The Jaded King

by Jovee Winters

  I did not like his tone and glowered at him before crossing my thick arms over my equally-impressive chest, letting him know without words that if he wanted a piece of me, I’d be more than happy to oblige. I outweighed him by several pounds. He could not take me in a fair fight.

  Chuckling deeply, he held up his hands. “Stop bristling, caveman. I’ve not come to pick a fight with you. But you owe me, and so now the devil has come to collect his due.”

  Owe him? “The devil you say? I owe you nothing. Wherever we are, wherever you’ve brought me, I have no interest in learning more. I demand you return me to—”

  “What?” He curled his lip as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “That tavern we left behind? That girl you were emasculating yourself over?”

  “How dare you!” I curled my fist, but again, he didn’t have the decency to even feign fear.

  “I dare much. Especially when someone tries to renege on our—”

  I stepped into him, shoving my chest into his and forcing him back on his heels. I was angry. I was exhausted. And I was in no mood to be trifled with.

  “You keep saying that! I have made no deal with you, demon. None! I am not whoever you think I—”

  “Gerard Caron?” He lifted a brow. “Eldest son of the Caron family line? Father is Emmanuel? Mother, Elain? Two younger brothers, both dead? Father abandoned the family after his favorite died. Mother died two years later when you were but fifteen. In love with that money-hungry wench, Belle Durand. Need I continue?”

  Breathing heavy, feeling as though my mouth had just flooded with spittle at the terrible things he’d said about my love, I could only seem to shake my head. But I was a coiled snake, ready to strike should he say even one thing more about her.

  Rumpelstiltskin, clearly smarter than he looked, took several steps back, putting a fair bit of distance between us. I never took my eyes off him, fully expecting him to say something else disparaging and unacceptable.

  But the angry, almost bitter set of his mouth relaxed for just a moment and instead of laughing when he inhaled, he sighed deeply, and the sound of it caused a strange emotion to wind through me. That had been the sound of a man near to the point of breaking, a sound I was all too intimately familiar with, as I’d often paced the length of my tent at night, unable to sleep, so deeply and profoundly grieved by feelings I could hardly even put a name to.

  The demon’s lashes fluttered like broken moth wings for several long seconds. I had a hard time reconciling this man with the one who’d just been before me. When Rumpelstiltskin finally looked back at me, he seemed completely altered, no longer quite as imposing or demonic, but now slightly desperate.

  “You have no idea,” he choked out, “what I’ve had to do to find you. None. I doubt you even remember what’s happened to our world.”

  “Nothing’s happened.”

  His eyes raged with flame, and he threw his hands up, gesticulating wildly as he said, “Everything! Everything has happened, you idiot! It’s all changed. All of you, you damned ignorant fool. And I loathe the fact that you don’t remember any of it. I want to hurt you for hurting me as you’ve done. And yet...” His laughter echoed with hollow bitterness.

  This time, it was me who backed up, shaking my head. The demon was insane. Suddenly, I felt real fear.

  “And yet you’re the key to it all.” His breaths were shuddery, as though he sobbed, but there were no tears left in him to cry.

  “Look, just take me home. I’ve made no deal with you. You cannot hold me here against my—”

  His moment of raw vulnerability snapped, and he glared at me, looking as though he really did want to kill me. I slid my hand into my coat, fingertips pressing against the cold steel of my blade. If he dared come a step closer, I would use it.

  “I saved your miserable excuse for a life, Caron. Of course you owe me,” he growled.

  “What?”

  His laughter rang out like a choir of demon bells, causing the many pairs of eyes across the lawn to glance our way. I did not like this place and did not wish to remain here even a second longer.

  “Belle’s heart is dark. Her intentions are not pure.”

  I frowned. He lied. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You would say anything to—”

  Suddenly, I was bum-rushed. Yes, I appeared to outweigh him and be stronger than him. But I recognized that for the illusion it truly was the moment he barreled into me and shoved me up against the wall. His strength was immense. His eyes were burning like coals in the dead of night. Rage twisted his features.

