Page 55 of Fae Unleashed
“The woman held the bratty little princess close. With hand on the girl’s golden crown, the woman stole a memory from her with each step. The little girl forgot about her favorite hiding place in the hedge maze. She mourned the lost memory while another was taken from her. A small, stuffed rabbit with long ears that’d been dragged through so much mud suddenly vanished from her mind.” Rhoan closed his eyes.
I thought I saw a bead of moisture gather at the corner.
“By the time they escaped the castle and rushed into the mortal realm, the little princess was nothing more than an empty girl. The woman looked at her creation, at the doll that had once been her best friend’s child…”
My stomach turned. I didn’t like the direction this story was taking. I knew where it was going and who it involved, and I didn’t want to hear it any longer. When I moved to get up and leave, Rhoan caught my hand ever so gently. I couldn’t help but look at him pleadingly.
“Trust me?” he asked.
I licked my lips and fought back tears of frustration. “Of course, I do.”
He’d started out as a drunk that I couldn’t fully rely on. Now, he was there wherever I turned. There was no way forward without Rhoan. I reached and tucked his black hair behind his ear.
“The story isn’t going to be pretty for a while,” Rhoan said. “Do you want me to skip ahead? The princess has a happy ending. I promise.”
My voice cracked. “Skip ahead. Please.”
His lips stretched into a soft smile, and my heart thumped. He tugged me back down beside him so that his shoulder pressed against my thigh. The warmth of him tried to comfort the knot in my chest, but the knot was too tight to be undone by a touch so small.
“All right, we’re going to fast forward. Skip a couple of decades. The princess isn’t a doll anymore. She might have lost the memories that made her who she’d been, but she gained memories to make her who sheis. There are good memories and bad memories, as is the way of life and the passing years.
“When a cursed ferret crash lands in her life, she is forced to reconcile with the person she should have been. The princess learns that she has a quest to fulfil and that there is help waiting for her. The ferret leads her to a man who wishes he could give up his memories. Meeting the princess showed him that memories are far more important than he wanted to admit, because now he needs to rememberher.”
My brow furrowed. “Why wouldn’t he be able to remember her?”
“Ah, like any good knight, he sold a part of himself to become the best at what he does. He sold the part he never thought he might need. The fool should have known that if he didn’t need it, then it would belong to someone else. It was never his to begin with.” Rhoan ran his thumb along the back of my hand still in his grasp.
My heart stuttered. Did he mean what I thought he meant?
“Don’t say it,” I whispered.
I knew what it meant now. If he admitted how he felt, then his entire being was at stake. I couldn’t let him do that. He needed to be here, not to become my king so that I could escape. That was the last thing on my mind as I gripped his hand tight.
No, I needed him herewith me. I didn’t need him to confess his love. I didn’t need him to whisper it softly in my ear. We could have so many happy years together. No confessions were necessary.
“It’s just a story,” Rhoan said with a smirk. “I didn’t say any of this was real. Why can’t I say that the knight’s heart belonged to the princess? He might not have known it when he sold it to a monstrous power, but it was an inevitable truth.
“Now, this knight. He was a big fool. He thought he’d lost everything. With his court and his heart both in the hands of the enemies, he no longer thought he had anything to live for. What is a knight without anything to protect? Well, the princess gave him something to protect. That simple act alone brought him back to life after living like a walking corpse for so many years.”
Rhoan had found a loophole. It seemed that his particular curse required a direct statement of love. In his story, he could use these characters to tell me how he felt. The thought made my heart swell. I wanted to tell him that I loved him in return, but fear kept my lips sealed. There was no telling what his curse would do if I said something.
The world stopped for us. No one walked past the park. The Unseelie that’d been prowling for a snack disappeared, and it seemed like they didn’t think to tell their Queen that I was vulnerable in the open.
Rhoan and I held this moment between the two of us. We clutched it close and savored it while we could.
“Now, this princess is a bit reckless. She spends much of her time giving the knight a run for his money. He’s struggling to catch up and keep her safe, but his reflexes sharpen for her. He becomes a weapon in her hands once again.” Rhoan’s expression turned sad. “The knight realized that he never wanted to be a weapon. What he always wanted was to be loved, and the poor fool thought that he could do that as a weapon. He never once thought that there would be someone in this world who would look at him and forget that he could be used. This princess showed him he wasn’t just a tool. He was a man with a heart.”
“I thought this story was about a princess? What happens to her?”
Rhoan snorted. “Her story isn’t over. She’s a damn determined character. I can’t tell her story because she’s constantly rewriting it. I guess that’s what happens when memories need to be made. She took that empty slate and wrote in everything that she wanted.
“I’ve never seen someone so capable of writing their own story. There’s no way that I can finish it for her.”
I wanted to lean in and kiss him again. His lips had a dark, blackberry tinge that I wanted to taste on my tongue. Somehow, I managed to stay put. I kept my hands from roaming. No matter how badly I wanted to tell him my side of the story, I stayed silent. I didn’t trust myself to word it quite like he had.
I stared at my hand in his. “Maybe we should get going. Tal wants me to give a speech at the castle tonight. He thinks its going to rally my court for the final push.”
“It could. There’s no way to know until we try. If it doesn’t, then we’ll regroup and try another approach. We’ll keep doing this until it works. All right?”
