Chapter 8 Rumple
eight
Rumple
Frown lines were etched deep into Rumple’s brow as he gazed at his reflection in the looking glass in his high Tower room, but what plagued his thoughts was not his usual fixation on the acquisition of old grimoires that might teach him how to break free of his entrapment.
Instead, he was consumed by memories of the boy in the cell.
How many times had his shadows acted without his express command the night before?
Once even under the boy’s explicit instruction.
Not that Rumple had tried too hard to recall them when they had slipped under the boy’s tunic and stroked over his bare skin.
Or when they had eased inside his woollen breeches and found him hard and wanting.
Especially not when they had brought him so much pleasure that he came from their touch alone.
Rumple had known then, beyond a doubt. The boy was his missing Heart.
Rumple wanted to turn back time. To revisit the exact moment the boy had made his shadows twitch with such raw need that he’d fought hard not to unbuckle his belt and demand the boy stretch those plump lips around him and not that strawberry.
Trapped behind a layer of thick and luxurious fabric, the strain in Rumple’s breeches matched the strain in his jaw exactly.
Historically, whenever he had taken a human lover and his shadows had acted on their urges during coitus, they had bitten and cut into them, feeding on their inner darkness until there was little left of them.
Yet for the boy who had knelt so beautifully at Rumple’s feet, they had lapped eagerly at his skin and tenderly stroked over his scalp, and the sight had broken the floodgates of his desire.
He grunted in self-reproach. Rumple could fantasise all he wanted, but without a way to rid himself of Queen Schon’s black magick, he couldn’t claim his Heart.
It was this loss of autonomy that had slowly, over the years, caused Rumple to lose his love and enjoyment of the things he used to relish.
Yes, he was permitted to roam the length and breadth of Falchovari, and he also had a full pick from her courtesans and whorehouses, but they had long stopped holding his interest. Like him, they too were under her thrall and, like him, the light had long since gone from their eyes.
But the boy in the cell? His eyes sparkled with all the glitter of the golden thread he had spun—and Rumple wanted.
He turned his back on his reflection.
Spinning the thread into gold was an act of treason, but he’d been left with no other choice: the boy was his Heart and the Queen would have had him killed.
As if his thoughts had summoned her, the barbs of black magick in his chest dug themselves ever deeper. Rumple staggered forward before he regained his footing.
“Mirror, mirror. Show me my Shadow.”
Once again, his services were needed.
The Falchovarian forest was so large and dense that it was said a man could walk for a full turn of the moon and not make it out the other side.
Which is why the Queen always called on Rumple whenever she had business there that required her attention.
Being that he was a malevolent spirit who could travel as fast as light, it took him barely any time at all to find her current person of interest. Especially as he insisted on wearing that ridiculous red cloak in an environment that consisted predominantly of shades of brown and green. He was practically asking to be eaten.
Rumple hadn’t yet made himself known to the little archer.
After all, the Queen had asked only that he locate the cloaked brat, make sure that he wasn’t being distracted from the mission she had sent him on, and report back.
Apparently, five nights was long enough for him to have acquired his target.
Rumple didn’t think so, but then he knew a different side of Red than Her Majesty did.
Rumple seeped from shadow to shadow, thankful the forest’s canopy was so thick with foliage that barely any light pierced through to the overgrown trails below where Red picked his way along lost in thought. Rumple sighed. This was shaping up to be a long and tedious day.
But as he glided unseen through the darkness, he noticed his shadows were invigorated, their previously dense and rigid expression having eased. In its place, however, was a gnawing urge to claim—to possess—and the further he roamed from the palace, the louder and more insistent his shadows became.
They replayed the prior evening’s events on a loop in his mind, as if Rumple might have forgotten what he stood to lose by leaving his Heart unprotected in the cells.
Images of the boy filled every corner of Rumple’s noncorporeal form. How those tears had burned his shadows like nothing else ever had, and the heady weight of the trust he had bestowed on Rumple when he’d placed his hand in his. Even the memory of his touch lingered.