  “Yes, I would say anything! Anything I had to! You’re right,” he barked. “But I do not lie. I never lied to her. And it is for her that I do all of this. You are an idiot if you think you would find happiness with that woman. Look into my eyes, and see that I tell the truth.”

  I tried to squeeze my eyes shut, tried to turn my face away. But I could not. I was held fast, gripped by his immense power and forced to gaze deep into the flames.

  Images rolled swiftly by of Belle and I as children, running and laughing and playing, frolicking in the waters before her father would come out and find us. He’d snatch her up and beat her bloody. Tears and snot would pour down her mottled face, and she would shut me out.

  On and on, our past played like a reel in my mind. Her and I older, meeting up in an abandoned farm to cuddle and talk into the wee hours of the night, where she would profess her love to me. But I saw our conversations now in a way I couldn’t have then.

  I was a stranger in this re-creation, a ghost lingering on the fringes of my memory. I saw the way her dark eyes glittered as she spoke of finding enough money to run away forever, saw the way her fingers slipped into the pocket facing away from me as she caressed and fondled an item over and over.

  There’d been a great scandal that rocked our tiny hamlet many years earlier. Lady Tierney had been robbed of her finest jewel—a golden sun with diamond chips that glittered like beams in the light. Everyone in town had blamed the feeble-minded George as the thief. He was known for his sticky fingers, always stealing rolls of bread from the market vendors.

  Belle’s voice had been loudest, not only decrying him as the thief, but claiming she’d caught him in the very act of it. George had only been able to cry, standing in the middle of the busy street dressed his rags, with missing teeth, thinning hair, and a face covered in soot. He’d looked broken and miserable.

  I remembered my feelings that day, standing beside Belle, thinking it wasn’t right how the entire village had accused him. But I’d said nothing. At sixteen, I’d been too scared to speak up in his defense, terrified to turn Belle’s heart against me.

  George had spoken no words in his own defense, merely lifted his hands over his head and sobbed like a broken man-child.

  It was the next night—after George’s beating, but before he was forced to sit in the stocks for another three long nights, enduring rotten fruit and vegetables being tossed at him, mingled with the jeers and contempt of our hamlet—that Belle and I sat in that barn.

  In this memory, I saw myself clearly, mooning over her, spellbound by her beauty, completely unaware that the item she continued to fondle in that pocket was the very pendant that’d been stolen from Lady Tierney.

  My heart shook violently, but the onslaught of memories did not stop. They continued to roll on and on, revealing new bits of information I’d willfully chosen not to see.

  I saw the five years without her, saw how she shamelessly flirted with each and every male in the hamlet before finally landing on one—that shaggy beast of a man with the beard that I’d seen back in the tavern.

  Just as she and I had done, they stole away to “our” barn. I heard her laughter, the sounds of moans, the heated whispers of promises made. He lavished her with jewels, and she’d accepted them all.

  I wanted to beg the demon to stop, wanted to tell him that this was dark magic, that he lied, that he was only trying to manipulate me. But then, other m
emories came barreling through.

  I saw scenes of a world that did not exist, but a man that was me holding the hands of a woman I did not know, gazing at her with a type of longing and love that was impossible. She was looking back at me with the very same emotion.

  By the time the images finally ended, my very soul trembled. My stomach heaved. My heart hurt. I looked slowly up at Rumpelstiltskin. His face was an unreadable mask.

  “Who was that woman?” I croaked, mouth feeling dry and throat parched for moisture.

  The demon’s nostrils flared as he rubbed violently at his eyes. I would not think the monster capable of tears, but something had definitely left him shaken.

  “That is who you’ve been brought here to find. She owes me greatly.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t.”

