grogan,” he said, pacing the room and expanding his chest like a territorial monkey. “I don’t hire anyone unless I’m sure that’s the case.” A sigh of relief whooshed in from the other side of the phone, but Dawn knew this was premature. She grasped the windowsill and closed her eyes, hoping the storm would pass quickly.
“Thank you, Sir.” Grogan sounded one syllable away from vomiting.
“However, I also don’t hire anyone who questions, in any way, my vision for the company I founded. If I were to advise turning our best golf course into a landfill, for example, I’d expect my top man to have the wheels in motion before I finished the sentence. Now, I have an appointment with my wife. I expect this to be taken care of by the time I walk out this door.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. The wheels are in motion, Your Majesty.”
“Good. And when that’s settled, I’d like to see you at the castle to discuss your future under my employ.”
“Hunter!” Dawn shrieked and spun around as Grogan’s bewildered image disappeared from her husband’s phone. He dropped it daintily into his vest pocket and smoothed the crimson linen with his palm. “Can you honestly say that was necessary?”
His face softened into an adoring smile. “One of us needs to flex our muscles, darling.” He placed his palm on the small of her back and guided her to the sofa. “And I certainly wouldn’t want that to be you. You’re too delicate.” He gave her forehead a birdlike peck. She tried to hold in her cringe. “Now, where were we?”
Dawn sunk down into the leather and stroked a lock of her long red hair. Hunter slid directly beside her and propped one ankle up with his knee.
At that moment, the King and Queen of Regian looked just like their wedding portrait: Him, ever the conqueror, radiating enough assurance for the both of them. Her, the image of compulsory obedience, staring at nothing with a million secrets in her eyes.
Yes, after two decades watching Marestam’s preeminent families languish in hatred and infidelity, Dr. Donovan Darling knew without fail when a marriage was, most certainly, doomed.
* * *
No one would have imagined, in their wildest dreams, that the pious Queen of Regian had been seeing another man for weeks while her husband snored away—safe in that dream world from which she’d been so abruptly banished. But she was.
Having slumbered long enough to fill three lifetimes, Dawn couldn’t fall asleep even if she wanted to—which, thankfully, she didn’t. Why would she? When every day came stuffed with fake smiles, obligatory ribbon cuttings, and dead-fish kisses from a man she never got the chance to love, her only release arrived with the moon.
This is why, each night after bundling Morning and Day into their gilded beds, kissing their foreheads, and dutifully coaxing Hunter to sleep, Dawn would slip into her most comfortable clothes and disappear into Regian’s sixteen square miles of forest.
Here, she found a woman with no buttoned-up chaperone telling her what she should feel, how she should smile, or which words she should strike from her antiquated vocabulary. She found the same starry sky that lit her childhood exploits three centuries earlier. She found the ability to pretend, for a few precious hours, that nothing had changed at all. And she found Mark—or Lucas, or Rupert, or Damian, or whatever name her mood bestowed on him that particular evening.
The first time she saw him, Dawn was on a cliff overlooking a river. The handsome stranger was a few dozen meters below, chopping wood on the far side and playing with a giant dog whose fur glistened like iron. She’d rarely ventured that far into the forest before, but from that day forward it was her favorite spot. The man was tremendously handsome and had a strong, hearty laugh that seemed to zip straight down her throat and race around her stomach like a trapped butterfly. Unlike her husband, this mysterious figure seemed far better suited to the whispers of the trees than of briefcase-toting advisors. And that first night, as she perched safely behind a thicket of bushes, watching him from above, she began to fabricate details about his life.
She wondered if they could have been lovers in some other dimension. She wondered what had brought him so deep into the Regian Woods, and why he wasn’t warm in bed like everyone else in Marestam at such an hour. For one brief moment, she even imagined that he was the reincarnation of someone from her past. Someone she loved dearly and had once expected to marry. Someone she’d murdered—as much as if she’d stabbed him through with a rapier—when she pricked her finger on that cursed spinning wheel all those years ago.
His name was Davin, and he was the son of her father’s most trusted advisor. He was also the brother Dawn never had. That is, until he hit puberty, sprouted in all the right places, and swiftly became something else entirely. Her parents had been exceptionally strict that year because her seventeenth birthday was looming—the year of her supposed curse. Back then, before interbreeding had diminished magical powers and technology had made them almost obsolete, threats from fairies were not taken lightly—a fact Dawn knew but quickly forgot when Davin asked to meet her in the highest tower. The forbidden tower. The Princess-Dawn-is-a-real-naïve-idiot tower.