The boy—skin flushed with desire—had stared up at him with those glassy chestnut eyes, and Rumple couldn’t remember ever seeing anything more beautiful.
He’d almost said those words out loud, but then the boy had closed them, as if he were so overwhelmed it was all he could do to preserve his sense of self, and spared him.
Red’s coat snagged on a rambling rose and he cursed out loud, breaking Rumple’s reverie and reminding him of where he was.
He needed to regain control, but he was full to overflowing with unfamiliar emotions and needed an outlet.
His black gaze settled on the young man, dramatically preoccupied with the small pull in the thread of his cloak, and he sent forth his shadowed tendrils to flip the hood up and over the brat’s head.
Rumple laughed—the low sound echoing through the forest—at the angry face that emerged from the oversized cowl.
Now that he had given himself away, he had no choice but to materialise.
Maybe that wasn’t the worst thing. Rumple only needed to make a report, and the most efficient way to do that would be to simply ask Red what he was up to.
Then he wouldn’t need to linger and could return to the Royal District…
and the cells. One specific cell, where a boy Rumple had lulled to sleep with his magick lay.
“Having fun on the Queen’s time, little archer?” His voice rang out, low and menacing.
In an instant, Red had trained his bow on him and notched an arrow. “What are you doing here?”
“The Queen sent me to check up on you. She expected you back already.”
“But I’m not even there yet!”
“Evidently.” Rumple flashed Red a cold smile. “But then, she did send a child to do a man’s job.” He rotated his wrist in an impatient gesture that implied Red should stop stalling.
Red swallowed. “There’s been a few… mishaps.” Then carefully recounted his journey thus far, but Rumple was only half listening.
This was an enormous waste of his particular skill set, and if Red insisted on drawing so much attention to himself with his antics, he could do so alone.
Not that it was his place to say, but Queen Schon would do better to focus her attention on the increased rebellion by peasants across the kingdom than on this foolish mission.
“Just… fuck off back to the palace, and tell the Queen I’m almost there!” Red seemed flustered and overly defensive, and fleetingly Rumple wished he’d been paying more attention to their exchange as he’d clearly struck a nerve.
Still, that level of belligerence couldn’t go unchecked. His form wavered briefly before melting into pure darkness, and he commanded his shadows to reach for Red’s ankles.
Red jerked backwards. “Stop that!” His voice pitched high in surprise.
Rumple re-formed, closer than he had been before. “What’s wrong, little archer? Scared of the dark?”
“I’m not scared of anything, especially not an overgrown shadow puppet.” Red lowered his bow. “How does it feel, by the way? Being Her Majesty’s pet?”
Rumple’s smile vanished. His shadows clung to the tattered fabric secured at Red’s neck. He hated when the Queen referred to him that way, but coming from someone else, it crossed a line. How easy it would be to squeeze until that loose tongue swelled and stilled in his mouth. “Watch your tongue.”
“Or what? You’ll go crying to your mistress?” Red’s words dripped with venom. “That’s all you can do, isn’t it? Run back to her like a good little pet.” His hands trembled, but he pressed on. “Does she at least pat you on the head when you fetch her slippers?”
“You little—”
“Or does she just snap her fingers and point?” Red clicked his fingers. “Here, boy! Heel!”
With a rush, Rumple’s shadows tightened the fabric around his throat. Defiant and foolish until the end, Red lifted his chin and held the spirit’s gaze.
“You’re an unwanted, foolish child, and I don’t have time for your insolence. No wonder the Queen sent you to the Dark Forest in little more than a red cloak. You’re entirely expendable,” Rumple spat. “As you always have been, from the moment you were abandoned on the palace steps.”
Red forced out a laugh. “Better abandoned than enslaved. I may not have family, but at least I’m not spending eternity as someone’s trained dog.”
The shadows constricted. Red gasped for air.
Yet, as much as he might have wanted to eviscerate the brat, he couldn’t.
Red was off limits lest he incur Queen Schon’s wrath, and the knowledge frustrated him further.
