Page 39 of Rumpelstilzchen

Rumple saw red. Bright and violent slashes of red.

“He belongs to me now, and if I can find no use for a deceitful and traitorous human—”

She didn’t get to finish her threat before Rumple’s shadows, coiled tight with restless anticipation, whip-cracked at her through the looking glass.

The look of smug satisfaction that adorned her face was the last thing he saw before his shadow magick collided with her black magick in an almighty clash of power. Wisps of black smoke streaked through with flashes of violet crackled and flared. Claps of thunderous energy ricocheted through his chest and kicked up his hair. A litany of tiny fractures webbed outward from the centre of the looking glass that Rumple still held firmly in his grasp.

Then, for a beat, everything froze.

Two indomitable forces were locked in a battle for supremacy.

Suddenly, shards of glass flew outwards. The blast was strong enough that Rumple was lifted clear off his feet and sent hurtling through the air. He crashed through the ornate screens around the dais and was left slumped over the throne.

Fragments of glass were embedded in his body, their jagged edges having torn through his clothing with ease, but he didn’t pull them out. Numb with rage, he flickered between human and shadowed forms without control. The Queen had taken his Heart!

Rumple had never wanted to end a life more than he wanted to end hers, and yet he couldn’t. The spell that prevented him from touching her was—evidently—still in place.

Her parting words ran on repeat: “He belongs to me now.”

The arms of the intricately carved, black wood throne splintered and cracked under the force of his grip. Boy did not belong to that bitch.

His shallow breaths were visible in the frigid air. Boy was his.

Incensed, Rumple wrested the arms from the throne, and with an enraged cry, speared them through the stained-glass windows of the throne room. Red shards flew like daggers out into the courtyard of the Royal City, and the screams of those maimed below were the a cappella of his wrath. His shadows fed on their pain. He craved more.

Rumple bled into his shadow form and expanded until he easily filled the great hall with an all-consuming blackness. The Queen of Falchovari had dared to steal his Heart—and in return, he would take everything from her.

To the sounds of distress, dogs barking, and the Royal Guard’s clamour, Rumple heaved her garish displays of wealth from the stone walls. The decapitated and taxidermied heads of rare and magnificent predators, mouths open in vicious snarls, were heaped over the remains of Her Majesty’s throne. Into their macabre and gaping maws, he threw the numerous flattering and elaborate portraits of Queen Schön.

Driven to destroy all she held dear, Rumple exposed the truth beneath her famed beauty and power. Upon the shadow-soaked dais, he erected an altar to her true image. No longer would she sit upon a throne of lies, in a room of vanity, housed in a prison built to resemble a palace. The angrier he became, the higher the construct was piled.

Next, his shadows dragged the spinning wheel and stool across the black marble floor. A symbol of Boy’s imprisonment, Rumple tore it apart piece by piece, just as he would the entire building until he found him.

He unravelled the countless bobbins of golden thread he had split himself apart to conjure and clawed back his shadow magick. Reverted to its natural state, endless stems of dried maize and corn rained down from the high-vaulted ceilings.

Finally, the wooden bench, ornate screens, long ladders, and discarded hessian sacks were added as tinder. Rumple couldn’t think of anything more devastating to treasured possessions than the ravages of an untameable fire.

When the handles of the massive throne room doors rattled, and loud pounding against their frame rang out, Rumple converted his hatred and anger into ravenous flames. They ate up the still-falling grass stalks, which sprinkled like embers over the twisted altar-cum-pyre in the centre of the room. Its ignition was instantaneous, but not nearly satisfying enough.

As the Royal Guard outside the doors grew increasingly desperate to gain entry, his shadows retrieved Boy’s shoes from where they were discarded on the floor. Rumple turned the supple leather over and ran a shadowed finger along the gaping sole. That Queen Schön had denied Boy the basic courtesy of wearing even broken shoes renewed his fury.

When the throne room doors finally blew inward, and no less than a dozen armed men barged through the broken entrance, they became fresh fuel for the inferno. Blinded and disoriented, some stumbled headlong into the raging fire, and others bolted back into the hallway beyond, igniting the rugs, drapes, and artworks as they ran through the palace passageways.

Their agonised screams were music to Rumple’s ears—and a warning to everyone else.

Until he found his Heart, no one was safe.

twenty-three

Rumple

Untouchable in his shadowed form, Rumple stayed to watch the blaze take hold. The ferocious heat stripped the pigments from the paintings, ate up the dry fur of the taxidermied heads, and held his focus as if he were spelled.

From the moment the Queen had enthralled him, Rumple had sought a way out from under her control. He’d longed for the return of a life where he was free to move in and out of the shadows at will. He’d envisioned it countless times, but never, not once, had he imagined that when the day finally came, he would choose to remain. As the flames licked higher up the walls of the throne room, that was exactly what Rumple did.

It was in this prison that he had found his Heart. A Heart that beat good and pure and strong. A Heart that had set him free. A Heart he wouldn’t leave without.

Yet, even as he made that vow, the hollow of his chest burned as if it too were on fire, and Rumple felt the waning of his form. Without the Queen’s black magick to act as a tether, he was reminded of how little time he had left. The energy cost of having split himself in two, to spin the straw into gold and find the Prince, had caught up with him.