In the few seconds it took for the poison to flow from the grooves of her finger to the edges of her brain, she’d panned through her young life and feared it was the end. But thanks to the
last-ditch efforts of another fairy named Elmina, the end turned out to be sleep. Three hundred years of sleep that ended in a compulsory marriage (“It’s the only way to ensure Selladóre has a place in this new world,” her mother had said, entirely mistaken); the death of her parents and half their people (“They say it’s to protect us,” her father had griped, “but I refuse to let these heathens stick a needle into my arm”); Parliament’s refusal to recognize Selladóre as a sixth kingdom (“We have been formed,” Angus Kane had concluded); and the horror of being nearly eaten alive—along with her twin children—by her part-ogre mother-in-law. Had Dawn known this was what awaited her in advance, she would have slit her wrists hours before her birthday and let life move on without her.
That’s why, no matter how unhealthy it was to take a complete stranger and swell him up to mythic proportions in her head, Dawn needed Mark (or Lucas, or Rupert, or Damian…) in order to survive.
She was almost at that cliff, in her nicely worn sneakers and teal September hoodie, when an upturned boulder caught her foot. She stumbled, then tumbled, down a slope dangerously close to her lookout spot. Tossed like a Jack-in-the-box down a grand staircase, she felt every bump. Wrist. Elbow. Ankle. Hip. Her sneaker pulled off. Her hood flew over her head. Her hands grasped at the air until her shoulder caught on fire and she came to a violent stop. Pain shot from her wrist to her neck but the rest of her body felt nothing. Nothing but air. She was dangling over the side of the cliff.
Her stomach leapt up her throat. Panic flooded her lungs. She screamed for help immediately, knowing it would be hardly a whisper by the time it reached anyone. Well, maybe not anyone.
She looked up, whipping the curtain of copper hair from her eyes. Her knuckles, bright white, were clutching a raised tree root. Great. She was either going to die or meet Hunter’s sexual stand-in while filthy and wriggling like a hooked fish. For the first time in her life, she actually was a damsel in distress. Hunter’s “rescue,” in her opinion, had been no more heroic than a foreigner “discovering” an already inhabited land and thrusting a flag between its legs.
A minute passed with no help. She struggled not to hyperventilate. Her fingers burned, but rearranging them only sent her sneakerless toe careening into the rock to keep her balance.
She cursed, but the chasm just spat her words back a hundred times over. Her heart pounded like a metal ball against her bones. “Hello? I’m hanging over a cliff and could use a hand climbing back up!” Too many words, she realized when they all came tumbling back over each other like a drunk marching band. Then there was silence. “Please! Help!”
She pictured Mark/Rupert/Damian rushing to her aid, plucking her into the air with one hand, and placing her delicately on the ground by his side. Then she pictured him staring at her single yellow sneaker, her dirt-caked yoga pants, and her ragged hair. She cringed. Sure, he hadn’t seemed like the superficial type. But then again, everything he’d seemed had been pure fantasy—a shell which she’d filled with all the dream qualities she wished Hunter could magically attain: Patience. Compassion. Humility. A love of the simple—
The sound of rustling scattered her thoughts. Then she heard a grunt.
“Hello! I’m over here!” she bellowed, gaping toward the top of the cliff. Then she found an entirely new reason to panic. What if her would-be-rescuer tumbled over trying to save her? Or what if he didn’t, and they fell instantly in love? What if—
But the next sound she heard wasn’t a man’s voice. It was a howl. And it came from an outcropping a few meters below.
Dawn craned her neck and squinted. Something appeared to be moving on the ledge. Something shiny and craggy and—
She yelped as two massive eyes lit up red. They were curved like the blades of a scythe and frighteningly still. Was it a wolf? A bear? A dragon? Was she about to be mauled by a species that supposedly went extinct decades ago?
She didn’t recognize the animal but knew enough to fear it. She scraped and scraped her surviving sneaker against the rock to push her way up, but nothing gripped. The beast howled again and clawed at the space between them, sending rubble tumbling into the river far below.
A few hours earlier, she wouldn’t have cared about dying. She might even have welcomed the opportunity. But now that she was actually staring the possibility straight in its crusty face, all she could think about was Morning and Day. She couldn’t leave them without a mother. She cringed at the thought of them becoming miniature versions of Hunter, joining their father’s quest to fill the entire world with resorts and casinos and concrete buildings with tree-studded lobbies instead of real forests.