  He chuckled. “You do if I say you do. One flick of my fingers, and that fate I showed you, with Belle and her shaggy mate, will be yours. The bitterness, the rage, the despair, the knowledge that you love something that can never love you back will all be yours. Her father’s contempt twisted that young girl into a monster. She has no feelings. She has no remorse for the hearts she’s broken. Go ahead, mate.” He jerked his fingers. “Go back to her. Make a fool of yourself. Propose. Think that it will all get better? That she will finally see what a good thing she really has and change it all? Just for you? Just for love?”

  “You’re a bastard.”

  The demon snorted. “But I’m an honest one,” he growled. “I saved you from that fate, so whether you signed an agreement with me or not, you owe me. I’ve opened your eyes, and you know it. Deny it all you want, but deep down, you know she’s a viper out only to serve herself. Your friend was right, and it kills you that she was.”

  I clenched my back molars, grinding down so hard I faintly tasted powder on the back of my tongue. “Va te faire foutre.”

  “You first.”

  “Take. Me. Back.”

  “You cannot possibly be this stupid, Caron! But then, you were before, weren’t you?” He huffed. “It was Belle that broke your heart then, too. Belle that turned you into a raging manwhore. You lost your way all for a woman who was never worthy.” His chest heaved, and he began to pace, shoving fingers through his hair, as his eyes roved wildly back and forth as he gazed at the ground. “I’m trying to save us all! Can’t you see that!”

  He stopped, whirling on me, his eyes blazing like fiery rubies. The giant birds and the people staring at us all stopped moving. The world just completely stopped, as if it paused for breath, and I gazed around wide-eyed, wondering at the type of power this demon had to possess in order to affect an entire community as he just had. A few seconds later the world started up again, but I was left shaken by the dark one’s power.

  I could be obstinate. I could fight him for the sake of fighting him. Or I could choose to be wise and learn what it was he wanted me to do. I still believed I owed this demon nothing, but if all he needed me to do was find a girl, surely I could do that.

  Then maybe I could get him out of my hair and my life.

  “Where is this girl you want?”

  Those must have been the right words because he visibility deflated, going from a raging psychotic to just a man again.

  Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he shook his head. “I haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Then—” I jerked my hand out, irritated beyond belief at this point.

  He glared at me. “Come on, Caron,” he growled, “think! Feel it. Feel it! It lives in you. That fire. That need. It’s there, maybe buried, but it’s there. I know it is because it still burns in me!” He pounded a fist to his chest over and over. “It is the one magic that can never be erased. You will always find each other. That’s how it works. That’s how it is. So you goddamn do it!”

  My mind went black. My chest expanded and my lungs filled with air. I wanted to... I wasn’t even sure what. Rage. Hurl insults back at him. Pound my fists into his head and demand he release me from this hell now.

  But suddenly, I felt something—a tiny flame, a little burn of light that glowed within me, so faint I would not have recognized it had he not said what he’d just said. There’d always been a hollowness in me, an emptiness that I’d tried to fill with anything good, positive, and beautiful.

  It was that empty well inside of me that now shimmered and rose up like a feather fluttering into a gentle breeze, growing bigger and deeper and wider. I looked around, feeling as if I needed to go.

  Needed to find... it. Whatever it was.

  “And I will know this girl when I see her?”

  Rumpelstiltskin’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, Caron. Yes. And somewhere deep inside of her, she will know you, too.”

  “And then what?” I shrugged. “How do I leave this place?”

  “Once you have her, I will transport you both.”

  “What?” I frowned, noticing he’d been very non-specific. “What is this girl to you?”

  “She is everything. She is Eve. Do not ask me more than that. Once you find her, you will be free of your duty to me. Then she is mine, and you can leave. For good, if you want.”

  Find her, and be freed of this madman? That deal seemed almost too good to be true, especially because of the way his gaze kept shifting around and how he suddenly licked his lips. After five years as a solider I’m grown astute at learning body language, and his told me one thing, he was keeping things from me. Good or bad, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was I didn’t trust him, but I had no other options available to me.

  I swallowed hard. “Then I’ll do it.”

