Chapter 5 Rumple #2
Scrambling to keep the curds on the cracker, the boy hurriedly shoved the entire offering into his mouth before any could fall on the floor, and Rumple used the brief opportunity to recover himself. The boy closed his eyes as he crunched the thin bread and angled his face upward in pleasure.
“No, you said it yourself. The Queen will do that in the morning. No reason for me to concern myself in her matters.”
When Rumple’s words registered, eyes the exact colour of chestnuts snapped open. The boy swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed, then he winced as what must have been painful shards of half-masticated bread raked down his throat. A fresh wall of tears built behind clumped lashes.
Without instruction, Rumple’s shadows soothed the boy, stroking away the curl that was stuck to his forehead, and he felt an uncharacteristic urge to make it up to the boy.
Purposefully, he touched each of the remaining foods on the platter in turn—the grapes, the blue cheese, the cornbread, the strawberries—and the boy’s pupils dilated.
Rumple selected one from the small pile and brought it into the palm of his hand.
The red contrasted against the black leather so perfectly. The boy watched it keenly.
This was a replica of the new cultivars the Queen had insisted be brought in from the neighbouring Kingdom of Hallin.
They had grown much bigger and juicier fruit with a longer harvesting season than the wild strawberries that grew native to Falchovari, and Queen Schon was not one to be outdone.
These particular strawberries were now embedded in the palace’s kitchen garden, and Rumple was certain the boy had never seen a fruit quite so big, nor quite so red.
He bounced it in his hand for good measure. Mesmerised, the boy’s warm brown eyes tracked the strawberry like a hawk would track a mouse through a field of barley.
The corner of Rumple’s mouth curled upward, and he added extra weight to the blanket of shadows that still draped around the boy’s shoulders.
Being able to control their density gave him an advantage; mothers had used swaddling clothes since the dawn of mankind to help unsettled babes feel more secure, and Rumple wasn’t above applying that same technique here.
What he wasn’t prepared to examine any closer was his desire to bring the boy comfort. Rumple was a shadow geist: he didn’t nurture, he maimed.
Instead, he chalked his unusual behaviour up to the overwhelming experience of having possibly discovered his Heart in the palace cells.
That he wasn’t consoling the boy so much as he was reassuring himself before he made what would be the toughest decision of his life.
Because if this boy was his Heart, then claiming him would also mean taking a stand against the Queen, and with her black magick infecting the space where his Heart would go, he wasn’t sure he was ready—or able—to risk her wrath just yet.
In desperate need of a distraction, Rumple ventured, “Have you ever eaten strawberries?”
The boy nodded, but didn’t speak.
“Wild strawberries, yes. I imagine you have. They grew well in your region before the famine. But imagine tasting one of the Queen’s Garden strawberries.
” He leaned forward, lowering his voice once more in an attempt to draw the boy into the conversation.
“Can you already feel their sweet and sticky juices coating your tongue?”
The boy’s cheeks flushed, and his pupils dilated further. His small pink tongue darted out to lick across his lower lip, and if Rumple were a betting man, he’d wager that the boy didn’t even realise he’d done it.
Rumple positioned the strawberry in the centre of his gloved palm, and rested his hand on his knee, as close to the boy as he could position it without moving from his seat.
He wasn’t blind to the power he held over the boy.
The young man had lived in famine and poverty, he was set to die in the morning, and Rumple was shamelessly using those disadvantages against him.
As he teased more of his weighted shadows up through the boy’s golden waves and massaged his scalp—rewarding, cajoling, encouraging—Rumple told himself that this was all for the boy’s benefit.
So when the boy fully lowered his knees to the ground and leaned forward from his hips, Rumple’s excitement got the better of him. “The Queen will never know.”
Despite the impulsive nature of the promise, Rumple meant every word. The Queen could never find out just how special this particular human was.
The boy hesitated for the briefest moment, then braced his palms flat on the wet stones beneath him and pushed up. His heart pounded in his chest—Rumple knew because his shadows could feel every beat as if it were their own.
“Here, now, there’s only you and me. No one can see or hear what happens inside my shadows if I don’t want them to.” Rumple didn’t think for too long about why it was important for the boy to know he could trust him, that he was safe with him, but it was.
Rumple held out his free hand, palm upturned. “Come,” he commanded.
The request was simple, and Rumple kept his voice low so as not to lose the tentative dominion he held, and the boy submitted beautifully. He placed his smaller hand squarely in the centre of Rumple’s and looked up at him through long lashes.
The boy wanted, and Rumple needed.