Her attacker scrambled, lurching up like a giant nightmare, and missed her leg by inches. It fell back and set up again. This time Dawn was ready. Clutching the tree root with both hands, she tensed her foot like the ball end of a whip and slammed into something slick. The creature yelped and landed back on its ledge. Dawn cocked her leg again.
“Wait!” she heard someone call from above, distracting her just as the creature leapt up once more. This time, a claw tore across her calf and released the hot sting of blood. Adrenaline ricocheted throughout her body. She kicked like a frantic cyclist as the creature leapt again. This time, her feet made contact three times and unleashed an ear-splitting shriek. She heard the thing crash backwards—first smacking the ledge and then, as if in slow motion, plummeting into the darkness below.
Dawn’s arms burned as her body slammed back into the cliff, knocking the wind from her lungs. She was alive. Dangling over her death for the moment, but alive.
“Grab hold!” she heard before something coarse cracked against her cheek. As if she hadn’t been through enough. “I’ll pull you up!”
Dawn took a moment to breathe, then wrapped her legs through the knotted rope and carefully forced her hands to follow. She felt like a three-hundred-pound horse as the man heaved her up one foot at a time. Some rescue this was: the damsel slays the beast and the hero drags her back like a slug. Her view shifted from rock to dirt to grass, just as two bronzed arms yanked her up and dropped her flat on her ass. Her hair, tangled and full of dirt, hung in front of her eyes like twine.
“What did you do that for?” the man demanded. “She was trying to help you!”
“Huh?” She shook her head to get the wooziness out. “What?” she snapped, surprised by her bitter tone. This man did just save her life—sort of. But what the heck was his problem? “Who was trying to help me?” She leapt to her feet and whacked her hair away with her entire arm. Then she paused. Damn. It was her fantasy man. And he looked even more handsome up close.
The figure looming before her was the exotic sort of handsome that sent feminine defenses plummeting with one glance. His face was kind and boyish, despite a strap of stubble, and he had heavy-lidded eyes that could encourage women to flop right into his bed. As she took him in, the once crisp air suddenly felt so thick she could barely move. She was frozen on the outside, though everything underneath seemed ready to twirl off its axis.
He examined her right back, with an edge of perturbed amusement. He was probably trying to determine why this flustered woman in the filthy hoodie looked so familiar. But they were both staring for much longer than appropriate for a married woman. And as the moment wore on, Dawn became aware of an illogical and immeasurable comfort washing over her—like the taste of her favorite childhood soup on a winter day.
That, and a throbbing temptation to punch this guy in the gut.
Finally, he broke eye contact, tore a chunk of his shirt, and bent down to wrap it around her calf. “She was trying to put you on her back.” His skin smelled familiar as he leaned close, but she couldn’t quite place it. “You didn’t have to kick her off the ledge like that.”
Why did she feel like she was being chastised? The meaning of his words took a moment to process. Was he talking about the monster? “Wait. Are you saying that thing was trying to help me?”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth
than she heard something pounding through the trees towards them. It sounded like a helicopter had lost a propeller and was going down. Dawn’s heart rushed up her throat just as the trees opened and the creature lurched into the clearing. She screamed and raced behind the stranger, wrapping her hand around his bicep.
“Stay!” he yelled, raising both arms to defend her. Dawn covered her eyes. “Stay back!”
But the animal wasn’t listening. Instead, it crouched down, thrust its hind into the air, and bounced forward.
Dawn shrieked as he twirled around, keeping her safely behind him.
Then he slammed both hands against his thighs, wrapped his arms around the beast’s head, and broke into that massive, hearty laugh. Only this time, Dawn didn’t feel butterflies in her stomach. She felt rocks. Then she tripped on her own astonishment and fell back to the ground.
“This thing, as you called it, is my dreirem. And she doesn’t often meet other humans this deep in the woods, so she didn’t quite know what to do with herself.” He looked at Dawn’s leg and frowned. Then he knelt down to adjust the cloth. “I am sorry. But she was trying to help. She’s just kind of a big bumbling goof. Lucky for me, she’s as strong as she is stubborn and always lands on her feet.”
Dawn let out a nervous laugh just as his face tilted up beneath hers. His dark waves brushed her cheeks, flooding the air with that scent again. Then he pushed to his feet and helped her do the same.
“The blood’s only coming through in spots, but keep it clean for a few days. You may get some blisters and scabs, but nothing—”
Dawn opened her mouth to thank him, but all that came out was a vigorous nod and a grateful smile. What the heck? Why did she suddenly feel two inches tall? Why was her stomach incomprehensibly full?