  His face contorted into a mask of irritation. “Then what are you bloody waiting for? Go!”

  I ignored the sudden, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and turned on my heel. The moment I did, the well within me lit up, like someone had taken a string to my soul and was tugging on me. I didn’t understand this magic, but I also didn’t believe it was part of Rumpelstiltskin. It felt too pure, too clean.

  Ignoring the madman at my back, I walked. Following that tug wherever it would lead.

  ~*~

  Rumpel

  The tears I’d just barely held in check now rolled down my cheeks as I watched the fate of everything I loved hinge on the actions of a man who remembered nothing at all.

  I’d tried to share Betty and his past with him, but had felt the barriers of his mind so thick, so impenetrable that I knew it wasn’t Gerard blocking me, but a part of this damn curse. I hoped something had gotten through, but I wasn’t very confident.

  Shayera had told me of her parents’ history, of the curse Galeta—when she’d been the Blue—had set on Gerard.

  The Gerard of that day and this one were completely different, though. Polar opposites, in fact. I did not have even the slightest bit of hope this could succeed.

  Yes, I’d found Caron, but he loved another. That damned idiot. Even in this new life, I could never have forgotten my beloved. Love like what Shayera and I shared was eternal, no matter the many incarnations one was forced to work through. But I could literally do no more.

  Or could I?

  I blinked as an idea—a terribly fascinating and wholly awful idea—came to me. I could force this. I could make them believe whatever I wanted them to believe. I mean, they had been in love, once. Surely, they would learn to love again.

  “I do not care for that look on your face.” A voice, deeply feminine and wary, cut through my devious musings.

  Twitching, I glanced down to notice the fairy, Danika, standing beside me. Dressed in her ever-present gown of glittering spider silk and wreathed in wild flowers, she was as lovely as she was powerful. She’d been godmother to the Bad Five—it was how she’d referred to her first five happily ever afters, of which Gerard was number two. That she took a personal interest in the restoration of her boys’ happily ever afters did not surprise me, but if she thought her censure would change my mind, she was dead wrong.

  I rolled my eyes. “Save your platitudes f
or someone else, fairy. I don’t care to hear them. This is my show, and I will run it as I see fit.”

  She clutched at her wand, watching Gerard’s now-shrinking form fade off into the distance.

  “You screw this up, and I will personally make your life hell.”

  I chuckled, the sound low and, frankly, evil. “There is no hell worse than the one I am living. If you think for a moment I will allow anyone, even you, to keep me from my end goal, then you do not know me at all, old friend.”

  She blinked and turned to me, wearing a pretty pink frown. “I hope you know what you are doing, Rumpel. I really do. Remember that these two are Shayera’s parents. Anything you do to them now will affect how she sees you later.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath, blinking violently. There could have been no greater threat than the one she’d just delivered.

  She grabbed my wrist and squeezed gently. “Tread lightly, old friend. And know that I will be watching. May the gods be merciful to us all.”

  Then she vanished, leaving me alone with only my terrifying thoughts for company.

  Chapter 3

  Gerard

  I walked for what felt like days, but had been only hours. The sun was soon to set. The stifling heat of the day had made way to a cooler nighttime clime. There was a sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and dogwood lingering all around the closer I neared a placid pond in the middle of the town.

  The pond was quite large and a cool blue-gray color. The reflection from the waning sunlight dappled the water so that it appeared to shimmer like cut gems.

  Coming to a stop at the edge of it, I pursed my lips. I was tired. I stank of sweat. Hunger gnawed at my belly. I’d been at this for hours, looking for this woman the dark magician had sent me to find.

  Pinching my brows to relieve the ache that’d progressively grown throughout the day from a slight annoyance to a banging throb, I moaned, “Merde.”

  I wasn’t even sure why I’d walked to this damned pond, other than my feet ached, and I’d spied a bench. But the seat I’d come for was now being taken up by two lovers, canoodling and murmuring sweet nothings. I sighed.