Rumpelstilzchen (The GriMM Tales #7)

Chapter 1

one

Rumple

“Who’s out there?” barked a thief emboldened by his dagger.

Rumple reached out with shadowed hands and trailed his fingers up an arm, ghosted a touch to the back of a neck, played with a lock of longer hair, tugged on a well-worn cloak, and leaned in close to whisper the promise of death.

He would have stated his own name, were it not for the spell that forbade him from doing so.

“It’s him,” another man murmured. He nudged his elbow sharply into the ribs of the fellow beside him, as if his friend might be so dim-witted that he’d failed to notice the paranormal aura that had pervaded their immediate vicinity.

His dialect was not local. In fact, it was from much further east in the kingdom where the famine was worse.

Such was the trend over these last several seasons; those from the outer reaches of the territory were migrating west, closer to the more fertile lands of the River Albī and the Royal City.

Something the Queen was most ardent about deterring.

Another man, who squatted low, trembled and said, “The Royal Shadow.”

Rumple let loose a rumble of pleasure at the recognition of his legend.

The Royal Shadow was just one of the many names he was known by, all equally intimidating, and nothing like his true name.

Every corner of the kingdom knew who he was: the ruthless entity deployed by the Queen of Falchovari to handle dissenters and rebels.

“Shhh, don’t say his name out loud!” The thief with a dagger raised it high until his fist was level with his temple. “If you do, then you’re the first one he kills. Mercilessly.”

Rumple tutted under his breath—that was only partially true.

He could be lenient when he wanted to be.

It was a shame, then, that circumstances meant he couldn’t often show that side of himself.

Those same circumstances that had him surrounding this group of vagabonds on a crisp autumn night, their pockets and sacks bulging with the spoils from the Royal Storehouse they had raided not long ago.

As the Queen’s Shadow, he was duty bound to punish all those suspected of being guilty of treason, and having long lost autonomy over everything else in his life, all Rumple had left was pride in his role—and he took that seriously.

His sentient shadows crept low through the underbrush, unseen by their targets.

With a dense and menacing intent, they filled the space between the dry bracken and thorny vines that littered the forest floor.

The crude fire the men had lit elicited a false sense of security, and at fifteen paces out, when fully surrounding them, the shadows paused their advance.

They climbed the nearby walnut trees until the branches were cloaked in darkness right to the very tips, where the rounded seeds were all but ready to drop.

Undoubtedly, this was the reason the vagabonds had set up camp here, but whilst a handful of early-season nuts provided a nutritious snack, the unripened delicacies would bring nothing but terror.

Shadowed fingers emerged and selected two of the larger walnuts, hefting them in smoky palms to test the best trajectory.

One of the men, who was huddled deep inside his tattered overcoat and using his knapsack filled with stolen wares for a pillow, slept on a hastily made bed of dried leaves.

For having the audacity to fall asleep in a haunted forest, Rumple decided he would be the first target.

The second would be the man whose flinty eyes darted with unease whilst his fingers twitched nervously upon the handle of a well-used dagger.

From experience, Rumple knew that men of his disposition—those so riddled with anxiety that it manifested in constant and unwanted physical tells—were the first to act rashly and chaotically.

It was a combination he loved to use to his advantage.

Having failed to stifle his sadistic delight any longer, Rumple pelted the nuts—still in their husks—and struck his intended targets both simultaneously and with fervour.

In an instant, the man with the dagger sprang from the ground and slashed it through the air with reckless abandon.

The man who’d been dozing awoke with a start and sat bolt upright, unwittingly putting his head directly into the erratic path of the fast-moving blade.

Their sudden movements agitated the three remaining companions, who had twitched as if to beat a hasty retreat, but when the abruptly woken man suddenly reached for the side of his face and unleashed a pained shriek that pierced the silence of the forest, they froze—stupefied.

Rumple pushed a strong gust of wind through the leaves of the trees and allowed it to carry his low and sinister chuckle. Instinctively, the men huddled closer, pressed back to back as if that would help them defend against the malevolent spirit who now had them in his sights.

Blood spilled from between the fingers of the man on the floor, who despite his grievous wound had shuffled into a squat position. Rumple hoped an ear had been severed.

The putrid stench of urine invaded Rumple’s noncorporeal form.

He located the source with practised ease; the culprit with only one ear was now also down a pair of breeches.

Luckily for him, the cold water of the River Albī would help with washing both bodily fluids out of his clothing, but he’d have to make it there alive.

Unless of course he ended up on the wrong trail and delivered himself right into the heart of the Frog Prince’s Lair, in which case his soiled breeches would be the least of his worries.

Rumple manifested into his preferred corporeal form directly in front of the terrified man. Unblinking, wide eyes took him in from head to toe. Rumple was used to this. He knew he looked like a distinguished nobleman, and the juxtaposition always added to the confusion. “Run,” he whispered.

He could almost hear the man’s conflicting thoughts.

“I’m going to die. Is he really letting me go?

Where will I go? Why am I still here? I’ll die if I run.

I’ll die if I stay.” Yet as predictable as the sun rising in the east, the man eventually stumbled to his feet and ran, still clutching his ear as he disappeared into the too-dark forest.

With one down, four thieves remained. Rumple commanded his shadows into a gridiron that surrounded the group, and the next to make a break for it was the man who had first identified him.

But unlike he whom Rumple had encouraged to leave, this one ran headfirst into the shadowed trap, only to discover that it was more solid than it looked.