Before he gave in to his murderous temptation, Rumple dematerialised with such force that he burst through the forest as a blackened blur.
He finally came to a halt where the tree line gave way to the Oberland Mountain Range in the far south of Falchovari.
The sun was at its highest point in the sky and bounced off the snow-capped peaks in a blinding array of colours.
A beauty he would appreciate far more if he were free. If he had his Heart.
Rumple was a shadow geist—he reminded himself—one so old and powerful that he had matured beyond the noncorporeal realm.
He hadn’t been born per se, but had risen from the nascent human sense of darkness.
Just as there had always been light, there had always been shadow, and whenever levels of magick in the world grew too strong, some was funnelled into the creation of a spirit.
Yet he had been reduced to nothing more than the Queen’s “Pet.”
His clawed shadows swiped at the bark on the nearby trees and gouged trenches deep into the hard ground as they desperately sought to mete out his impotent rage.
A distressed cry carried on the air and rang through Rumple as if he were hollow.
Attracted to the sheer misery, his shadows ceased their pointless destruction and strafed along the tree line as if hypnotised. They had already been denied one kill, and maybe Rumple would gain back some mental clarity if they could slake their bloodlust.
Not far away, he discovered a young man with shoulders that heaved in sorrow, a heart that beat rabbit-fast, and a soaked mop of strawberry-blond hair so much like that of the boy in the cell that Rumple was immediately assaulted with yet more memories.
Particularly the image of when the boy had leaned his head against Rumple’s inner thigh and looked up at him with such an open expression that had Rumple needed to breathe, he would have struggled.
This young man, who bore his Heart’s resemblance, was sitting in the shallows of an icy plunge pool, cradling a sodden and shivering hound in his arms, as another much older and more rugged man laughed cruelly.
Rumple understood at once what must have transpired, and ordinarily he would move on—he was no one’s saviour—but he was caught in a trance.
His mind was aware that this was not the same boy, not his boy, and yet his phantom heart convinced him that it was.
Rumple didn’t have his Heart. Not yet. Neither did he have the capacity to figure out what was happening before he found himself halfway down the embankment in some sort of grotesque and demonic form.
His thick shadows smoked fiercely and lashed out at the man who threatened his boy’s double before he had time to draw his next breath.
Rumple’s shadows coiled tightly around his midsection, and they dragged him slowly toward the same body of water in which he had just tried to drown either the boy or the puppy—or both.
The shadows did this slowly—purposefully—not because the man was too heavy to move any quicker, but so that as they hauled him towards the brackish, icy water, the man had time to realise his fate.
So that he would struggle and weep and beg.
So that his desperate cries would fill the air… and the gaping hole inside Rumple.
A hole he had almost given up on until a boy with impossibly rich brown eyes, who had submitted to him so fully, flayed him wide open and exposed it. And now he would do the same to the man who squirmed against the vice-like grip of his power.
His shadows undulated as they smothered the man in the shallow water. They writhed and heaved as they ate at his flesh and peeled it from his skin. The horrified cries soothed Rumple’s nerves, and frustrated anger morphed into sadistic want.
What was left of the man drew a final, gasping breath, and Rumple’s senses returned.
How many years now had he been enthralled to Queen Schon?
And despite that being against his will, how many uprisings had he quelled for her?
How many people had he killed to help her keep her throne and kingdom?
And in all that time, never once had his portrayed allegiance been anything other than stellar.
His blackened gaze darted to the soaked and retreating form of the boy as he limped up the bank on the other side of the river, the puppy nestled safely in his hold. Rumple watched him leave.
That wasn’t his boy; his boy would never run away from him or his shadows. His boy would kneel, rest his head, accept the food Rumple offered, and lick his fingers clean in gratitude…
Rumple dematerialised back into the shadowed sanctuary of the forest.
He had searched his entire life for his Heart, and now that he had found it—found him—he would find a way to claim him for his own.
Even if he had to continue his deceit toward Queen Schon to do so.