Composed of shadow magick, it was sharper than any sword found in the kingdom of Falchovari, and as soon as the man emerged on the other side, he fell upon the floor in no less than thirty-six neatly squared chunks.

The sound of dry-heaving preceded the splattering of meagre stomach contents, and Rumple took a step back at exactly the same moment the angry man with the dagger lurched forward.

The blade would have done him no harm—no mortal weapon against his kind existed—but it was the predictability of it all that irked him. No matter how many creative ways he came up with to solve the Queen’s problems, humans invariably responded in the same ways. It was boring. He was bored.

The man roared and lunged again. Spittle flew from behind spaced-out and yellowed teeth, and Rumple side-stepped elegantly.

How long had he been doing this now? He’d lost track of his age not long after Falchovari became independent from the Southern Kingdom.

Rumple ducked, avoiding the sharpened point of the dagger aimed at his neck, and realised that he had, quite possibly, been around since the dawn of time.

But he had not lost track of the number of years he’d been indentured to Queen Schon.

His attacker swung the blade back, and the unpredictable nature of the move made Rumple smile.

He commanded his shadows into a short rapier and stood on guard.

Shadow magick was fuelled by the darker emotions of anger, shame, and guilt, and without Rumple’s express command, they would freely ravage a person—consuming all of their lies and malice until nothing else of them remained.

For a fleeting moment, Rumple held out hope that these men might salvage his entertainment for the evening after all.

Alas, the other bandit, who until this moment had stood petrified, joined his friend in a syncopated assault that saw him impaled through the gut, right up to the hilt of Rumple’s blade.

Had he not learned from what happened earlier, that the shadows were not what they appeared?

He gurgled, choked, and spluttered before coughing up a mouthful of blood.

But this, too, was nothing new. It didn’t hold any of the intrigue that Rumple was hoping for.

He commanded his sword to disappear from inside its temporary sheath and conjured it to reappear in his other hand, all before the man with the dagger had fully processed what had happened.

“What do you want?” demanded the man with the flinty eyes, his shaking hand held out before him as if it might ward off Rumple purely by existing. “If it’s the coin you want us to return, you’re out of luck. The coffers were already empty when we arrived.”

Shameful. A thief and a liar. Rumple commanded his shadows into giant bat-like wings on his back and flapped them in agitation.

The other man, who had streaks of bile and broth down his simple woollen tunic, dropped to his knees in an instant and clasped his hands as if in prayer.

Rumple’s shadows grew into a long and spiked tail that snaked the short distance to coil up the newly devout man’s body and cinch around his neck.

All the while Rumple’s shadows squeezed, the man’s lips never stopped mouthing his silent pleas. For clemency? Salvation, perhaps? A merciful death? The man’s eyes bulged from within his bright red face and he slow-blinked.

Why did humans rarely ever embrace death? Rumple squeezed harder still and felt the rabbit-like pulse weaken under his hold. Why did they assume their right to life? His anger spiked, and the sudden but muffled crack of the man’s neck was unfulfilling.

He redirected his gaze to the man with the dagger.

How many had this man stolen from? How many had he killed?

How many lies had he told? What purpose did his life serve?

Bored with the enforced nature of this evening’s expedition, Rumple drove his shadowed rapier through the man’s lying mouth and out the back of his skull before he could utter another word, forgotten before his body hit the floor.

Rumple dusted off his black leather gloves as his shadows retrieved the Queen’s stolen property.

Unable to resist, he chanced a look inside the thieves’ knapsack.

Some pewter drinking cups, a small leather-bound book with a title almost too faded to read in the patchy moonlight etched upon it, and an ivory ink pen.

“Something, something, Geisterjagd,” he muttered under his breath as he tilted the small journal this way and that.

Rumple infused the book with shadow magick and sent it to the shadow realm to read later.

For decades he had been acquiring scrolls, parchments, and grimoires that held even the slightest reference to black magick.

Specifically, the magick Queen Schon had used to bind him into her servitude.

The same magick that pulsed painfully inside him.

Overall, however, Rumple thought the loot was hardly worthy of Queen Schon sending him all the way out here to retrieve it, but she could—and so she had. And she would do so again.

Rumple growled out his frustration, and a murder of crows took to the night sky in a flurry of frantic wing beats and caws.

Leaving the bodies where they lay for the scavengers of the forest to feast upon, he dematerialised and raced through the evergreen canopy of the western forest toward the palace.

Time passed strangely for Rumple. Each day bled into the next in a never-ending cycle of violence and monotony.

If he were being truthful, he’d admit that the fear radiated by a human in those moments before their death thrilled him, but lately he’d found himself wondering more and more if this could ever be enough.

For every day that went by, Rumple could feel the shadows that gave him life thickening.

Where once they were wispy and malleable, now they were unforgiving and demanding.

He flexed within his noncorporeal form, pushing further outward, and was met by an invisible barrier.

It shouldn’t be like this. Soon, they would consume him entirely.

Geist’s seldom reached the maturity and power that Rumple had, and without a Heart—a magickal amplifier designed and created especially for him—he was on borrowed time.

He should have searched harder. Had he found his Heart sooner, his core would have been impervious to the Queen’s forceful claim upon him, but as it was, the barbs of her black magick were now sunk deep.

The bitter irony of it all, was that her poisoned magick not only tethered him to her, but entirely filled the space where his Heart should be and thus stalled his departure from the human realm. Even if he happened across it today, it would be nothing more than a painful reminder of his failure.

Until he found a way to break her spell, his Heart was nothing more than a useless trinket.